easy a moment she distrusts everything till everything is examined and known. In the same manner does a child examine into everything, when he begins to walk about, and enters, if I may so say, the apartment of the world. All the difference is, that the sight, which is common to both the child and the cat, is in the first assisted by the feeling of the hands, and in the latter by the exquisite scent which nature has bestowed on it. It is the right or wrong cultivation of this inquisitive disposition that makes children either stupid or expert, sprightly or dull, sensible or foolish. The primary impulses of man, urging him to compare his forces with those of the objects about him, and to discover the sensible qualities of such objects as far as they relate to him, his first study is a sort of experimental philosophy relative to self-preservation, from which it is the custom to divert him by speculative studies before he has found his place on this earth. During the time that his supple and delicate organs can adjust themselves to the bodies on which they should act; while his senses are as yet exempt from illusions; this is the time to exercise both the one and the other in their proper functions; this is the time to learn. the sensuous relations which things have with us. As everything that enters the human understanding is introduced by the senses, the first reason in

le goût aussi sensible, quoiqu'il l'ait moins délicat, et distingue aussi bien les odeurs, quoiqu'il n'y mette pas la même sensualité. Les premières facultés qui se forment et se perfectionnent en nous sont les sens. Ce sont donc les premières qu'il faudrait cultiver; ce sont les seules qu'on oublie ou celles qu'on néglige le plus.

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man is a sensitive reason; and this serves as the basis of his intellectual reason. Our first instructors in philosophy are our feet, hands, and eyes. Substituting books for all this is not teaching us to reason, but teaching us to use the reasoning of others; it is teaching us to believe a great deal, and never to know anything.' 'To exercise any art, we must begin by procuring the necessary implements; and to employ those implements to any good purpose, they should be made sufficiently solid for their intended use. To learn to think, therefore, we should exercise our limbs, and our organs, which are the instruments of our intelligence; and in order to make the best use of those instruments, it is necessary that the body furnishing them should be robust and hearty. Thus, so far is a sound understanding from being independent of the body, that it is owing to a good constitution that the operations of the mind are effected with facility and certainty.' 'To exercise the senses is not merely to make use

* Voyez un chat entrer pour la première fois dans une chambre: il visite, il regarde, il flaire, il ne reste pas un moment en repos, il ne se fie à rien qu'après avoir tout examiné, tout connu. Ainsi fait un enfant commençant à marcher, et entrant pour ainsi dire dans l'espace du monde. Toute la différence est qu'à la vue, commune à l'enfant et au chat, le premier joint, pour observer, les mains que lui donna la nature, et l'autre l'odorat subtil dont elle l'a doué. Cette disposition, bien ou mal cultivée, est ce qui rend les enfants adroits ou lourds, pesants ou dispos, étourdis ou prudents.

Les premiers mouvements naturels de l'homme étant donc de se mesurer avec tout ce qui l'environne, et d'éprouver dans chaque objet qu'il aperçoit toutes les qualités sensibles qui peuvent se rapporter à lui, sa première étude est une sorte de physique expérimentale relative à sa propre conservation, et dont on le détourne par des études spéculatives avant qu'il ait reconnu sa place ici-bas. Tandis que ses organes délicats

of them; it is to learn rightly to judge by them; to learn, if I may so express myself, to perceive; for we know how to touch, to see, to hear, only Some exercises are purely

as we have learned. natural and mechanical, and serve to make the body strong and robust, without taking the least hold on the judgment: such are those of swimming, running, leaping, whipping a top, throwing stones, &c. All these are very well: but have we only arms and legs? Have we not also eyes and ears; and are not these organs necessary to the expert use of the former? Exercise therefore not only the strength but also all the senses that direct it; make the best possible use of each, and let the impressions of one confirm those of another. Measure, reckon, weigh, compare.'*

et flexibles peuvent s'ajuster aux corps sur lesquels ils doivent agir, tandis que ses sens encore purs sont exempts d'illusion, c'est le temps d'excercer les uns et les autres aux fonctions qui leur sont propres ; c'est le temps d'apprendre à connaître les rapports sensibles que les choses ont avec nous. Comme tout ce qui entre dans l'entendement humain y vient par les sens, la première raison de l'homme est une raison sensitive; c'est elle qui sert de base à la raison intellectuelle: nos premiers maîtres de philosophie sont nos pieds, nos mains, nos yeux. Substituer des livres à tout cela, ce n'est pas nous apprendre à raisonner, c'est nous apprendre à nous servir de la raison d'autrui; c'est nous apprendre à beaucoup croire, et à ne jamais rien savoir.

