“The first natural movements of the child being then to measure himself with his surroundings and to test in everything he sees all its sensible properties which may concern him, his first study is a kind of experimental physics relating to his own preservation; and from this we divert him to speculative studies before he feels himself at home here below. So long as his delicate and flexible organs can adjust themselves to the bodies on which they ought to act, so long as his senses as yet uncorrupted are free from illusion, this is the time to exercise them all in their proper functions; this is the time to learn to understand the sensuous relations which things have with us. As everything that enters the mind finds its way through the senses, the first reason of a human being is a reason of sensations; this it is which forms the basis of the intellectual reason; our first masters in philosophy are our feet, our hands, our eyes. Substituting books for all this is not teaching us to reason, but simply to use the reason of other people; it teaches us to take a great deal on trust and never to know anything.
“In order to practise an art we must begin by getting the proper implements; and that we may have good use of these implements they must be made strong enough to stand wear and tear. That we may learn to think we must then exercise our members, our senses, our organs, as these are the implements of our intelligence; and that we may make the most of these implements the body which supplies them must be strong and healthy. We see then that far from man’s true reason forming itself independently of his body, it is the sound constitution of the body that makes the operations of the mind easy and certain.”[141]
§ 25. Rousseau does not confine himself to advising that the senses should be cultivated; he also gives some hints of the way in which they should be cultivated, and many modern experiments, such as “object lessons” and the use of actual weights and measures, may be directly traced to him. “As soon as a child begins to distinguish objects, a proper choice should be made in those which are presented to him.” Elsewhere he says, “To exercise the senses is not simply to make use of them; it is to learn to judge aright by means of them; it is to learn, so to say, to perceive; for we can only touch and see and hear according as we have learnt how. There is a kind of exercise perfectly natural and mechanical which serves to make the body strong without giving anything for the judgment to lay hold of: swimming, running, jumping, whip-top, stone throwing; all this is capital; but have we nothing but arms and legs? have we not also eyes and ears? and are these organs not needed in our use of the others? Do not then merely exercise the strength but exercise all the senses which direct it; get all you can out of each of them, and then check the impressions of one by the impressions of another. Measure, reckon, weigh, compare.”[142]
§ 26. Two subjects there were in which Émile was to receive instruction, viz.: music and drawing. Rousseau’s advice about drawing is well worth considering. He says: “Children who are great imitators all try to draw. I should wish my child to cultivate this art, not exactly for the art itself, but to make his eye correct and his hand supple: Les enfants, grands imitateurs, essayent tous de dessiner: je voudrais que le mien cultivât cet art, non précisément pour l’art même, mais pour se rendre l’œil juste et la main flexible.” (Ém. ij., 149). But Émile is to be kept clear of the ordinary drawing-master who would put him to imitate imitations; and there is a striking contrast between Rousseau’s suggestions and those of the authorities at South Kensington. Technical skill he cares for less than the training of the eye; so Émile is always to draw from the object, and, says Rousseau, “my intention is not so much that he should get to imitate the objects, as get to know them: mon intention n’est pas tant qu’il sache imiter les objets que les connaître.” (Ém. ij., 150).
§ 27. Before we pass the age of twelve years, at which point, as someone says, Rousseau substitutes another Émile for the one he has hitherto spoken of, let us look at his proposals for moral training. Rousseau is right, beyond question, in desiring that children should be treated as children. But what are children? What can they understand? What is the world in which they live? Is it the material world only, or is the moral world also open to them? (Girardin’s R., vol. ij., 136). On the subject of morals Rousseau seems to have admirable instincts,[143] but no principles, and moral as he is “on instinct,” there is always some confusion in what he Says. At one time he asserts that “there is only one knowledge to give children, and that is a knowledge of duty: Il n’y a qu’une science à enseigner aux enfants: c’est celle des devoirs de l’homme.” (Ém. j., 26). Elsewhere he says: “To know right from wrong, to be conscious of the reason of duty is not the business of a child: Connaître le bien et le mal, sentir la raison des devoirs de l’homme, n’est pas l’affaire d’un enfant.” (Ém. ij., 75).[144] In another place he mounts his hobby that “the most sublime virtues are negative” (Ém. ij., 95), and that about the best man who ever lived (till he found Friday?) was Robinson Crusoe. The outcome of all Rousseau’s teaching on this subject seems that we should in every way develop the child’s animal or physical life, retard his intellectual life, and ignore his life as a spiritual and moral being.
§ 28. A variety of influences had combined, as they combine still, to draw attention away from the importance of physical training; and by placing the child’s bodily organs and senses as the first things to be thought of in education, Rousseau did much to save us from the bad tradition of the Renascence. But there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in his philosophy, and whatever Rousseau might say, Émile could never be restrained from inquiring after them. Every boy will think; i.e., he will think for himself, however unable he may seem to think in the direction in which his instructors try to urge him. The wise elders who have charge of him must take this into account, and must endeavour to guide him into thinking modestly and thinking right. Then again, as soon as the child can speak, or before, the world of sensation becomes for him a world, not of sensations only, but also of sentiments, of sympathies, of affections, of consciousness of right and wrong, good and evil. All these feelings, it is true, may be affected by traditional prejudices. The air the child breathes may also contain much that is noxious; but we have no more power to exclude the atmosphere of the moral world than of the physical. All we can do is to take thought for fresh air in both cases. As for Rousseau’s notion that we can withdraw the child from the moral atmosphere, we see in it nothing but a proof how little he understood the problems he professed to solve.[145]
§ 29. Although the governor is to devote himself to a single child, Rousseau is careful to protest against over-direction. “You would stupify the child,” says he, “if you were constantly directing him, if you were always saying to him, ‘Come here! Go there! Stop! Do this! Don’t do that!’ If your head always directs his arms, his own head becomes useless to him.” (Ém., ij., 114). Here we have a warning which should not be neglected by those who maintain the Lycées in France, and the ordinary private boarding-schools in England. In these schools a boy is hardly called upon to exercise his will all day long. He rises in the morning when he must; at meals he eats till he is obliged to stop; he is taken out for exercise like a horse; he has all his indoor work prescribed for him both as to time and quantity. In this kind of life he never has occasion to think or act for himself. He is therefore without self-reliance. So much care is taken to prevent his doing wrong, that he gets to think only of checks from without. He is therefore incapable of self-restraint. In the English public schools boys have much less supervision from their elders, and organise a great portion of their lives for themselves. This proves a better preparation for life after the school age; and most public schoolmasters would agree with Rousseau that “the lessons the boys get from each other in the playground are a hundred times more useful to them than the lessons given them in school: les leçons que les écoliers prennent entre eux dans la cour du collège leur sont cent fois plus utiles que tout ce qu’on leur dira jamais dans la classe.” (Ém. ij., 123.)
§ 30. On questions put by children, Rousseau says: “The art of questioning is not so easy as it may be thought; it is rather the art of the master than of the pupil. We must have learnt a good deal of a thing to be able to ask what we do not know. The learned know and inquire, says an Indian proverb, but the ignorant know not what to inquire about.” And from this he infers that children learn less from asking than from being asked questions. (N. H., 5th p. 490.)