[[4]] This is an allusion to one of the most unfortunate episodes in the life of Rousseau,—his abandoning of the children whom Thérèse Levasseur bore him, and whom he sent to a foundling hospital because he felt within him neither courage to labor for their support, nor capacity to educate them. Sad practical defect in this teacher of theories of education!
[[5]] For the particular example of education which he supposes, Rousseau creates a tutor whom he consecrates absolutely, exclusively, to the work. He desires one so perfect that he calls him a prodigy. Let us not blame him for this. The ideal of those who assume the noble and difficult office of a teacher of childhood cannot be placed too high. As to the pupil, Rousseau imagines a child of average ability, in easy circumstances, and of robust health. He makes him an only son and an orphan, so that no family vicissitudes may disturb the logic of his plan.
All this may be summed up by saying that he considers the child in himself with regard to his individual development, and without regard to his relations to ordinary life. This at the same time renders his task easy, and deprives him of an important element of education.
[[6]] No doubt this sarcasm is applicable to those teachers who talk so as to say nothing. A teacher ought, on the contrary, to speak only so as to be understood by the child. He ought to adapt himself to the child's capacity; to employ no useless or conventional expressions; his language ought to arouse curiosity and to impart light.
BOOK SECOND.
The second book takes the child at about the fifth year, and conducts him to about the twelfth year. He is no longer the little child; he is the young boy. His education becomes more important. It consists not in studies, in reading or writing, or in duties, but in well-chosen plays, in ingenious recreations, in well-directed experiments.