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i%.
iCQUES
ROUSSEAU
r f^RlEL COMPAYR^
UC-NRLF
K^^^^S
EOUSSEAU
PIONEERS IN EDUCATION
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
AND EDUCATION FKOM NATUKE
BY
GABRIEL C0MPAYR6
OOBBBBFONDBNT OF THB INSTITUTB ; DIBBOTOB OV THB AGADBMT
OV LYONS; AUTHOB OF ^'PSTCHOLOOT APPLIBD TO
BDUCATION," **LB0TUBB8 ON PBDACKMJT,"
'<▲ mSTOBT OF PBDAGOGT," BTG.
TRANSLATED BY
R. P. JAGO
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
PUBLISHERS
^7
COPTBIOHT, 1907,
Bt THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY.
PUBLISHBDy SXPTSMBEB, 1907.
C7
CONTENTS AND SUMMARY
PAOB
Preface vii
I. Novelty of Rousseau's views on education. — ilmile a
mixture of truth and error. — Of greater importance to
lay stress on the abiding truths than to refute uto-
pianisms ... ...... 1
II. Rousseau an initiator and revolutionary. — Despite his
originality, he had his forerunners : Montaigne, F^nelon,
Locke, etc. — Turgot had previously preached the re-
turn to nature. — A study of children necessary in
order to educate them. — The psychology of infancy
contained in ^mUe, — Rousseau had observed the chil-
dren of others. — His deficiency in professional experi-
ence. — Lacking in connected study. — Influence of
personal reminiscences on Rousseau's pedagogical
theories. — !6mile is self-taught. — Emile's education is
often conceived by Rousseau as a fancied antithesis to
the realities of his own life and character. — Rousseau,
in his visionary structure, reacted against himself . 6
III. Essential principles of J^mile, and their results. — The
doctrine of original innocence. — Positive statements.
— Pessimism in regard to society : optimism in regard
to nature. — Return to the natural man advocated. —
In consequence, "negative" education until the age of
twelve. — No moral authority. — No didactic teaching.
— Paradoxes on paradoxes. — Neither punishments nor
rewards. — The child is of necessity subjected to the laws
of nature. — Suppression of the authority of parents and
masters : Rousseau's capital error. — Inactive, expec-
ivl652587
iv CONTENTS AND SUMMARY
PAGB
tant education. — Abnormal isolation of l^lmile. —
Contrived situations. — Tricks of composition. — De-
spite his contradictions, Rousseau is a partisan of
domestic education. — Praise of family life. — The duty
of mothers to nurse their children. — Obligations of
fathers. — Another paradox : " successive " education.
— Artificial division of the life of the child and the youth
into three periods. — Correct views concerning the char-
acteristics proper to each age. — Is it necessary to treat
the child as a man? — Unjustifiable postponement of
moral education. — Religious training delayed until
adolescence. — The Profession de foi du vimire Savoyard.
— K Nature should speak, with what she could right-
fully reproach Rousseau 20
IV. The eternal truths of tlmUe. — Physical education. —
Minute directions regarding the hygiene of childhood.
— Importance of bodily exercise from a moral view-
point. — Education in the country. — femile is taught
a manual trade : why ? — Education of the senses. —
Things, things! — Exercise of the judgment in the
domain of tangible knowledge. — Progranmie of utili-
tarian studies. — The art of action. — Necessity of
adapting education to life. — Neither literature nor his-
tory. — Regarding the last point, Rousseau makes a
retraction in the ConsidSrations svr le gouvemement de
Pologne. — As for the ancient languages, they are not a
utility. — Nature study. — Astronomy, physics. —
Geography without maps. — Emile at fifteen: more
teachable than taught. — Education of the will. —
J^lmile brought up in liberty. — Make the child happy.
— fonile, however, knows how to bear suffering. —
Introduction to social feelings. — l^mile a philanthro-
pist. — Rousseau has not written directly for the people,
but he has, however, prepared the way for popular in-
CONTENTS AND SUMMARY v
PAOB
struction. — What he wished to form was "just a man. "
— Unconcern regardmg professional education. —
Occasional awakening of the practical spirit in Rous-
seau. — Travel abroad for purposes of study. — iSlmile
learns on the spot two or three modem languages . 52
V. Education of Sophie, the ideal woman. — The treatise
turns into a romance. — Sophie is not, however, alto-
gether an imaginary being: she existed. — Rousseau's
mistakes in his views on the education of women. —
Sophie's education is the reverse of Smile's. — Subordi-
nation of the woman to the man. — Rousseau does
not admit the equaUty of the sexes. — Incomplete
psychology. — Woman's defects. — Her qualities. —
Woman should remain woman. — Rousseau not a
woman's rights man. — Sophie's education limited. —
" Household education." — Needlework. — A yoimg
woman should go into society. — She should be given
religious instruction in good season. — Woman should
think, in order to fulfil her duties as a wife and mother.
— Her personality slightly overlooked. — The authority
which she exercises is based on her natural graces. —
Sophie is already to an extent the modem lovely and
attractive woman, created not for the church and the
convent, but for family life 81
VI. Success of tlmUe. — Extraordinary influence of Rous-
seau. — Numerous works in imitation or in refutation.
— UMh)e de la nature by de Beaurieu. — Effect of
Rousseau's inspiration on the French Revolution. —
Bemardin de Saint-Pierre and the ^cole de la patrie. —
Mme. Roland's admiration for Rousseau. — Mme. de
Stael's, Mme. de Genlis, Mme. de Necker de Saussure.
— International reputation of tlmUe, — Enthusiastic
testimonies from Germany. — Basedow and Lavater.
— Kant and his TraUi de p4dagogie. — Goethe, Schiller,
vi CONTENTS AND SUMMARY
PAOB
J.-P. Richter, Herder, Pestalozzi, etc. — Favourable
appreciation of English writers: John Morley, R. H.
Quick, etc. — The least success in the United States. —
However, American education strives to attain the ideal
dreamed of by Rousseau. — How Rousseau's pedagogi-
cal spirit has insinuated itself into modem methods of
teaching and educational practices. — It has raised and
ennobled the educator's part. — How he is at times a
stoic. — He remains a great enticer of intellects. — Why
he will never cease to be loved 100
BiBLIOOBAPHY • • . 119
PREFACE
In pubKshing a series of monographs on the
*^ Pioneers in Education/' those of all nations and
of every age, we have several aims in view.
In the first place, we wish to represent the men
who deserve to have their names on the honom*
list in the history of education, all who have in
any remarkable way contributed to the reform
and progress of the instruction and advancement
of humanity ; to represent them as they lived ; to
show what they thought and did ; and to exhibit
their doctrines and methods, and their moral
character.
But after having portrayed each heroic figure
clearly, we must also sketch his background, the
general tendencies of the epoch in which the re-
former lived, the scholastic institutions of his coun-
try, and the genius, so to speak, of his race, in
order that we may set forth in successive pictures
the struggles and the progress of the civilized races.
In the last place, we wish to do more than write
a historical narrative merely. Our ambition is
higher : it is to bring face to face ideas held long
ago with modem opinions, with the needs and
vii
viii PREFACE
aspirations of society to-day, and thus to prepare
the way for a solution of the pedagogical problems
confronting the twentieth century.
If we have chosen J.-J. Rousseau to open this
gallery of portraits, it is not because he was a sure
guide, an irreproachable leader. But in the cause
of education he has been a great inciter of ideas in
others, the initiator of the modem movement, the
" leader " of most of the educators who came after
him. Pestalozzi, Spencer, to cite only two, have
undoubtedly been his disciples. He has assailed
the routine of tradition; he has broken short off
with the past ; and if he has not always sown the
seed in the field of education, he has at least
watered it, rid it of encumbering weeds, leaving to
his successors the care of its cultivation and fertili-
zation for later flowering. We therefore render
but simple justice and place him where he belongs,
when we mention him first.
We dedicate this study and those which follow
it to all people who are interested in the cause of
education, and who think, as we do, that this ques-
tion is the vital one, the one upon which depends
the future of the people ; without which no social
reform is possible; that, finally, the progress of
education is the question of life and death for soci-
ety and the individual alike.
ROUSSEAU
For two centuries the works of J.-J. Rousseau have
been read and reread and perpetually annotated.
Everything concerning him having been said again
and again during this period, pretensions to origi-
nality in so minutely explored a subject are scarcely
possible. It is, however, always interesting to return
to the ideas of an independent and intrepid thinker,
one in whose writings paradox and truth are sown
broadcast, whose extraordinary influence over the
minds of men is a kind of fascination, and of whom
M. Melchior de Vogu6 could recently say that ''he
had monopolized our whole political and social
future." Rousseau^s ideas on education, which
also we intend to discuss here, were so original when
Emile was published in 1762 that they still have
claims to novelty, and many a pamphlet, many a
book on education, which in 1899 or 1900 earned
for its author the reputation of being a daring in-
novator is, nevertheless, merely the reissue of some
1
2 ROUSSEAU
of the theories dear to Rousseau. Is it not also
true that the light of progress and the broader
horizons revealed by the succession of the ages are
able to rejuvenate and reillumine a subject to all
appearance exhausted?
Emile is a knotty, tangled book, full of matter,
and to such an extent is the true mingled with the
false, imagination and hazardous dream with keen,
accurate observation and reasoning power, that at
first a full comprehension of it is impossible. It is
not one of those simple, straightforward works which,
yield their secret from the outset ; it is an intricate
composition, haK novel, haK philosophical treatise,
which — supposing that Rousseau had not written
La Nouvelle Heloise — would be sufficient to justify
the title of a recent study by M. Faguet, J -J.
Rousseau J romancier frangais, just as it gave him^
the right to be called ^^a psycholo^st of the first
degree," an appellation bestowed on him by Mr.
Davidson, an American author. The propositions
advanced in it by Rousseau, with all the ardor of his
fervid imagination and all the allurements of an en-i
chanted pen, are at first disconcerting to the reader :
some minds are captivated, others roused to distrust.
Many are the perusals necessary before a path can
be traced through this confusion of philosophic
meditation and sentimental fancy. Did not his own
ROUSSEAU 3
steps wander, as when, for example, having mtro-
duced Emile to us as an orphan, he makes him the
recipient of letters from his father and mother as a
means of inducing him to learn to read?
Though at first one is tempted to protest against
the audacities and blunders of a venturesome mind
lacking in balance, yet, on reflection, it becomes ap-
parent that the greater part of his paradoxes conceal
a fund of truth — not, indeed, a commonplace, but
an original conception, a thought reaching into the
future, the accuracy of which will, Uttle by Uttle, be
proved by experience. Oftentimes the myths with
which he seemed most infatuated receive from him-
self a decisive reply. Elsewhere, to find oneseK in
agreement with him, it is only necessary to set aside
the tricks of style with which he chose to envelop
his ideas. In short, ^mile is a combative book ''full
of fire and smoke, '^ and as on a battlefield a just idea
of the positions which have been carried can only
be obtained after the smoke of the cannonade has
cleared away, so, to grasp and distinguish the re-
sults of Rousseau's rapid advance on the field of the
new education, the sound of the sonorous sentences,
the tmnult of the figures of speech, apostrophe, and
prosopopseia in his inflamed harangues must be
allowed to die away. Unquestionably, certain por-
tions of ^mile have grown old, but others have
4 ROUSSEAU
required the passage of a hundred years and
more ere they could be truly understood and could
present themselves in their full force.
The preceding sentences describe the spirit m
which this study has been conceived : less to criticise
Rousseau than to bring to Ught the treasures of
abiding truth which he has, as it were, buried in a
book described truly by him as ^Hhe most useful
and considerable" of his writings. It were an easy
^matter to convict him of flagrant utopianism: this
commonplace task of refutation will occupy us no
more than is absolutely necessary. Without con-
cealing any of the sophisms of J^mife, our principal
aim will be to ascertain in what Rousseau's guidance
may still be useful to us. True criticism is that
which insists upon the good, and deals with the bad
only to explain it. Rather for posterity and for the
future did Rousseau speak than for his contem-
poraries and the period in which he lived. In the
forgotten recesses of Emile lurk more than one
reflection which, hitherto unperceived, proves to be
fruitful in instruction for the people of our time, and
directly suited to present requirements; so great
was the perspicacity of a philosopher, a '^finder of
hidden springs," who, thirty years in advance, had
predicted the French Revolution at the same time
that he was preparing it. Far greater in importance,
ROUSSEAU 5
however, than a multitude of isolated truths, is the
general spirit animating the entire book. Emile de-
serves to remain the eternal object of the educator's
meditation, were it only because it is an act of faith
and trust in humanity.
n
Rousseau is truly an initiator ; nay more, a revo-
lutionary. He forestalled the generations of 1789,
even those of 1793, which claimed to be the re-
constitutors of society and the regenerators of the
human race, as expressed in Barfere's energetic speech
to his colleagues of the Convention, ''You are con-
voked for the recommencement of history/' In such
times of crisis and disturbance the attention of
vigilant thinkers is naturally directed to children
and education ; for by education alone can one expect
to guide new souls along the paths of a regenerated
existence. Such was Rousseau's ambition. He
was the reformer, the dreamer, if you will, who, in
his ardent protest against realities which he con-
demns, aspires in all things to a radical renovation
of hmnan institutions. This appeal to the ideal —
to leave unmentioned those first attempts by which
he had already trained his critical enthusiasm —
had as its result the splendid trilogy of his principal
works, published in quick succession in three years.
La NouveUe Hiloise, in 1759, the Contrat social and
6
ROUSSEAU 7
Einile in a single year, 1762; three masterpieces
which, despite diversity of form and subject, proceed
from a common inspiration, tending equally, as they
do, to the reformation of society, the first in its
domestic morals, the second in its political constitu-
tion, and lastly -^mife, in the laws of education for
children and youths.
Powerful as may be Rousseau's inventive origi-
naUty, we are far from claiming that his educational
system, which for eight years occupied his medita-
tions, is a stroke of genius, a miraculous revelation,
neither prepared nor announced by anjrthing in the
past. Rousseau had his forerunners and inspirers.
A Benedictine — Dom Cajot — who might have em-
ployed his time to better purpose, wrote a large
voliune on Rcmsseau^s Plagtarisms: the plagiarisms
we deny, but imitation and indebtedness must be
admitted. The glory of even the most original gen-
iuses suffers no diminution though it be established
that some of their most famous conceptions were
dimly perceived and outUned before they succeeded,
as it were, in giving substance to vague intellectual
shadow by the intensity of their personal reflection.
Rousseau was impregnated with Montaigne and
quotes him constantly. He had read and "de-
voured" the Port Royal books. F^nelon, "wise"
Locke, "good"RolUn, and " learned "Fleury dictated
8 ROUSSEAU
some of his finest precepts. Locke, with his practical
mind and somewhat prosy sound sense, doubtless
has no great resemblance to Rousseau; he inspired
him, nevertheless, in his campaign against weak,
effeminate education, and also against ^^ bookish"
instruction. Rousseau does not appear to have been
familiar with Rabelais, yet there are obvious simi-
larities between Emile's education and that which
Epist^mon instituted for the profit of yoimg Gar-
gantua, that other imaginary being and pupil of
nature. Not only did Rousseau study and annotate
the Projet de paix perp^tvdle by the abb6 of Saint-
Pierre, that man so fertile in projects, he continues
it by his utilitarian tendencies and taste for ethical
education. Other names might well be mentioned.
. . . But the author of EmUe transfigures what-
ever he touches, and transforms all that he borrows.
His exuberant imagination gives fresh form and
color to ideas lent by others : timid, they become
imperious; vague, they obtain a sharp definition;
like feeble shrubs, which, transplanted to a rich and
fertile soil, grow up into vigorous trees.
Of all Rousseau's predecessors it is perhaps Turgot
who most clearly traced out the new paths. The
author of l^mile does not appear, indeed, to have had
any knowledge of the views which Turgot expounded
in the long epistle, — a veritable memoir, — which he
ROUSSEAU 9
addressed in 1751 to Mme. de Grafl5gny, the then
celebrated authoress of Lettres p6ruviennes. It is not
a rare thing, however, for minds in motion to meet at
the same period of time in the same inspirations
without mutual arrangement. Earlier than Rousseau
by ten years, and with equal conviction, Turgot
preached the return to nature. ''Our education,"
said he, ''is mere pedantry: everything is taught us
quite against natm-e." — "Natm-e must be studied
and consulted, so that she may be assisted and
we be saved the detriment of thwarting her.'^ —
"Children's heads are filled with a mass of abstract
notions which they cannot grasp, and all the time
nature is calling them to her through every percep-
tible object." Down to the fundamental maxim of
Emile on the original innocence of our inclinations,
everything has already been admitted by Turgot:
"All the virtues have been sown by natm-e in the
heart of man : the one thing needful is to let them
blossom forth."
The examples quoted are sufficient to make it
apparent that ideas in germ were diffused in the
atmosphere aroimd Rousseau and that he collected
them for development. It is, however, no less ap-
parent that from himself, from his own rich store
and A priori views of human natm-e, if not from a
practical experience which he lacked, was drawn the
10 ROUSSEAU
substance of his treatise De Vtducation. Rousseau
reasoned and imagined still more than he beheld
and observed. This is not because he overlooked the
necessity for observation: he was fully alive to it
and knew exactly in what he was deficient to treat
with competence the great subject upon which he
was entering. This is proved by the letter written
by him to one of his protectresses, Mme. de Cr6quy,
on the 15th of January, 1759, when. La NouveUe
H&Mse being finished, he had begun in earnest the
composition of J^mUe: "Speaking of education,
there are some ideas on this subject which I should
be tempted to put on paper if I had a little assistance ;
but some observations which I cannot supply are
necessary. You, Madam, are a mother and, though
devout, a philosopher; you have educated your son.
