CHILDHOOD NOT UNDERSTOOD BY ADULTS. 105

reporting Rousseau), instead of seeking to develope the life of the child, sacrifices childhood to the acquirement of knowledge, or rather the semblance of knowledge, which it is thought will prove useful to the youth, or the man. Rousseau's great merit lies in his having exposed this fundamental error. He says, very truly, 'People do not understand childhood. With the false notions we have of it, the further we go the more we blunder. The wisest apply themselves to what it is important to men to know, without considering what children are in a condition to learn. They are always seeking the man in the child, without reflecting what he is before he can be a man. This is the study to which I have applied myself most; so that, should my practical scheme be found useless and chimerical, my observations will always turn to account. I may possibly have taken a very bad view of what ought to be done, but I conceive I have taken a good one of the subject to be wrought upon. Begin then by studying your pupils better; for most assuredly you do not at present understand them. So if you read my book with that view, I do not think it will be useless to you.'* 'Nature requires children to be children

* On ne connaît point l'enfance: sur les fausses idées qu'on en a, plus on va, plus on s'égare. Les plus sages s'attachent à ce qu'il importe aux hommes de savoir, sans considérer ce que les enfants sont en état d'apprendre. Ils cherchent toujours l'homme dans l'enfant, sans penser à ce qu'il est avant que d'être homme. Voilà l'étude à laquelle je me suis le plus appliqué, afin que, quand toute ma méthode serait chimérique et fausse, on pût toujours profiter de mes observations. Je puis avoir très-mal vu ce qu'il faut faire; mais je crois avoir bien vu le sujet sur lequel on doit opérer. Commencez donc par mieux étudier vos élèves;

before they are men. If we will pervert this order, we shall produce forward fruits, having neither ripeness nor taste, and sure soon to become rotten: we shall have young professors and old children. Childhood has its manner of seeing, perceiving, and thinking, peculiar to itself; nothing is more absurd than our being anxious to substitute our own in its stead.'* "We never know how to put ourselves in the place of children; we do not enter into their ideas, we lend them our own: and following always our own train of thought, we fill their heads, even while we are discussing incontestible truths, with extravagance and error.' 'I wish some judicious hand would give us a treatise on the art of studying children; an art of the greatest importance to understand, though fathers and preceptors know not as yet even the elements of it.' I

The governor, then, must be able to sympathise with his pupil, and, on this account, Rousseau requires that he should be young. "The governor of

car très-assurément vous ne les connaissez point: or, si vous lisez ce livre dans cette vue, je ne le crois pas sans utilité pour vous.

* La nature veut que les enfants soient enfants avant que d'être hommes. Si nous voulons pervertir cet ordre, nous produirons des fruits précoces qui n'auront ni maturité ni saveur, et ne tarderont pas à se corrompre nous aurons de jeunes docteurs et de vieux enfants. L'enfance a des manières de voir, de penser, de sentir, qui lui sont propres; rien n'est moins sensé que d'y vouloir substituer les nôtres.

Nous ne savons jamais nous mettre à la place des enfants; nous n'entrons pas dans leurs idées, nous leur prêtons les nôtres; et, suivant toujours nos propres raisonnements, avec des chaînes de vérités nous n'entassons qu'extravagances et qu'erreurs dans leur tête.

Je voudrais qu'un homme judicieux nous donnât un traité de l'art d'observer les enfants. Cet art serait très-important à connaître les pères et les maîtres n'en ont pas encore les éléments.

FUNCTIONS OF THE GOVERNOR.

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a child should be young, even as young as possible, consistent with his having attained necessary discretion and sagacity. I would have him be himself a child, that he might become the companion of his pupil, and gain his confidence by partaking of his amusements. There are not things enough in common between childhood and manhood, to form a solid attachment at so great a distance. Children sometimes caress old men, but they never love them.'*

The governor's functions are threefold: 1st, that of keeping off hurtful influences-no light task in Rousseau's eyes, as he regarded almost every influence from the child's fellow-creatures as hurtful; 2nd, that of developing the bodily powers, especially the senses; 3rd, that of communicating the one science for children-moral behaviour. In all these, even in the last, he must be governor rather than preceptor, for it is less his province to instruct than

Je remarquerai seulement, contre l'opinion commune, que le gouverneur d'un enfant doit être jeune, et même aussi jeune que peut l'être un homme sage. Je voudrais qu'il fût lui-même enfant, s'il était possible; qu'il pût devenir le compagnon de son élève, et s'attirer sa confiance en partageant ses amusements. Il n'y a pas assez de choses communes entre l'enfance et l'âge mûr, pour qu'il se forme jamais un attachement bien solide à cette distance. Les enfants flattent quelquefois les vieillards, mais ils ne les aiment jamais.

