Emile: Abridged Version
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
downloaded from: http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/pedagogies/rousseau/em_eng_abridged.html
10/14/03
Book One
[10:] Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the author of things,
everything degenerates in the hands of man. He forces one soil to nourish
the products of another, one tree to bear the fruits of another. He mixes
and confuses the climates, the elements, the seasons. He mutilates his
dog, his horse, his slave. He turns everything upside down, he disfigures
everything, he loves deformities, monsters. He wants nothing as nature
made it, not even man himself. For him man must be trained like a saddle-
horse; he must be shaped according to the fashion, like trees in his
garden.
[11:] Without this everything would be even worse; our species was not
made to remain only half-finished. Under existing conditions a man left to
himself from birth would be the most disfigured of all. Prejudice,
authority, necessity, example -- all the social conditions in which we
find ourselves submerged -- would stifle nature in him and put nothing in
its place. Human nature would be like a seedling that chance had sown in
the midst of the highway, bent this way and that and soon crushed by the
passers-by.
[12:] It is you whom I address, tender, foresighted mother [note 1] -- you
who know how to stay away from the busy highway and protect the growing
seedling from the impact of human opinion! Cultivate and water the young
plant before it dies; its fruit will one day be your delight. Early on,
form an enclosure around your child's soul. Someone else can mark its
circumference, but you alone must build the fence.[note 2]...
[14:] We are born weak, we need strength; we are born lacking everything,
we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. All that we lack at
birth and that we need when we are grown is given by education.
[15:] This education comes to us from nature, from men, or from things.
The inner growth of our organs and faculties is the education of nature,
the use we learn to make of this growth is the education of men, and what
we gain by our experience of our surroundings is the education of things.
[16:] Thus we are each taught by three masters. The pupil in whom their
diverse lessons conflict is poorly raised and will never be in harmony
with himself; he in whom they all agree on the same points and tend
towards the same ends goes straight to his goal and lives consistently.
The latter is well raised.
[17:] Now of these three factors in education, the education of nature is
wholly beyond our control; that of things is only partly in our power; the
education of men is the only one of which we are truly the master. And
even here our power is largely illusory, for who can hope to direct every
word and action of all those who surround a child?
[18:] As much therefore as education is an art, it is almost impossible
that it succeed, since the coordination necessary to its success depends
on no one person. All one can do by one's own efforts is to more or less
approach the goal. One needs luck to attain it.
[19:] What is this goal? It is the goal of nature, that has just been
proved. Since the coordination of the three educations is necessary to
their perfection, the two that we can control must follow the lead of that
which is beyond our control....
[21:] We are born sensitive and from our birth onwards we are affected in
various ways by the objects that surround us. As soon as we have, so to
speak, consciousness of our sensations, we are disposed to seek out or
shun the things that cause them, at first because they are pleasant or
unpleasant, then because they suit us or not, and finally because of
judgments of them formed by means of the ideas of happiness and goodness
which reason gives us. These tendencies gain strength and permanence as we
become more sensitive and more enlightened. But once they are constrained
by our habits, they become more or less corrupted by our opinions. Before
this change they are what I call nature within us.
[22:] It is thus to these primitive dispositions that everything should be
related, and that would be possible if our three modes of education merely
differed from one another. But what can be done when they are opposed,
when instead of raising a man for himself one wishes to raise him for
others? Then harmony becomes impossible. Forced to combat either nature or
social institutions, you must choose between making a man and making a
citizen, for you cannot do both at the same time....
[24:] Natural man is everything for himself. He is the numerical unit, the
absolute whole, accountable only to himself or to his own kind. Civil man
is only a fractional unit dependent on the denominator, whose value is in
his relationship with the whole, that is, the social body. Good social
institutions are those that know best how to denature man, to take away
his absolute existence in order to give him a relative one, and to
transport the "me" into a common unity so that each individual no longer
regards himself as one but as a part of the unity and is sensitive only to
the whole...
[29:] From these necessarily opposite aims come two contrary forms of
education -- one is public and common, the other individual and domestic.
[30:] Do you wish to get an idea of public education? Read Plato's
Republic. Those who merely judge books by their titles take this for a
treatise on politics, but it is the finest treatise on education ever
written....