Were you willing, in your spare moments, to jot
down some reflections on this matter and com-
municate them to me, you would be well repaid
for your trouble should they assist me in the pro-
duction of a useful work." The imnatural father
who had not reared his own offspring was reduced
to begging the experience of others. . . .
Rousseau was aware, then, that a study of child-
hood is necessary before rules for the management
of children can be estabUshed. K it is correct to
say that he endowed France with a new literatmre
ROUSSEAU 11
and that he was one of the ancestors of romanticism^
it is equally correct to aflSrm that in his manner he
inaugm^ted those important studies which for some
years have been in vogue under the name of "psy-
chology of the child." A well-stocked chapter on
this new psychology could easily be made by collect-
ing the numerous accurate, subtle observations on
the character and tastes of infancy which are
scattered through the long pages of iJiriUe. "Chil-
dren always think only of the present. . . . I know
of nothing for which, with a little ingenuity, one
cannot inspire them with a taste, a passion even,
and this without rendering them vain or jealous of
the acquirements of others. Their vivacity, their
imitative mind, and especially their natural gayety
are sufficient for this. . . . Every age in life, and
especially the age of infancy, desires to create, to
imitate, to produce, to manifest power and activity.''
These quotations might be multiplied many
times, and it might be shown how greatly Rousseau
delighted in studying children — alas ! why must it
be added, other people's children? It is sad to see
him take up his position at the window of his dreary
house, empty through his own fault, to watch the
children coming out of school and to observe by
stealth the conversations, games, and childish actions
of the little scholars. . . . "Never did a man,'' says
12 ROUSSEAU
he in the last but one of the Reveries d^un promeneur
solitaire, "find more pleasure than myself m watch-
mg youngsters romp and play together I" And he
adds, "If I have made some progress m the knowl-
edge of the human heart, it is the pleasure that I
used to take in watching and observing children
which has earned me that knowledge."
How much more accurate would Rousseau^s
psychology have been, however, if, instead of a fleet-
ing attention paid to a few street Arabs, whom he
watched for a moment at their frolics, he had been
able to exercise the attentive observation of a father
who, day by day, watches the birth and develop-
ment of his son's mind.
It is, moreover, noteworthy that the solicitude
for education came to Rousseau because he had
criminally abandoned his five children, as though
he had felt himself compelled to make partial
reparation for the most serious of all his moral
^shortcomings. "The ideas with which my fault has
\filled my mind have contributed to turn my medi-
[tations to the subject of education. . . /'
Rousseau was also deficient in professional ex-
perience of instruction. I am well aware that to the
long list of occupations which he took up in the
course of his vagrant youth and Bohemian existence,
when he was successively engraver's apprentice,
ROUSSEAU 13
recorder's clerk, clerk, secretary, music copyist, —
Grimm, who did not like him, once advised him
to sell lemonade, — the occupation of tutor must be
added; but he practised it so little and so ill I . . .
In 1739 — he was then twenty-seven — Bonnot de
Mably, royal provost at Lyons, confided to him the
education of his two sons. At first he applied him-
self to this task, thinking himself fitted for it. He
was soon disabused, however : "I did nothing worth
doing." He could only employ three methods of
discipline, '^ always useless and pernicious with chil-
dren," — sentiment) argument, and anger. Sentiment
he never renounces, as, when reproving ifcmile for a
fault, the tutor will only say, ^^My boy, you have
hurt me!" . . . Argument, however, he excludes
pitilessly from the child's instruction, convinced
henceforth, contrary to Locke's doctrine, that it is
not advisable to argue and reason too early with
children, ^^who, though they may be reasoners, are
no more reasonable for that." Quickly finding dis-
tasteful a profession for which he was in no way
suited, Rousseau resigned it at the end of a year,
but not before he had drawn up for M. de Sainte-
Marie, one of his two pupils, an educational scheme
in which neither thought nor style annoimce the
brilliant and profound author of J^mtk.
K Rousseau was neither an assiduous observer of
14 ROUSSEAU
childhood nor a professor — nor even a pupil; as he
never studied in a connected manner^ and was
a student only of what has been called "the Uni-
versity of Charmettes"; as a compensation he felt
much and lived much; and for the formation of a
powerful mmd, a regular course of study at Plessis
College would certainly have been less advanta-
geous and efficacious than that agitated existence
which led Rousseau into all grades of society, into
drawing-room and anteroom, which made him in
succession the friend of philosophers and the table
companion of great lords, a plebeian on good terms
with the people, and the petted favorite of great
ladies, countesses, duchesses, and marchionesses.
It is indisputable that Rousseau put much of his
personality, that he worked many reminiscences of
his life and reflections of his mind, into the con-
ception of the model pupil which he fashioned for
humanity. Montaigne said, "I am the substance of
my book.'' Is this so with Rousseau? Could he
also say, as Amiel insinuates, "My system and my-
self make one"? Did he conceive fimile in his
likeness and in his resemblance? Amiel claims
that he weaves nothing but his own substance into
his most magnificent theories, that he is first and
foremost a "subjective." We do not deny this, and
we are aware that as a general rule educators have
ROUSSEAU 15
a natural tendency to project themselves, as it were,
into the plans which they recommend for others'
imitation. When Rousseau, for example, sup-
presses all didactic teaching in instruction, what
does he do beyond setting up' as a rule his own
experience? "What Httle I know, I learned by!
myself. I could never learn anything from a
master. . . ." Rousseau is self-taught, and so is
Emile.
On the other hand, however, on how many other
points are the fancies of i^mile's education in formal
opposition with the realities of Rousseau's existence ?
It follows naturally that people satisfied with their
destiny recommend to others what they have found
to answer in their own case. But Rousseau was dis-?
satisfied with himself and his lot, no less than with
society. The education which he desired, appears,
as a consequence, to have been conceived in an effort
of reaction against his own condition, as a contrast
to the imprudences from which he had suffered, and
the errors or faults committed by him. Poor
stricken mind and infirm, diseased body, he consoles
himself by evoking the ideal image of a hardy child,
healthy in mind and body. He requites himself for
his wretchedness and imperfections by creating a
happy, perfect being.
He says, for example: "As yet I had conceived
16 ROUSSEAU
nothing. I had felt eveiything." Is it not so as
to escape the consequences of this precocious stimu-
lation, which had made him morbidly sensitive, and
demoralized for life, that, going to the opposite
extreme, he leaves !l&mile unacquainted with all
sentimental emotion until he is fifteen? He read
to excess; before he was ten years old he had de-
voured a whole library of novels. Is it because of
this that, detesting and anathematizing books, he
forbids them absolutely to ^femile ? I do not know,
said M. Brunetifire, one of om- great writers whose
childhood and youth were to such a degree lacking
in guidance. He cannot, indeed, be said to have
had a family: his mother died in giving birth to
him; his father, after having spoiled him, deserted
him. Nobody brought him up. . . . How, after
that, could the temptation be avoided of imagining
a situation quite the reverse, by which Emile is given
a tutor who does not lose sight of him for a second,
a mentor who will accompany and protect him in his
every action right up to the threshold of the nuptial
chamber?
In evil surroundings, compromised by humiliating
society, Rousseau was conscious of all the dignity
and nobiUty of mind that he had lost in the con-
taminations of his existence: then, to educate a
man in honor and virtue, let us eliminate all
ROUSSEAU 17
exterior circumstances which may sully and degrade
him. Emile shall live alone, far from mankind. . . .
Rousseau lounged in servants' hall and antechamber ;
he took part in the distractions of fashionable life;
he frequented the drawing-rooms of Paris, and now
and again allowed himseK to be seduced by society's
artifices; he contracted nimierous frivolous love
intrigues. None of these things for the ideal man :
the coimtry, fresh air, outdoor Ufe with its simpUcity,
a pure love, single and deep, nothing but nature. . . .
''Farewell, Paris, city of noise, smoke, and mud,
where woman no longer beUeves in purity nor man
in virtue ! Farewell, Paris, our quest is love, happi-
ness, and innocence; never shall we be sufficiently
remote from thee ! . . ."
Much of l^mile is, then, a visionary structure
erected expressly to make a contrast to Rousseau's
actual life. To excuse, or at least explain, the gener-
.ation of all the wild delusions of j&mife, let us never
lose sight of the inward struggle which took place
in its author's heart between what was noble in
his aspirations and base in his existence : the strik-
ing incongruity between the adoration which he
professed for the ideal and the pitiful reality of the
circimistances in which he was placed and for which
he was in part responsible. This man, of whom
Grimm said that *'he had nearly always been miser-
18 ROUSSEAU
able," bruised by the strangest adventures, weighed
down by physical sickness, and who felt that he was
dying whilst engaged in composing tlmile; still more
disturbed by imaginary ills which an anxious mind
invented for him; embittered by that kind of mania
of persecution which from year to year was to in-
crease and was finally to drive him to suicide ; exas-
perated against a state of society with whose vices
he was the better acquainted through having par-
ticipated in them; hmniUated by the remembrance
of what he called his youthful ^'rascaUties " ; ashamed
later of his cohabitation with an inn servant whose
vulgarity must more than once have been a heavy
burden to him : he felt the need of throwing himself
back upon an ideal world, there to seek a fleeting
forgetfulness of his moral infirmities, a compensation
for his misfortimes, in revenge for the frailties of his
character and the gloom of his destiny. If his Ufe
was often a painful drama, certain parts of tlmile
shall be idyls and pastorals of real poetic charm.
He has said so: **The impossibiUty of attaining to-
actual beings has cast me into the land of delusions :
I have made myseK societies of perfect creatures.
. . .'' The exaggerations and phantasies to which
we shall have to direct attention in l^rrvile will often
only be deUberate inventions which did not at all
delude their inventor. As he put it when writing
ROUSSEAU 19
in 1763 to the prince of Wirtemberg concerning the
scheme of education which he had addressed to him
for his daughter Sophie, brought up in conformity
with the principles of J^mile: ''These are, perhaps,
only the hallucinations of a delirious man. . . . The
comparison of what is with what should be has given
me a romantic mind, and has always driven me far
from what goes on."
What Rousseau would fain have been and was
not, femile is to be, or at least that is Rousseau's
desire.
m
^Tardon me my paradoxes, ordinary reader/'
exclaims Rousseau somewhere. The best way of
pardoning them is to attempt to extract the core of
truth which they contain. Once we have deprived
the essential principles of his sjrstem of the violent
form in which this conjurer of thought was pleased
to envelop them, it remains for us to gather together
the general rules, the characteristic positive and un-
questioned truths in Emile which modem education
will never reUnquish.
''Man is bom free and everjrwhere he is fettered,"
thus begins Control social.
''Man is bom good and everjrwhere he has become
corrapt," such is the sense of the preamble to Emile.
Rousseau delights in these absolute statements:
he Ukes concise, peremptory formulas which compel
attention.
To his political sophism, "The universal will of
the people is always right," corresponds his psy-
chological sophism, "Nature is fimdamentally
good."
ROUSSEAU 21
Such is the initial error which gives rise to all
that is false in tlmile. The bitterest and most in-
cisive of pessimists when judging actual society,
Rousseau is the most indulgent of optimists when
he considers, beyond the work of man, the work of
Providence, that is to say, nature.
Nature is good and beneficent. Her creatures
are pure, so long as they have not been perverted,
corrupted, disfigured, and sophisticated by a pre-
tended civiUzation which is merely a long decadence.
On this point, Rousseau was in agreement with a
nmnber of his contemporaries. D'Holbach said,
"Man is vicious because he has been made so";
and Diderot, ''A natural man used to exist; into
this natural man an artificial man has been intro-
duced." Rousseau comes back insistently to the
same doctrine. "Let us lay down as an incon-
testable maxim that the first movements of nature
are always right, and that there is no original per-
versity in man's heart. ... All characters are
good and healthy in themselves. . . . There is no
error in nature. . . ."
Doubtless it would be within one's right to stop
Rousseau at once and ask him to explain this
flagrant contradiction : man is naturally good, and
society, man's work, is bad. . . . But he is not
disturbed by this incongruity. Faithful to the
22 ROUSSEAU
opinion which he had expressed in the two Discours
which began his reputation, he clings tenaciously to
his Utopia. He repeats in every form that, with its
customs and prejudices, society is detestable and
perverted, that it must be thoroughly reformed.
Let us revive nature's authority and substitute it
for the rule of ancient and antiquated tradition; let
us supersede the empire of stem discipline and op-
pressive restriction, which mutilate and deform the
himian faculties, by the reign of young Uberty, which
will assist in their expansion.
By such a challenge hurled ai^ every himian in-
stitution, Rousseau had in view more than a simple
pedagogical reformation : he was announcing a social
revolution. Authentically he is the father of the
revolutionists whose idol he was to become : let us
not forget that Marat, in 1788, read Contrat social
to the cheers of an enthusiastic audience.
From the educational point of view, the principle
laid down by Rousseau has for consequence the
necessity of reconstructing natural man, ^'originaP'
man according to the expression of which he had
already made use in his Discours sur Vinigaliti
parmi les hommes, man as he was in the primitive
scheme of nature and Providence — for in Rousseau's
religious mind, behind nature is Providence, who is
the keystone of his philosophical doctrine — man,
ROUSSEAU 23
in short, as he would be, if social life and its long
corruption had not perverted him, natural man, in
a word, and not ''human man."
Let us not stop to demonstrate that Rousseau is
in error, that there are in nature germs for evil as
well as good, and that education is consequently
something more than a complaisant auxiUary, that
it should be a resistive force which corrects and
compensates. Let us rather bear in mind that the
contrary opinion, which also was absolute, that of a
nature essentially bad, vitiated in its origin, and pre-
destined exclusively to evil had long prevailed and
still held sovereign sway. And from this radical
condemnation of humanity proceeded a strict and
rigid education, made up chiefly of repression,
bristUng with prohibition and chastisement, which
conceded nothing to the child's native Uberty. Trial
had been made of all disciplinary instruments save
one, precisely the one which alone could succeed, —
well regulated Uberty. Rousseau arises, and with
iclat he opposes the conception of the old fallen
Adam whose fated inheritance must be eradicated
from every man by the contrary doctrine of a hu-
manity instinctively impelled to good and, accord-
ingly, destined to develop in full hberty. The con-
tradictory movements of the ideas which appear in
succession on the theatre of hiraian opinion recall
24 ROUSSEAU
in some degree those comedies in which a speaker
primed with one side of a question is answered by
another, who goes to the opposite extreme, the better
to display the conflict of sentiments. Both the one
and the other are wrong, but the colUsion of opposite
opinions will cause the truth which Ues between to
stand out. Even at the risk of straining his voice
and exaggerating his repartee, it was good that an
eloquent thinker, in reply to those who for two
thousand years had repeated the lament of de-
generate mankind, should testify to his confidence
and happy faith in the natiu'al powers and tendencies
of man: thus, thirty years before the French Revo-
lution promulgated the Declaration des droits de
Vhomme, a pedagogue announced the declaration of
childhood's rights, of its right to an education of
Uberty. *'It is wrong," says Rousseau, ''always to
speak to children of their duties, never of their
rights." J^mile was, as it were, the charter of child-
hood's freedom.
Paradox begets paradox, and from the erroneous
principle which serves as the starting-point of J^mile
has sprung the entire series of pedagogical falsities,
for which Rousseau has been so severely but so
justly reproved, what Nisard called his ''enormi-
ties," and the EngUsh pedagogue, R. Hubert Quick,
"his extravagances."
J
ROUSSEAU 25
The first of these capital errors is that education,
at any rate to the age of twelve, should be strictly
^'negative." ^Tositive" education will only begin
for i^mile after a long intellectual idleness and an
equally lengthy moral inaction. Since nature ten ds x
of its etf towards its ends^ she should he left alone.
In^La NouveUe Heloise, Julie was already of opinion
that education consists *'in doing nothing at all."
The best educator is the one who acts least, inter-
vening only to remove obstacles which would hinder
the free play of nature, or to create circumstances
favorable to it.
Education is to be doubly negative : in discipline
and instruction alike. On the one hand, no com-
mands are to be given to the child; on the other,
he is to be taught nothing.
Hence, no moral authority, no material discipline
in the child's upbringing. Neither precepts nor chas-
tisements, at least such as are inflicted by hmnan
intention, nor rewards of any kind. No punish-
ments other than those which are the natural re-
sults of the action and the consequences of the fault
committed. It is the principle which we find again
in Herbert Spencer, "Never offer to the indiscreet
desires of a child any other obstacles than physical
ones." The hand of man is to be nowhere apparent.
{ ]femile must remain alone in the presence of nature
26 ROUSSEAU
and her might. Knowledge of good and evil is
not for children. . . . The inspiration of this kind
of disciplinary nihihsm was perhaps obtained by
Rousseau from his personal remembrances. ''He
had never obeyed," says Amiel. ''He had known
neither kindly family control nor firm scholastic
discipUne.'' Emile does not know what obedience
is, nor disobedience either, as he never receives
commands, /ije has no idea that a human will other
/ than his own can exist. 1 He is subjected to one law
\ only, an inflexible oneTBowever, that of the possible
.and the impossible. He knows no other authority
\than that of nature's laws, no other dependence than
I that of the imperative necessity of things.
Would it serve any useful purpose to reply to
Rousseau, to point out to him that he is in error,
that there is mdeed nothing more artificial and con-
trary to nature than this so-called natural education,
in which is suppressed the most natural thing in the
world, — the authority of parents and masters?
What? No longer could anything be expected in
the direction of a child's conduct from either the
tender insinuations of a mother's affection, or the
injunctions of a father's strong will, at once gentle
and firm, or the persuasive exhortations of a kindly
and watchful master? It may be wise to exclude
from discipUne the caprices of maladroit parents who
(!
