that the one to which fewer arts are necessary deserves it still more than those more subordinate, because it is freer and nearer independence. These are the true rules for estimating arts and industries; all others are arbitrary, and depend on opinion.

The first and most respectable of all the arts is agriculture. I would place the forge in the second rank, carpentering in the third, and so on. The child who has not been seduced by vulgar prejudices will judge of them precisely in the same way. How many important reflections on this point will our Emile draw from his Robin

son Crusoe! What will he think as he sees that the arts are perfected only by subdivision and by multiplying to infinity their respective instruments? He will say to himself: "All these people are stupidly ingenious; one would think that they are afraid that their arms and fingers may be good for something, seeing they invent so many instruments for dispensing with them. In order to practice a single art they have put a thousand others under contribution; a city is necessary for each workman. As for my companion and myself, we place our genius in our dexterity; we make for ourselves instruments which we can carry everywhere with us. All these people, so proud of their talents in Paris, would be of no account on our island, and in their turn would be our apprentices."

Reader, do not pause here to see the bodily training and manual dexterity of our pupil, but consider what direction we are giving to his childish curiosity; consider his senses, his inventive spirit, his foresight; consider what a head we are going to form for him; in everything he sees, in everything he does, he will wish to know everything, and understand the reason of everything; from instrument to instrument, he will always ascend to the

first; he will take nothing on trust; he will refuse to learn that which can not be understood without an anterior knowledge which he does not possess. If he sees a spring made, he would know how the steel was taken from the mine; if he sees the pieces of a box put together, he would know how the tree was cut; if he himself is at work, at each tool that he is using he will not fail to say to himself: "If I did not have this tool, how should I go to work to make one like it or to do without it?"

Besides, it is an error difficult to avoid, in occupations for which the teacher has a passion, always to suppose that the child has the same taste. Take care, when the amusement of labor engrosses you, lest your pupil grow tired of it without daring to notify you of it. The child ought to be wholly absorbed in the thing he is doing; but you ought to be wholly absorbed in the child—observing him, watching him without respite, and without seeming to do so, having a presentiment of his feelings in advance, and preventing those which he ought not to have, and, finally, employing him in such a way that he not only feels that he is useful in what he is doing, but that he may feel a pleasure in it from clearly comprehending that what he does has a useful purpose.

The need of a conventional standard of value by which things may be measured and exchanged has caused money to be invented; for money is but a term of comparison for the value of things of different kinds; and in this sense money is the true bond of society. But everything may be money. Formerly, cattle were money, and shells still are among several peoples; iron was money in Sparta, leather has been in Sweden, and gold and silver are with us.

Thus explained, the use of this invention is made obvious to the most stupid. It is difficult to compare

immediately things of different kinds—cloth, for example —with wheat; but when a common measure has been found, namely, money, it is easy for the manufacturer and the laborer to refer the value of the things which they wish to exchange to this common measure. If a given quantity of cloth is worth a given sum of money, and if a given quantity of wheat is also worth the same sum of money, it follows that the merchant receiving this wheat for his cloth makes an equitable exchange. Thus it is by means of money that goods of different kinds become commensurable, and may be compared.

Do not go further than this, and do not enter into an explanation of the moral effects of this institution. In everything it is important clearly to set forth its uses before showing its abuses. If you attempt to explain to children how signs cause things to be neglected, how from money proceed all the vagaries of opinion, how countries rich in money must be poor in everything else, you are treating these children not only as philosophers, but as men of wisdom; and you are attempting to make them understand what few philosophers even have clearly comprehended.

To what an abundance of interesting objects may we not thus turn the curiosity of the pupil without ever quitting the real and material relations which are within his reach or allowing a single idea to arise in his mind. which he can not comprehend! The art of the teacher consists in never allowing his observations to bear on minutia which serve no purpose, but ever to confront him with the wide relations which he must one day know in order to judge correctly of the order, good and bad, of civil society. He must know how to adapt the conversations with which he amuses his pupil to the turn of mind which he has given him. A given question which might

not arouse the attention of another would torment Emile for six months.

We go to dine at an elegant house, and find all the preparations for a feast—many people, many servants, many dishes, and a table-service elegant and fine. All this apparatus of pleasure and feasting has something intoxicating in it which affects the head when we are not accustomed to it. I foresee the effect of all this on my young pupil. While the repast is prolonged, while the courses succeed each other, and while a thousand noisy speeches are in progress around the table, I approach his ear and say to him: "Through how many hands do you really think has passed all that you see on this table before it reaches it?" What a host of ideas do I awaken in his mind by these few words! In an instant all the vapors of delirium are expelled. He dreams, he reflects, While the philoso

he calculates, he becomes restless. phers, enlivened by the wine, and perhaps by their companions, talk nonsense and play the child, he philosophizes all alone in his corner. He interrogates me, but I refuse to reply, and put him off until another time; he becomes impatient, forgets to eat and drink, and longs to be away from the table in order to converse with me at his ease. What an object for his curiosity! What a text for his instruction! With a sound judgment which nothing has been able to corrupt, what will he think of luxury when he finds that all the regions of the world have been put under contribution, that twenty millions of hands, perhaps, have been at work for a long time to create the material for this feast, and that it may have cost the lives of thousands of men?

Carefully watch the secret conclusions which he draws in his heart from all these observations. If you have guarded him less carefully than I suppose, he may be

tempted to turn his reflections in another direction, and to regard himself as a personage of importance to the world, seeing there has been this vast combination of human industry for the preparation of his dinner. If you have a presentiment of this reasoning, you may easily prevent it before he forms it, or, at least, may at once efface its impression. Not yet knowing how to appreciate things save through the material enjoyment of them, he can not judge of their fitness or unfitness for him save through obvious relations. The comparison of a simple and rustic dinner, prepared for by exercise and seasoned by hunger, liberty, and joy, with a feast so magnificent and elaborate, will suffice to make him feel that as all this festal preparation has given him no real profit, and as his stomach comes just as well satisfied from the table of the peasant as from that of the banker, there was nothing at the one more than at the other which he could truly call his own.

What remains for us to do after having observed all that surrounds us? To convert to our use all of it that we can appropriate to ourselves, and to make use of our curiosity for the advantage of our own well-being. Up to this point we have provided ourselves with instruments of all sorts, without knowing which of them we shall need. Perhaps, though useless to ourselves, ours will be able to serve others; and possibly, on our part, we shall have need of theirs. Thus we shall all find our advantage in these exchanges; but, in order to make them, we must know our mutual needs, each one must know what others have for their use, and what he can offer to them in return. Let us suppose ten men, each of whom has ten different needs. It is necessary that each one, for his own necessities, apply himself to ten sorts of labor; but by reason of difference in genius and talent one will