[32:] Public institutions do not and cannot exist, for where there is no
longer a homeland there can no longer be citizens. These two words,
homeland and citizen, ought to be erased from modern languages. I know
very well the reason for this but I do not want to discuss it here; it has
nothing to do with my subject.
[33:] I do not consider our ridiculous colleges[note 6] as public
institutions. Nor do I count the education of society, for this education,
facing two ways at once, achieves nothing. It is only fit to turn out
double men, always seeming to relate everything to others while actually
relating nothing to anyone but themselves. These forms of display are
common to everybody and deceive no one. They are so much wasted effort.
[34:] From these contradictions arise the one which we experience
ceaselessly within ourselves. Drawn this way by nature and that way by
men, forced to divide ourselves between divergent impulses, we make a
compromise and reach neither goal. Thus buffeted and floating throughout
the course of our lives, we end it without having been able to be in
harmony with ourselves -- and without having done anything good either for
ourselves or for others.
[35:] There remains finally domestic education or the education of nature.
But what will a man raised uniquely for himself become for others? If
perhaps the proposed double aim could be resolved into one, then by
removing man's contradictions we would remove a great obstacle to his
happiness. To judge you must see this man full-grown; you must have
observed his inclinations, watched his progress, followed his steps. In a
word, natural man would have to be known. When you have read this work, I
think you will have made some progress in this research....
[37:] In the social order where each has his own place a man must be
educated for it. If an individual formed for a particular social position
happens to leave that position, he is fit for nothing else. His education
is only useful when fate agrees with his parents' choice. If not,
education harms the student, if only by the prejudices it has given him.
In Egypt, where the son was compelled to adopt his father's calling,
education had at least a settled aim. But with us, where only the social
ranks remain and the men who form them are constantly changing, no one
knows if raising one's son for his own class may actually be working
against him.
[38:] In the natural order since men are all equal their common vocation
is that of man. And whoever is well-raised for that calling cannot badly
fulfill anything that relates to it. Whether my pupil is destined for the
army, the church, or the law, is of little import. Before his parents
chose a vocation for him, nature called him to human life. Life is the
trade I want to teach him. Leaving my hands I grant you he will be neither
a magistrate, a soldier, nor a priest; he will be first of all a man. All
that a man ought to be he will learn as quickly as another. In vain can
fortune change his station; he will always be in his right place. "
Ocupavi te, fortuna, atque cepi; omnes-que aditus tuos interclusi, ut ad
me aspirare non posses."
[39:] Our true study is that of the human condition. Those who can best
endure the good and evil of life are in my view the best educated. Hence
it follows that true education consists less in precept than in practice.
We begin to learn when we begin to live; our education begins with
ourselves....
[41:] People think only of preserving their child's life; this is not
enough. He must be taught to preserve himself as a man, to bear the blows
of fate, to brave wealth and poverty, to live if necessary among the snows
of Iceland or on the scorching rocks of Malta. In vain you guard against
death: he will nevertheless have to die, and even if you do not kill him
with your precautions, they are ill-conceived. It is less a question of
keeping him from dying than of making him live. To live is not to breathe
but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of
all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence.
The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years
but he who has most felt life. A man may be buried at a hundred who has
been dead since his birth. He would have gained more by dying young: at
least he would have lived up until that time....
[43:] It is said that many midwives profess to improve the shape of the
infant's head by rubbing, and they are allowed to do this. Our heads are
not good enough as God made them; they must be moulded outside by the
nurse and inside by the philosophers. The Caribs are better off than we
are.
[44:] "The child has hardly left the mother's womb, it has hardly begun to
move and stretch its limbs, when it is given new bonds. It is wrapped in
swaddling bands, laid down with its head fixed, its legs stretched out,
and its arms by its sides; it is wound round with linen and bandages of
all sorts so that it cannot move. The child is fortunate if it has room to
breathe and if it is laid on its side so that any water which should flow
from its mouth can escape; for it is not free to turn its head on one side
for this purpose."