ROUSSEAU 27
command and coimtermand, who go from the ex-
treme of bUnd complacency to that of brutal severity ;
but what folly it would be to reject the benefits to
the moral education of a child permitted by the
action of authority exercised with prudence and
wisdom. Kevent the birth of v ice, and you will
h ave done enough for virtue ^ protests Roussea u.
Just as he says a Uttle later, Prevent error and
prejudice from obtai ning entrance into ES iile's mind,
and you wil l have done enoup :h^forJmowledge. No,
prevention of evil is not suflSicient: it is necessary
to teach good. If Emile's intellect Ues fallow for
twelve years, it will be like those fields which the
husbandman does not till or sow : weeds will spring
up in alarming abundance ; and when their destruc-
tion is desired, it will be too late. Rousseau was
better inspired in La Nouvelle H^Msey in which he
said: *^A good nature should be cultivated. . • .
Children must be taught to obey their mother.'^
In the study which he has devoted to J^mik, and
which is the best we know, John Morley remarks
with reason that omission of the principle of authority
is the fundamental weakness of Rousseau's system.
In this system, says he, in effect, thejjhildJajlssay^
to supgose^that^it is following its oOTX-iudgment or
impulses. ... It must not feel jjifi. ronstrai^t of
a wnlonier than its own. The parent and the
28 ROUSSEAU
^ master must not intervene; ... as though parente
were not a part of nature? . . . And, moreover,
why are the effects of conduct upon the actor's own
phjrsical well-being to be the only effects honored
with the title of being natural, neglecting the feel-
ings of approbation or disapproval which this same
conduct inspires? One of the most important of
educating influences is lost if the young are not
taught to place the feehngs of others in a front
place. The acquirement of many excellent quaUties
is threatened if a child, in its ignorance and frailty, is
not inclined naturally to respect, in its parents and
masters, a better-informed authority and an expe-
rience riper than its own.
No less serious is the error in respect of the other
aspect of negative education, — the adjoimmient of
instruction. Here Rousseau becomes enthusiastic,
and he impressively eulogizes the supposed benefits
of the long mental idleness which he imposes on his
pupil. ^'May I venture to state the greatest, the
most important, the most useful rule in all education ?
it is, not to gain time, but to lose it. . . . Reading
is the scourge of childhood. . . . Apparent facility
in learning is the ruin of children. . . . I teach the
art of being ignorant. . . ." No books, then, no
verbal lesson. ]&mile will grow up like a little
savage, without intellectual culture, exercising only
ROUSSEAU 29
his body and his senses. The ideal is for him to
remain ignorant as long as possible, to reach the
age of twelve not even Imowing *'how to distinguish
his rig ht hand from his left.j ^ RousseaU; who goes
iSfcTecstasies in face of his work, says, with himiorons
exaggeration, **I would as soon require a child of
ten to be five feet tall as to be judicious;" . . . and
again, '']&mile would not hesitate to give the whole
Acad^mie des sciences" — supposing that he is
aware of its existence — **for a pastry-cook's shop."
Undoubtedly, not everything is blameworthy in
the inactive, expectant education which Rousseau
recommends. Let us retain this much of it, that it
is well not to b e in haste, g ol to outdistance the
prog fesg" natural to the age^lbhat it is imprudent and
dangerous to weary a*cEild with a precocious and
premature education; that one risks exhausting its
powers by fatiguing them too soon. But what a
mmaber of arguments array themselves against the
sjTstem which, by a contrary abuse, leaves the in-
tellectual faculties uncultured dming the first twelve
years, perhaps the most fruitful of one's whole life !
Rousseau himself points out an objection that might
well be final: it is that the mind, so long enervated
by inaction, will become incapable of action, and
"will be absorbed by matter." How can it be hoped
that ;fonile, who has studied nothing, will all at
30 ROUSSEAU
once have the desire and ability to learn everything,
that his dormant thought will spring into wakeful-
ness at the magic smnmons of his tutor, to acquire
as by enchantment all the attainments in which he
is deficient? And especially, how can the versatiUty
and flexibiUty of the intellectual organs required by '
every study be assured him in a short time, when
their preparation by continued exercise and slow
initiation has been neglected ? Finally, if Rousseau's
statement were true, if the child were incapable of
all abstract study, if it were necessary to prohibit
all mental work for it till the age of twelve, can the
result be imagined? It would be necessary to close
all elementary schools, and the instruction of the
people would be impossible.
I am well aware that Rousseau, as a substitute
for books and formal lessons, appeals to nature's
teachings, ifemile has learned nothing by heart ; he
scarcely knows what a book is. To make up for
this, he knows much from experience; *'he reads in
nature's book." First, let us point out that nature
does not consent to play the part of schoolmistress,
with which Rousseau wishes to saddle her, to such
an extent. \The proof of this is that he is himseK
forced to resort to artifices, to the most compHcated
stratagems, to inculcate into his pupil the rare gleams
of knowledge which Kghten the darkness of his
ROUSSEAU 31
ignorance.^ Nature needs a sta^e carpenter to
prepare t he laboriously a rranp;ed scenes jn \Khich
a n attem pt is made to provide E mile w ith a n^egjiiva-
le nt fo r the lesso ns of eve ryd ay ed ucation. ^ Such is
the juggler episode, intended to reveal to him some
notions of elementary physics ; such is the conver-
sation with Robert the gardener on the origin
of property. Doubtless, l&mile will know more
thoroughly the few Uttle things thus learned by
himseK. But not only will his instruction be
singularly Umited, this teaching from experience
and nature will also be very slow. It will take him
months and years to discover what hejtmghFjust
as well haye"Teamed in a few'^our sTby means of
well-arrange^nfessons or jwell-chosen reading. Is,
then^eveiySung that the clear diction of a professor
can put within the reach of the smallest scholar, all
the Ught that books can bring to the dawning intel-
Ugence, to be useless? And is it to benefit ifimile
nothing that he is heir to a long Une of generations
who have worked, thought, and written, although
that effort of centuries has accumulated treasuries
of truths upon which newcomers need only draw
in order to derive instruction?
It is suflScient, moreover, to condemn a system
which would result in nothing less than the sup-
pression of all moral discipUne and all didactic
32 ROUSSEAU
teaching during the first period of life, that Rous-
seau, to apply it, is obliged to place his pupil in an ab-
normal situation, to set him free from the ordinary
conditions of existence, to isolate him in a kind of
exile, to withdraw him from his parents' control in
order to confide him to a stranger's keeping. Aston-
ishment has been expressed that Rousseau, a sincere
friend and an apostle of family Ufe, — we shall soon
be convinced of that, — suppressed parents, brothers,
and sisters in his educational novel. Where are the
exquisite pictures which he had outlined in La
NouveUe Hdoise of the games and education mutu-
ally shared by Julie's children brought up under
their mother's eyes? If Rousseau is recanting, it is
because he was forced into doing so by the necessity
of giving an appearance of practical achievement to
his dream of negative education. How, indeed, can
one suppose that a father and mother are capable
of holding sufficiently aloof from the education of a
son reared by themselves, to keep from influencing
him by admonitions, severe at need, or by affectionate
caresses ? It wa^ absolutely necessary that the hero
of natural educatioiL^ould Uve alone^in his child-
ho6d,„,Ydthput either pareirts, comrg^dgs, God, or
master^-^ for God is not mentioned to him till much
later^ when. He m eigbteen; . and as fOT the tutor who
bears him company he is, properly speaking, neither
ROUSSEAU 33
master nor professor: he is simply a guardian, a
vigilant sentinel, whose orders are to protect fimile
against influences from without, against everjrthing
which could hinder nature^s beneficent action, and
whose part is restricted to forming around his pupil,
as it were, an isolating wall.
This strange isolation of a child to whom all inter-
course with the rest of the human species is for-
bidden is, then, only a fanciful fabrication which
Rousseau required in order to throw into clear reUef
the novelties of his plan. We see Uttle more in it
than a trick of composition, and it would conse-
quently be superfluous to indulge in irony against a
fiction which the author disavows in many passages
of his book; a fiction the absurd improbability of
which is sufficient to demonstrate that he never
thought of making it the imiversal rule of educa-
tion. "I point out the goal to make for: I do not
say that it can be reached." How suppose that
Rousseau seriously thought it possible to realize a
system the least defect of which would be that it
suppress every other fimction than the tutor's, since
haK mankind would be kept employed as educators
for twenty years, and as Mme. de Stael said, ''Grand-*
fathers at most would be free to begin a personal
career " ? A mentor, indeed, would have to be found
for every Telemachus; that is, for every child to be
34 ROUSSEAU
educated. The Christian faith, in its fervors, in-
spired the ''stylites," those extravagant anchorites
who passed their Uves on the summit of a column,
'twixt earth and sky, as though it were desired in
this way to present in a striking and absurd form
the necessity of rupture with the world. Similarly,
Rousseau's naturalistic faith suggested to him the
invention of an exceptional being who is to Uve and
grow up far from society, by a sort of hj^pothesis
whose object is to make the power of natm-e's educa-
tion evident. It is unthinkable that Rousseau should
so imperiously call upon a mother to suckle her
child, only to carry it away from her tenderness and
remove it from her care as soon as it is weaned. No,
he merely wished, in an artificial framework, to give
jfree rein to his visions. Emile is no reaX being: he
is a creatm'e of reason, asit were^ an engine^ of war
invented to combat society.
At bottom, as will be seen by reference to other
passages of Emile and to Rousseau's other writings,
domestic education never had a more fervent
partisan.
Often in his Correspondence does he return to the
praise of family life. It is true that in his Conside-
rations sur le gouvemement de Pologne, dating from
1772, he has altered his opinion and, by a fresh con-
tradiction, declares himself ardently for a third solu-
ROUSSEAU 35
tion, education in common. Rousseau is a man of
successive impulses, each in turn defended with the
same impetuosity. To the Poles he resolutely
advises national education pushed to its last
extreme, the teachings of the Republic of Plato,
which absorbs the man into the citizen, and con-
fiscates the individual to hand him bodily to the
State. Rousseau was divided all his life between
the doctrine of individualism and that of socialism,
between State sovereignty and man^s Uberty.
He sa3rs: '^The good social institutions are those
which can best change man's nature, remove his
absolute existence to replace it by a quite relative
one. ... It is by pubUc education that minds are
given a national form. . . . Public education, on
Unes prescribed by the government, is one of the
fimdamental maxims of all popular government.
. . ." And again, in the Encydopcedia article on
Political Economy J "As each man's reason is not
left sole arbiter of his duties, so much the less should
children's education be left to the opinions and
prejudices of fathers. . . .''
This is far removed from Emile's individualistic
education, and we willingly admit that it is impos-
sible to push unconscious freedom in the mutabiUty
of conflicting opinions and impetuous contradictions
farther than Rousseau does. And yet, in spite of
36 ROUSSEAU
all, we maintain that, viewing his aspirations as a
whole, Rousseau is in favor of domestic educa-
tion. Let us first read that fine page of ilmile, in
which he claims that a girl should be brought up
by her mother, and vigorously refutes the chimeras
of platonic education. He protests "against that
ci\dl promiscuity which mixes both sexes in the same
emplojnoients, in the same labors, and which cannot
but give rise to the most intolerable abuses, — against
that subversion of the gentlest sentiments of nature
sacrificed to an artificial sentiment which owes its
existence to them, — as though it were not necessary
to have a natural hold to form conventional ties; as
though love of kindred were not the principle of
that which is due to the State ; as though it were
not through the Httle fatherland, which is the
family, that the heart is attached to the larger one ;
as though it were not the good son, the good father,
and the good husband, who make the good citi-
zens. . . /'
At the great word "family'^ Rousseau's imagina-
tion takes fire, so much the more, perhaps, as he
himseK neither knew its jo3rs nor performed its
obUgations. Talk not to him either of colleges for
bojrs or of convents for girls ! Colleges he dismisses
in a word as "laughable establishments," — and it is
because he had spoken of them in this disdainful
ROUSSEAU 37
way that he thought, according to what he recounts
in the Confessions, that he had drawn upon himself
the hatred of the Jesuits, of whom, from prudence,
he had made it a rule '^ never to speak, either well
or ill." As for convents, because they do not exist
in Protestant nations, he considered the latter supe-
rior to Catholic nations.
In La NouveUe H4loise, Rousseau sharply repri-
mands parents who put their children into the hands
of strange masters, "as though a tutor could re-
place a father. . • ." Elsewhere, in his letters to
the prince of Wurtemberg, he writes: '^ There is no
paternal eye but a father's, and no maternal eye but
a mother's. I should Uke to devote twenty reams
of paper to repeating those two Unes to you, so
much am I convinced that everything depends on
them. . • ."
Besides this, it is known with what eloquence,
in Emile itseK, Rousseau recalled mothers to their
duty, as far as nursing is concerned. Undoubtedly
he is not the first who did so. In Rome itself, in
the second century, the philosopher Favorinus said,
'^Is it not being only haK a mother to confide one's
children to paid nurses? . . ." Words of kindness,
in agreeable contrast with the harsh manners and
severity of a society, one of whose most illustrious
representatives, Cicero, wrote a century earlier,
38 ROUSSEAU
in his Tusculanes, ^^When a child dies young, con-
solation is easily found; when it dies in the cradle,
it is not even a matter for concern. . . J^
In the years which preceded the pubUcation of
Emile, doctors and moralists had undertaken the
same campaign, but they had carried it on without
vigor. Rousseau put his whole heart into it,
and as Mme. de Genlis said, '^Wisdom is less per-
suasive than enthusiasm. Rousseau repeated what
others had said; but he did not advise: he com-
manded and was obeyed.'^
In bringing the mothers back to the cradles, Rous-
seau was not solely concerned with the child's in-
terest and its physical needs. ''If he demanded the
nurse's milk, it was to have the mother's affection."
In his eyes, the child is, as it were, the bearer of the
family virtues, the pledge and at the same time the
guarantee of conjugal love. It is the sacred bond
which indissolubly unites husband and wife. It is
the child which sustains and rekindles the domestic
hearth, by the joy which its winning presence brings
to it, as by the conmion duties which its education
imposes. In the appeal which Rousseau addresses
to parents, the father is no more forgotten than the
mother. After saying : "Would you recall every one
to his highest duties ? Begin with the mothers," he
adds: ''As the mother is the true nurse, the father
ROUSSEAU 39
is the true teacher. . . . The father will make
excuses : business, he will say, duties. . . . Doubt-
less, the least important is to be a father !...''
But let us return to Rousseau's chimeras, to what
he himself described in his Preface as the ''dreams
of a visionary," without giving up the idea of
seeking and finding in them some grains of truth.
To the illusion of negative education is attached that
of ''successive" education. Here Rousseau is going
to contradict his essential principle, which is to
follow nature. If there be, indeed, a fixed law of
nature, it is that she creates nothing abruptly, but
always proceeds by slow, imperceptible evolution.
"With her," says Mme. Necker de Saussure, "one
can nowhere lay hold on a beginning; she is not to
be surprised in the act of creation, and it seems that
she is forever developing." From this very accurate
conception has issued the fine system of "progressive
education." But Roasseau imagined another thing :
a fragmentary, seriate education, divided into three
periods. He forgets that natiu'e makes the several
functions of a human creature advance abreast in
their development, and that education should ac-
cordingly conform to this simultaneous evolution
of the various bodily and mental faculties. Quite
otherwise, he shatters the true unity of the human
being. "It is, "says Mme. d'Epinay, "as though
40 ROUSSEAU
children were forbidden to move their arms and use
their hands whilst learning to walk." In the first
place, by an absolute dualism, Rousseau disasso-
ciates the mind from the body. "Nature intended
the body to develop before the mind." But of the
mind itself, instead of one, he makes three. In the
artificial story of femile, there are three phases,
radically distinct and separate from each other.
^ntil twelve ye ars old, physical life and sense
exercise : nqthing~Tor" either intelligence or heart.
Emile, at the age of twelve, is only a hardy animal,
an agile '^roebuck." ^ From twelve to fifteen, the
intellectual age, the very short period of study, in
which the child is rapidly initiated into the elements
of useful knowledge, is no longer submitted to the
necessary power of the natural laws, reflects at last,
and decides in accordance with a fresh principle,
the idea of utiUty. Lastly, — third period, — after
the age of fifteen, sentiment and duty make their
.long-delayed appearance, '^We enter upon the
moral order." Abruptly, the social formation of
the man comes under consideration.
Such is Rousseau's bizarre programme: thus he
establishes three superposed divisions of education,
three stages; and one may ask how, after this arti-
ficial distribution of the individual, the three sections
of the human person can join together again, and
ROUSSEAU 41
combine to reconstitute the natural entirety formed
by the body and the mind.
None the less, there is, as always, a proportion of
just, true observation in Rousseau^s arbitrary theory.
He is right in desiring that consideration be given
to the characteristics proper to each age of Ufe, and
that, for example, a child be treated, not as a man,
but as a child. ' ' Treat your pupil as his age demands.
The wisest,'' sajrs he, — and he evidently intends to
refer to Locke, — '^devote themselves to what a man
should know, without considering what children
are able to learn. They always seek the man in the
child, without thinking of what he is before he be-
comes a man." And again: "Let infancy mature
in the child. We have often heard of a finished man ;
let us at last think of a'^lhisE M child."' '
On this point, Rousseau ig" not m agreement with
some of our modem educators, even with those who
draw their inspiration most from him. In a recent
book, which is extremely interesting, Vtducatwn
nouveUe, M. Demolins, the founder of the school of
les Roches, the innovator who with praiseworthy
zeal is striving to acclimatize in France certain
portions of the manly, free English education, M.
DemoUns formulates a contrary opinion. According
to him, it is never too soon to treat a child as a man.
