Jean Jacques Rousseau
Emile, or On Education
(1762)
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Emile, or On Education
(1762)
Excerpts from the Original
Electronic Text at the web site of the Institute
for Learning Technologies.
On one level, Emile is a novel in which the narrator supervises Emile's education from infancy to adulthood, but the narration is really only the frame for long passages that describe ideals for education. The first four books concern Emile's infancy, childhood, and adolescence. The fifth book, which includes Emile's marriage and expectation of fatherhood, discusses women's education in the context of introducing Emile's wife-to-be, Sophie. -smv
[3:] We know nothing of childhood, and with our mistaken notions the further we advance the further we go astray. The wisest writers devote themselves to what a man ought to know without asking what a child is capable of learning. They are always looking for the man in the child without considering what he is before he becomes a man. It is the latter study to which I have applied myself the most; so that if my method is unrealistic and unsound at least one can profit from my observations. I may be greatly mistaken as to what ought to be done, but I think I have clearly perceived the material that is to be worked upon. Begin thus by making a more careful study of your pupils, for it is clear that you know nothing about them. If you read this book with that end in view I think you will find that it is not entirely useless.
[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. . . .
[12:] It is you whom I address, tender, foresighted mother -- 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.
[258:] Nature wants children to be children before they are men. If we try
to pervert this order we shall produce a forced fruit that will have neither
ripeness nor flavor and that will soon spoil. We will have young doctors and
old children. Childhood has its ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling that are
proper to it. Nothing is less sensible than to try and substitute our ways.
I would like no more to require a young child be five feet tall than that he
have judgement at the age of ten. Indeed, what use would reason be to him at
that age? It is the curb of strength, and the child does not need this curb.
[261:] Treat your pupil according to his age. Put him in his place from the
first, and keep him there so well that he does not try to leave it. Then before
he knows what wisdom is, he will be practising its most important lesson. Never
command him to do anything, whatever in the world it may be. Do not let him
even imagine that you claim to have any authority over him. He must know only
that he is weak and you are strong, that his condition and yours put him at
your mercy. Let him know this, let him learn it, let him feel it. At an early
age let his haughty head feel the heavy yoke which nature imposes upon man,
the heavy yoke of necessity under which every finite being must bow. Let him
see this necessity in things, not in the whims of man. Let the curb that restrains
him be force, not authority. If there is something he should not do, do not
forbid him, but prevent him without explanation or reasoning. What you grant
him, grant it at his first word without sollicitations or pleading, above all
without conditions. Grant with pleasure, refuse only with repugnance; but let
your refusal be irrevocable so that no entreaties move you. Let your "No,"
once uttered, be a wall of bronze against which the child may have to exhaust
his strength five or six times in order not to be tempted again to overthrow
it.
[262:] It is thus that you will make him patient, equable, resigned, peaceful,
even when he does not get all he wants. . . .
[264:] Every means has been tried except one. the one precisely that could
succeed -- well-regulated freedom. One should not undertake to raise a child
unless one knows how to guide him where one wants by the laws of the possible
and the impossible alone. The limits of both being equally inknown, they can
be extended or contracted around him at will. Without a murmur the child is
restrained, urged on, held back, only by the bands of necessity. One can make
him supple and docile solely by the force of things, without any chance for
vice to spring up in him. For passions never become aroused so long as they
have no effect.
[265:] Do not give your pupil any kind of verbal lessons; he should receive
them only through experience. Do not inflict on him any kind of punishment,
for he does not know what it is to do wrong. Never make him beg your pardon,
for he does not know how to offend you. Deprived of all morality in his actions,
he can do nothing that is morally wrong, and he deserves neither punishment
nor reprimand....
[272:] The first education ought thus to be purely negative. It consists not
at all in teaching virtue or truth, but in preserving the heart from vice and
the mind from error. If you could do nothing and let nothing be done, if you
could bring your pupil healthy and robust to the age of twelve without knowing
how to distinguish his right hand from his left, the eyes of his understanding
would be open to reason as soon as you began to teach him. Without prejudice
and without habits, there would be nothing in him to counteract the effects
of your labours. In your hands he would soon become the wisest of men; by doing
nothing to begin with, you would end with a prodigy of education.