[45:] The new-born child needs to stir and stretch his limbs to free them
from the stiffness resulting from being curled up so long. His limbs are
stretched indeed, but he is not allowed to move them. Even the head is
confined by a cap. One would think they were afraid the child should look
as if he were alive.
[46:] As a result the internal impulses which should lead to growth find
an insurmountable obstacle in the way of the necessary movements. The
child exhausts his strength in vain struggles, or he gains strength very
slowly. He was freer and less constrained in the womb; he has gained
nothing by birth.
[47:] The inaction, the constraint to which the child's limbs are
subjected, can only hinder the circulation of the blood and bodily fluids;
it can only limit the child's growth in size and strength and injure its
constitution. In places where such absurd precautions are unknown, the men
are tall, strong, and well-made. The countries where children are swaddled
swarm with hunch-backs, the lame, the bowlegged, the arthritic, and people
with every kind of deformity. In our fear that the body should become
deformed by free movement, we hasten to deform it by putting it in a
press. We willfully make our children crippled by preventing them from
disabling themselves.
[48:] Might not such a cruel constraint influence their humor as well as
their temperament? Their first feeling is one of sadness and of pain. They
are confronted by obstacles with each necessary movement. More miserable
than a criminal in chains, they make vain efforts, they become angry, they
cry. Their first words you say are tears. I believe it. You thwart them
from birth. The first gifts they receive from you are chains, the first
treatment they experience is torture. Having nothing that is free but
their voice, why wouldn't they use it to complain? They cry from the pains
that you give them. Thus fettered you would cry louder than they.
[49:] Whence comes this unreasonable custom? From an unnatural practice.
Since mothers despise their primary duty and do not wish to nurse their
own children, they have had to entrust them to mercenary women. These
women thus become mothers to a stranger's children, who by nature mean so
little to them that they seek only to spare themselves trouble. A child
unswaddled would need constant watching; well swaddled it is cast into a
corner and its cries are ignored. As long as the nurse's negligence
escapes notice, as long as the nursling does not break its arms or legs,
what matter if it dies or becomes a weakling for life? Its limbs are kept
safe at the expense of its body, and if anything goes wrong it is not the
nurse's fault.
[50:] These gentle mothers, having gotten rid of their babies, devote
themselves gaily to the pleasures of the town. Do they know how their
children are being treated in the villages? If the nurse is at all busy,
the child is hung up on a nail like a bundle of clothes and is left
crucified while the nurse goes leisurely about her business. All those who
have been found in this position were purple in the face. Their tightly
bandaged chest prevented the circulation of the blood, and it went to the
head. The patient was considered very quiet because he had not strength to
cry. How long a child might survive under such conditions I do not know,
but it could not be long. That, I suppose, is one of the chief advantages
of swaddling clothes....
[65:] Observe nature, follow the route that it traces for you. Nature
exercises children continually, it hardens their temperament by all kinds
of difficulties, it teaches them early the meaning of pain and sorrow.
Teething gives them fevers, sharp colics bring on convulsions, long
coughing suffocates them, worms torment them, plethora corrupts their
blood, various leavens ferment it and cause dangerous eruptions. Almost
all of the first age is sickness and danger: one half of the children who
are born die before their eighth year. The tests passed, the infant has
gained strength, and as soon as he can make use of his life its principle
becomes more secure.
[66:] This is the law of nature. Why would you contradict it? Do you not
see that in your efforts to improve upon its work you are destroying it,
that you impede the effect of its aims? To do from without what she does
within is according to you to increase the danger twofold. On the
contrary, it is the way to avert it. Experience shows that children
delicately raised are more likely to die. Provided we do not overdo it,
there is less risk in using their strength than in sparing it. Accustom
them therefore to the hardships they will have to face; train them to
endure extremes of temperature, climate, and condition, hunger, thirst,
and weariness. Dip them in the waters of Styx. Before bodily habits are
acquired you may teach what habits you will without danger. But once
habits are established any change becomes perilous. A child will bear
changes which a man cannot bear. The muscles of the one are soft and
flexible and take whatever direction you give them without any effort. The
muscles of the grown man are harder and they only change their accustomed
mode of action when subjected to violence. One can thus make a child
robust without risking his life or health; and even if there were some
risk, one should not hesitate. Since risks are inseperable from human
life, can we do better than face them at a time when they can do the least
harm?...