Pour excercer un art, il faut commencer par s'en procurer les instruments; et, pour pouvoir employer utilement ces instruments, il faut les faire assez solides pour résister à leur usage. Pour apprendre à penser, il faut donc excercer nos membres, nos sens, nos organes, qui sont les instruments de notre intelligence; et pour tirer tout le parti possible de ces instruments, il faut que le corps, qui les fournit, soit robuste et sain. Ainsi, loin que la véritable raison de l'homme se forme indépendamment du, corps, c'est la bonne constitution du corps qui rend les opérations de l'esprit faciles et sûres.

* Exercer les sens n'est pas seulement en faire usage, c'est apprendre à bien juger par eux, c'est apprendre, pour ainsi dire, à sentir; car nous

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According to the present system, 'The lessons which school-boys learn of each other in playing about their bounds, are an hundred times more useful to them than all those which the master teaches in the school.'*

He also suggests experiments in the dark, which will both train the senses and get over the child's dread of darkness. Ab assuetis non fit passio.'

Émile, living in the country and being much in the open air, will acquire a distinct and emphatic way of speaking. He will also avoid a fruitful source of bad pronunciation among the children of the rich, viz. saying lessons by heart. These lessons the children gabble when they are learning them, and afterwards, in their efforts to remember the words, they drawl, and give all kinds of false emphasis. Declamation is to be shunned as acting. If Emile does not understand anything, he will be too wise to pretend to understand it.

Rousseau seems perhaps inconsistent, in not excluding music and drawing from his curriculum of ignorance but as a musician, he naturally relaxed ne savons ni toucher, ni voir, ni entendre, que comme nous avons appris.

:

Il y a un exercice purement naturel et mécanique, qui sert à rendre le corps robuste sans donner aucune prise au jugement: nager, courir, sauter, fouetter un sabot, lancer des pierres; tout cela est fort bien mais n'avons-nous que des bras et des jambes? n'avons-nous pas aussi des yeux, des oreilles? et ces organes sont-ils superflus à l'usage des premiers? N'exercez donc pas seulement les forces, exercez tous les sens qui les dirigent; tirez de chacun d'eux tout le parti possible, puis vérifiez l'impression de l'un par l'autre. Mesurez, comptez, pesez, comparez.

* Les leçons que les écoliers prennent entre eux dans la cour du collége leur sont cent fois plus utiles que tout ce qu'on leur dira jamais dans la classe.

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*

towards the former; and drawing he would have his pupil cultivate, not for the sake of the art itself, but only to give him a good eye and supple hand. He should, in all cases, draw from the objects themselves, my intention being, not so much that he should know how to imitate the objects, as to become fully acquainted with them.'

The instruction given to ordinary school-boys, was of course an abomination in the eyes of Rousseau. 'All the studies imposed on these poor unfortunates tend to such objects as are entirely foreign to their minds. Judge, then, of the attention they are likely to bestow on them.' 'The pedagogues, who make a great parade of the instructions they give their scholars, are paid to talk in a different strain: one may see plainly, however, by their conduct, that they are exactly of my opinion: for, after all, what is it they teach them? Words, still words, and nothing but words. Among the various sciences they pretend to teach, they take particular care not to fall upon those which are really useful; because there would be the sciences of things, and in them they would never succeed; but they fix on such as appear to be understood when their terms are once gotten by rote, viz. geography, chronology, heraldry, the languages, &c., all studies so foreign to the purposes of man, and particularly to those of a child, that it is a wonder if ever he may have occasion for them as long as he

*The followers of the Tonic Sol-Fa System have in Rousseau a strong ally in attacking the method which makes Do the tonic of the natural key only.