"Treated as men," says he, "children actually and
42 ROUSSEAU
speedily become men." And he quotes the anec-
dote of a child of nine, who, very quickly indeed, —
in two hours, — really became a man, simply because,
having been received with his parents by an English
family, the three members of this family took him
seriously during his visit, and were willing to talk
with him the whole time ! . . .
To form men, to ^'manufacture " them, as it is now
expressed, is the perpetual dream of educators of all
times and coimtries. To have a certain measure
of success, it is perhaps desirable to adopt a course
somewhere between the two extreme opinions of
M. Demolins and of Rousseau. On the one hand,
it is never too early to school a child in his duty and
to prepare the apprenticeship of personal responsi-
biUty by appealing to his reason and reflection,
and Rousseau errs in causing the delajrs of which
we know to this education of reason. On the other
hand, however, — and here Rousseau triumphs, —
it must not be forgotten that the child is a child,
and that he cannot be required to exercise judgment
and act as a free man when his judgment is not
formed nor his liberty created. Our two peda-
gogues, moreover, are at bottom more in agreement
than one would think. They neither wish for a
premature instruction which throws the child from
the beginning into abstract studies, and according
ROUSSEAU 43
to Goethe's expressions, tends to make him into "a
subtle philosopher, a scholar, and not a man/'
M. DemoUns certainly would indorse this conclu-
sion of Rousseau's : '^The ordinary education is bad
because is makes old children and young professors."
In the same way, as regards moral education, M.
Demolins, who is especially opposed to discipline
based on 'Hhe principle of authority," cannot but
applaud Rousseau's exaggerations, since the latter
expressly does away with all authority, and cen-
sures parents and masters who have never early
enough ''corrected, reprimanded, flattered, threat-
ened, promised, instructed, reasoned."
Where it is not permissible to fall in with Rous-
seau's views is in the incomprehensible delay which
he imposes on moral education. This is, in another
manner, more pernicious than the adjournment of
intellectual culture. !^lmile has attained his fifteenth
year, and has not as yet felt any human sentiment.
Whom does he love? Nobody, save perhaps his
tutor, the only man whom he knows. His mind has
not been opened to any of those infantile affections
which prepare the social virtues. By what miracle
will he suddenly learn to love mankind, after Uving
60 long in the cold, sterile isolation of a strictly indi-
vidual life ? Rousseau, truly, is too smnmary in the
recital of his pedagogic methods. He says, "]6mile
44 ROUSSEAU
is this; Sophie is that." He endows both of them
with all kinds of marvellous qualities and virtues;
but he neglects to tell us how they have been ac-
quired. Concerning the genesis of affectionate sen-
timent, it is evident that he is reckoning on a mirac-
ulous result which he has done nothing to prepare.
He has left !&nile^s heart empty for fifteen years, and
in an instant he thinks that he can fill it. What a
delusion! Love cannot be taught like calculation.
The formation of social feeling is a delicate and
difficult matter. Rousseau, moreover, complicates
the problem by submitting Emile to the laws of
egoism alone. As Condillac, by a series of subtle
transformations, derives from primal sensation the
most abstract and general notions, so does Rousseau
pretend, by a strange metamorphosis, to obtain
from initial egoism alone all the altruistic sentiments.
Self-respect is, in his eyes, the sole and fundamental
atom of sensibility. How could he forget that other
atom, sympathy, which makes itself apparent from
the dawn of fife, and whose development cannot
too soon be encouraged and stimulated? In the
smile which a new-bom babe directs towards the one
who suckles and cares for it, there is more than the
expression of a material need satisfied : there is the
instinctive response of the child to the considerate
tenderness of the mother. "So long as the child
ROUSSEAU 45
pB,y8 attention only to what affects his senses,
arrange for all his ideas to be limited to sensations.
. . /' No, on the contrary, let us open wide the
door for the sentiments, which are, indeed, only too
ready to enter. With children, it is necessary at
once to mingle mind with body.
It is known that Rousseau, in his mania for post-
ponement, delayed imtil adolescence the revelation
of reUgious as well as moral ideas. The reason which
he gy^„is,thatj3L.r.hi1d, with ita.,purely. emotional
imaginatioja-T-and it is very Ukely the fault of nega-
tive education if this be the case — co uld on ly form
a superstitJQU&Jidea of G od, and would pict ure him
as a human. being, an old white-bearded man, a
monarch seated on a throne. . . . Hence the pro-
priety of awaiting the age of reason before speaking
of God to ]6mile, so that he may straightway form a
conception of him in the ideal sublimity of his
^iritual attributes. At least, if he has deferred
to the age of eighteen the revelation of the Supreme
Being, Rousseau makes up for it by the splendor
in which he invests him. He was a deist in all
sincerity. He believed in God with as much con-
viction as he beUeved in the soul and in a future Uf e :
''I desire too greatly that there be a God, not to
believe in him. ..." Without seeking verification
in his other writings, the Profession de Joi du vicaire
46 ROUSSEAU
Savoyard demonstrates it in a striking manner. It
was, in his opinion, the principal portion of Entile.
For it he would have sacrificed all the rest. It was
that part of his manuscript that he intrusted to the
keeping of his surest friends, fearing, in the perpetual
apprehensions which the printing of the work caused
him, that his enemies, and particularly the Jesuits,
might cause it to disappear. This was the principal
cause of the wrath and tempest of persecution which
were about to be let loose against him. It was this,
on the other hand, which earned him the enthu-
siastic praise and even the admiration of Voltaire ;
for it is of the Profession de foi that Voltaire, so hard
upon J^mUe, intended to q)eak, when he says that this
''stupid novel" contains, however, "fifty pages which
deserve to be boimd in morocco." At a distance,
and despite a superb setting and a magnificent style,
the Profession de foi, which is somewhat of a digres-
sion in an educational treatise, strikes us as an
emphatic declamation of a vague, irresolute spirit-
ualism. Its intrinsic value as a philosophical work
is, however, of small importance. The fault we find
with it is that it is the first word of religion which
Rousseau made his pupil hear, if so it be that he
really wishes to develop religious feeling in him.
That Rousseau's conception cannot be realized is
indisputable: if £mile Uved^ like all children, in a
ROUSSEAU 47
family and in the world, he would be a witness of
exterior manifestations of religion on the part of his
parents and fellow-citizens, and in his curiosity-
he would speedily ask what all this means : to hide
God from him would be impossible. But that is not
the question : what does matter, is to know whether
the method employed by Rousseau responds to his
intentions, whether it is of a nature to insure their
success. I should think it excellent rather to pro-
duce atheists. Will not ifemile, who has dispense d
with God for so long, be tempted to dispense wit h
^ him altogether? In his desire to communicate to
his pupil the sentiment of religion with which he him-
seK was so thoroughly imbued, Rousseau ought to
have taken thought that here also a slow develop-
ment is necessary, that [^mile's temporary atheism
is in great danger of becoming fixed, quite as much
as his egoism or his intellectual inertia.
In this, as in many another particular, Rousseau
has not followed his principle, which is to obey the
laws of nature. Borrowing from him one of his
nietaphorical methods of expression, one would be
tempted to imagine that '^ Nature," speaking, would
address him nearly as follows : —
''Truly, O Rousseau, I should be very ungrateful,
did I not hail you as one of the mortals who have
most exerted themselves to restore my dominion.
48 ROUSSEAU
You have avowed yourself my faithful servant.
Your mcense has burned on my altars. You have
practised, with sincere enthusiasm, a simple, frugal
life, rustic pleasures, and innocent manners, in a
society given up to luxurious tastes, to vice, and the
complications of worldly life. You have shown the
dawn to people who used not to rise till noon. You
have taken into the open air, into the broad sim-
shine, little children who were fading away in the
vitiated atmosphere of great towns. You have pro-
tested against unnatural requirements and the
caprice and artifice of fashion. You have endeav-
ored to restore to humanity the simplicity of the
primal ages. ... All praise to you for this.
''But on how many points, believing your in-
spiration to come from me alone, you nevertheless
have erred? I have no proof that you really im-
derstand my nature. Everybody around you speaks
'of the mystery of nature's law.' Are you quite
sure that you have thrown light upon this mystery
and penetrated it?
"What am I in your eyes? 'The sum total, you
say, of himianity's instinctive tendencies before
falsified by opinion.' You forget that 'opinion'
has been in part formed by me ; that society is my
work, that I founded it, and count for much in its
organization. It seems that, in your mind, I have
ROUSSEAU 49
remained, congealing in my immobiKty the wild,
primitive nature of the world's earliest ages. No,
I am not a motionless, invariable force. I advance
and keep abreast of progress. Some one who has no
liking for you, but who has much wit, said humorously
that you were making humanity move backwards
to the barbarian epoch in which men walked on all
fours and ate acorns. ... I grant you that Vol-
taire exaggerates; but all the same, by vaimting
the benefits of ignorance, by execrating arts and
letters and all the works of civilization, have you
not given excuse for this raillery ?
''Heedlessly you ask that a clean sweep be made
of everything that your ancestors have instituted,
whereas these institutions and customs have often
been dictated to them by me. You wish, in edu-
cation, to take in everything the side opposed to
custom, but do you not see that 'custom,' which
you condemn in its entirety, could not have lasted
from century to century, if it had not agreed in part
with the laws over which I preside ?
"I do not wish to take your errors in detail, but
here is one. You rightly teach your dear femile
natural religion alone, the one rehgion which I can
admit. You are right, acclaiming behind me
Providence, my creator, to oppose the internal and
profoimd sentiment of conscience to vain and super-
60 ROUSSEAU
stitious fonns of ritual. . . . But why, in this re-
ligious education, have you not acted in conformity
with human progress itself, which, guided by me, has
advanced from primitive superstition and the feeble
light of later theology, to the fuller hght of pure
reason ? Your predecessor, F6nelon, who also pleased
me greatly by the effort which he made to approach
me nearly, was wiser; and if it really is necessary
that men remain behevers, he understood that the
one means of insuring their faith was to lay its
foimdations early in the child's mind, by introducing
to him at first, as I have done for humanity, per-
ceptible ideas of God, imperfect, confused notions,
whose superstitious imageries will gradually be dis-
sipated by reason, in proportion as it develops, in
order to exhibit, as far as human frailty permits,
the pm^ and rational conception of Him who made
me. . • .
"To sum up, Rousseau, yom* great error, the
principal fault with which you will be reproached in
succeeding centuries — for I foresee the future — is
lack of belief in progress; failure to divine the great
law of the perpetual evolution of things. You have
missed my most important characteristic, which is
ceaseless motion. The word 'progress' comes
often from yom* pen, but you always find it evil.
It is for you, or nearly so, a synonym for decadence
ROUSSEAU 51
and corruption. . . . Your successors, on the con-
trary, will consider progress as my supreme law,
my essential principle, as the reason for the existence
of humanity and the world. They will understand
that nature is not the product of a day, that the suc-
cessive acquisitions of inheritance form an integral
portion of my substance.
''Let your errors be forgiven you, however, for
you have loved me greatly. Others will come after
you who will also think that they have defined me.
They also will, perchance, be mistaken ; for I am not
as simple as may be thought ; I am infinitely complex,
and I remain the impenetrable enigma, unfathom-
able in its designs, whose solution will perhaps never
be accomplished by man. . . ."
IV
By his visions, even those which were in contra-
diction with the nature whose patronage he was
invoking, Rousseau has rendered signal service to
the science and art of education. ''His errors," said
P. Girard, ''are themselves wholesome warnings."
By violently shaking traditionary usages, he awoke
minds slumbering in routine, and by his flights of
fancy he suggested and prepared just and practical
solutions.
But J^mile contains also, and in large nmnber,
general views and detailed facts concerning the
various branches of education which may be ac-
cepted straightway almost without revision. These
form, as it were, quite a cluster of flowers, which will
blossom eternally in the garden of education. How
many eloquent sajdngs, taken from Emile, do we
constantly hear ? How many maxims, fresh in 1762,
and become almost trivial at the present time,
form the current coin of our pedagogics? How
many others, wrongly neglected, will be foimd to be
of value to us ?
62
ROUSSEAU 53
It is now commonplace to recommend physical edu-
cation. And Rousseau is not the first who, in mod-
em times, by a reversion to the ancient mode of Uf e,
inrged youth to bodily exercises. Ten years earlier,
Turgot wrote, "We have especially forgotten that
the formation of the body is a part of education."
Rousseau, on this subject, refers his reader to Mon-
taigne and Locke ; he might also have referred him
to Rabelais. None the less do we praise him for
having, in his turn, insisted forcibly on precepts
more frequently recommended than practised. Let
us be grateful to him for entering, as he does, into
minute details on clothing, length of sleep, and food,
thus clearing the way for the hygienists of childhood.
!6mile must strive to '^ combine the vigor of an
athlete with the reason of a sage." He must think
Uke a philosopher and work Uke a peasant. Bodily
exercise is not prejudicial to the operations of the
mind. The two actions should proceed in harmony.
Sports were not yet fashionable in Rousseau's
time, and no one can blame him, when he prophesied
the French Revolution, for not having also predicted
the triumph of football. He at least recommends
swimming, which everybody can learn. Riding is
discarded, as too expensive. When he is twenty,
however, l^mile will take rides, without prejudice
to his long excursions on foot. Rousseau, who had
54 ROUSSEAU
walked across France, from Paris to Lyons, could
not help recommending pedestrian exercise. It is,
however, of the infant, principally, that Rousseau
thinks. Even before it can walk, it will be taken
daily into the fields and meadows, to frolic, to run
about as soon as it can. Let there be no longer any
question of an efifeminate, confined education, suit-
able for making '^scholars without muscle.'' Health
and physical force are to be considered first. Rous-
seau comes back to this subject in his Considerations
sur U gouvemement de Pologne. In this work he
calls for the establishment in every school of a
gymnasium for bodily exercise. ''This is,'' say^ he,
''the most important item in education, not only as
regards the formation of a robust constitution, but
even more on the score of morality. ..."
Indeed, it is not solely from hygienic motives,
nor for the strengthening of the body, that Rousseau
proposes his scheme of education in the country, with
full Uberty of movement, open-air excursions, and
joyous gambols : he sees in physical exercise a means
of development of moral power, — a prelude to edu-
cation in courage and innate virtue. Rousseau
seems to be inspired by memories of Spartan life
or Stoic doctrine. His ifcmile is rigorously brought
up ; he is inured to cold and heat and accustomed
to privation. None of his caprices, supposing such
ROUSSEAU 55
possible in nature's pupil, are acceded to. K he
is granted what he asks for, it is not on account of
his having made the request, but because it is known
that it is really needed. And Rousseau, who a mo-
ment ago was wisely retimiing from paradox to
common sense, now, inversely, and with equal
faciUty, passes from equitable, just precept to ridicu-
lous and absurd exaggeration, femile is to walk
barefoot; he is to go about in the dark, without a
candle or other light. He will, perhaps, learn in this
way to have no fear of the dark, but will he not run
the risk of a broken neck, ''the eyes which he has
at his finger-tips'' seeming scarcely suflScient to
insure him against a slip or a fall? Let us pass
by these eccentricities in which Rousseau's genius
goes astray, and let us be satisfied with proving that
he anticipated all those who, nowadays, demand an
active, manly education, which shall produce vigor-
ous men, dexterous of Umb and capable of standing
face to face with danger; ready and able to render
practical assistance both to themselves and others ;
truly equipped for life as regards its material oc-
cupations as well as its difficulties and moral trials.
To view Rousseau's famous theory on the neces-
sity of serving an apprenticeship in a manual occu-
pation from the utilitarian standpoint alone, would
be to misinterpret his intentions. Undoubtedly, he
56 ROUSSEAU
saw in it a resource, an assured livelihood, should
there come a time of adversity and ruin. A presci-
ent thought for the rich man, suddenly reduced to
poverty and obliged to work for his Uving, is not
foreign to Rousseau's scheme. "We are drawing
near the age of revolutions. Who can say what
will then become of you?" K, however, he makes
femile a joiner, not a mock joiner, but a real workman,
who attends his workshop regularly, and does not
allow even the visit of his betrothed to distract him
from his occupation — there are other motives gov-
erning him: he wishes to reinstate work, and more
especially, manual work. "Rich or poor, whosoever
does not work is a cheat." There is also the peda-
gogical consideration that it is not alone the head,
the brain of a man, which must be exercised, as
though the brain were the entire man. We should be
able to use our hands as well as our reason, and
because it develops ph3rsical capability, endurance,
exertion, and practical acquirements, manual labor
is good for everybody. Rousseau would have en-
dorsed these recent words of M. Jules Lemaltre:
"Our collegians' time, wasted twice over by them,
since they spend it in not learning a dead language
which, if learned, would be of Uttle use to them,
might better be employed, I do not say in stud3ring
living tongues, natural science, and geography, —
ROUSSEAU 67
that is too apparent, — - but in games, g3nnnastics,
and joinery. . . /^ Especially would he be de-
lighted to see in what honor the manual occupation
to which he gave the preference is held in certain
modem schools, in England, for example, at Bedale
College, the prototype of M. Demolins' des Roches
school, where gardening and farm work is succeeded
by exercise in woodwork. The pupils are seen
bringing real enthusiasm to the making of boxes,
racks, and book shelves, on which they then place
books bound by themselves.
The education of the sense is intimately connected
with that of the body. "Not only have we arms
and legs, we also have eyes and ears." In this, again,
Rousseau is an excellent guide. Pestalozzi, and all
the patrons of the intuitive method, all those who
preach the lessons of things, are only his disciples.
