Maxims to Keep us True to Nature.
Reason alone teaches us to know good and evil. Conscience, which makes us love the one and hate the other, is independent of reason, but cannot grow strong without its aid. Before reaching years of reason, we do good and evil unconsciously. There is no moral character in our actions, although there sometimes is in our feeling toward those actions of others which relate to us. A child likes to disturb everything he sees; he breaks, he shatters everything within his reach; he lays hold of a bird just as he would lay hold of a stone, and strangles it without knowing what he is doing.
Why is this? At first view, philosophy would account for it on the ground of vices natural to us—pride, the spirit of domination, self-love, the wickedness of mankind. It would perhaps add, that the sense of his own weakness makes the child eager to do things requiring strength, and so prove to himself his own power. But see that old man, infirm and broken down, whom the cycle of human life brings back to the weakness of childhood. Not only does he remain immovable and quiet, but he wishes everything about him to be in the same condition. The slightest change disturbs and disquiets him; he would like to see stillness reigning everywhere. How could the same powerlessness, joined to the same passions, produce such different effects in the two ages, if the primary cause were not changed? And where can we seek for this difference of cause, unless it be in the physical condition of the two individuals? The active principle common to the two is developing in the one, and dying out in the other; the one is growing, and the other is wearing itself out; the one is tending toward life, and the other toward death. Failing activity concentrates itself in the heart of the old man; in the child it is superabounding, and reaches outward; he seems to feel within him life enough to animate all that surrounds him. Whether he makes or unmakes matters little to him. It is enough that he changes the condition of things, and that every change is an action. If he seems more inclined to destroy things, it is not out of perverseness, but because the action which creates is always slow; and that which destroys, being more rapid, better suits his natural sprightliness.
While the Author of nature gives children this active principle, he takes care that it shall do little harm; for he leaves them little power to indulge it. But no sooner do they look upon those about them as instruments which it is their business to set in motion, than they make use of them in following their own inclinations and in making up for their own want of strength. In this way they become disagreeable, tyrannical, imperious, perverse, unruly; a development not arising from a natural spirit of domination, but creating such a spirit. For no very long experience is requisite in teaching how pleasant it is to act through others, and to need only move one's tongue to set the world in motion.
As we grow up, we gain strength, we become less uneasy and restless, we shut ourselves more within ourselves. The soul and the body put themselves in equilibrium, as it were, and nature requires no more motion than is necessary for out preservation.
But the wish to command outlives the necessity from which, it sprang; power to control others awakens and gratifies self-love, and habit makes it strong. Thus need gives place to whim; thus do prejudices and opinions first root themselves within us.
The principle once understood, we see clearly the point at which we leave the path of nature. Let us discover what we ought to do, to keep within it.
Far from having too much strength, children have not even enough for all that nature demands of them. We ought, then, to leave them the free use of all natural strength which they cannot misuse. First maxim.
We must aid them, supplying whatever they lack in intelligence, in strength, in all that belongs to physical necessity. Second maxim.
In helping them, we must confine ourselves to what is really of use to them, yielding nothing to their whims or unreasonable wishes. For their own caprice will not trouble them unless we ourselves create it; it is not a natural thing. Third maxim.
We must study carefully their language and their signs, so that, at an age when they cannot dissemble, we may judge which of their desires spring from nature itself, and which of them from opinion. Fourth maxim.
The meaning of these rules is, to allow children more personal freedom and less authority; to let them do more for themselves, and exact less from others. Thus accustomed betimes to desire only what they can obtain or do for themselves, they will feel less keenly the want of whatever is not within their own power.
Here there is another and very important reason for leaving children absolutely free as to body and limbs, with the sole precaution of keeping them from the danger of falling, and of putting out of their reach everything that can injure them.
Doubtless a child whose body and arms are free will cry less than one bound fast in swaddling clothes. He who feels only physical wants cries only when he suffers, and this is a great advantage. For then we know exactly when he requires help, and we ought not to delay one moment in giving him help, if possible.
But if you cannot relieve him, keep quiet; do not try to soothe him by petting him. Your caresses will not cure his colic; but he will remember what he has to do in order to be petted. And if he once discovers that he can, at will, busy you about him, he will have become your master; the mischief is done.
