ÉMILE. Yes; by the direction of our shadows.
JEAN JACQUES. But the south?
ÉMILE. How can we find that?
JEAN JACQUES. The south is opposite the north.
ÉMILE. That is true; all we have to do is to find the side opposite the shadows. Oh, there's the south! there's the south! Montmorency must surely be on that side; let us look on that side.
JEAN JACQUES. Perhaps you are right. Let us take this path through the forest.
ÉMILE. [Clapping his hands, with a joyful shout.] Oh, I see Montmorency; there it is, just before us, in plain sight. Let us go to our breakfast, our dinner; let us run fast. Astronomy is good for something!
Observe that even if he does not utter these last words, they will be in his mind. It matters little so long as it is not I who utter them. Rest assured that he will never in his life forget this day's lesson. Now if I had only made him imagine it all indoors, my lecture would have been entirely forgotten by the next day. We should teach as much as possible by actions, and say only what we cannot do.
Robinson Crusoe.
In his legitimate preference for teaching by the eye and hand and by real things, and in his aversion to the barren and erroneous method of teaching from books alone, Rousseau, constantly carried away by the passionate ardor of his nature, rushes into an opposite extreme, and exclaims, "I hate books; they only teach us to talk about what we do not understand." Then, checked in the full tide of this declamation by his own good sense, he adds:—