Émile; Or, Concerning Education; Extracts

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Mark the difference between the learning of your pupils and the ignorance of mine. They know all about maps, and he can make them. Our maps will serve as new decorations for our room.

Imparting a Taste for Science.

Bear in mind always that the life and soul of my system is, not to teach the child many things, but to allow only correct and clear ideas to enter his mind. I do not care if he knows nothing, so long as he is not mistaken. To guard him from errors he might learn, I furnish his mind with truths only. Reason and judgment enter slowly; prejudices crowd in; and he must be preserved from these last. Yet if you consider science in itself, you launch upon an unfathomable and boundless sea, full of unavoidable dangers. When I see a man carried away by his love for knowledge, hastening from one alluring science to another, without knowing where to stop, I think I see a child gathering shells upon the seashore. At first he loads himself with them; then, tempted by others, he throws these away, and gathers more. At last, weighed down by so many, and no longer knowing which to choose, he ends by throwing all away, and returning empty-handed.

In our early years time passed slowly; we endeavored to lose it, for fear of misusing it. The case is reversed; now we have not time enough for doing all that we find useful. Bear in mind that the passions are drawing nearer, and that as soon as they knock at the door, your pupil will have eyes and ears for them alone. The tranquil period of intelligence is so brief, and has so many other necessary uses, that only folly imagines it long enough to make the child a learned man. The thing is, not to teach him knowledge, but to give him a love for it, and a good method of acquiring it when this love has grown stronger. Certainly this is a fundamental principle in all good education.

Now, also, is the time to accustom him gradually to concentrate attention on a single object. This attention, however, should never result from constraint, but from desire and pleasure. Be careful that it shall not grow irksome, or approach the point of weariness. Leave any subject just before he grows tired of it; for the learning it matters less to him than the never being obliged to learn anything against his will. If he himself questions you, answer so as to keep alive his curiosity, not to satisfy it altogether. Above all, when you find that he makes inquiries, not for the sake of learning something, but to talk at random and annoy you with silly questions, pause at once, assured that he cares nothing about the matter, but only to occupy your time with himself. Less regard should be paid to what he says than to the motive which leads him to speak. This caution, heretofore unnecessary, is of the utmost importance as soon as a child begins to reason.

There is a chain of general truths by which all sciences are linked to common principles and successively unfolded. This chain is the method of philosophers, with which, for the present, we have nothing to do. There is another, altogether different, which shows each object as the cause of another, and always points out the one following. This order, which, by a perpetual curiosity, keeps alive the attention demanded by all, is the one followed by most men, and of all others necessary with children. When, in making our maps, we found out the place of the east, we were obliged to draw meridians. The two points of intersection between the equal shadows of night and morning furnish an excellent meridian for an astronomer thirteen years old. But these meridians disappear; it takes time to draw them; they oblige us to work always in the same place; so much care, so much annoyance, will tire him out at last. We have seen and provided for this beforehand.

I have again begun upon tedious and minute details. Readers, I hear your murmurs, and disregard them. I will not sacrifice to your impatience the most useful part of this book. Do what you please with my tediousness, as I have done as I pleased in regard to your complaints.

The Juggler.

For some time my pupil and I had observed that different bodies, such as amber, glass, and wax, when rubbed, attract straws, and that others do not attract them. By accident we discovered one that has a virtue more extraordinary still,—that of attracting at a distance, and without being rubbed, iron filings and other bits of iron. This peculiarity amused us for some time before we saw any use in it. At last we found out that it may be communicated to iron itself, when magnetized to a certain degree. One day we went to a fair, where a juggler, with a piece of bread, attracted a duck made of wax, and floating on a bowl of water. Much surprised, we did not however say, "He is a conjurer," for we knew nothing about conjurers. Continually struck by effects whose causes we do not know, we were not in haste to decide the matter, and remained in ignorance until we found a way out of it.

When we reached home we had talked so much of the duck at the fair that we thought we would endeavor to copy it. Taking a perfect needle, well magnetized, we inclosed it in white wax, modelled as well as we could do it into the shape of a duck, so that the needle passed entirely through the body, and with its larger end formed the duck's bill. We placed the duck upon the water, applied to the beak the handle of a key, and saw, with a delight easy to imagine, that our duck would follow the key precisely as the one at the fair had followed the piece of bread. We saw that some time or other we might observe the direction in which the duck turned when left to itself upon the water. But absorbed at that time by another object, we wanted nothing more.