If children were not so much thwarted in their movements, they would not cry so much; if we were less annoyed by their crying, we would take less pains to hush them; if they were not so often threatened or caressed, they would be less timid or less stubborn, and more truly themselves as nature made them. It is not so often by letting children cry, as by hastening to quiet them, that we make them rupture themselves. The proof of this is that the children most neglected are less subject than others to this infirmity. I am far from wishing them to be neglected, however. On the contrary, we ought to anticipate their wants, and not wait to be notified of these by the children's crying. Yet I would not have them misunderstand the cares we bestow on them. Why should they consider crying a fault, when they find that it avails so much? Knowing the value of their silence, they will be careful not to be lavish of it. They will, at last, make it so costly that we can no longer pay for it; and then it is that by crying without success they strain, weaken, and kill themselves.
The long crying fits of a child who is not compressed or ill, or allowed to want for anything, are from habit and obstinacy. They are by no means the work of nature, but of the nurse, who, because she cannot endure the annoyance, multiplies it, without reflecting that by stilling the child to-day, he is induced to cry the more to-morrow.
The only way to cure or prevent this habit is to pay no attention to it. No one, not even a child, likes to take unnecessary trouble.
They are stubborn in their attempts; but if you have more firmness than they have obstinacy, they are discouraged, and do not repeat the attempt. Thus we spare them some tears, and accustom them to cry only when pain forces them to it.
Nevertheless when they do cry from caprice or stubbornness, a sure way to prevent their continuing is, to turn their attention to some agreeable and striking object, and so make them forget their desire to cry. In this art most nurses excel, and when skilfully employed, it is very effective. But it is highly important that the child should not know of our intention to divert him, and that he should amuse himself without at all thinking we have him in mind. In this all nurses are unskilful.
All children are weaned too early. The proper time is indicated by their teething. This process is usually painful and distressing. By a mechanical instinct the child, at that time, carries to his mouth and chews everything he holds. We think we make the operation easier by giving him for a plaything some hard substance, such as ivory or coral. I think we are mistaken. Far from softening the gums, these hard bodies, when applied, render them hard and callous, and prepare the way for a more painful and distressing laceration. Let us always take instinct for guide. We never see puppies try their growing teeth upon flints, or iron, or bones, but upon wood, or leather, or rags,—upon soft materials, which give way, and on which the tooth impresses itself.
We no longer aim at simplicity, even where children are concerned. Golden and silver bells, corals, crystals, toys of every price, of every sort. What useless and mischievous affectations they are! Let there be none of them,—no bells, no toys.
A little twig covered with its own leaves and fruit,—a poppy-head, in which the seeds can be heard rattling,—a stick of liquorice he can suck and chew, these will amuse a child quite as well as the splendid baubles, and will not disadvantage him by accustoming him to luxury from his very birth.
Language.
From the time they are born, children hear people speak. They are spoken to not only before they understand what is said to them, but before they can repeat the sounds they hear. Their organs, still benumbed, adapt themselves only by degrees to imitating the sounds dictated to them, and it is not even certain that these sounds are borne to their ears at first as distinctly as to ours.
I do not disapprove of a nurse's amusing the child with songs, and with blithe and varied tones. But I do disapprove of her perpetually deafening him with a multitude of useless words, of which he understands only the tone she gives them.
I would like the first articulate sounds he must hear to be few in number, easy, distinct, often repeated. The words they form should represent only material objects which can be shown him. Our unfortunate readiness to content ourselves with words that have no meaning to us whatever, begins earlier than we suppose. Even as in his swaddling-clothes the child hears his nurse's babble, he hears in class the verbiage of his teacher. It strikes me that if he were to be so brought up that he could not understand it at all, he would be very well instructed.[6]
Reflections crowd upon us when we set about discussing the formation of children's language, and their baby talk itself. In spite of us, they always learn to speak by the same process, and all our philosophical speculations about it are entirely useless.
They seem, at first, to have a grammar adapted to their own age, although its rules of syntax are more general than ours. And if we were to pay close attention to them, we should be astonished at the exactness with which they follow certain analogies, very faulty if you will, but very regular, that are displeasing only because harsh, or because usage does not recognize them.
It is unbearable pedantry, and a most useless labor, to attempt correcting in children every little fault against usage; they never fail themselves to correct these faults in time. Always speak correctly in their presence; order it so that they are never so happy with any one as with you; and rest assured their language will insensibly be purified by your own, without your having ever reproved them.
But another error, which has an entirely different bearing on the matter, and is no less easy to prevent, is our being over-anxious to make them speak, as if we feared they might not of their own accord learn to do so. Our injudicious haste has an effect exactly contrary to what we wish. On account of it they learn more slowly and speak more indistinctly. The marked attention paid to everything they utter makes it unnecessary for them to articulate distinctly. As they hardly condescend to open their lips, many retain throughout life an imperfect pronunciation and a confused manner of speaking, which makes them nearly unintelligible.
