Contradictory statements on morals.

no principles, and moral as he is "on instinct," there is always some confusion in what he says. At one time he asserts that "there is only one knowledge to give children, and that is a knowledge of duty: "Il n'y a qu'une science à enseigner aux enfants: c'est celle des devoirs de l'homme." (Ém. j., 26). Elsewhere he says: "To know right from wrong, to be conscious of the reason of duty is not the business of a child: Connaître le bien et le mal, sentir la raison des devoirs de l'homme, n'est pas l'affaire d'un enfant." (Ém. ij., 75).* In another place he mounts his hobby that "the most sublime virtues are negative” (Ém. ij., 95), and that about the best man who ever lived (till he found Friday?) was Robinson Crusoe. The outcome of all Rousseau's teaching on this subject seems that we should in quoted by Saint-Marc Girardin (ij., 121)—“L'habitude la plus douce qui puisse exister est celle de la vie domestique qui nous tient plus près de nous qu'aucune autre." We may say of Rousseau what Émile says of the Corsair :-" Il savait à fond toute la morale; il n'y avait que la pratique qui lui manquât.” (Em. et S. 636). And yet he himself testifies :-"Nurses and mothers become attached to children by the cares they devote to them; it is the exercise of the social virtues that carries the love of humanity to the bottom of our hearts; it is in doing good that one becomes good; I know no experience more certain than this : Les nourrices, les mères, s'attachent aux enfants par les soins qu'elles leur rendent; l'exercice des vertus sociales porte au fond des cœurs l'amour de l'humanité; c'est en faisant le bien qu'on devient bon; je ne connais point de pratique plus sure." Em. iv, 291.

* Elsewhere he asserts in his fitful way that there is inborn in the beart of man a feeling of what is just and unjust. Again, after all his praise of negation he contradicts himself, and says: "I do not suppose that he who does not need anything can love anything; and I do not suppose that he who does not love anything can be happy: Je ne conçois pas que celui qui n'a besoin de rien puisse aimer quelque chose; je ne conçois pas que celui qui n'aime rien puisse être heureux " Emi iv, 252.

The material world and the moral.

every way develop the child's animal or physical life, retard his intellectual life, and ignore his life as a spiritual and moral being.

§ 28. A variety of influences had combined, as they combine still, to draw attention away from the importance of physical training; and by placing the child's bodily organs and senses as the first things to be thought of in education, Rousseau did much to save us from the bad tradition of the Renascence. But there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in his philosophy, and whatever Rousseau might say, Émile could never be restrained from inquiring after them. Every boy will think; i.e., he will think for himself, however unable he may seem to think in the direction in which his instructors try to urge him. The wise elders who have charge of him must take this into account, and must endeavour to guide him into thinking modestly and thinking right. Then again, as soon as the child can speak, or before, the world of sensation becomes for him a world, not of sensations only, but also of sentiments, of sympathies, of affections, of consciousness of right and wrong, good and evil. All these feelings, it is true, may be affected by traditional prejudices. The air the child breathes may also contain much that is noxious; but we have no more power to exclude the atmosphere of the moral world than of the physical. All we can do is to take thought for fresh air in both cases. As for Rousseau's notion that we can withdraw the child from the moral atmosphere, we see in it nothing but a proof how little he understood the problems he professed to solve.*

* This part of Rousseau's scheme is well discussed by Saint-Marc Girardin (J. J. Rousseau, vol. ij.). The following passage is striking

.

Shun over-directing.