[71:] Do you wish, then, that he keep his original form? Watch over him
from the moment he comes into the world. As soon as he is born take
possession of him and do not leave him till he is a man; you will never
succeed otherwise. Just as the real nurse is the mother, the real teacher
is the father. Let them agree in the ordering of their functions as well
as in their system; let the child pass from one to the other. He will be
better educated by a sensible though limited father than by the cleverest
teacher in the world. For zeal will make up for lack of knowledge better
than knowledge for lack of zeal....
[144:] Children's first sensations are purely affective. They are only
aware of pleasure and pain. Being unable to walk nor to grasp they need
much time to form little by little the representative sensations that show
them objects beyond themselves. But while waiting for these objects to
become extended, become distanced, so to speak, from their eyes and take
on for them dimension and shape, the recurrence of affective sensations
begins to subject the child to the rule of habit. You see his eyes
constantly follow the light, and if the light comes from the side the eyes
turn towards it, so that one must be careful to turn his head towards the
light lest he should squint. He must also be accustomed from the first to
the dark, or he will cry if he misses the light. Food and sleep, too
exactly measured, become necessary at regular intervals, and soon desire
is no longer the effect of need, but of habit, or rather habit adds a
fresh need to those of nature. This is what must be prevented.
[145:] The only habit the child should be allowed is that of contracting
none. Let him be carried on either arm, let him be accustomed to offer
either hand, to use one or other indifferently; let him not want to eat,
sleep, or do anything at fixed hours, nor be unable to be left alone by
day or night. Prepare from afar the reign of his liberty and the use of
his own forces by letting his body keep its natural habit, by putting him
in a condition of being always master of himself, of following his will in
everything as soon as he has one....
[147:] Since the mere choice of things shown him may make the child timid
or brave, why should not his education begin before he can speak or
understand? I would have him accustomed to see fresh things, ugly,
repulsive, and strange animals, but little by little, and at a distance,
until he is used to them, and until having seen others handle them he
handles them himself. If in childhood he sees toads, snakes, and crayfish,
he will not be afraid of any animal when he is grown up. Those who are
continually seeing terrible things think nothing of them.
[148:] All children are afraid of masks. I begin by showing Emile a mask
with a pleasant face. Then some one puts this mask before his face; I
begin to laugh, they all laugh too, and the child with them. By degrees I
accustom him to less pleasing masks, and at last to hideous ones. If I
have arranged my stages skilfully, far from being afraid of the last mask,
he will laugh at it as he did at the first. After that I am not afraid of
people frightening him with masks....
[152:] At the beginning of life, when memory and imagination have not
begun to function, the child only attends to what affects its senses. His
sense experiences are the raw material of thought. They should, therefore,
be presented to him in fitting order, so that memory may at a future time
present them in the same order to his understanding. But since he only
attends to his sensations it is enough, at first, to show him clearly the
connection between these sensations and the things which cause them. He
wants to touch and handle everything. Do not oppose this restlessness; it
suggests to him a very necessary learning. It is thus that he will learn
to feel heat, cold, hardness, softness, weight, or lightness of bodies; to
judge their size and shape and all their physical properties by looking,
feeling,[note 16] listening, and, above all, by comparing sight and touch,
by judging with the eye what sensation they would cause to his hand.
[153:] It is only by movement that we learn that there are things which
are not us; it is only by our own movements that we gain the idea of
extension. It is because the child does not have this idea that he
indifferently reaches out to grasp the object that touches him or the
object that is a hundred feet away. You take this as a sign of tyranny, an
attempt to make the thing come near him or to make you bring him to it;
but it is not that. It is merely that the object first seen in his brain,
then before his eyes, now seems close to his arms, and he has no idea of
space beyond his reach. Be careful, therefore, to take him about, to move
him from place to place, and to let him perceive the change in his
surroundings so as to teach him to judge of distances. When he begins to
perceive distances then you must change your method, and only carry him
when you please, not when he pleases. For as soon as he is no longer
deceived by his senses, the cause of his effort changes. This change is
important and calls for explanation....