Everything else depends on the education of the
senses. Rousseau has sometimes been compared
with Descartes. He would have been the ' ' Descartes
of sensibiUty" following the Descartes of under-
standing. It is more accurate to Uken him to Con-
dillac, whom he classed "among the best reasoners
and most profound metaphysicians of his time."
like the author of the TraiU des sensations, he
accepts the maxim, "Everything that enters the
understanding comes through the senses." The
58 ROUSSEAU
senses are "the first faculties to form in us : the first,
accordingly, to be cultivated." To this cultivation
Rousseau devotes the twelve years of childhood,
satisfied if, ''after this long journey through the
region of sensations to the boundaries of childish
reason," he has succeeded in forming femile into a
sensitive being, able to see, hear, feel, calculate dis-
tance, and compare quantities and weights. • • .
''Yonder is a veryj^high cherry tree; how can we
manage to gather some cherries? Will the ladder
in the neighboring bam do ? There is a very wide
brook; will one of the planks Ijdng in the yard be
long enough to cross by? . . ."
femile, who uses the plane adroitly later on, is
clever in the use of his fingers at an early age. Rous-
seau, who does not say much of how he taught him
to write, being ashamed, as he says, of troubling
over such trifles, — and yet spelling is not taught by
nature, — takes great interest in the study of draw-
ing: "Children, who are great imitators, all try
to draw." In these attempts, however, it is not
the art of drawing for its own sake which Rousseau
values so highly, it is more on account of the profit
accruing from it to the training of the senses and
the organs of the body. Practice in drawing makes
the eye more accurate and the hand more flexible.
The child, of com^e, is only to draw from nature;
ROUSSEAU 59
he is not to imitate imitations; objects will be his
only models. Let us add that all idea of beauty is
absent from this first initiation into the material
representation of things. Rousseau is not thinking
of producing an artist; the result will, at most, be
a geometrician; moreover, if he recommends draw-
ing, it is less for Emile to imitate objects than to be-
come acquainted with them.
Sensations prepare ideas. By perceiving objects
clearly, femile trains himself to judge, that is to
say, to grasp their aflSnities. His first judgments,
however, are confined strictly to the domain of tangible
knowledge. He must obtain his instruction from
actual objects and not from words. ''Do not talk
to the child of matters which it cannot understand.
Use no descriptions, no eloquence, no figurative lan-
guage. Be satisfied with introducing him to ob-
jects opportunely. Let us transform our sensations
into ideas, but without leaping at one bound from
perceptible to intellectual objects. — Turgot had
abeady said: 'I wish abstract and general notions
to come to children in the same way that they come
to men, — by degrees, and by a regular progress from
sensible ideas.' — Let us pass slowly from one sen-
sible idea to another. In general, never replace a
thing by its representation unless it be impossible
to show the thing itself. I dislike explanations and
60 ROUSSEAU
discourses. Things? things? I cannot repeat of ten
enough that we attach too much importance to
words; our chattering education produces nothing
but chatterers. . . ."
A time comes, however, when the emplojonent of
words and abstract ideas is forced upon us, when
something more than perceptible objects must be
studied. In the selection of studies which he offers
fenile, Rousseau is obedient to a principle, a single
criterion, — that of utility. This great visionary is
a utilitarian. His programme certainly is short : it
is calculated to displease those who demand a com-
plete education, universal knowledge for a youth.
But in his practical tendencies he inaugurates, with
omissions, the programmes of reaUstic instruction
which will be adopted more and more for fresh gen-
erations. Rousseau may well be the father of this
instruction which our contemporaries are endeavor-
ing, not without gropings, to establish and organize
under the fine title of up-to-date education. The
name is foimd: the thing itself is by no means
realized.
Howe¥er this may be, the end in view is now
settled. A fact which must be recognized is that
intellectual education should be a direct preparation
for Ufe, and that the current system is in part bad
and doomed to disappear, because, between the
ROUSSEAU 61
ultra-speculative studies which it inflicts on youth
and the realities of existence, between the scholar's
life and the man's calling, there is a profound disa-
greement, — whatTaine called an' 'incompatibility/'
Goethe was even then sajdng, fifty years later than
Rousseau, however: ''So much theoretical knowl-
edge, so much science, is what exhausts our young i
people, both physically and morally. They lack/
the physical and moral energy necessary to make
a suitable entry into the world. . . .''
Rousseau's language is to the same effect. It has
been seen that he wished to endow l&mile with physi-
cal energy. He was no less thoughtful for moral
energy. This philosopher, thought to be lost in the
land of chimera, says : "When I see that, at the most
active time of Hfe, youths are kept to purely specu-
lative studies, and are afterwards, without the least
experience, cast upon the world and into business,
it seems to me the offence against society is as great
as that against nature ; it does not, therefore, surprise
me that so few people know how to order their con-
duct. What bizarre deception causes the persistent
teaching of so many useless things, whilst ^the 'art
of action' coimts for nothing? Nominally, we are
formed for society, and we are instructed as though
each of us had to pass his life in a cell, engaged in
solitary thought."
62 ROUSSEAU
''The art of action," is not this the watchword of
future education? To Rousseau belongs the credit
of having uttered it, though he may not have had
the talent necessary to combine the means which can
make it effective. There is some temptation to reply
to him that it is not by rearing IJlmile in solitude, ''as
though he had to pass his Ufe in solitary thought"
in the fields, that a youth is made fit for actual
hmnan life. But what does one more inconsistency
matter? Rousseau, at least, imderstood that in-
struction must be relieved of all the superfluity of
show study. He, however, carries this also to excess.
How can we refrain from reproving him for the way
in which he despises the old classical studies, the
ancient languages in particular, which he dares to
describe as "a useless feature of education." As
an educator he went too far in rejecting the Uterary
sources, by draughts from which, as a thinker and
writer, he formed his genius. Men of letters will
protest, and not unreasonably, against such culpa-
ble infidelity; but all men of good sense will praise
him for having shown that the aim of education
is not the accumulation of sterile knowledge in the
memory; that it is the formation of intelligence by
a discreet introduction to a moderate selection of
useful studies, giving preference to attainments
which nourish the mind and train it to be ready
ROUSSEAU 63
for action, rather than to those attainments which
are only a useless ornament.
Emile has reached the age of fifteen: his short
studies have come to an end. He has Uttle knowl-
edge, but he is prepared for knowledge of every kind,
and this is the most important consideration. Do
not take him for a scholar: he is not meant to be
one ; but he has a taste for knowledge. His natural
curiosity has been aroused. According to the say-
ing which Rousseau borrows from Montaigne, if not
taught, he is at least '^teachable." No prejudice
] has perverted his mind or impaired the accuracy of
his judgment. He knows nothing on authority;
he has acquired all his knowledge for himself. He
has'not been taught the facts themselves, so much as
the method of finding them out. He has been told
to look, and he has found. Thus will he continue
all his life on the path to knowledge, which he has
been shown, ''long, stupendous, tedious to follow."
In Rousseau's methods of instruction we perceive
two excellent tendencies : firstly, that, in order to
thoroughly master what is learned, a personal effort
is required, a research, a sort of original discovery,
and not merely an effort of memory and mechanical
acquisition; secondly, that the most important
thing is not the knowledge acquired at the end of
study, the light baggage of attainments which serve
64 ROUSSEAU
too often as an excuse for mental slumber after
leaving college, but the desire to enlarge one's
knowledge and aptitude for acquiring it. Those
who draw up the overladen, encyclopaedic pro-
grammes of our education, before beginning deUb-
erations which almost alwa3rs result in yet another
burden, even when schemes of reduction are the
order of the day, should read over and meditate
well upon this pleasing passage from tlmile: ''When
I see a man carried away by his love for knowledge,
hastening from one alluring study to another, with-
out 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, he ends by throwing all
away, and returning empty-handed. ..." Is not
this a very clever and correct picture of many modem
scholars, weighed down by their burden of useless
acquirements, embarrassed with ideas of every kind,
disgusted by wearisome studies, and finally leaving
college almost empty-handed? Rousseau attaches
himself here to the great tradition of French peda-
gogics, a tradition too often set at naught in our
schemes for study. It advocates, as Nicole said,
'Hhe use of knowledge only as an instrument for the
formation of reason''; which, of course, appUes to
ROUSSEAU 65
knowledge only in so far as it plays a part in that
general culture aimed at by secondary education.
If we now examine in detail the programme of
utilitarian studies which Rousseau intends for ]&mile,
we shall be surprised more than once, both on ac-
count of what he includes and what he omits.
Rousseau is the most disconcerting and deceptive of
educators. Thus, he forbids the study of history,
and this is one of his most provoking paradoxes.
In this he is, however, logical with himself. Since
Emile is ^Ho be removed from hmnankind," he must
be denied knowledge of the dead as well as contact
with the living. History is the great agent by
which social consciousness is developed; now, in
his early education, Emile is only an individualist,
a perfect egoist, without any social sentiment. It
is known, moreover, what special argument Rous-
seau advanced and upheld to excuse the omission
of history; namely, that a child is incapable of un-
derstanding it. History is as much out of his reach
as the philosophic idea of God: as though there
were not a history for children, a history made up of
description, narrative, and great men's lives. For-
txmately, in the matter of history, as in so many
other things, Rousseau contradicted himself, and
to rectify his errors or correct his semi-voluntary
paradoxes, it is sufficient to appeal from Rousseau
66 ROUSSEAU
to Rousseau. As legislator of the Polish govern-
ment, his language is quite different from that used
by the theorist of tlmile. Far from condemning
history, he will be found rather to carry it to
excess.
In language which, in its animation, recalls the
words used by Rabelais to extol the study of natural
science when he makes Gargantua say to his son:
'^I want you to be acquainted with the fish of every
sea, river, and spring, — with all the birds of the
air, the trees and shrubs of the forest, and all the
herbs of the earth; . . /' similarly, Rousseau says:
'^I want the young Pole, when learning to read, to
read things concerning his coimtry ; so that when he
is ten years old he shall be acquainted with all its
products; when twelve, all its provinces, roads, and
towns; when fifteen, its entire history; when six-
teen, all its laws ; thus, every fine deed which has
been done, and every noted man who shall have
hved, in all Poland, shall fill his heart and mind.''
The education of a little citizen, a future patriot,
could not have a better preparation. Let us take
note, however, that Rousseau's retraction is not
complete ; he speaks only of national history, leav-
ing the general history of mankind, which has no
interest for him, a sealed book to his pupil.
femile, having been cheated of knowledge of the
ROUSSEAU 67
ethical world, will, in compensation, be nourished
with knowledge of the material worid. The study of
nature must come before everjrthing else. Is not
the same thing thought at the present day by the
educators of the United States, who attach so much
importance to knowledge of natural truths? What
does cause surprise, is that, in his programme,
Rousseau should put astronomy in the forefront.
Auguste C!omte also mentions it first in his cata-
logue of sciences and in his S3rstem of positive edu-
cation. One has the right to ask why. UtiUty
cannot be its recommendation. ]&mile is to travel,
but he is not intended to navigate, and it does not
seem at all Ukely that he would find a knowledge of
the constellations and heavenly bodies of any use
to him. Likely enough what decided Rousseau was
the fact that astronomy, physical astronomy at
least, is one of the sciences most suitable for the
application of his beloved method, — the method of
conscious and direct observation of things. Emile,
who does not know what a class room or a study is,
gains his knowledge in the open; he contemplates
nature's great spectacles, and reflects in the presence
of the starry sky.
In virtue of the same S3rstem, astronomy is fol-
lowed by phjrsical science and geography, keeping
to tangible and concrete studies in which abstrac-
68 ROUSSEAU
tion pla3^ the least important part, ifcmile leams
geography without maps, dming his walks and in
presence of the actual objects. "Why all these
representations? • • . I recollect seeing somewhere
a text-book on geography which began thus : ' What
is the world? — A pasteboard globe/ . . /' The
only method of preventing these fallacies is to in-
troduce to the child the thing itself and not its arti-
ficial representation.
[_An elementary knowledge of astronomy, physics,
and geography will be practically everjrthing till the
age of fifteen is reached?) Has ijmile learned gram-
mar? Not otherwisffuian by using his mother-
tongue and hearing his master talk : "Always speak
correctly in his presence." At all events, at this
age, he as yet knows nothing of either ancient or
modem Uterature. Poets and prose-writers of every
degree are as imknown to him as historians. Rous-
seau, before CJondorcet and so many others, is already
an expert in scientific education; but in science
itself he rejects all that is pure speculation and
abstract generality. He admits that there is a
chain of general truths by which all sciences are
Unked to common principles and successively un-
folded. But "with this we have nothing to do" in
the formation of the mind. "There is another,
altogether different, which shows each object as the
ROUSSEAU 69
cause of another, and alwa3rs points out the one
following. This order, which by a perpetual curi-
osity keeps aUve the attention demanded by all,
is the one followed by most men, and of all others
necessary with children/' Thus, in the study of
physics, arrangements will be made to connect all
experiments by a kind of deduction, so that, assisted
by this connection, children can arrange them
methodically in their minds, and recall them when
required. All this, however, only deals with the
establishment of a material order between percep-
tible truths. To the senses, Rousseau subordinates
even the deduction of ideas and their linking to-
gether. No doubt it is on this account that mathe-
matics do not figure in Rousseau's programme,
femile, who is forbidden to read even La Fontaine's
Fables, on the ground that he would not understand
them, does not seem to be any more acquainted with
arithmetical rules. • . • Decidedly his instruction
is insufficient and limited. Rousseau had none of
that holy horror of ignorance which characterizes
later educators: "Ignorance," said he, "never did
harm; error alone is pernicious." Education has an
importance beyond instruction. "We prefer good
men to scholars."
Rousseau is more happily inspired in the educa-
tion of the will than he is when dealing with the
70 ROUSSEAU
mind. Despite appearances, and despite the con-
tinual presence of a guardian whose siureillance
would not seem altogether favorable to the develop-
ment of individuality, femile is really brought up in
Uberty. It is certain, and we do not forget it, that
Rousseau was chiefly deficient in character and
energy. He could never overcome temptation.
"It was alwajrs impossible for me to act against
my inclination.*' All through his life he was the
plaything of circumstances, the victim of his pas-
sions. This, however, rather disposed him to desire
for femile a better education than the one from
which he himself suffered, an education of a kind to
accustom a child to act on his own initiative, in
fine, an education of "self-government": "The
child must be left to himself, both as regards body
and mind. The boon of freedom is worth many
scars.''
By emancipating the child, Rousseau intends,
primarily, to make him happy, and that at once;
for the poor httle one may die young, and before
he dies he must taste life./ Now a child's happiness,
hke a man's, consists in the exercise of libertyA
Rousseau had a sincere affection for children. Tn
all his wise recommendations concerning the care
to be taken with an infant, an inspiration of ten-
derness almost unknown before his time may be
ROUSSEAU 71
detected, a lively feeling of pity for these frail
creatures who are, as a first consideration, to be
made to Uve. What a number of tender things he
has written on children I What treasures of affec-
tion left unused by this culpable father! *' Nature
made children to be loved and succored. . . .
Does it not seem as though a child displays such a
sweet face and affecting manner only that every-
thing which comes near it may be touched by its
feebleness and may hasten to its assistance?"
Tutors of all ages will have to draw inspiration from
cautions Uke the following: ''If you do not open
your heart,- others' hearts will remain closed to
you. It is your care and affection that you must
give."
But beyond the child's present, and the joy in life
which he wishes to insure for it immediately, Rous-
seau also thought of the future, and the require-
ments of social life. By the independence which
he grants it from the cradle, when he abolishes the
imprisonment of swaddling clothes; as later, in
boyhood's years, when he wars against prohibitions
and verbal injunctions, in order to substitute for
them instruction from facts alone and the living
lessons of example, — "Example, example ! lacking
this, success with children was never obtained;" —
when, finally, he appeals to all that is spontaneous
72 ROUSSEAU
in the intelligence and personal in the will of his
pupil, it is evident that he wishes, in this way, to
form men of stronger phjrsique, more vigorous
morals, and greater control over their actions, than
the scholars of old-style colleges, in the austerity of
their cloistered life, were prepared to become, and
than the students of our modem high schools are,
even at the present day, in spite of the achievement
of so much progress.
Note, however, that Smile's education is by no
means one of complacency and enervating laxity:
rather is he submitted to a regimen of severity.
His room is in every way hke a peasant's. And if
Rousseau has made a gleam of joy shine in his life
by the liberty which he grants him, he none the
less wishes the child to know how to bear suffering.
Suffering will leave ifemile stronger, and is the first
thing that he must learn. Primarily, he is thus
early armed against the evils which existence has
in store for him. But he also learns to sjrmpathize
with the misfortunes of others.
Man is an apprentice, with affliction for his master.
Earlier than De Musset, Rousseau said in his fine
prose, ''The man who is ignorant of affiction, knows
neither human tenderness nor the sweetness of
commiseration.''
In spite of the sort of antisocial sequestration
ROUSSEAU 73
which Rousseau imposed on fenile for fifteen years,
it must not be imagined that he gave up all idea of
making a feeling, loving being of him a Uttle later.
Even as a child, he must be shown 'Hhis world's
imfortunates." The spirit of fraternity fills Rous-
seau's generous soul to overflowing: 'Troclaim
yourself aloud the protector of the imhappy. Be
just, hiunane, and kindly. Do not give alms alone,
give charity.'' Rousseau advances toward modem
sociaUsm. Note, for example, this bold reflection:
'^When poor people were willing there should be
rich people, the rich promised to take care of those
without means of subsistence, either from their
property or labor." Arrived at man's estate,
ifemile spends a part of his time in doing good to
those around him. When in love, he does not allow
the thought of Sophie alone to absorb him. He
interrupts his attentions to his betrothed that he
may act as a true philanthropist. He travels the
country; he examines the land, its productions, and
their cultivation; he himself ploughs on occasion.
