R. "neglects" essentials. Lose time.

only what is accidental, and retains all the essentials of the problem. But his rage for simplicity sometimes carried him beyond this. There is an old Cambridge story of a problem introducing an elephant "whose weight may be neglected." This is after the manner of Rousseau. In the bringing up of the model child, he "neglects" parents, brothers and sisters, young companions; and though he says that the needful qualities of a master may be expected only in "un homme de génie," he hands over Émile to a governor to live an isolated life in the country.

§ 8. This governor is to devote himself, for some years, entirely to imparting to his pupil these difficult arts-the art of being ignorant and of losing time. Till he is twelve years old, Émile is to have no direct instruction whatever. "At that age he shall not know what a book is," says Rousseau; though elsewhere we are told that he will learn to read of his own accord by the time he is ten, if no attempt is made to teach him. He is to be under no restraint, and is to do nothing but what he sees to be useful.

9. Freedom from restraint is, however, to be apparent, not real. As in ordinary education the child employs all its faculties in duping the master, so in education "according to Nature" the master is to devote himself to duping the child. "Let him always be his own master in appearance, and do you take care to be so in reality. There is no subjection so complete as that which preserves the appearance of liberty; it is by this means even the wili is led captive."

§ io. "The most critical interval of human nature is that between the hour of our birth and twelve years of age. This is the time wherein vice and error take root without our being possessed of any instrument to destroy them."

Early education negative.

(Em. ij., 79.) Throughout this season, the governor is to be at work training the pupil in the art of being ignorant and losing time. "The first education should be purely nega tive. It consists by no means in teaching virtue or truth, but in securing the heart from vice and the intellect from error. If you could do nothing and let nothing be done, if you could bring on your pupil healthy and strong to the age of 12 without his being able to tell his right hand from his left, from your very first lessons the eyes of his understanding would open to reason. Being without prejudices and without habits he would have nothing in him to thwart the effect of your care; and by beginning with doing nothing you would have made an educational prodigy."*

"Exercise his body, his organs, his senses, his powers; but keep his mind passive as long as possible. Mistrust all his sentiments formed before the judgment which determines their value. Restrain, avoid all foreign impressions, and to prevent the birth of evil be in no hurry to cause good; for good is good only in the light of reason. Look on all delays as so many advantages: it is a great gain to advance towards the goal without loss: let childhood ripen in children. In short, whatever lesson they may need, be

* "La première éducation doit donc être purement négative. Elle consiste, non point à enseigner la vertu ni la vérité, mais à garantir le cœur du vice et l'esprit de l'erreur. Si vous pouviez ne rien faire et ne rien laisser faire; si vous pouviez amener votre élève sain et robuste à l'âge de douze ans, sans qu'il sût distinguer sa main droite de sa main gauche, dès vos premières leçons les yeux de son entendement s'ouvriraient à la raison; sans préjugés, sans habitudes, il n'aurait rien en lui qui pût contrarier l'effet de vos soins. Bientôt il deviendrait entre vos mains le plus sage des hommes; et, en commençant par ne rien faire, vous auriez fait un prodige d'éducation." Em. ij., 80.

Childhood the sleep of reason.

sure not to give it them to-day if you can safely put it off till to-morrow."*

"Do not, then, alarm yourself much about this apparent idleness. What would you say of the man, who, in order to make the most of life, should determine never to go to sleep? You would say, The man is mad: he is not enjoying the time; he is depriving himself of it: to avoid sleep he is hurrying towards death. Consider, then, that it is the same here, and that childhood is the sleep of reason."†

§ 11. We have now reached the climax (or shall we say the nadir ?) in negation. Rousseau has given the coup de grâce to the ideal of the Renascence. Comenius was the first to take a comprehensive view of the educator's task and to connect it with man's nature and destiny; but he could not get clear from an over-estimate of the importance of knowledge. According to his ideal, man should know all things; so in practice he thought too much of imparting knowledge. Then came Locke and treated the imparting.