Children who are too much urged to speak have not time sufficient for learning either to pronounce carefully or to understand thoroughly what they are made to say. If, instead, they are left to themselves, they at first practise using the syllables they can most readily utter; and gradually attaching to these some meaning that can be gathered from their gestures, they give you their own words before acquiring yours. Thus they receive yours only after they understand them. Not being urged to use them, they notice carefully what meaning you give them; and, when they are sure of this, they adopt it as their own.
The greatest evil arising from our haste to make children speak before they are old enough is not that our first talks with them, and the first words they use, have no meaning to them, but that they have a meaning different from ours, without our being able to perceive it. Thus, while they seem to be answering us very correctly, they are really addressing us without understanding us, and without our understanding them. To such ambiguous discourse is due the surprise we sometimes feel at their sayings, to which we attach ideas the children themselves have not dreamed of. This inattention of ours to the true meaning words have for children seems to me the cause of their first mistakes, and these errors, even after children are cured of them, influence their turn of mind for the remainder of their life.
The first developments of childhood occur almost all at once. The child learns to speak, to eat, to walk, nearly at the same time. This is, properly, the first epoch of his life. Before then he is nothing more than he was before he was born; he has not a sentiment, not an idea; he scarcely has sensations; he does not feel even his own existence.
[1] It is useless to enlarge upon the absurdity of this theory, and upon the flagrant contradiction into which Rousseau allows himself to fall. If he is right, man ought to be left without education, and the earth without cultivation. This would not be even the savage state. But want of space forbids us to pause at each like statement of our author, who at once busies himself in nullifying it.
[2] The voice of Rousseau was heard. The nursing of children by their own mothers, which had gone into disuse as vulgar and troublesome, became a fashion. Great ladies prided themselves upon returning to the usage of nature, and infants were brought in with the dessert to give an exhibition of maternal tenderness. This affectation died out, but in most families the good and wholesome custom of motherhood was retained. This page of Rousseau's contributed its share to the happy result.
[3] This remark is not a just one. How often have we seen unhappy creatures disgusted with life because of some dreadful and incurable malady? It is true that suicide, being an act of madness, is more frequently caused by those troubles which imagination delights itself in magnifying up to the point of insanity.
[4] This is an allusion to one of the most unfortunate episodes in the life of Rousseau,—his abandoning of the children whom Thérèse Levasseur bore him, and whom he sent to a foundling hospital because he felt within him neither courage to labor for their support, nor capacity to educate them. Sad practical defect in this teacher of theories of education!
[5] For the particular example of education which he supposes, Rousseau creates a tutor whom he consecrates absolutely, exclusively, to the work. He desires one so perfect that he calls him a prodigy. Let us not blame him for this. The ideal of those who assume the noble and difficult office of a teacher of childhood cannot be placed too high. As to the pupil, Rousseau imagines a child of average ability, in easy circumstances, and of robust health. He makes him an only son and an orphan, so that no family vicissitudes may disturb the logic of his plan.
All this may be summed up by saying that he considers the child in himself with regard to his individual development, and without regard to his relations to ordinary life. This at the same time renders his task easy, and deprives him of an important element of education.
[6] No doubt this sarcasm is applicable to those teachers who talk so as to say nothing. A teacher ought, on the contrary, to speak only so as to be understood by the child. He ought to adapt himself to the child's capacity; to employ no useless or conventional expressions; his language ought to arouse curiosity and to impart light.
BOOK SECOND.
The second book takes the child at about the fifth year, and conducts him to about the twelfth year. He is no longer the little child; he is the young boy. His education becomes more important. It consists not in studies, in reading or writing, or in duties, but in well-chosen plays, in ingenious recreations, in well-directed experiments.
There should be no exaggerated precautions, and, on the other hand, no harshness, no punishments. We must love the child, and encourage his playing. To make him realize his weakness and the narrow limits within which it can work, to keep the child dependent only on circumstances, will suffice, without ever making him feel the yoke of the master.
The best education is accomplished in the country. Teaching by means of things. Criticism of the ordinary method. Education of the senses by continually exercising them.
Avoid taking too many Precautions.
