Émile; Or, Concerning Education; Extracts

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Clothing.

As to clothing, the limbs of a growing body should be entirely free. Nothing should cramp their movements or their growth; nothing should fit too closely or bind the body; there should be no ligatures whatever. The present French dress cramps and disables even a man, and is especially injurious to children. It arrests the circulation of the humors; they stagnate from an inaction made worse by a sedentary life. This corruption of the humors brings on the scurvy, a disease becoming every day more common among us, but unknown to the ancients, protected from it by their dress and their mode of life. The hussar dress does not remedy this inconvenience, but increases it, since, to save the child a few ligatures, it compresses the entire body. It would be better to keep children in frocks as long as possible, and then put them into loosely fitting clothes, without trying to shape their figures and thereby spoil them. Their defects of body and of mind nearly all spring from the same cause: we are trying to make men of them before their time.

Of bright and dull colors, the former best please a child's taste; such colors are also most becoming to them; and I see no reason why we should not in such matters consult these natural coincidences. But the moment a material is preferred because it is richer, the child's mind is corrupted by luxury, and by all sorts of whims. Preferences like this do not spring up of their own accord. It is impossible to say how much choice of dress and the motives of this choice influence education. Not only do thoughtless mothers promise children fine clothes by way of reward, but foolish tutors threaten them with coarser and simpler dress as punishment. "If you do not study your lessons, if you do not take better care of your clothes, you shall be dressed like that little rustic." This is saying to him, "Rest assured that a man is nothing but what his clothes make him; your own worth depends on what you wear." Is it surprising that sage lessons like this so influence young men that they care for nothing but ornament, and judge of merit by outward appearance only?

Generally, children are too warmly clothed, especially in their earlier years. They should be inured to cold rather than heat; severe cold never incommodes them when they encounter it early. But the tissue of their skin, as yet yielding and tender, allows too free passage to perspiration, and exposure to great heat invariably weakens them. It has been observed that more children die in August than in any other month. Besides, if we compare northern and southern races, we find that excessive cold, rather than excessive heat, makes man robust. In proportion as the child grows and his fibres are strengthened, accustom him gradually to withstand heat; and by degrees you will without risk train him to endure the glowing temperature of the torrid zone.

Sleep.

Children need a great deal of sleep because they take a great deal of exercise. The one acts as corrective to the other, so that both are necessary. As nature teaches us, night is the time for rest. Constant observation shows that sleep is softer and more profound while the sun is below the horizon. The heated air does not so perfectly tranquillize our tired senses. For this reason the most salutary habit is to rise and to go to rest with the sun. In our climate man, and animals generally, require more sleep in winter than in summer. But our mode of life is not so simple, natural, and uniform that we can make this regular habit a necessity. We must without doubt submit to regulations; but it is most important that we should be able to break them without risk when occasion requires. Do not then imprudently soften your pupil by letting him lie peacefully asleep without ever being disturbed. At first let him yield without restraint to the law of nature, but do not forget that in our day we must be superior to this law; we must be able to go late to rest and rise early, to be awakened suddenly, to be up all night, without discomfort. By beginning early, and by always proceeding slowly, we form the constitution by the very practices which would ruin it if it were already established.

It is important that your pupil should from the first be accustomed to a hard bed, so that he may find none uncomfortable.

Generally, a life of hardship, when we are used to it, gives us a far greater number of agreeable sensations than does a life of ease, which creates an infinite number of unpleasant ones. One too delicately reared can find sleep only upon a bed of down; one accustomed to bare boards can find it anywhere. No bed is hard to him who falls asleep as soon as his head touches the pillow. The best bed is the one which brings the best sleep. Throughout the day no slaves from Persia, but Émile and I, will prepare our beds. When we are tilling the ground we shall be making them soft for our slumber.

Exercise of the Senses.

A child has not a man's stature, strength, or reason; but he sees and hears almost or quite as well. His sense of taste is as keen, though he does not enjoy it as a pleasure.