[157:] As man's first state is one of misery and weakness, his first
sounds are cries and tears. The child feels his needs and cannot satisfy
them; he begs for help by his cries. If he is hungry or thirsty he cries;
if is he is too cold or too hot he cries; if he needs movement and is kept
quiet he cries; if he wants to sleep and is disturbed he cries. The less
comfortable he is the more he demands change. He has only one language
because he has, so to say, only one kind of discomfort. In the imperfect
state of his sense organs he does not distinguish their several
impressions; all ills produce one feeling of sorrow.
[158:] From these tears that we might think so little worthy of attention,
arise man's first relation to all that surrounds him; here is forged the
first link in the long chain that forms the social order....
[162:] Children's first tears are prayers; if you are not careful they
soon become commands. They begin by asking for help, they end by making
themselves served. Thus from his own weakness, the source of his first
sentiment of dependence, springs the later idea of empire and domination.
But this idea being less aroused by his needs than by our service, we
begin to see moral results whose immediate cause is not in nature, and we
see how important it is, even at the earliest age, to discern the secret
meaning of the gesture or cry.
[163:] When the child tries to seize something without speaking, he thinks
he can reach the object, for he does not rightly judge its distance. When
he cries and stretches out his hands he no longer misjudges the distance;
he bids the object approach, or orders you to bring it to him. In the
first case bring it to him slowly; in the second do not even seem to hear
his cries. The more he cries the less you should heed him. He must learn
in good time not to give commands to men, for he is not their master, nor
to things, for they cannot hear him. Thus when the child wants something
you mean to give him, it is better to carry him to it rather than to bring
the thing to him. From this he will draw a conclusion suited to his age,
and there is no other way of suggesting it to him.
[164:] The AbbΘ de Saint-Pierre calls men big children; one might also
call children little men. These statements contain truth as sentences; as
principles they require explanation. But when Hobbes calls the wicked man
a strong child, he says something absolutely contradictory. All wickedness
comes from weakness. The child is only wicked because he is weak; make him
strong and he will be good. He who could do everything would never do
wrong. Of all the attributes of the allpowerful divinity, goodness is the
one without which we could least conceive him. All peoples who have
recognized two principles have always regarded the evil as inferior to the
good; otherwise their opinion would have been absurd. See below the creed
of the Savoyard Vicar.
[165:] Reason alone teaches us to know good and evil. Therefore
conscience, which makes us love the one and hate the other, although
independent of reason, cannot develop without it. Before the age of reason
we do good and bad without knowing it, and there is no morality in our
actions, although there sometimes is in the sentiment of others' actions
which relate to us. A child wants to overturn everything he sees. He
breaks and smashes everything he can reach; he seizes a bird as he seizes
a stone, and strangles it without knowing what he is doing....
[167:] At the same time that the the Author of nature has given children
this active principle, he takes care that it shall do little harm by
giving them small power to use it. But as soon as they can think of people
as instruments that depend on them to be set in action, they use them to
carry out their wishes and to supplement their own weakness. This is how
they become bothersome, tyranical, imperious, evil, and unmanageable -- a
development which does not spring from a natural spirit of domination but
which is given them. For one does not need much experience to realise how
agreeable it is to act with the hands of others and to need only to move
one's tongue in order to make the universe move.
[168:] As the child grows it gains strength and becomes less restless and
unquiet and turns more towards oneself. Soul and body become better
balanced and nature no longer asks for more movement than is required for
self-preservation. But the desire to command is not extinguished with the
need that aroused it; domination arouses and flatters amour-propre, and
habit strengthens it. Thus whim succeeds need; thus prejudice and opinion
take their first roots.
[169:] The principle once known we see clearly the point where one leaves
the path of nature. Let us see what must be done to stay on it.
[170:] First maxim: Far from having superfluous strength, children do not
have enough enough for all that nature demands of them. One must,
therefore, let them have the use of all the strength that they are given
and which they cannot abuse.
[171:] Second Maxim. One must help them and supplement what is lacking
either in intelligence or in strength regarding everything that has to do
with physical need.