§ 29. Although the governor is to devote himself to a single child, Rousseau is careful to protest against overdirection. "You would stupify the child," says he, "if you were constantly directing him, if you were always saying to him, 'Come here! Go there! Stop! Do this! Don't do that!' If your head always directs his arms, his own head becomes useless to him." (Ém. ij., 114). Here we have a warning which should not be neglected by those who maintain the Lycées in France, and the ordinary private boarding-schools in England. In these schools a boy is hardly called upon to exercise his will all day long. He rises in the morning when he must; at meals he eats till he is obliged to stop; he is taken out for exercise like a horse; he has all his indoor work prescribed for him both as to time and quantity. In this kind of life he never has occasion to think or act for himself. He is therefore without self-reliance. So much care is taken to prevent his doing wrong, that he gets to think only of checks from without. He is therefore incapable of self-restraint. In the English public schools boys have much less supervision from their elders, and organise a great portion of their lives for them

"How is it that Madame Necker-Saussure understood the child better than Rousseau did? She saw in the child two things, a creation and a ground-plan, something finished and something begun, a perfection which prepares the way for another perfection, a child and a man. God, Who has put together human life in several pieces, has willed, it is true, that all these pieces should be related to each other; but He has also willed that each of them should be complete in itself, so that every stage of life has what it needs as the object of that period, and also what it needs to bring in the period that comes next. Wonderful union of aims and means which shews itself at every step in creation! In everything there is aim and also means, everything exists for itself and also for that which lies beyond it! (Tout est but et tout est moyen; tout est absolu et tout est relatif.)” J. J. R., ij., 151.

Lessons out of school. Questioning. At 12.

selves. This proves a better preparation for life after the school age; and most public schoolmasters would agree with Rousseau that "the lessons the boys get from each other in the playground are a hundred times more useful to them than the lessons given them in school: les leçons que les écoliers prennent entre eux dans la cour du collège leur sont cent fois plus utiles que tout ce qu'on leur dira jamais dans la classe.” (Ém. ij., 123.)

$ 30. On questions put by children, Rousseau says: "The art of questioning is not so easy as it may be thought; it is rather the art of the master than of the pupil. We must have learnt a good deal of a thing to be able to ask what we do not know. The learned know and inquire, says an Indian proverb, but the ignorant know not what to inquire about." And from this he infers that children learn less from asking than from being asked questions. (N. H., 5th P. 490.)

§ 31. At twelve years old Émile is said to be fit for instruction. "Now is the time for labour, for instruction, for study; and observe that it is not I who arbitrarily make this choice; it is pointed out to us by Nature herself."

§ 32. What novelties await us here? As we have seen Rousseau was determined to recommend nothing that would harmonise with ordinary educational practice; but even a genius, though he may abandon previous practice, cannot keep clear of previous thought, and Rousseau's plan for instruction is obviously connected with the thoughts of Montaigne and of Locke. But while on the same lines with these great writers Rousseau goes beyond them and is both clearer and bolder than they are.

$33. Rousseau's proposals for instruction have the fol lowing main features.

No book-learning. Study of Nature.

Ist. Instruction is to be no longer literary or linguistic. The teaching about words is to disappear, and the young are not to learn by books or about books.

2nd. The subjects to be studied are to be mathematics and physical science.

3rd. The method to be adopted is not the didactic but the method of self-teaching.

4th. The hands are to be called into play as a means of learning.

§ 34. 1st. Till quite recently the only learning ever given in schools was book-learning, a fact to which the language of the people still bears witness: when a child does not profit by school instruction he is always said to be "no good at his book." Now-a-days the tendency is to change the character of the schools so that they may become less and less mere "Ludi Literarii." In this Rousseau seems to have been a century and more in advance of us; and yet we cannot credit him with any remarkable wisdom or insight about literature. He himself used books as a means of "collecting a store of ideas, true or false, but at any rate clear" (J. Morley's Rousseau, j. chap. 3, p. 85), and he has recorded for us his opinion that "the sensible and interesting conversations of a young woman of merit are more proper to form a young man than all the pedantical philosophy of books" (Confessions, quoted by Morley j., 87). After this, whatever we may think of the merit of his suggestions we can sit at the Sage's feet no longer.

§ 35. 2nd. Rousseau had himself little knowledge of inathematics and natural science, but he was strongly in favour of the "study of Nature"; and in his last years his devotion to botany became a passion. His curriculum for Émile is in the air, but the chief thing is to get him to