320. Choice in the Things to be taught.—The principle which guides Rousseau in the choice of Émile’s studies is no other than the principle of utility:—
“There is a choice in the things which ought to be taught as well as in the time fit for learning them. Of the knowledges within our reach, some are false, others are useless, and still others serve to nourish the pride of him who has them. Only the small number of those which really contribute to our good are worthy the care of a wise man, and consequently of a child whom we wish to render such. It is not a question of knowing what is, but only what is useful.”
321. Rousseau and the Abbé de Saint Pierre.—Among educators, some wish to teach everything, while others demand a choice, and would retain only what is necessary. The Abbé de Saint Pierre follows the first tendency. He would have the scholar learn everything at college; a little medicine towards the seventh or eighth year, and in the other classes, arithmetic and blazonry, jurisprudence, German, Italian, dancing, declamation, politics, ethics, astronomy, anatomy, chemistry, without counting drawing and the violin, and twenty other things besides. Rousseau is wiser. He is dismayed at such an accumulation, at such an obstruction of studies, and so yields too much to the opposite tendency, and restricts beyond measure the list of necessary studies.
322. Émile’s Studies.—These, in fact, are the studies to which Émile is limited: first, the physical sciences, and, at the head of the list, astronomy, then geography, geography taught without maps and by means of travel:—
“You are looking for globes, spheres, maps. What machines! Why all these representations? Why not begin by showing him the object itself?”
Here, as in other places, Rousseau prefers what would be best, but what is impossible, to that which is worth less, but which alone is practicable.
But Rousseau does not wish that his pupil, like the pupil of Rabelais, become an “abyss of knowledge.”
“When I see a man, enamored of knowledge, allow himself to yield to its charms, and run from one kind to another without knowing where to stop, I think I see a child on the sea-shore collecting shells, beginning by loading himself with them; then, tempted by those he still sees, throwing them aside, picking them up, until, weighed down by their number, and no longer knowing which to choose, he ends by rejecting everything, and returns empty-handed.”
No account is made of grammar and the ancient languages in the plan of Émile’s studies. Graver still, history is proscribed. This rejection of historical studies, moreover, is systematically done. Rousseau has placed Émile in the country, and has made him an orphan, the better to isolate him; to teach him history would be to throw him back into society that he abominates.