[273:] . . . Since they want their child to be a doctor instead of a child,
fathers and teachers think it never too soon to scold, correct, reprimand, flatter,
threaten, promise, instruct, and reason. Do better than they; be reasonable
and do not reason with your pupil. More especially do not try to make him approve
of what he dislikes; for if reason is always connected with disagreeable matters,
you make it distasteful to him. . . . Exercise his body, his limbs, his senses,
his strength, but keep his mind idle as long as you can. . . . To prevent the
birth of evil do not hasten to do good, for goodness is only possible when enlightened
by reason. . . . Let childhood to ripen in children. . . .
[1248:] Man should not be alone. Emile is now a man. We
have promised him a companion; we must give her to him. That companion is Sophie.
[1250:] Sophie should be a woman as Emile is a man. That
is to say, she should have everything that suits the constitution of her species
and of her sex so as to take her place in the physical and moral order. Let
us begin, therefore, by examining the similarities and differences between her
sex and ours. [1251:] In all that does not relate to sex, woman is man.
She has the same organs, the same needs, the same faculties. The machine is
constructed in the same manner, the parts are the same, the workings of the
one are the same as the other, and the appearance of the two is similar. From
whatever aspect one considers them, they differ only by degree. [1254:] In the union of the sexes, each alike contributes
to the common end but not in the same way. From this diversity springs the first
difference which may be observed in the moral relations between the one and
the other. The one should be active and strong, the other passive and weak.
It is necessary that the one have the power and the will; it is enough that
the other should offer little resistance. [1255:] Once this principle is established it follows that
woman is specially made to please man. If man ought to please her in turn, the
necessity is less urgent. His merit is in his power; he pleases because he is
strong. This is not the law of love, I admit, but it is the law of nature, which
is older than love itself. . . . [1256:] If woman is made to please and to be subjected,
she ought to make herself pleasing to man instead of provoking him. Her strength
is in her charms; by their means she should compel him to discover his strength
and to use it. The surest way of arousing this strength is to make it necessary
by resistance. Then amour-propre joins with desire, and the one triumphs
from a victory that the other made him win. This is the origin of attack and
defense, of the boldness of one sex and the timidity of the other, and even
of the shame and modesty with which nature has armed the weak for the conquest
of the strong. . . . [1265:] There is no parity between the two sexes when it
comes to the consequence of sex. The male is only a male in certain instances;
the female is female all her life or at least all her youth. Everything reminds
her of her sex, and to fulfill well her functions she needs a constitution that
relates to them. She needs care during pregnancy and rest when her child is
born; she must have a quiet, sedentary life while she nurses her children; their
education calls for patience and gentleness, for a zeal and affection which
nothing can dismay. She serves as a liasion between them and their father; she
alone can make him love them and give him the confidence to call them his own.
What tenderness and care is required to maintain a whole family as a unit! And
finally all this must not come from virtues but from feelings without which
the human species would soon be extinct. [1272:] Once it is demonstrated that men and women neither
are nor ought to be constituted the same, either in character or in temperament,
it follows that they ought not to have the same education. . . . After having
tried to form the natural man, in order not to leave our work incomplete let
us see how to also to form the woman who suits this man. [1298:] Prevent young girls from getting bored with their
tasks and infatuated with their amusements. . . . A little girl who is fond
of her mother or her friend will work by her side all day without getting tired;
the chatter alone will make up for any loss of liberty. But . . . . children
who take no delight in their mother's company are not likely to turn out well.
. . . They are flatterers and deceitful and soon learn to conceal their thoughts.