- CC "Exercez son corps, ses organes, ses sens, ses forces, mais tenez son âme oisive aussi longtemps qu'il se pourra. Redoutez tous les sentments antérieurs au jugement qui les apprécie. Retenez, arrêtez les impressions étrangères : et, pour empêcher le mal de naître, ne vous pressez point de faire le bien; car il n'est jamais tel que quand la raison l'éclaire. Regardez tous les délais comme des avantages: c'est gagner beaucoup que d'avancer vers le terme sans rien perdre; laissez mûrir l'enfance dans les enfants. Enfin quelque leçon leur devient-elle néces⚫ saire, gardez-vous de la donner aujourd'hui, si vous pouvez différer jusqu'à demain sans danger." Em. ij., 80.

+ "Effrayez-vous donc peu de cette oisiveté prétendue. Que diriezvous d'un homme qui, pour mettre toute la vie à profit, ne voudrait jamais dormir? Vous diriez : Cet homme est insensé ; il ne jouit pas du temps, il se l'ôte; pour fuir le sommeil il court à la mort. Songez donc que c'est ici la même chose, et que l'enfance est le sommeil de la . raison." Em. ij., 99.

Start from study of the child.

of knowledge as of trifling importance when compared with the formation of character; but he too in practice hardly went so far as this principle might have led him. He was much under the influence of social distinctions, and could not help thinking of what it was necessary for a gentleman to know. So that Rousseau was the very first to shake himself entirely free from the notion which the Renascence had handed down that man was mainly a learning animal. Rousseau has the courage to deny this in the most emphatic manner possible, and to say: "For the first 12 years the educator must teach the child nothing."

§ 12. In this reaction against the Renascence Rousseau puts the truth in the form of such a violent paradox that we start back in terror. But it was perhaps necessary thus to sweep away the ordinary schoolroom rubbish before the true nature of the educator's task could be fairly considered. The rubbish having been cleared away what was to take its place? No longer having his mind engrossed by the knowledge he wished to communicate, the educator had now an eye for something else not less worthy of his attention, viz., the child itself. Rousseau was the first to base education entirely on a study of the child to be educated; and by doing this he became, as I believe, one of the greatest of educational Reformers.

§ 13. It was, however, purely as a thinker, or rather as a voice giving expression to the general discontent that Rousseau becaine such a tremendous force in Europe. He has indeed often been called the father of the first French Revolution which he did not live to see. But, as Macaulay has well said, a good deal besides eloquent writing is needed to cause such a convulsion; and we can no more attribute the French Revolution to the writings of Rousseau than we

R.'s paradoxes un-English.

can attribute the shock of an explosion of gunpowder to the lucifer match without which it might never have happened. (2. Macaulay's Barrère). Rousseau did in the world of ideas what the French Revolutionists afterwards did in the world of politics; he made a clean sweep and endeavoured to start afresh.

§ 14. I have already said that as regards education I think his labours in destruction were of very great value. But what shall we say of his efforts at construction? There would not be the least difficulty in showing that most of his proposals are impracticable. It is no more "natural" to treat as a typical case a child brought up in solitude than it would be to write a treatise on the rearing of a bee cut off from the hive.* Rousseau requires impossibilities, e.g., he postulates that the child is never to be brought into contact with anyone who might set a bad example. Modern science has shown us that the young are liable to take diseases from impurities in the air they breathe: but as yet no one has proposed that all children should be kept at an elevation of 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. Yet the advice would be about as practicable as the advice of Rousseau. A method which always starts with paradox and not infrequently ends with platitude might seem to have little in its favour; and Rousseau has had far less influence since (in the words of Herman Merivale) "he was dethroned with the fall of his extravagant child, the [First] Republic." No doubt the great exponent of English

* "Il n'y a pas de philosophie plus superficielle que celle qui, prenant l'homme comme un être égoïste et viager, prétend l'expliquer et lui. tracer ses devoirs en dehors de la société dont il est une partie. Autant vaut considérer l'abeille abstraction faite de la ruche, et dire qu'à elle seule l'abeille construit son alvéole." Renan, La Réforme, 312.