This is the second period of life, and the one at which, properly speaking, infancy ends; for the words infans and puer are not synonymous.[1] The first is included in the second, and means one who cannot speak: thus in Valerius Maximus we find the expression puerum infantem. But I shall continue to employ the word according to the usage of the French language, until I am describing the age for which there are other names.
When children begin to speak, they cry less often. This step in advance is natural; one language is substituted for another. As soon as they can utter their complaints in words, why should they cry, unless the suffering is too keen to be expressed by words? If they then continue to cry, it is the fault of those around them. After Émile has once said, "It hurts me," only acute suffering can force him to cry.
If the child is physically so delicate and sensitive that he naturally cries about nothing, I will soon exhaust the fountain of his tears, by making them ineffectual. So long as he cries, I will not go to him; as soon as he stops, I will run to him. Very soon his method of calling me will be to keep quiet, or at the utmost, to utter a single cry. Children judge of the meaning of signs by their palpable effect; they have no other rule. Whatever harm a child may do himself, he very rarely cries when alone, unless with the hope of being heard.
If he fall, if he bruise his head, if his nose bleed, if he cut his finger, I should, instead of bustling about him with a look of alarm, remain quiet, at least for a little while. The mischief is done; he must endure it; all my anxiety will only serve to frighten him more, and to increase his sensitiveness. After all, when we hurt ourselves, it is less the shock which pains us than the fright. I will spare him at least this last pang; for he will certainly estimate his hurt as he sees me estimate it. If he sees me run anxiously to comfort and to pity him, he will think himself seriously hurt; but if he sees me keep my presence of mind, he will soon recover his own, and will think the pain cured when he no longer feels it. At his age we learn our first lessons in courage; and by fearlessly enduring lighter sufferings, we gradually learn to bear the heavier ones.
Far from taking care that Émile does not hurt himself, I shall be dissatisfied if he never does, and so grows up unacquainted with pain. To suffer is the first and most necessary thing for him to learn. Children are little and weak, apparently that they may learn these important lessons. If a child fall his whole length, he will not break his leg; if he strike himself with a stick, he will not break his arm; if he lay hold of an edged tool, he does not grasp it tightly, and will not cut himself very badly.
Our pedantic mania for instructing constantly leads us to teach children what they can learn far better for themselves, and to lose sight of what we alone can teach them. Is there anything more absurd than the pains we take in teaching them to walk? As if we had ever seen one, who, through his nurse's negligence, did not know how to walk when grown! On the contrary, how many people do we see moving awkwardly all their lives because they have been badly taught how to walk!
Émile shall have no head-protectors, nor carriages, nor go-carts, nor leading-strings. Or at least from the time when he begins to be able to put one foot before the other, he shall not be supported, except over paved places; and he shall be hurried over these. Instead of letting him suffocate in the exhausted air indoors, let him be taken every day, far out into the fields. There let him run about, play, fall down a hundred times a day; the oftener the better, as he will the sooner learn to get up again by himself. The boon of freedom is worth many scars. My pupil will have many bruises, but to make amends for that, he will be always light-hearted. Though your pupils are less often hurt, they are continually thwarted, fettered; they are always unhappy. I doubt whether the advantage be on their side.
The development of their physical strength makes complaint less necessary to children. When able to help themselves, they have less need of the help of others. Knowledge to direct their strength grows with that strength. At this second stage the life of the individual properly begins; he now becomes conscious of his own being. Memory extends this feeling of personal identity to every moment of his existence; he becomes really one, the same one, and consequently capable of happiness or of misery. We must therefore, from this moment, begin to regard him as a moral being.
Childhood is to be Loved.
Although the longest term of human life, and the probability, at any given age, of reaching this term, have been computed, nothing is more uncertain than the continuance of each individual life: very few attain the maximum. The greatest risks in life are at its beginning; the less one has lived, the less prospect he has of living.
