She carries daintiness a little too far:—
“She does not love cooking; its details have some disgust for her. She would sooner let the whole dinner go into the fire than to soil her cuffs.”
Truly this is fine housewifery! We feel that we have here to do with a character in a romance who has no need to dine. Sophie would not have been well received at Saint Cyr, where Madame de Maintenon so severely scolded the girls who were too fastidious, “fearing smoke, dust, and disagreeable odors, even to making complaints and grimaces on their account as though all were lost.”
335. General Conclusion.—In order to form a just estimate of the Émile, it is necessary to put aside the impressions left by the reading of the last pages. We must consider as a whole, and without taking details into account, that work, which, notwithstanding all, is very admirable and profound. It is injured by analysis. To esteem the Émile at its real worth, it must be read entire. In reading it, in fact, we are warmed by contact with the passion which Rousseau puts into whatever he writes. We pardon his errors and chimeras by reason of the grand sentiments and the grand truths which we meet at every step. We must also take into account the time when Rousseau lived, and the conditions under which he wrote. We have not a doubt that had it been written thirty years later, in the dawn of the Revolution, for a people who were free, or who desired to be free, the Émile would have been wholly different from what it is. Had he been working for a republican society, or for a society that wished to become such, Rousseau would not have thrown himself, out of hatred for the reality, into the absurdities of an over-specialized and exceptional education. We can judge of what he would have done as legislator of public instruction in the time of the Revolution, by what he wrote in his Considerations on the Government of Poland:—
“National education belongs only to people who are free.... It is education which is to give to men the national mould, and so to direct their opinions and their tastes that they will become patriots by inclination, by passion, and by necessity” (we would only add, by duty). “A child, in opening his eyes, ought to see his country and nothing but his country. Every true republican, along with his mother’s milk, will imbibe love of country, that is, of law and liberty. This love constitutes his whole existence. He sees but his country, he lives but for her. So soon as he is alone, he is nothing; so soon as there is no more of country, he is no more.... While learning to read, I would have a child of Poland read what relates to his country; at the age of ten, I would have him know all its productions; at twelve, all its provinces, all its roads, all its cities; at fifteen, the whole of its history; and at sixteen, all its laws; and there should not be in all Poland a notable deed or an illustrious man, of which his memory and his heart were not full.”
336. Influence of the Émile.—That which proves better than any commentary can the high standing of the Émile, is the success which it has obtained, the influence which it has exerted, both in France and abroad, and the durable renown attested by so many works designed, either to contradict it, to correct it, or to approve it and to disseminate its doctrines. During the twenty-five years that followed the publication of the Émile, there appeared in the French language twice as many books on education as during the first sixty years of the century. Rousseau, besides all that he said personally which was just and new, had the merit of stimulating minds and of preparing through his impulsion the rich educational harvest of this last one hundred years.
To be convinced of this, it suffices to read this judgment of Kant:—
“The first impression which a reader who does not read for vanity or for killing time derives from the writings of Rousseau, is that this writer unites to an admirable penetration of genius a noble inspiration and a soul full of sensibility, such as has never been met with in any other writer, in any other time, or in any other country. The impression which immediately follows this, is that of astonishment caused by the extraordinary and paradoxical thoughts which he develops.... I ought to read and re-read Rousseau, till the beauty of his style no more affects me. It is only then that I can adjust my reason to judge of him.”
[337. Analytical Summary.—1. The study of the Émile exhibits, in a very striking manner, the contrast between the respective agencies of art and nature in the work of education, and also the power of sentiment as a motor to ideas.
2. What Monsieur Compayré has happily called Rousseau’s “misuse of the principle of nature” marks a recoil against the artificial and fictitious state of society and opinion in France in the eighteenth century. In politics, in religion, and in philosophy, there was the domination of authority, and but a small margin was left for the exercise of freedom, versatility, and individual initiative; while education was administered rather as a process of manufacture, than of regulated growth.