Émile; Or, Concerning Education; Extracts

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The development of their physical strength makes complaint less necessary to children. When able to help themselves, they have less need of the help of others. Knowledge to direct their strength grows with that strength. At this second stage the life of the individual properly begins; he now becomes conscious of his own being. Memory extends this feeling of personal identity to every moment of his existence; he becomes really one, the same one, and consequently capable of happiness or of misery. We must therefore, from this moment, begin to regard him as a moral being.

Childhood is to be Loved.

Although the longest term of human life, and the probability, at any given age, of reaching this term, have been computed, nothing is more uncertain than the continuance of each individual life: very few attain the maximum. The greatest risks in life are at its beginning; the less one has lived, the less prospect he has of living.

Of all children born, only about half reach youth; and it is probable that your pupil may never attain to manhood. What, then, must be thought of that barbarous education which sacrifices the present to an uncertain future, loads the child with every description of fetters, and begins, by making him wretched, to prepare for him some far-away indefinite happiness he may never enjoy! Even supposing the object of such an education reasonable, how can we without indignation see the unfortunate creatures bowed under an insupportable yoke, doomed to constant labor like so many galley-slaves, without any certainty that all this toil will ever be of use to them! The years that ought to be bright and cheerful are passed in tears amid punishments, threats, and slavery. For his own good, the unhappy child is tortured; and the death thus summoned will seize on him unperceived amidst all this melancholy preparation. Who knows how many children die on account of the extravagant prudence of a father or of a teacher? Happy in escaping his cruelty, it gives them one advantage; they leave without regret a life which they know only from its darker side.[[2]]

O men, be humane! it is your highest duty; be humane to all conditions of men, to every age, to everything not alien to mankind. What higher wisdom is there for you than humanity? Love childhood; encourage its sports, its pleasures, its lovable instincts. Who among us has not at times looked back with regret to the age when a smile was continually on our lips, when the soul was always at peace? Why should we rob these little innocent creatures of the enjoyment of a time so brief, so transient, of a boon so precious, which they cannot misuse? Why will you fill with bitterness and sorrow these fleeting years which can no more return to them than to you? Do you know, you fathers, the moment when death awaits your children? Do not store up for yourselves remorse, by taking from them the brief moments nature has given them. As soon as they can appreciate the delights of existence, let them enjoy it. At whatever hour God may call them, let them not die without having tasted life at all.

You answer, "It is the time to correct the evil tendencies of the human heart. In childhood, when sufferings are less keenly felt, they ought to be multiplied, so that fewer of them will have to be encountered during the age of reason." But who has told you that it is your province to make this arrangement, and that all these fine instructions, with which you burden the tender mind of a child, will not one day be more pernicious than useful to him? Who assures you that you spare him anything when you deal him afflictions with so lavish a hand? Why do you cause him more unhappiness than he can bear, when you are not sure that the future will compensate him for these present evils? And how can you prove that the evil tendencies of which you pretend to cure him will not arise from your mistaken care rather than from nature itself! Unhappy foresight, which renders a creature actually miserable, in the hope, well or ill founded, of one day making him happy! If these vulgar reasoners confound license with liberty, and mistake a spoiled child for a child who is made happy, let us teach them to distinguish the two.

To avoid being misled, let us remember what really accords with our present abilities. Humanity has its place in the general order of things; childhood has its place in the order of human life. Mankind must be considered in the individual man, and childhood in the individual child. To assign each his place, and to establish him in it—to direct human passions as human nature will permit—is all we can do for his welfare. The rest depends on outside influences not under our control.

Neither Slaves nor Tyrants.

He alone has his own way who, to compass it, does not need the arm of another to lengthen his own. Consequently freedom, and not authority, is the greatest good. A man who desires only what he can do for himself is really free to do whatever he pleases. From this axiom, if it be applied to the case of childhood, all the rules of education will follow.

A wise man understands how to remain in his own place; but a child, who does not know his, cannot preserve it. As matters stand, there are a thousand ways of leaving it. Those who govern him are to keep him in it, and this is not an easy task. He ought to be neither an animal nor a man, but a child. He should feel his weakness, and yet not suffer from it. He should depend, not obey; he should demand, not command. He is subject to others only by reason of his needs, and because others see better than he what is useful to him, what will contribute to his well-being or will impair it. No one, not even his father, has a right to command a child to do what is of no use to him whatever.