Of all children born, only about half reach youth; and it is probable that your pupil may never attain to manhood. What, then, must be thought of that barbarous education which sacrifices the present to an uncertain future, loads the child with every description of fetters, and begins, by making him wretched, to prepare for him some far-away indefinite happiness he may never enjoy! Even supposing the object of such an education reasonable, how can we without indignation see the unfortunate creatures bowed under an insupportable yoke, doomed to constant labor like so many galley-slaves, without any certainty that all this toil will ever be of use to them! The years that ought to be bright and cheerful are passed in tears amid punishments, threats, and slavery. For his own good, the unhappy child is tortured; and the death thus summoned will seize on him unperceived amidst all this melancholy preparation. Who knows how many children die on account of the extravagant prudence of a father or of a teacher? Happy in escaping his cruelty, it gives them one advantage; they leave without regret a life which they know only from its darker side.[2]
O men, be humane! it is your highest duty; be humane to all conditions of men, to every age, to everything not alien to mankind. What higher wisdom is there for you than humanity? Love childhood; encourage its sports, its pleasures, its lovable instincts. Who among us has not at times looked back with regret to the age when a smile was continually on our lips, when the soul was always at peace? Why should we rob these little innocent creatures of the enjoyment of a time so brief, so transient, of a boon so precious, which they cannot misuse? Why will you fill with bitterness and sorrow these fleeting years which can no more return to them than to you? Do you know, you fathers, the moment when death awaits your children? Do not store up for yourselves remorse, by taking from them the brief moments nature has given them. As soon as they can appreciate the delights of existence, let them enjoy it. At whatever hour God may call them, let them not die without having tasted life at all.
You answer, "It is the time to correct the evil tendencies of the human heart. In childhood, when sufferings are less keenly felt, they ought to be multiplied, so that fewer of them will have to be encountered during the age of reason." But who has told you that it is your province to make this arrangement, and that all these fine instructions, with which you burden the tender mind of a child, will not one day be more pernicious than useful to him? Who assures you that you spare him anything when you deal him afflictions with so lavish a hand? Why do you cause him more unhappiness than he can bear, when you are not sure that the future will compensate him for these present evils? And how can you prove that the evil tendencies of which you pretend to cure him will not arise from your mistaken care rather than from nature itself! Unhappy foresight, which renders a creature actually miserable, in the hope, well or ill founded, of one day making him happy! If these vulgar reasoners confound license with liberty, and mistake a spoiled child for a child who is made happy, let us teach them to distinguish the two.
To avoid being misled, let us remember what really accords with our present abilities. Humanity has its place in the general order of things; childhood has its place in the order of human life. Mankind must be considered in the individual man, and childhood in the individual child. To assign each his place, and to establish him in it—to direct human passions as human nature will permit—is all we can do for his welfare. The rest depends on outside influences not under our control.
Neither Slaves nor Tyrants.
He alone has his own way who, to compass it, does not need the arm of another to lengthen his own. Consequently freedom, and not authority, is the greatest good. A man who desires only what he can do for himself is really free to do whatever he pleases. From this axiom, if it be applied to the case of childhood, all the rules of education will follow.
A wise man understands how to remain in his own place; but a child, who does not know his, cannot preserve it. As matters stand, there are a thousand ways of leaving it. Those who govern him are to keep him in it, and this is not an easy task. He ought to be neither an animal nor a man, but a child. He should feel his weakness, and yet not suffer from it. He should depend, not obey; he should demand, not command. He is subject to others only by reason of his needs, and because others see better than he what is useful to him, what will contribute to his well-being or will impair it. No one, not even his father, has a right to command a child to do what is of no use to him whatever.
Accustom the child to depend only on circumstances, and as his education goes on, you will follow the order of nature. Never oppose to his imprudent wishes anything but physical obstacles, or punishments which arise from the actions themselves, and which he will remember when the occasion comes. It is enough to prevent his doing harm, without forbidding it. With him only experience, or want of power, should take the place of law. Do not give him anything because he asks for it, but because he needs it. When he acts, do not let him know that it is from obedience; and when another acts for him, let him not feel that he is exercising authority. Let him feel his liberty as much in your actions as in his own. Add to the power he lacks exactly enough to make him free and not imperious, so that, accepting your aid with a kind of humiliation, he may aspire to the moment when he can dispense with it, and have the honor of serving himself. For strengthening the body and promoting its growth, nature has means which ought never to be thwarted. A child ought not to be constrained to stay anywhere when he wishes to go away, or to go away when he wishes to stay. When their will is not spoiled by our own fault, children do not wish for anything without good reason. They ought to leap, to run, to shout, whenever they will. All their movements are necessities of nature, which is endeavoring to strengthen itself. But we must take heed of those wishes they cannot themselves accomplish, but must fulfil by the hand of another. Therefore care should be taken to distinguish the real wants, the wants of nature, from those which arise from fancy or from the redundant life just mentioned.
I have already suggested what should be done when a child cries for anything. I will only add that, as soon as he can ask in words for what he wants, and, to obtain it sooner, or to overcome a refusal, reinforces his request by crying, it should never be granted him. If necessity has made him speak, you ought to know it, and at once to grant what he demands. But yielding to his tears is encouraging him to shed them: it teaches him to doubt your good will, and to believe that importunity has more influence over you than your own kindness of heart has.