[172:] Third Maxim. The help that one gives them should be limited to what
is real utility, without granting anything to whim or to desire without
reason; for whim will not torment them as long as it has not been aroused,
since it is no part of nature.
[173:] Fourth Maxim. One must study carefully their language and their
signs, so that at an age when they are incapable of deception one may
discriminate between those desires which come immediately from nature and
those which spring from opinion.
[174:] The spirit of these rules is to give children more real freedom and
less imperiousness, to let them do more for themselves and demand less of
others. Thus accustoming them from the first to limiting their desires to
their stengths, they will scarcely feel the deprivation of whatever is not
in their power.
[175:] This is another very important reason for leaving children's limbs
and bodies perfectly free, the only precaution being to keep them away
from the danger of falls and to keep out of their hands everything that
could hurt them.
[176:] Certainly the child whose body and arms are free will cry much less
than a child tied up in swaddling clothes. He who knows only bodily needs
only cries when in pain; and this is a great advantage, for then we know
exactly when he needs help, and if possible we should not delay our help
for an instant. But if you cannot relieve his pain, stay where you are and
do not flatter him by way of soothing him. Your caresses will not cure his
colic, but he will remember what he must do to win them; and if he once
finds out how to gain your attention at will, he is your master;
everything is lost.
[177:] Less constrained in their movements, children will cry less; less
wearied with their tears, people will not take so much trouble to keep
them quiet. With fewer threats and promises, children will be less timid
and less obstinate, and will remain more nearly in their natural state. It
is less in letting them cry than in rushing to appease them that makes
them get hernias, and my proof for this is that the most neglected
children are less subject to them than others. I am very far from wishing
that they should be neglected; on the contrary, it is of the utmost
importance that their wants should be anticipated, so that one need not be
warned of their needs by their cries. But neither would I have unwise care
bestowed on them. Why should they think it wrong to cry when they find
that their cries are good for so many things? When they have learned the
value of their silence they take good care not to waste it. In the end
they will so exaggerate its importance that no one will be able to pay its
price; then worn out with crying they become exhausted, and are at length
silent.
[178:] Prolonged crying on the part of a child neither swaddled nor out of
health, a child who lacks nothing, is merely the result of habit or
obstinacy. Such tears are no longer the work of nature, but the work of
the child's caretaker, who could not resist its importunity and so has
increased it, without considering that while she quiets the child to-day
she is teaching him to cry louder to-morrow.
[179:] The only way to cure or prevent this habit is to pay it no
attention. No one likes to take useless pains, not even infants. They are
obstinate in their attempts; but if you have more constancy than they have
hardheadedness, they will give up and not try again. Thus one spares them
tears and accustoms them to shed them only when pain forces them to do so.
[180:] Moreover, when whim or obstinacy is the cause of their tears, there
is a sure way of stopping them by distracting their attention by some
pleasant or conspicuous object which makes them forget that they want to
cry. Most nurses excel in this art, and rightly used it is very useful.
But it is of the utmost importance that the child should not perceive that
you mean to distract his attention, and that he should be amused without
suspecting you are thinking about him; now this is what most nurses cannot
do.
[181:] Most children are weaned too soon. The time to wean them is when
they cut their teeth. This generally causes pain and suffering. At this
time the child instinctively carries everything he gets hold of to his
mouth to chew it. To help forward this process he is given as a plaything
some hard object such as ivory or a wolf's tooth. I think this is a
mistake. Hard bodies applied to the gums do not soften them; far from it,
they make the process of cutting the teeth more difficult and painful. Let
us always take instinct as our guide; we never see puppies practising
their budding teeth on pebbles, iron, or bones, but on wood, leather,
rags, soft materials which yield to their jaws, and on which the tooth
leaves its mark.
[182:] We can do nothing simply, not even for our children. Toys of
silver, gold, coral, cut crystal, rattles of every price and kind; what
vain and useless appliances! Nothing of all that. No bells, no rattles. A
small branch of a tree with its leaves and fruit, a little poppy flower in
which one can hear the seeds shake, a stick of liquorice which he may suck
and chew, will amuse him as well as all those magnificent knick-knacks,
and they will not have the disadvantage of accustoming him to luxury from
his birth....