His knowledge of natural history is utilized for the
benefit of the cultivators; he teaches them better
methods. He visits the peasants in their homes;
and, after inquiring into their needs, he helps them
with his person and his money. Does a peasant
fall ill? He has him cared for; he himself attends
74 ROUSSEAU
to him. Simple medicine, indeed, and such as can
be allowed by an enemy of doctors, consisting, as it
does, in more substantial nourishment. He makes
his future wife a partner in these good works: he
takes her to visit the poor, to see a laborer who
has broken his leg, and whose wife is about to be
confined. ''With her gentle, light hand,*' Sophie
puts dressings on the wounded man: she waits on,
pities, and consoles hun.
By birth and extraction Rousseau was of the
people. He remained one of them by the simplicity
of his tastes, Uving hke a laborer, fond of associat-
ing with the lowly, though at times he did not
disdain the complaisance of great lords, and was not
insensible to the caresses of great ladies. Does this
imply that in his educational projects he worked
directly for the people and for the people's instruc-
tion? No. i^mile, if not a gentleman Uke Locke's
pupil, is at any rate of the middle classes, rich and
well bom. But by the fact that he eliminated ancient
languages and all expensive studies, and replaced
"book" education by the simple, natural cultivation
of the talents which every human creature brings
into the world at its birth, Rousseau suggested
the idea of the imiversal emancipation of intelli-
gence; he inspired the democratic idea of making
instruction general. He did not wish for the "cere-
ROUSSEAU 75
monious'' education of the rich, for what he still
called ^'exclusive" education, which only tends to
distinguish from the common people those who have
received it. Moreover, the object being to make
men, and not scholars, the poor would, in truth,
'^require no education/' Freed by their life of
toil from all the conventions of society, subjected
to nature's laws alone, ^Hhe poor can of themselves
become men/'
Rousseau — and for it he has been severely
blamed — wished to form, not a man of a certain
station, or of a settled profession, but just a man.
He thought too much, sajrs Taine, of ''man in the
abstract," and not enough of actual man, such as he
is made by the circumstances of time and place,
and as he should be trained by education, so that he
may be fitted for his place in Ufe. ''Whether my
pupil be intended for the army, the church, or the
bar, matters httle to me. Before he adopts the
vocation of his parents, nature calls upon him to
be a man. How to live is the business I wish to
teach him. On leaving my hands, he will not, I
admit, be a magistrate, a soldier, or a priest : first
of all he will be a man. All that a man should be,
he can be." Let us give praise to Rousseau for
having reminded men that they have a personal
destiny, that first and foremost they should, if pos-
76 ROUSSEAU
sible, set up and strengthen in themselves the prin-
ciples of human dignity. Let us, however, censure
him for keeping too strictly to the absolute, without
considering the contingencies and relative conditions
which require the individual to graft on the common
stem that branch of special acquirements which the
place that he will occupy in Ufe exacts, as a con-
dition of being worthily held. He did not sufl&-
ciently reflect on the principle, which is becoming
more and more insistent on recognition, that edu-
cation must be diversified and speciaUzed in a score
of forms, that it may be in conformity with the
various exigencies of social [labor, no less than in
correspondence with the multiplicity of individual
talents. Rousseau has erred in a manner analogous
to those religious educators who, forgetful of the
present Ufe, and thoughtful only for the life to
come, — which alone has any value in their eyes, —
aspire only to the rearing of a pure and virtuous
creature for the bUss of Ufe everlasting. The
philosopher of nature and ideal himianity joins
hands, without suspecting it, with the mystical
constructors of God's City. When his ''one and
indivisible'' education is finished, Emile may be the
type of a man; but he must not be expected to be
an engineer, a doctor, or a lawyer. Of what use,
then, will he be in society, since he can bring no
ROUSSEAU 77
special attainments beyond those proper to his trade
of joiner?
It is well that il^mile has learned a manual trade;
it is well that he is ''fit for all stations of life " ; but
perhaps no harm would ensue from the addition of
a professional preparation for one of the functions
to which society calls men.
At times, however, the practical spirit awakens in
Rousseau and timidly takes its revenge. After he
has betrothed Emile to Sophie, he forces him to
leave her and travel* abroad for two years. By a
fresh contradiction, Rousseau, who so long kept
Emile from coming into contact with his own com-
patriots, and did not introduce him into society till
he was twenty, now enlarges the circle of his social
connections to the extent of wishing him to enter
into relations with the men of other countries.
Travel, says he, forms part of education: travel, not
for pleasure, however, but for instruction and study,
a kind of ''scholastic course'' abroad. ;6mile must
be acquainted with the genius and ways of foreign
nations; truly it was wasted time to forbid so long
the reading of histories ! It is true that books are
worth nothing. It is with his eyes that IJmile should
see foreign things, as all other things. Rousseau
never abandons the method of direct observation.
If we are to beUeve him, the French are, of all the
78 ROUSSEAU
peoples of the world, the greatest travellers. Was
this true in 1762? We doubt it. At all events, it
is regrettable that it is not now the case. Emile
travels, then. So that, in the course of his wander-
ings, he be not turned aside and diverted from the
serious objects of his observations, Rousseau has
taken care that he is enamoured before his departure.
The love sworn to Sophie is to preserve him from all
dissipation, and to shelter him from passion and
vice in the great towns which he visits. On his
travels, Emile devotes himself entirely to his obser-
vations, which are not, however, concerned with
monimients and antiquities, or on the reUcs and ruins
of the past. That is of no interest ; it is the present
which should be known. !^mile is not an archae-
ologist. His attention is directed especially to ques-
tions of government, to customs and laws. He will
study poUtics and comparative legislation on the
spot. And when he returns to his native land, he
can usefully examine the institutions of France, in
order to judge of them by comparison. Perhaps he
may deem them inferior and bad, and will conse-
quently be moved to the ambition of contributing
to their reformation. On the contrary, this cos-
mopolitan of a few months' standing may have
become a more ardent patriot, attached to his own
country the more for being better informed regard-
ROUSSEAU 79
ing the vices and evils of other countries. Let us
be assured, if Rousseau had Uved in our time, he
would have joined his eloquent rebukes to those of
the present-day educators, who lu-ge young French-
men to become colonists. It was not a fit time to
think of that in 1762, when, through the fault of its
monarchy, France was on the point of losing her
magnificent colonial empire.
The most important of the results of Emile^s
travel is that he. learned 'Hwo or three foreign
languages." Rousseau did not give him much time
for that ; difficulty of achievement, as we know, does
not trouble him. It is scarcely apparent how fimile,
who as yet has studied no foreign language, Uving
or dead, is able so rapidly to learn German and
English. What matters this? The main thing is
, that here again Rousseau pointed out the goal and
drew attention to the importance of studying the
Uving languages. Further, in the course of his
travels, Emile took care to cultivate acquaintance
with foreigners of parts, so that, having returned
home, he continues to correspond with them. This
exchange of letters, which lasts his whole Ufe, will
raise his thoughts and sentiments above national
/prejudice, and will make him a citizen of the
^ world. Thus did Rousseau prepare the way for
the modem educators, who protest against French-
80 ROUSSEAU
men confining themselves to devout contemplation
of themselves, and who exhort them to mix with
the miiversal Ufe of humanity, that they may see
and comprehend the world outside.
]6mile is a perfect man ; to be worthy of becoming
his wife, Sophie should be an ideal woman. But
Rousseau is far from successful in this second part
of his task; and woman's education, as displayed
by him, is certainly not so well understood as man's.
It is with special care, however, that Rousseau
wrote the fifth book of Emile, which is almost en-
tirely devoted to feminine instruction. He com-
posed it, he says, '^in a continual ecstasy" (he was
at the time the guest of the duchess of Luxembourg,
at Montmorency), '^in the midst of woods and
streams and choirs of birds of every kind, with the
fragrance of the orange-blossom in the air"; and
he in part attributes 'Hhe rather fresh coloring"
of these pages, more poetical than philosophical, to
the pleasant impressions which he experienced in
this earthly paradise. But he Uved there with his
Th^rfise, — a companion and model ill-fitted to
assist him in the conception of an educated woman.
He was constantly at the mansion and received
visits from brilliant and titled ladies, — a compan-
81
82 ROUSSEAU
ionship ill-suited perhaps to the conception of a
simple, strong woman, whose likeness he wished to
sketch. The material smroimdings themselves, also
the deUcious abode at Mont-Louis was more con-
ducive to revery than analysis. The book of
Sophie is only a pleasant idyl. The poet and
noveUst decidedly gain the upper hand in it. Of
tall things that Rousseau fails to understand, said
Saint-Marc Girardin, it is woman that he imder-
stands least. Certain of her refinements, her noble
dignity and pure moral grandem* have, at all events,
eluded him. He has for her more tenderness and
loving adoration than true respect and esteem. Even
in the most exquisite descriptions of his heroine,
looked at both physically and morally, an indefin-
able, sensual appetite is always to be detected, — a
memory of common or worldly women, coquettish
and artificial, whom he had known and loved.
Sophie, moreover, is not altogether an imaginary
being. When outlining her lineaments, Rousseau
asserts that he had in his mind an actual model.
Sophie existed then, and the name alone was of his
invention. Dead in the springtime of her Ufe, he
merely ''revived^^ her to make 'Hhis lovable girl"
femile^s companion. The story is dramatic and
touching. Having read Telernachvs, at the age of
twenty the real Sophie was smitten vrith love for
ROUSSEAU 83
F^nelon's hero, and, being unable to find in the world
a youth like him, she died of unsatisfied love, of
languor and despair. F^nelon is thus responsible
for the death of a maiden. . . . How does it come
about that this tragic episode of real hfe did not
prevent Rousseau from making his Sophie, who was
the image of the other, too sensitive and romantic?
It is true that, overtaken with tardy remorse, he
seems to have reahzed the vanity of his efforts, and
himself emphasized the insuflSciency and inefficacy
of his scheme of feminine education, when, with
strange irony, in the Roman des Solitaires, he shows
us the virtuous Sophie become an unfaithful wife,
although she saw in woman^s misconduct nothing
but ''misery, disorder, imhappiness, opprobriimi,
and ignominy."
Between femile's education and that which Sophie
receives, there is more than a contrast, there is an
abyss. Rousseau emancipated femile; he enslaves
Sophie. To the same degree that he showed him-
self bold in his views on the "foimdation" of men,
is he timid, backward, and conservative in his ideas
on woman's education. The apostle of individual-
ism renounces his doctrine. He subordinates woman
to man; of her he makes an hmnble subject whose
only value Hes in ministering to her husband's hap-
piness. He confines her strictly to her duties as
84 ROUSSEAU
daughter, wife, and mother. K he mvites her elo-
quently to fulfil her obUgations as a teacher, he for-
gets to provide her, by a suflSciently well-developed
instruction, with the means of acquitting herself
worthily in this great mission. Finally, he does not
appear to suppose that woman also has a claim to
acquire personalty, that she legitimately aspires to
extension of her acquirements and development of
her faculties, so that, with her enhghtened inteUi-
gence and emancipated reason, she may truly be
man^s equal and, indeed, the ''abstract woman."
Rousseau^s maxim is that woman should be obe-
dient to man, that her existence is, as it were, con-
ditional on that of man. Listen to these continual
repetitions which, Uke a monotonous refrain, re-
appear on every page: "The whole education of
women ought to be relative to men. . . . Woman
is specially made to please men, to be useful to
them, to make themselves loved and honored by
them, to rear them when yoimg, to care for them
when grown up, to advise them, to console them, to
render their hves agreeable and sweet to them, —
these are the duties of women at all times, and should
be taught to them from their childhood. ... All
their caprices must be overcome so as to make them
submissive to the will of others. . . . Dependence
is the woman's natm-al condition. . . . Woman is
ROUSSEAU 85
created to be all her life subject to man and to man's
judgment. • . . It is a law of nature that woman
shall obey man. . . . She is created to give way to
man, and to suffer even his injustice. . . ."
There is, then, no idea of educating Sophie for
herself. Rousseau does not, at heart, admit the
equaUty of the sexes. He says of woman that she
is ''an imperfect man," that in many respects she
is only "a grown-up child." I am aware that
Rousseau, with his customary inconsistency, con-
tradicts himself in other passages: "The question
^ of superiority," he says, ''must not be urged:
differences accoimt for all. . . . Each sex has
qualities suited to its destiny and part in life. . . .
It is perhaps one of the marvels of nature that two
beings so similar, and at the same time so differently
constituted, should have been made. . . ." But
he insists upon these differences: "It is demon-
strated that man and woman are not constituted
aUke, either in temperament or character." By
speaking of differences, does not one -singularly
compromise the idea of equaUty?
What, then, is Rousseau's idea of the character
and temperament proper to woman? He expoimds
it to us twice : first, somewhat ponderously in the
long pages of general philosophy which begin the
fifth book of iJmUe, and form a kind of outline of
86 ROUSSEAU
feminine psychology; and later, with a quite poetic
charm, when, putting away abstract considerations,
he raises the curtain to show Sophie in her grace
and beauty.
Woman is weak. She is passionate: "If she
pretends to be unable to bear the Kghtest burdens,
it is not only to appear deUcate, it is to arrange ex-
cuses for herself and the right to be feeble should
occasion require." Her heart feeds on unUmited
desires of love; it is true that 'Hhe Supreme Being
added modesty" in order to counterbalance and
restrain them. Sophie, Uke all women, is a natural
coquette. She is fond of finery, almost from the
moment of her birth. She is not displeased to dis-
play "her well-turned leg." She is inquisitive, too
much so. She is artful, and necessarily so, to com-
pensate for what she lacks in strength. "You tell
me that Uttle Sophie is very artful," wrote Rous-
seau to the prince of Wtirtemberg, "so much the
better 1 . . ." Artfulness is a natural talent, and
everything natm-al is "good and right." The in-
stinct of artfulness, then, must be cultivated. Rous-
seau, however, is good enough to admit that it is
as well "to prevent its abuse." Sophie is talkative.
She is imperious. She is by nature a glutton —
here Rousseau forgets that he has declared all
primitive instincts to be excellent. Does not the
ROUSSEAU 87
doctrine of original goodness apply to woman with
as much force as to man ? Sophie is temperate, but
she has become so. . . .
So much for the defects, and we have minimized
them. The portrait is not overdrawn. Let us now
examine the other side: the good, the qualities.
Woman is more docile than man. She has more
delicacy than man. She is more skilful in reading
the human heart. Her dominant passion is virtue.
Let us note, moreover, that it is never certain
whether Rousseau means to speak of woman in
general, or of the exceptional creature which he
has personified in Sophie. Her chief happiness
is to make her parents happy. She is chaste and
honest till her last sigh: here the ideal woman is
obviously intended, the one of whom he sajrs,
''A virtuous woman is almost the equal of the
angels 1 . . ."
But woman, in general, is not man's equal. A
charming being whom Rousseau idolizes, yet none
the less binds down to the subordinate position of
her part as yoimger sister, and inferior in the hmnan
family. Her natural quaUties must be respected,
be they good or ill. It does not seem as though
Rousseau wishes even her faults to be corrected,
because they may perchance help her to captivate
men. A woman should remain a woman. It would
88 ROUSSEAU
be foDy to wish for the cultivation of man's qualities
in her. Rousseau, who, on so many other points
forestaUed the tendencies and innovations of the
modem mind, can in no wise be considered an expert
in what is nowadays called ''woman's rights."
Nothing would have offended him more than the
claim to mingle and assimilate the two sexes in
the same habits and fimctions. The modelling of
woman's education and Ufe on man's would, to him,
have seemed an aberration, a usurpation of the
rights of the stronger sex, and, in another sense, a
profanation.
It is more especially when he considers woman's
intellectual faculties that Rousseau shows himself
unjust to them. He admits that their judgment is
earUer formed, but he asserts that they soon allow
themselves to be outdistanced. They have not
sufficient attention and accuracy of mind to succeed
in the exact sciences : — we may note, in passing, that
ifemile gives no evidence of any training in them,
either. — Everything that tends to generalize ideas
is outside their competence. All their reflections
should centre in the study of men, or in agreeable
acquirements which have 'Haste" as their object.
Search after abstract truths is not suitable for them.
No women philosophers or women mathematicians
then : Rousseau would have refused another Sophie
ROUSSEAU 89
— Sophie Germain — the right to exist. Works of
genius are beyond them. Is it not true, however,
that, as a novehst, George Sand, to mention no
others, has indeed some genius, at any rate as much
as Rousseau? ... In short, feminine studies
should relate exclusively to practical matters, and
Rousseau would willingly repeat MoUfere's words : —
Is it not seemly, and for many reasons,
That a woman should study and know so many things. . . .
Sophie's instruction, then, is extremely Umited.
It could not be otherwise in a system which, on the
one hand, lowers the function of woman, and, on the
other hand, disparages her intelligence and powers.
How can she be asked to acquire knowledge which
will be useless to her in her r61e of humble subordi-
nation, or to undertake studies which exceed the
capacity of her mind ? In her Ubrary, Rousseau puts
only two books, Telemachus — and even this is out
of place, if it be true, as Rousseau tells us, that it
excites a girPs imagination — and Comptes fails, by
BarrSme. Sophie ought to imderstand thoroughly
the keeping of household accoimts. She must be a
true housewife, knowing the prices of provisions,
superintending her servants, such a wife as Xenophon
had already pictured the partner of Ischomachus.
In her youth, Sophie was especially engaged in
learning needlework: she sews and embroiders.
90 ROUSSEAU
The wife of fenile, who has his working hours, must
not be capable of neglecting manual occupations.