If he does not believe you good, he will soon be bad; if he believes you weak, he will soon be stubborn. It is of great importance that you at once consent to what you do not intend to refuse him. Do not refuse often, but never revoke a refusal.
Above all things, beware of teaching the child empty formulas of politeness which shall serve him instead of magic words to subject to his own wishes all who surround him, and to obtain instantly what he likes. In the artificial education of the rich they are infallibly made politely imperious, by having prescribed to them what terms to use so that no one shall dare resist them. Such children have neither the tones nor the speech of suppliants; they are as arrogant when they request as when they command, and even more so, for in the former case they are more sure of being obeyed. From the first it is readily seen that, coming from them, "If you please" means "It pleases me"; and that "I beg" signifies "I order you." Singular politeness this, by which they only change the meaning of words, and so never speak but with authority! For myself, I dread far less Émile's being rude than his being arrogant. I would rather have him say "Do this" as if requesting than "I beg you" as if commanding. I attach far less importance to the term he uses than to the meaning he associates with it.
Over-strictness and over-indulgence are equally to be avoided. If you let children suffer, you endanger their health and their life; you make them actually wretched. If you carefully spare them every kind of annoyance, you are storing up for them much unhappiness; you are making them delicate and sensitive to pain; you are removing them from the common lot of man, into which, in spite of all your care, they will one day return. To save them some natural discomforts, you contrive for them others which nature has not inflicted.
You will charge me with falling into the mistake of those fathers I have reproached for sacrificing their children's happiness to considerations of a far-away future that may never be. Not so; for the freedom I give my pupil will amply supply him with the slight discomforts to which I leave him exposed. I see the little rogues playing in the snow, blue with cold, and scarcely able to move their fingers. They have only to go and warm themselves, but they do nothing of the kind. If they are compelled to do so, they feel the constraint a hundred times more than they do the cold. Why then do you complain? Shall I make your child unhappy if I expose him only to those inconveniences he is perfectly willing to endure? By leaving him at liberty, I do him service now; by arming him against the ills he must encounter, I do him service for the time to come. If he could choose between being my pupil or yours, do you think he would hesitate a moment?
Can we conceive of any creature's being truly happy outside of what belongs to its own peculiar nature? And if we would have a man exempt from all human misfortunes, would it not estrange him from humanity? Undoubtedly it would; for we are so constituted that to appreciate great good fortune we must be acquainted with slight misfortunes. If the body be too much at ease the moral nature becomes corrupted. The man unacquainted with suffering would not know the tender feelings of humanity or the sweetness of compassion; he would not be a social being; he would be a monster among his kind.
The surest way to make a child unhappy is to accustom him to obtain everything he wants to have. For, since his wishes multiply in proportion to the ease with which they are gratified, your inability to fulfil them will sooner or later oblige you to refuse in spite of yourself, and this unwonted refusal will pain him more than withholding from him what he demands. At first he will want the cane you hold; soon he will want your watch; afterward he will want the bird he sees flying, or the star he sees shining. He will want everything he sees, and without being God himself how can you content him?
Man is naturally disposed to regard as his own whatever is within his power. In this sense the principle of Hobbes is correct up to a certain point; multiply with our desires the means of satisfying them, and each of us will make himself master of everything. Hence the child who has only to wish in order to obtain his wish, thinks himself the owner of the universe. He regards all men as his slaves, and when at last he must be denied something, he, believing everything possible when he commands it, takes refusal for an act of rebellion. At his age, incapable of reasoning, all reasons given seem to him only pretexts. He sees ill-will in everything; the feeling of imagined injustice embitters his temper; he begins to hate everybody, and without ever being thankful for kindness, is angry at any opposition whatever.
Who supposes that a child thus ruled by anger, a prey to furious passions, can ever be happy? He happy? He is a tyrant; that is, the vilest of slaves, and at the same time the most miserable of beings. I have seen children thus reared who wanted those about them to push the house down, to give them the weathercock they saw on a steeple, to stop the march of a regiment so that they could enjoy the drum-beat a little longer; and as soon as obedience to these demands was delayed they rent the air with their screams, and would listen to no one. In vain everybody tried eagerly to gratify them. The ease with which they found their wishes obeyed stimulated them to desire more, and to be stubborn about impossibilities. Everywhere they found only contradictions, impediments, suffering, and sorrow. Always complaining, always refractory, always angry, they spent the time in crying and fretting; were these creatures happy? Authority and weakness conjoined produce only madness and wretchedness. One of two spoiled children beats the table, and the other has the sea lashed.[3] They will have much to beat and to lash before they are satisfied with life.