Here, and in some other instances, I have selected, as characteristic of their author, opinions which I believe to be totally erroneous. The distance between the child and the man is no doubt very great (so great, indeed, that the distance between the young man and the old bears no appreciable ratio to it): but this does not preclude the most intense affection of the young towards grown persons of any age, as our individual experience has probably convinced us. Perhaps the old have more in common with children than those have who are in the full vigour of manhood

to conduct. He must not lay down precepts, but teach his pupil to discover them. I preach a difficult art,' says Rousseau, 'the art of guiding without precepts, and of doing everything by doing nothing.'*

The most distinctive characteristic of childhood is vitality. In the heart of the old man the failing energies concentrate themselves: in that of the child, they overflow and spread outwards: he is conscious of life enough to animate all that surrounds him. Whether he makes or mars, it is all one to him he is satisfied with having changed the state of things; and every change is an action.'t This vitality is to be allowed free scope. Swaddlingclothes are to be removed from infants; the restraints of school and book-learning from children. Their love of action is to be freely indulged.

The nearest approach to teaching which Rousseau permitted, was that which became afterwards, in the hands of Pestalozzi, the system of object-lessons.

* Je vous prêche un art difficile ; c'est de gouverner sans préceptes, et de tout faire en ne faisant rien.

+ L'activité défaillante se concentre dans le cœur du vieillard; dans celui de l'enfant elle est surabondante et s'étend au dehors; il se sent, pour ainsi dire, assez de vie pour animer tout ce qui l'environne. Qu'il fasse ou qu'il défasse, il n'importe; il suffit qu'il change l'état des choses, et tout changement est une action. Que s'il semble avoir plus de penchant à détruire, ce n'est point par méchanceté, c'est que l'action qui forme est toujours lente, et que celle qui détruit, étant plus rapide, convient mieux à sa vivacité.

Lord Stanley, than whom no man can be more practical,' follows Rousseau in this particular. 'People are beginning to find out, what, if they would use their own observation more, and not follow one another like sheep, they would have found out long ago, that it is doing positive harm to a young child, mental and bodily harm, to keep it learning, or pretending to learn, the greater part of the day. Nature says to a child,

'As soon as a child begins to distinguish objects, a proper choice should be made in those which are presented to him.'* 'He must learn to feel heat and cold, the hardness, softness, and weight of bodies; to judge of their magnitude, figure, and other sensible qualities, by looking, touching, hearing, and particularly by comparing the sight with the touch, and judging, by means of the eye, of the sensation acquired by the fingers.' These exercises should be continued through childhood. A child has

:

neither the strength nor the judgment of a man; but he is capable of feeling and hearing as well, or at least nearly so. His palate also is as sensible, though less delicate and he distinguishes odours as well, though not with the same nicety. Of all our faculties, the senses are perfected the first: these therefore are the first we should cultivate: they are, nevertheless, the only ones that are usually forgotten, or the most neglected.' + 'Observe a cat, the first time she comes into a room; she looks and smells about; she is not

"Run about," the schoolmaster says, "Sit still ;" and as the schoolmaster can punish on the spot, and Nature only long afterwards, he is obeyed, and health and brain suffer.'-Speech reported in Evening Mail,' December 9, 1864.

Dès que l'enfant commence à distinguer les objets, il importe de mettre du choix dans ceux qu'on lui montre.

Il veut tout toucher, tout manier: ne vous opposez point à cette inquiétude; elle lui suggère un apprentissage très-nécessaire. C'est ainsi qu'il apprend à sentir la chaleur, le froid, la dureté, la mollesse, la pesanteur, la légèreté des corps; à juger de leur grandeur, de leur figure et de toutes leurs qualités sensibles, en regardant, palpant, écoutant, surtout en comparant la vue au toucher, en estimant à l'œil la sensation qu'ils feraient sous ses doigts.

Un enfant est moins grand qu'un homme; il n'a ni sa force ni sa raison: mais il voit et entend aussi bien que lui, ou à très-peu près; il a