Since we must have books, there is one which, to my mind, furnishes the finest of treatises on education according to nature. My Émile shall read this book before any other; it shall for a long time be his entire library, and shall always hold an honorable place. It shall be the text on which all our discussions of natural science shall be only commentaries. It shall be a test for all we meet during our progress toward a ripened judgment, and so long as our taste is unspoiled, we shall enjoy reading it. What wonderful book is this? Aristotle? Pliny? Buffon? No; it is "Robinson Crusoe."
The story of this man, alone on his island, unaided by his fellow-men, without any art or its implements, and yet providing for his own preservation and subsistence, even contriving to live in what might be called comfort, is interesting to persons of all ages. It may be made delightful to children in a thousand ways. Thus we make the desert island, which I used at the outset for a comparison, a reality.
This condition is not, I grant, that of man in society; and to all appearance Émile will never occupy it; but from it he ought to judge of all others. The surest way to rise above prejudice, and to judge of things in their true relations, is to put ourselves in the place of an isolated man, and decide as he must concerning their real utility.
Disencumbered of its less profitable portions, this romance from its beginning, the shipwreck of Crusoe on the island, to its end, the arrival of the vessel which takes him away, will yield amusement and instruction to Émile during the period now in question. I would have him completely carried away by it, continually thinking of Crusoe's fort, his goats, and his plantations. I would have him learn, not from books, but from real things, all he would need to know under the same circumstances. He should be encouraged to play Robinson Crusoe; to imagine himself clad in skins, wearing a great cap and sword, and all the array of that grotesque figure, down to the umbrella, of which he would have no need. If he happens to be in want of anything, I hope he will contrive something to supply its place. Let him look carefully into all that his hero did, and decide whether any of it was unnecessary, or might have been done in a better way. Let him notice Crusoe's mistakes and avoid them under like circumstances. He will very likely plan for himself surroundings like Crusoe's,—a real castle in the air, natural at his happy age when we think ourselves rich if we are free and have the necessaries of life. How useful this hobby might be made if some man of sense would only suggest it and turn it to good account! The child, eager to build a storehouse for his island, would be more desirous to learn than his master would be to teach him. He would be anxious to know everything he could make use of, and nothing besides. You would not need to guide, but to restrain him.
Here Rousseau insists upon giving a child some trade, no matter what his station in life may be; and in 1762 he uttered these prophetic words, remarkable indeed, when we call to mind the disorders at the close of that century:—
You trust to the present condition of society, without reflecting that it is subject to unavoidable revolutions, and that you can neither foresee nor prevent what is to affect the fate of your own children. The great are brought low, the poor are made rich, the king becomes a subject. Are the blows of fate so uncommon that you can expect to escape them? We are approaching a crisis, the age of revolutions. Who can tell what will become of you then? All that man has done man may destroy. No characters but those stamped by nature are ineffaceable; and nature did not make princes, or rich men, or nobles.
This advice was followed. In the highest grades of society it became the fashion to learn some handicraft. It is well known that Louis XVI. was proud of his skill as a locksmith. Among the exiles of a later period, many owed their living to the trade they had thus learned.
To return to Émile: Rousseau selects for him the trade of a joiner, and goes so far as to employ him and his tutor in that kind of labor for one or more days of every week under a master who pays them actual wages for their work.
Judging from Appearances. The Broken Stick.
If I have thus far made myself understood, you may see how, with regular physical exercise and manual labor, I am at the same time giving my pupil a taste for reflection and meditation. This will counterbalance the indolence which might result from his indifference to other men and from the dormant state of his passions. He must work like a peasant and think like a philosopher, or he will be as idle as a savage. The great secret of education is to make physical and mental exercises serve as relaxation for each other. At first our pupil had nothing but sensations, and now he has ideas. Then he only perceived, but now he judges. For from comparison of many successive or simultaneous sensations, with the judgments based on them, arises a kind of mixed or complex sensation which I call an idea.