If these ideas of authority and of tyranny make them unhappy from their very childhood, how will it be with them when they are grown, and when their relations with others begin to be extended and multiplied?
Accustomed to seeing everything give way before them, how surprised they will be on entering the world to find themselves crushed beneath the weight of that universe they have expected to move at their own pleasure! Their insolent airs and childish vanity will only bring upon them mortification, contempt, and ridicule; they must swallow affront after affront; cruel trials will teach them that they understand neither their own position nor their own strength. Unable to do everything, they will think themselves unable to do anything. So many unusual obstacles dishearten them, so much contempt degrades them. They become base, cowardly, cringing, and sink as far below their real self as they had imagined themselves above it.
Let us return to the original order of things. Nature has made children to be loved and helped; has she made them to be obeyed and feared? Has she given them an imposing air, a stern eye, a harsh and threatening voice, so that they may inspire fear? I can understand why the roar of a lion fills other creatures with dread, and why they tremble at sight of his terrible countenance. But if ever there were an unbecoming, hateful, ridiculous spectacle, it is that of a body of magistrates in their robes of ceremony, and headed by their chief, prostrate before an infant in long clothes, who to their pompous harangue replies only by screams or by childish drivel![4]
Considering infancy in itself, is there a creature on earth more helpless, more unhappy, more at the mercy of everything around him, more in need of compassion, of care, of protection, than a child? Does it not seem as if his sweet face and touching aspect were intended to interest every one who comes near him, and to urge them to assist his weakness? What then is more outrageous, more contrary to the fitness of things, than to see an imperious and headstrong child ordering about those around him, impudently taking the tone of a master toward those who, to destroy him, need only leave him to himself!
On the other hand, who does not see that since the weakness of infancy fetters children in so many ways, we are barbarous if we add to this natural subjection a bondage to our own caprices by taking from them the limited freedom they have, a freedom they are so little able to misuse, and from the loss of which we and they have so little to gain? As nothing is more ridiculous than a haughty child, so nothing is more pitiable than a cowardly child.
Since with years of reason civil bondage[5] begins, why anticipate it by slavery at home? Let us leave one moment of life exempt from a yoke nature has not laid upon us, and allow childhood the exercise of that natural liberty which keeps it safe, at least for a time, from the vices taught by slavery. Let the over-strict teacher and the over-indulgent parent both come with their empty cavils, and before they boast of their own methods let them learn the method of Nature herself.
Reasoning should not begin too soon.
Locke's great maxim was that we ought to reason with children, and just now this maxim is much in fashion. I think, however, that its success does not warrant its reputation, and I find nothing more stupid than children who have been so much reasoned with. Reason, apparently a compound of all other faculties, the one latest developed, and with most difficulty, is the one proposed as agent in unfolding the faculties earliest used! The noblest work of education is to make a reasoning man, and we expect to train a young child by making him reason! This is beginning at the end; this is making an instrument of a result. If children understood how to reason they would not need to be educated. But by addressing them from their tenderest years in a language they cannot understand, you accustom them to be satisfied with words, to find fault with whatever is said to them, to think themselves as wise as their teachers, to wrangle and rebel. And what we mean they shall do from reasonable motives we are forced to obtain from them by adding the motive of avarice, or of fear, or of vanity.
Nature intends that children shall be children before they are men. If we insist on reversing this order we shall have fruit early indeed, but unripe and tasteless, and liable to early decay; we shall have young savants and old children. Childhood has its own methods of seeing, thinking, and feeling. Nothing shows less sense than to try to substitute our own methods for these. I would rather require a child ten years old to be five feet tall than to be judicious. Indeed, what use would he have at that age for the power to reason? It is a check upon physical strength, and the child needs none.
In attempting to persuade your pupils to obedience you add to this alleged persuasion force and threats, or worse still, flattery and promises. Bought over in this way by interest, or constrained by force, they pretend to be convinced by reason. They see plainly that as soon as you discover obedience or disobedience in their conduct, the former is an advantage and the latter a disadvantage to them. But you ask of them only what is distasteful to them; it is always irksome to carry out the wishes of another, so by stealth they carry out their own. They are sure that if their disobedience is not known they are doing well; but they are ready, for fear of greater evils, to acknowledge, if found out, that they are doing wrong. As the reason for the duty required is beyond their capacity, no one can make them really understand it. But the fear of punishment, the hope of forgiveness, your importunity, their difficulty in answering you, extort from them the confession required of them. You think you have convinced them, when you have only wearied them out or intimidated them.