Rousseau felt the importance of what is nowadajrs
called the '^household education." Sophie cuts out
and makes her own dresses. She has a preference,
it is true, for lace. Why is this? It is because
there is no form of needlework which 'Ogives a more
pleasing pose." Sophie remains somewhat coquet-
tish, even in her household occupations. Rous-
seau vrishes — must he be blamed for it? — a
woman to be alwa3rs attractive and elegant, to do
everything gracefully. Nothing should detract from
the charm of her personal appearance, even when she
is cooking. Somewhat '^foppish," Sophie prefers
burning the dinner to soiling her cuff. Is femile, who
dines badly that evening, consoled by admiring the
spotless cleanliness of Sophie's attire? There is,
let us confess, something sickly and too deUcately
refined in the education of this young woman who,
for example, dislikes gardening, giving as a reason
that 'Hhe earth seems dirty to her."
Sophie cultivates accompUshments, less for her
personal benefit than to contribute later to her hus-
band's amusement. She has a nice voice, and sings ;
a taste for music, and plays. She can dance. But
from all other points of view, she is decidedly an
ignoramus. A little arithmetic — enough to total
ROUSSEAU 91
up the household expenses — has been taught her:
'Terhaps women should before all learn to cipher,"
according to the natiu-al method, however: '*A
Uttle girl can easily be persuaded to learn arith-
metic, if care be taken to give her cherries for her
limch only on condition that she coimt them."
But hterature, poetry, and history she knows noth-
ing of. Bluestockings are an affiction. ''Every
learned girl will remain single all her life, when only
men of sense are to be found." Rousseau would
certainly not have approved of the creation of high
schools, nor even elementary schools, for girls.
"There are no colleges for women: what a misfor-
time. . . . Would to God there were none for
boys. . . ."
However insuflScient ]femile's instruction may
seem to us, Sophie's remains on a yet much lower
plane. She is in no wise the enhghtened woman
whose action is necessary to regenerate the family
and society. Rousseau, though he detested Paris,
has made of her a frivolous Parisian, who is rather
a grace than a power in the house, a charming play-
thing or a thing of fashion.
It is not alone by her insufficient instruction,
which practically amoimts to nothing, that Sophie
differs from iEmile; it is also in the nature of her
education. The ssrstem on which a woman is
92 ROUSSEAU
educated should be different from that adopted in
the case of a man. !^mile does not make his entry
into society till he is about twenty; Sophie is ad-
mitted at a very early age. Before becoming a wife
and mother, she must be acquainted with society
and Ufe. Reversing the usual practice by which a
girl is kept in almost cloistered seclusion, and a
woman is thrown into the whirlpool of society life,
Rousseau wishes Sophie to go often to balls, plays,
suppers, accompanied by her mother, of course;
but once married, she shuts herself up in the peace of
domestic life. Here we have quite a fresh inspira-
tion, a scheme of education in the EngUsh or Ameri-
can style. If Sophie is shown society, it is, however,
that she may be made to feel its emptiness and vice,
and may be sickened of it forever. Is it quite
certain that this precocious emancipation would give
the results that Rousseau expects? Let us praise
him, nevertheless, for having introduced the ele-
ments of gayety, good temper, and Uberty, into a
girFs life. Sophie is merry and ^'skittish"; she
is not to live ^'Uke a grandmother."
Another difference: from the earhest years of
her infancy, religion will be mentioned to Sophie.
The reason which Rousseau gives for this is the
very one which we advanced against him, when he
delayed for Emile this religious teaching which he
ROUSSEAU 93
hastens for Sophie. If we had to wait until a woman j
was able to conceive a true idea of religion, "to dis
cuss these deep questions methodically, we shoulc
run a risk of never mentioning it to her/' This is;
then, only a fresh proof of the little esteem which
Rousseau professed for feminine intelligence. Sub-
missive to the judgment of others, Sophie blindly
accepts her mother's religion. "Every girl ought
to have the reUgion of her mother, and every wife
that of her husband." Opinion and authority, so
boldly expelled from fenile's education, resume their
sovereign sway when Sophie is in question. "Opin-
ion,'' says Rousseau, emphatically "is with men the
tomb of virtue, with women it is its throne " : which
is to say that, in their beliefs as in their behavior,
women are subject to the opinion of others. Wom-
en's religion, moreover, is confined "in the nar-
row circle of dogmas which derive from morahty."
She is simple and reasonable, — "reasonable" is
a word already used by Mme. de Maintenon.
"Persuade her well that no knowledge is useful
except such as teaches us well-doing. Do not make
theologians and logicians of your daughters : teach
them such of heaven's things alone as are of use for
human wisdom. . . ." Morahty is the essential
part of religion, and we serve God by good actions.
At times Rousseau hesitates, desisting from keep-
94 ROUSSEAU
ing woman in her state of subordination ; he seems to
perceive that, to be a wife and mother, Sophie needs
a Uttle more instruction. ''There are," says he,
''only two classes in hiunanity : those who think and
those who do not think." And guiding femile in
the choice of a wife, he exhorts him to put aside all
consideration of fortune or social rank, "to take
for his wife even the hangman^s daughter, so little
should he care for class." What does matter,
is that a wife should think, know how to bring up
her children, and be able to live in commimion of
ideas with her husband. In that case, however,
is it not evident that it would be indispensable to
arrange for her a wider and more thorough instruc-
tion? "It is the husband," replies Rousseau, "who
will teach her everything and be her instructor. . . ."
I admit that he will complete and widen her in-
struction, but on condition that, already as a girl,
she has been initiated into the things of the mind.
Let her be forbidden to read novels, — "never did
a chaste girl read a novel," — this is already very
severe ; but how sanction her never having a serious
book in her hands and being as ignorant of Uterature
as of science, ' ' fatal science " ? This is, nevertheless,
really the conclusion come to by Rousseau, who
seemed to fear that by instructing woman she
might be made man's equal, and that "the pre-
ROUSSEAU 95
' eminence which nature gives to the husband might
thus be conveyed to the wife."
It is true that Rousseau, if he abases woman on
the one hand, exalts her on the other. ^^ Women,"
sa3rs he, *'have a supernatural talent for governing
men. . . ." But this so-called supernatural talent
is nothing but their grace and beauty, and, in short,
the very natural power which they exercise over
man^s senses. *'The best households," he says
again, ''are those in which the wife has most au-
thority." Yes ; but in his theories, this authority is
not that of a cultxu^d intelligence and tested reason;
it is simply a rule founded on gentleness, made last-
ing by the little methods which a wife^s ingenuity or
indulgence suggest to her. It it by her caresses
that Sophie orders, it is by tears that she threatens.
Mme. Roland's father, discussing the choice of a hus-
band with her one day, said to her, "I understand
you would like to subjugate some one who thinks
himself the master, doing everything that you wish.
. . ." Sophie is of the same school. She appears
to obey, but in fact she reigns and governs, and her
sovereignty is due only to the seductions of her
sex.
A strange book, it must be admitted, is this
romance of Sophie's education. In it charming
things are mingled with pedantic dissertations.
96 ROUSSEAU
Delicate thoughts are near neighbors to declama-
tions that might be described as the ramblings of a
disordered brain. In it the highest lessons of virtue
alternate with loose passages of vicious gallantry,
and with rather free observations. The eulogy of
Spartan or Roman manners is followed by pages in
which one guesses that Rousseau found as much
pleasure in reading Brant6me as in reading the Bible,
— which he had read right through more than six
times, during the sleeplessness of his nights of sick-
ness. We must not require from Rousseau the lofty
purity of sentiment which the mission of woman's
educator demands. How can we be touched by his
enthusiasm for decency, modesty, and seemliness,
when we have just heard him say that, ^'Sophie
does not display her charms; on the contrary, she
covers them up, but in covering them up she knows
how to suggest them''? Or again, ''In Sophie's
simple and modest attire, everything seems to have
been put in its place only to be removed piece by
piece. ..." We do not know, sometimes, when
reading ^mile, whether we are in presence of a severe
moralist or a man of gallant adventures. What is
not subject to doubt, is that the too realistic memory
of Mme. de Warens, or the ideal representation of
Mme. Sophie d'Houdetot, — whom he loved too
much ''to wish to possess her," — accompany and
ROUSSEAU 97
partly direct Rousseau's pen when he is sketching
Sophie's portrait. . . .
Do not let us, however, finish with this unfavor-
able impression. If Sophie is not the strong, sen-
sible, and enlightened woman that we could wish
her to be, if she is rather a "weak, silly woman,"
more graceful than reasonable, seeking, above all, to
please, not disdaining, in her coquetry, to display
her white hand and shapely foot, let us, nevertheless,
salute in her a pleasant wife, who can retain her
husband's affections, a devoted mother, who feeds
and brings up her children; lastly, one who compen-
sates by rare merits for the imperfections of her
incomplete education. Of her independent life and
her own personality, Rousseau takes no heed. It
is conjugal intimacy alone which can make of two
beings united for life one moral person. Woman is,
then, only a part, a fragment of this moral person.
As a compensation she will be the most seductive of
companions for the man whose complement she is.
Sophie is not one of "those who banish from mar-
riage everything that can be agreeable to men.''
She is not a wearisome devotee, enslaved by those
rigorous dogmas which, "by pushing duties to absurd
limits, make them impracticable and vain." Rous-
seau asserts that in his time "so much had been done
to prevent wives from being amiable, that husbands
98 ROUSSEAU
had been made indifferent/' To the scolding,
sullen wife he opposes one who is smiUng and cheer-
ful, who wishes to please and succeeds in doing so ;
who makes the obligation of fidelity pleasant and
easy for her life's companion. One may be tempted
to wonder how, after all the evil that he spoke of
women, Rousseau met among them so many im-
passioned admirers. It is because, if he did not
assign to them their true rank, he at least flat-
tered them; he encouraged them in their tendency
to rule by the power of their natural charms
alone. He liked^and cajoled them a great deal.
Observe with what satisfaction he forgets himself
when depicting the early love passages between Emile
and Sophie, what delicious trifles occupy him in the
portrait which he paints of his heroine. To figure
her as perfect, he draws upon all the races of hmnan-
ity. Sophie has the temperament of an Italian, the
pride of a Spaniard, and the sensibility of an English-
woman. All that she lacks to be perfect is, perhaps,
the good sense and sedate simphcity of an instructed
and cultm-ed Frenchwoman. She also is a pupil of
nature: ''She makes use only of scent which comes
from flowers." — ''I never praise her so much as
when she is simply clothed. . . ." There are wise
and beautiful sayings in the confusion of the fifth
book of Emile; as, for example: ''Show woman in
ROUSSEAU 99
her duties the very source of her pleasures and
foundation of her rights. Is it so diflGicult to love so
as to be loved, to make oneself amiable so as to be
happy, to make oneself esteemed so as to be obeyed,
and to respect oneself so as to be respected?
..." Many other passages explain, without how-
ever justifjdng it entirely, the opinion of a German
educational historian, Fr6d6ric Dittes, who went
so far as to say that he considered the fifth part of
^mile to be *Hhe best book which has been written
on woman's education/' And, at all events, Sophie,
despite the gaps in her education, is already the
modem woman, created not for the church and the
convent, but for family life; despite her defects, she
possesses this precious and fresh quality, that her
virtue is amiable.
VI
The influence of Rousseau and his pedagogic
thought was preponderant, as we shall see presently,
chiefly in Germany. But the fame of 6mile was uni-
versal, and the echoes of it have not yet died away.
As a man who sought after glory, and whose gloomy
temper took umbrage at everything, Rousseau com-
plained that ^rnile did not obtain the same success
as his other writings. He was truly hard to please I
. . . The anger of some, the ardent sympathy of
others; on the one hand, parliamentary decrees con-
demning the book and issuing a warrant for the
author^s arrest, the thunders of the church and the
famous mandate of the archbishop of Paris; on the
other hand, the applause of philosophers, of Clairaut,
Duclos, and d'Alembert, . . . what more, then, did
he want? ^mile was burned at Paris and Geneva;
but it was read with passion ; it was twice translated
in London, an honor which no French work had
received up till then. In truth, never did a book
make more noise and thrust itself so much on the
attention of men. By its defects, no less than by
100
ROUSSEAU 101
its qualities, by the inspired and prophetic character
of its style, as well as by the paradoxical audacity
of its ideas, J^mile swayed opinion and stirred up the
most generous parts of the human soul. If were
too difficult to enumerate all the imitations and
counterfeits which have been prompted by Rous-
seau's powerful influence, to say nothing of the
refutations, contradictions, and critiHsms^ The
end of the eighteenth century witnessed the appear-
ance of quite a succession, a posterity of i^miles:
first, Anti-tlmiles, then Christian iJmiles, Corrected
Entiles, New EmUes, "femiles retouched, improved,
shortened, amplified, and even iftmiles converted to
social life. In many a place were attempts made to
put into practice the education extolled by Rous-
seau; children were brought up in the Jean- Jacques
style. Fashion took part in it. There were also
*' dresses in the Jean- Jacques style," of which it was
said, in pecuhar language, that they were "analo-
gous to that author's principles."
Rousseau had already carried utopianism very far ;
it was, however, carried still farther. Let us mention,
for example, a very curious book, which is, as it were,
a caricature of tlmile, UtlUve de la nature, by Gas-
pard de Beaurieu. However silly this utopianism
may have been, it passed through no less than eight
editions, between 1763 and 1794. So as the better
102 ROUSSEAU
to insure his ]^mile's isolation, de Beaurieu had the
idea of shutting him up in a wooden cage till he
reached the age of fifteen; then he landed him on
a desert island. . . . Nothing more extravagant
could be conceived. And yet Rousseau did not
disclaim his fantastic disciple: he loved his para-
doxes to the extent of excusing and approving their
exaggeration. In a letter of the 25th of May, 1764,
he wrote: ''I have read UEUve de la nature. One
cannot think with more intelligence, or write more
pleasantly. ..." Without confusion, Rousseau
looked at himself in the magnifying mirror in which
an indiscreet admirer had already exaggerated his
dreams. It is true that he added, not without a
touch of irony: ^'I advise M. de Beaurieu to always
keep more to subjects which can be dealt with
by descriptions and representations, than to those
needing discussion and analysis. ... An agricul-
tural treatise would suit him perfectly. ..."
Happily, Rousseau found more serious imitators.
The end would never be reached if we mentioned all
the great men who, in literature or politics, make
for him in posterity a long train of admirers. How
many revolutionists fed on the maxims of Contrat
social, and felt the political influence of Rousseau,
a ''disastrous" influence, however, according to
Auguste Comte, who describes his doctrines as
ROUSSEAU 103
''anarchical"? Are not Chateaubriand, George
Sand, and many others, the progeny of the author of
La NouveUe H6loi$ef . . . But we have only to
occupy ourselves in this place with educators, and
it is perhaps on them that the salutary action of
Rousseau^s thought has most usefully been exercised.
The revolution of 1789 did not last long enough to
make it possible that anything of permanence in the
matter of education should be accomplished. But
Rousseau's inspiration is apparent in the majority
of the projects which it improvised without ever
succeeding in putting them into operation. The
chimerical plans of Saint-Just and Lepelletier de
Saint-FargeauJ emanate directly from ilmUe. In
year III, Marie- Joseph Ch6nier asked "that the
method pursued by Rousseau in femile's education
should be applied to the entire nation."
Rousseau's teachings, in truth, obtained more
theoretical admiration than practical application.
It has never been proposed, for example, to bring
into existence those Schools of the fatherland imagined
by the gentle and sentimental Bemardin de Saint-
Pierre, the cheerful Utopian, idyllic reformer, and
nature enthusiast. At least it must be admitted
that in suppressing pimishments and rewards in
his educational scheme, in removing the motive
of emulation, and on yet many other points, Ber-
104 ROUSSEAU
nardin merely copies Rousseau, whose friend, con-
fidant, and consoler he had been.
Women have had a special fondness for Rous-
seau. Who loved and extolled him more than Mme.
Roland, '^Jean-Jacques' daughter," or the "Jean-
Jacques of women,'' as she has been called? In
1777, she wrote to one of her friends : ''I love Rous-
seau beyond expression. ... I carry Rousseau in
my heart. . . ." She especially esteemed him for
having revealed to her domestic happiness and the
ineffable dehghts which may be tasted in family
life. For her part, Mme. de Stael greets ^mile as
"an admirable book, which puts envy to shame after
exciting it," and she tells us that, in her youth, she
fell in love with negative education. Rousseau's
influence is perceptible on even those women educa-
tors who most contested the conclusions of ^mUe.
The principal work of Mme. de Genlis, Adile et Thio-
dore, often recalls jEmile et Sophie: the indirect
lessons, the artificial and prepared scenes, dear to
Rousseau, are found again in it. Mme. Necker de
Saussure, though opposed to the principles of eigh-
teenth-century philosophy, often draws inspiration
from him, after contradicting him. Like him, she
sees in the child a being apart, whose education has
: rules of its own. She holds again, after him, the
idea of a progressive development of the faculties,
ROUSSEAU 105
and consequently that of the sequence of methods
appropriate to the age and powers of the child.
It has been said of Rousseau that he introduced
into French literature the genius of the north, that
he was of a German or English temperament. I
do not know whether this view is very acciirate.
Rousseau knew nothing of Germany. He did not
like the English. "I have no penchant for England.
..." He was brought especially under French
influence during his wanderings across France and
his long sojourn in Paris; and, indeed, nourished by
classical reading, he may quite as properly be re-
garded as a representative of the extreme sensibility
of southern races. What, however, is certain, is
that this child of Geneva, if not of *' Teutonic"
genius, became Teutonic by his influence. As the
lamented Joseph Texte has shown in his fine book,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les origines du cosmo-
politisme litaraire, his light has gone forth into all
lands. The success of his works and the propaga-
tion of his ideas made him a cosmopohtan.