Neither should they be told that they ought to love their mother. Affection
is not the result of duty, and in this respect constraint is out of place. Continual
attachment, constant care, habit itself, all these will lead a child to love
her mother as long as the mother does nothing to deserve the child's hate. The
very control she exercises over the child, if well directed, will increase rather
than diminish the affection, for women being made for dependence, girls feel
themselves made to obey. [1299:] For the same reason that they have, or ought to
have, little freedom, they are apt to indulge themselves too fully with regard
to such freedom as they do have. They carry everything to extremes, and they
devote themselves to their games with an enthusiasm even greater than that of
boys. . . . This enthusiasm must be kept in check, for it is the source of several
vices commonly found among women -- caprice and that extravagant admiration
which leads a woman to regard a thing with rapture to-day and to be quite indifferent
to it to-morrow. . . . Do not leave them for a moment without restraint. Accustom
them to interrupt their games and return to their other occupations without
a murmur. Habit is all that is needed, since you have nature on your side. [1300:] This habitual restraint produces a docility which
woman requires all her life, for she will always be in subjection to a man,
or to man's judgment, and she will never be free to set her own opinion above
his. What is most wanted in a woman is gentleness. Formed to obey a creature
so imperfect as man, a creature often vicious and always faulty, she should
early learn to submit to injustice and to suffer the wrongs inificted on her
by her husband without complaint. She must be gentle for her own sake, not his.
Bitterness and obstinacy only multiply the sufferings of the wife and the misdeeds
of the husband; the man feels that these are not the weapons to be used against
him. Heaven did not make women attractive and persuasive that they might degenerate
into bitterness, or meek that they should desire the mastery; their soft voice
was not meant for hard words, nor their delicate features for the frowns of
anger. When they lose their temper they forget themselves. Often enough they
have just cause of complaint; but when they scold they always put themselves
in the wrong. Each should adopt the tone that befits his or her sex. A too gentle
husband may make his wife impertinant, but unless a man is a monster, the gentleness
of a woman will bring him around and sooner or later will win him over. . .
. [1342:] The reason which teaches a man his duties is not
very complex; the reason which teaches a woman hers is even simpler. The obedience
and fidelity which she owes to her husband, the tenderness and care due to her
children, are such natural and self-evident consequences of her condition that
she cannot honestly refuse her consent to the inner voice which is her guide,
nor disregard her duty in her natural inclination. [1343:] I would not altogether blame those who would restrict
a woman to the labours of her sex and would leave her in profound ignorance
of everything else. But that would require either a very simple, very healthy
public morality or a very isolated life style. In large cities, among immoral
men, such a woman would be too easily seduced. Her virtue would too often be
at the mercy of circumstances. In this philosophic century, virtue must be able
to be put to the test. She must know in advance what people might say to her
and what she should think of it. [1357:] The search for abstract and speculative truths,
for principles and axioms in science, for all that tends to wide generalisation,
is beyond a woman's grasp; their studies should be thoroughly practical. It
is their business to apply the principles discovered by men, it is their place
to make the observations which lead men to discover those principles. A woman's
thoughts, beyond the range of her immediate duties, should be directed to the
study of men, or the acquirement of that agreeable learning whose sole end is
the formation of taste. For the works of genius are beyond her reach, and she
has neither the accuracy nor the attention for success in the exact sciences.
As for the physical sciences, to decide the relations between living creatures
and the laws of nature is the task of that sex which is more active and enterprising,
which sees more things, that sex which is possessed of greater strength and
is more accustomed to the exercise of that strength. Woman, weak as she is and
limited in her range of observation, perceives and judges the forces at her
disposal to supplement her weakness, and those forces are the passions of man.
Her own mechanism is more powerful than ours; she has many levers which may
set the human heart in motion. She must find a way to make us desire what she
cannot achieve unaided and what she considers necessary or pleasing. Therefore
she must have a thorough knowledge of man's mind -- not an abstract knowledge
of the mind of man in general, but the mind of those men who are about her,
the mind of those men who have authority over her, either by law or custom.
She must learn to intuit their feelings from speech and action, look and gesture.
By her own speech and action, look and gesture, she must be able to inspire
them with the feelings she desires, without seeming to have any such purpose.
The men will have a better philosophy of the human heart, but she will read
more accurately in the heart of men. Woman should discover, so to speak, an
experimental morality; man should reduce it to a system. Woman has more wit,
man more genius; woman observes, man reasons. Together they provide the clearest
light and the profoundest knowledge which is possible to the unaided human mind
-- in a word, the surest knowledge of self and of others of which the human
race is capable. In this way art may constantly tend to the perfection of the
instrument which nature has given us.BOOK ONE
BOOK TWO
BOOK FIVE