What results from this? First of all that, by imposing upon them a duty they do not feel as such, you set them against your tyranny, and dissuade them from loving you; you teach them to be dissemblers, deceitful, willfully untrue, for the sake of extorting rewards or of escaping punishments. Finally, by habituating them to cover a secret motive by an apparent motive, you give them the means of constantly misleading you, of concealing their true character from you, and of satisfying yourself and others with empty words when their occasion demands. You may say that the law, although binding on the conscience, uses constraint in dealing with grown men. I grant it; but what are these men but children spoiled by their education? This is precisely what ought to be prevented. With children use force, with men reason; such is the natural order of things. The wise man requires no laws.
Well-Regulated Liberty.
Treat your pupil as his age demands. From the first, assign him to his true place, and keep him there so effectually that he will not try to leave it. Then, without knowing what wisdom is, he will practise its most important lesson. Never, absolutely never, command him to do a thing, whatever it may be.[6] Do not let him even imagine that you claim any authority over him. Let him know only that he is weak and you are strong: that from his condition and yours he is necessarily at your mercy. Let him know this—learn it and feel it. Let him early know that upon his haughty neck is the stern yoke nature imposes upon man, the heavy yoke of necessity, under which every finite being must toil.
Let him discover this necessity in the nature of things; never in human caprice. Let the rein that holds him back be power, not authority. Do not forbid, but prevent, his doing what he ought not; and in thus preventing him use no explanations, give no reasons. What you grant him, grant at the first asking without any urging, any entreaty from him, and above all without conditions. Consent with pleasure and refuse unwillingly, but let every refusal be irrevocable. Let no importunity move you. Let the "No" once uttered be a wall of brass against which the child will have to exhaust his strength only five or six times before he ceases trying to overturn it.
In this way you will make him patient, even-tempered, resigned, gentle, even when he has not what he wants. For it is in our nature to endure patiently the decrees of fate, but not the ill-will of others. "There is no more," is an answer against which no child ever rebelled unless he believed it untrue. Besides, there is no other way; either nothing at all is to be required of him, or he must from the first be accustomed to perfect obedience. The worst training of all is to leave him wavering between his own will and yours, and to dispute incessantly with him as to which shall be master. I should a hundred times prefer his being master in every case.
It is marvellous that in undertaking to educate a child no other means of guiding him should have been devised than emulation, jealousy, envy, vanity, greed, vile fear,—all of them passions most dangerous, readiest to ferment, fittest to corrupt a soul, even before the body is full-grown. For each instruction too early put into a child's head, a vice is deeply implanted in his heart. Foolish teachers think they are doing wonders when they make a child wicked, in order to teach him what goodness is; and then they gravely tell us, "Such is man." Yes; such is the man you have made.
All means have been tried save one, and that the very one which insures success, namely, well-regulated freedom. We ought not to undertake a child's education unless we know how to lead him wherever we please solely by the laws of the possible and the impossible. The sphere of both being alike unknown to him, we may extend or contract it around him as we will. We may bind him down, incite him to action, restrain him by the leash of necessity alone, and he will not murmur. We may render him pliant and teachable by the force of circumstances alone, without giving any vice an opportunity to take root within him. For the passions never awake to life, so long as they are of no avail.
Do not give your pupil any sort of lesson verbally: he ought to receive none except from experience. Inflict upon him no kind of punishment, for he does not know what being in fault means; never oblige him to ask pardon, for he does not know what it is to offend you.
His actions being without moral quality, he can do nothing which is morally bad, or which deserves either punishment or reproof.[7]
Already I see the startled reader judging of this child by those around us; but he is mistaken. The perpetual constraint under which you keep your pupils increases their liveliness. The more cramped they are while under your eye the more unruly they are the moment they escape it. They must, in fact, make themselves amends for the severe restraint you put upon them. Two school-boys from a city will do more mischief in a community than the young people of a whole village.
Shut up in the same room a little gentleman and a little peasant; the former will have everything upset and broken before the latter has moved from his place. Why is this? Because the one hastens to misuse a moment of liberty, and the other, always sure of his freedom, is never in a hurry to use it. And yet the children of villagers, often petted or thwarted, are still very far from the condition in which I should wish to keep them.