There is hardly a German writer but has borne
him favorable testimony, usually, indeed, enthusi-
astic homage. Basedow, a pedagogue who had in
his time a great but Uttle deserved reputation,
swears only by Rousseau, whose theories he uses,
in his way, with frenzied zeal. Having no son, he
106 ROUSSEAU
finds consolation in calling his daughter ^'Emilie,"
Lavater shows himself as eager as Basedow for the
reformation of education in the direction of the
doctrines of tlmile. But here are weightier authori-
ties. Lessing declares that he cannot pronounce
the name of Rousseau "without respect." Schiller
extols "the new Socrates, who of Christians wished
to make men." Goethe calles tlmile "the teacher^s
gospel." Kant aflSrms that no book "moved him
so deeply." He read it with such avidity, that, in
his strictly ordered life, 'Hhe regularity of his daily
walks was for a time disturbed." In his little
Treatise on Pedagogics^ many principles are bor-
rowed from 'tmile: for him also nature is good.
Herder, who has been named "the German Rous-
seau," cries out, "Come, Rousseau, be thou my
guide"; and in a letter to his beloved Carohne, he
acclaims tlmih as "a^divine work." In his Leoana,
Jean-Paul Richter says that, of all previous works
to which he feels himself indebted, it is to tlmile
that he must assign the front rank, that "no pre-
ceding work can be compared to it." But it is to
Pestalozzi especially that is due the honor of
developing and popularizing, whilst attempting to
apply them, the methods of Rousseau, whose works
had early fixed his imagination: "The system of
liberty founded ideally by the author of tlmiU
ROUSSEAU 107
excited in me a boundless enthusiasm." Lastly,
Froebel, who wished to replace books by things,
who had nothing so much at heart as the preserva-
tion of the child's spontaneity, deserves a place in
the golden book of Rousseau's disciples. And it
is not only in the great men of Germany that Rous-
seau inspired new sentiments: thinkers of lesser
importance, Jacobi, Heinse, Klinger, and yet many
others, took part in this adoring veneration which
Germany professed for the French educator.
Rousseau has been somewhat less appreciated in
England. There also, however, despite the scandal
of his ridiculous rupture with Hmne, he found im-
mediate favor and success, ilmile was translated
in London as soon as it appeared; and a second
edition was soon called for. In 1789 David Will-
iams said, *' Rousseau is in full possession of the
pubUc attention." It is true that opinion was
occupied with the poUtical theories of Conbrat social
rather than the pedagogical conceptions of J^mzfe.
Somewhat neglected for a century, Rousseau was
again brought forward by Mr. John Morley, and
also by a distinguished educational historian, Robert
Quick. The latter opines that *Hhe truths contained
in tJmile will survive the fantastic forms in which
the author enveloped them." In his eyes, J^rnile is
'Hhe most influential book ever written on educa-
108 ROUSSEAU
tion/' This is also the opinion of John Morley,
who states that J^mtk is *^one of the seminal books
in the history of literature." Again we have George
Eliot's avowal: ** Rousseau has breathed life into
my soul, and awakened new faculties in me. ..."
And lastly, is it not true that Rousseau's principle,
the return to nature, dominates the pedogogics of
Herbert Spencer, the most brilliant educational
theorist of contemporary England?
Apparently it is in America that Rousseau has
met with least sympathy, and we must not be much
surprised at this. How could this dreamer, this
indolent idler, this heroic representative of the
sensibility of the Latin races, be gifted with the
power of pleasing the virile, rugged minds and busy,
practical temperaments of the citizens of the New
World? In the study which he recently devoted to
him, Mr. Thomas Davidson admits his discomfiture.
On examination, the most vaimted theories of Rous-
seau have disappointed him. He did not find in
them the firm and solid substance which he expected
to obtain from a study of j&mik. And yet, when
closely examined, American education, as we see it
practically developing at the present time, has more
than one point of resemblance with the ideal peda-
gogics of Rousseau. One of the leaders of American
education. Dr. Charles W. Eliot, the revered president
ROUSSEAU 109
of Harvard University, summarizing the progress
accomplished in his coimtry during the nineteenth
century, draws attention especially to the intro-
duction of two essential things into the school cur-
riculum: nature study and manual training. The
American child is no longer a logical phantom, stuffed
with words aiid abstractions, but a Uving creature,
working with hands as well as mind. . • . But is
not all this Rousseau? Similarly, Dr. Eliot points
out that an improvement has come about in dis-
cipline. In religion, love has been substituted for
fear; in politics, people have begim to imderstand
that the government of nations should no longer re-
main what for thousands of years it has been, — the
work of an absolute and arbitrary will; that in its
place must be put the free government of the people
by the people ; and consequently people have come
to think that the modem and more accm^te con-
ception of a good government for a nation's citizens
held lessons for us on the subject of a good govern-
ment for children, who also should be freed, as far
as possible, from the yoke of the old tutelage, and
trained in self-government. . . . But is not this
also Rousseau?
Without our suspecting it, Rousseau's pedagogical
spirit has insinuated itself into and penetrated the
methods of teaching and the educational practices
no ROUSSEAU
which the present time endeavors more and more to
honor. Go into one of the infant schools : object-
lessons are given; the children are shown the things
themselves, and the method of observation and direct
intuition is put into practice. Make obeisance:
Rousseau it is who inspired these methods. . . .
Pay a visit to one of those English colleges which
M. Demolins is attempting to imitate and popularize
in France : there you will find masters who are both
guardians and professors, never leaving their pupils,
who, Uke them, live in the college from morning till
night; how can we avoid recognizing in them the
actual descendants of the imaginary tutor to whom
Rousseau confided the care of femile ? . . . Enter
one of those American schools in which the abuse of
books and manuals is condemned, and in which the
mental slavery of mechanical instruction has been
exchanged for methods of intellectual freedom, so
that the child shall acquire what it is requisite to
know as far as possible by himself and by his per-
sonal effort. In this, again, you will be forced to
acknowledge the hand of Rousseau. . . . Where-
soever discipline has become more liberal, where
active methods are supreme, and where the child is
kept constantly in a state of interest, Uvely curiosity,
and sustained attention, his dignity being at the
same time respected, there we may say Rousseau
has passed by.
ROUSSEAU 111
Utopias perish, but the truth endures. The spirit
survives the letter. We cannot, indeed, hope to
derive from Rousseau's pedagogics a definite and
final sjTstem of methods and procedure. But what
is perhaps better, he handed on to his successors and
still imparts to all who read him a spark, at least,
of the flame which burned in him. As Mme. de Stael
said, he has perhaps discovered nothing, but he has
set everything ablaze. His eloquence was the most
powerful appeal ever addressed to parents and
masters to exhort them to take their task as educa-
tors seriously. With him, education became a
sacred mission, a sublime ministry. Into educa-
tional questions he instilled a spirit of Ufe, a move-
ment of passion, unknown to the cold, dry peda-
gogues who had dealt with such questions before
him. Henceforth the educator's part is raised and
ennobled; and, by the fire of his enthusiasm, Rous-
seau stamped the science and art of rearing men with
the majesty and solemnity of a kind of reUgious reve-
lation.
And as, in Rousseau's works, time, eliminating
his mistakes, maintains and develops the Uving seed
which he sowed abimdantly in the field of education,
so with the man himself, in his character and
acts, distance and the flight of ages hide from us
defects and misdeeds, which, Uttle by little, return to
112 ROUSSEAU
shadoW; in order to let us see only his qualities
and virtues.
If Rousseau still exercises great seduction over the
human intellect, it is not solely by virtue of the force
of his innovating genius. Neither is it by the mere
effect of his style, sometimes somewhat heavy, but
whence at every moment flashes forth the lightning ;
that style which earned him the title of the "king
among prose-writers.'' It is because, behind the
writer and thinker, we feel the pulsations of the most
sincere heart which ever throbbed in the breast of
man. Voltaire's enmity must have been strong indeed
to blind him to such a degree that he could write : " It
is useless for Rousseau to play now the stoic and now
the cjnoic : he belies himself continually. The man
is factitious from head to foot." The opposite is
the truth. Rousseau's great charm, the secret of the
irresistible sympathy which he inspires, is precisely
that he yields his entire self, that he displays him-
self, as it were, stripped to the skin. With a soul
more sensitive than meditative, a mind more aes-
thetic than philosophic, he did not know that self-
possession, that mastery of a firm, cool judgment,
which permits a thinker to control the tmmoil
of sentiments and the confusion of images, so as to
construct and organize a system of connected and
consistent argmnent. From this arises the hesita-
ROUSSEAU 113
tions and contradictions of his thought. On the
other hand, a dreamer guided by his senses, he could
offer no resistance to instinctive impulses; whence
the failings of his moral Uf e, f aiUngs, moreover, which
we are aware of only through his own confession.
Many men of genius have doubtless had these same
passions and frailties; they, however, have hidden
them as much as possible, whilst he spread them
abroad in the shameless candor of his Confessions.
There is nothing fixed or precise in Rousseau's
moral philosophy. Rules of conduct strongly
enough established to suffice for the rearing of men
cannot be foimd in it. There is something of the
stoic in him, but the epicurean gets the upper hand.
'The man who has hved most," sajrs he, ''is not the
f one who coimts most years, but the one who has most
felt life." To enjoy Ufe, that is the object he pre-
scribes for Emile. It is true that Rousseau im-
mediately writes: ''Shall I add that his object is
also to do good, when he is able? No; for that
is itself to enjoy life. ..." The accomplishment
of duty is presented, not as a law and an obUgation,
but as a source of pleasm-e. The stoic reappears
when Rousseau advises the Umitation of desires,
when he says that the essentially good man is he who
has least needs, who is self-sufficing. In this respect,
Rousseau generally acted in accordance with his
114 ROUSSEAU
maxims. He was intemperate at times. In his
youth he pilfered from M. de Mably's cellars bottles
of a white wine for which he had a liking, and many
other peccadillos could be mentioned. But taking
his life as a whole, he was sober, simple in his tastes,
an enemy of luxmy, temperate, and even austere.
What he lacked, more than lofty and noble inspi-
rations, was the necessary energy to keep to them.
His senses and imagination governed his existence.
Could it be otherwise, considering the education
which he had received ? While yet a child, his father
read novels with him till morning; and only when
he heard the swallow^s notes did he say, ''Let us
go to bed, Jean-Jacques I ..." A friend of virtue
rather than virtuous, agitated rather than active,
a slave to his sensations when he would fain have
been the apostle of Uberty, tossed about by the ca-
prices of his fancy when he claimed to be establishing
among men the reign of sovereign reason, capable
of being at times a hero of courage and disinterested-
ness, to descend afterwards to unworthy and even
criminal actions; sentimentaUst and idealist, yet
often allowing I know not what coarse echo of erotic
sensuaUty to be heard in his most poetic hymns to
love and beauty, in the torrent of his Ufe he mingled
muddy waters with the piu'est streams. At times in-
toxicated with sublime thoughts, he nevertheless
ROUSSEAU 115
evaded the strictest and pleasantest duties; and he
has not absolved himself from his faults by a too pla-
tonic enthusiasm for righteousness. Too often has he
lived selfishly, seeking the soUtude which was sooth-
ing to his reveries, flying the men who troubled his
pride. He was imbued with his own opinion to the
point of willingly parting company with common
sense, and was so elated with his personaUty that
he thought himself an exceptional being, of a race
apart: ^''VMiy did Providence cause me to be bom
among men, having made me of a species different
fromthem? . . ."
Yet this somewhat wild misanthrope has contrib-
uted to a greater love of life by introducing into
it more Uberty, joy, and faith; by arousing and
strengthening, according to Mme. Roland's phrase,
'^all the affections which attach us to existence '':
devotion to humanity, enthusiasm for the ideal,
friendship and love. He has been generous and
helpful. His dream was the happiness of man:
''Make your paradise upon earth, whilst awaiting
the other. ^' He worked for a fresh, rejuvenated
society, freed from the prejudices of the past : ''Woe
to thee, O thou stream of custom !'' In an age of
courtiers, he com-ageously safeguarded his right of
free speech, and imder an oppressive rule he main-
tained his independence at the cost of his happiness.
116 ROUSSEAU
He was a citizen. One of Geneva's sons, he drew
from the traditions of his first fatherland the love
of liberty, the republican pride: *'With us, Tnaxims
are imbibed with the mother's milk." In a society
of sceptics and profligates, he was simple and a be-
Uever. Literary critics have praised Rousseau for
introducing into France the dreamy melancholy
of northern lands. Yes, but this melancholy is not
foimd in J^mife, which is, on the contrary, an opti-
mistic book, with a joyous confidence in the future.
Really living and fertile minds are those which look,
not to the past, but to the future ages : Rousseau is of
their nmnber. In his sovereign disdain of antiquated
tradition, he prepared the youth of the newly dawn-
ing era. With Voltaire, said Goethe, a world has
come to an end; with Roxisseau, a world begins.
The eighteenth century, especially with Rousseau,
is the rally to eternal nature, the commencement
of a forward movement, a bold anticipation of the
future.
I am willing that Rousseau be criticised and his
errors blamed : but let us not be forbidden to ad-
mire him. He will not cease to be read, followed, and
obeyed, in some, at least, of his prescriptions. He
will always be a leaven of life and moral regeneration.
He can proudly say to his critic, *' Strike, but
Usten." Above all, he will be loved to all eternity.
ROUSSEAU 117
I am well aware that Mme. du Deflfand, who re-
proached him with wishing to plunge everything
back into chaos, called him *'an antipathetic
sophist." But this is merely an exception, a voice
lost in the chorus of praise which is everywhere
uplifted in his honor. The women at all times have
been enraptured with Rousseau, and men have been
no more niggardly with the tribute of their devotion.
**I love ^mife," said Saint-Marc Girardin, and he
learnedly expounded his reasons. He is not the
only one who has spoken in this way. ''It will
always be impossible for us not to love Jean-Jacques
Rousseau," declared Sainte-Beuve fifty years ago.
And recently, the same declaration came, Uke a
refrain, from the pen of M. Jules Lemattre: ''It is
impossible for me not to love him : I feel that he was
good." Let us lore him, because he was indeed
good, because, thanks to him, a breath of hmnanity
and good-will penetrated and softened men's hearts,
because he himself loved truth, and because he con-
ceived an ardent love of justice, and from his child-
hood was inspired with transports of anger at its
violation. Let us love him and pity him also because
of his sufferings. Let us leave to curious and prying
minds the task of deciding what was the cause of
these sufferings, the mental malady, the kind of
madness with which he was afficted. We wish
118 ROUSSEAU
not to know whether he were neurotic, hysterical, or
simply melancholy mad. What is certain and enough
for us, is that he was a man of heart and of genius
to boot.
BIBLI06RAPH7
Op Rousseau's own works, besides EmUe, should be read : —
Projet pour Viducation deM.de Sainte-Marie (1740).
La NouveUe Hiloise, 5th part, Letter III (1761).
tmile et Sophie ou les Solitaires (1778).
Lettre h Christophe de Beaumont, archev^que de Paris (1763).
Considirations sur le gouvemement de Pologne et aur la riforme
projeUe en 1772 (1772).
In the Correspondance, the Letters to the prince of WQrtem-
berg (1763), and passim.
Only the most important and recent of the numerous publica-
tions dealing with ^mUe and Rousseau's ideas are mentioned
below : —
F. Brockbrdopp, J. -J. Rousseau, sein Leben und seine Werke,
3 vols., Leipzig, 1863.
H. Beaudouin, La vie et les oeuvres de J. -J. Rousseau, 2 vols.,
Paris, 1871.
Saint-Marc Girardin, J.-J. Rousseau, savie et ses ouvrages,
2 vols., Paris, 1875.
J.-J. Rousseau jug6 par les Genevois d'aujourd'hui, lectures
given at Geneva, on the occasion of the centenary of 2d July,
1878, Geneva, 1879. See especially : Les idies de Rousseau star
Viducation, by Andr£ Oltramare, and Caractiristigue g&n4rale
de Rousseau, by H. Fr^d^ric Amiel.
John Morlbt, Rouleau, 2 vols., London, 1888 (1st edition,
1873).
E. RiTTER, La famille et la jeunesse de J. -J, Rousseau, Parisi
1896.
119
120 ROUSSEAU
Strdckbisbn-Moulton, J.-/. Rousseau, ses amis et ses enne-
mis, 2 vols., Paris, 1865.
A. Chuqubt, J. -J. Rousseau, in the Great French Writers series,
Paris, 1893.
Davidson, Rousseau and Education according to Nature, in
TheOreat Educators series, New York and London, 1898.
J. Textb, J.-J. Rousseau et les origines du cosmopolitisme
littiraire, Paris, 1895.
A. EspiNAS, Le systkme de J. -J. Rousseau, in la Revue inter-
naiionale de Venseignement, vols. XXX and XXXI, 1895 and
1896. See also: Mussbt-Pathay, Histoire de la vie et des
ouvrages de J. -J. Rousseau (1821) ; Robert H. Qvick, Essays on
educational reformers, London, 1868; Rousseau's ^mile, trans-
lated and abridged by E. Worthington, with notes by Jules Steeg,
Boston and London, 1883 ; ^mile, abridged and annotated by
William H. Payne, New York, 1893; Hanus, Rousseau and
Education according to Nature, New York, 1897; M. Grbabd,
Uiducation des femmes par les femmes; and finally, articles or
chapters devoted to Rousseau by M. Bbunbtiebb, Etudes
critiques sw la littirature frangaise, 3d and 4th series; by
M. Fagubt, XVIIP si^le: ijtudes littiraires, 1890; by Tainb,
Les origines de la France contemporaine: VAncien regime, 1882;
by Mblchior db VogCb, Histoire et Po4sie, 1898; by M. E.
LiNTiLHAC, LiMratvre frangaise, etc.
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