prize essay: Has the progress of the sciences and arts con- In This point of view in a somewhat modified form he continued to embody in writings at the village of Montmorency, whither he soon withdrew from the hypocritical and cold-blooded atmosphere of Paris. Here in 1759 he produced his remarkable romance, The New Heloise, and three years later he published his influential essay in The New on political ethics, known as the Social Contract, and that most revolutionary treatise on education, the Emile. The New Heloise departs somewhat from the complete return to nature sought in the two prize discourses. It commends a restoration of as much of the primitive simplicity of living as the crystallized traditions and Heloise, Social Contract, and Emile. 'academies' for the discussion of scientific and philosophic questions. Of these institutions one of the earliest and most prominent was that of Dijon. institutions of society will permit. In the Social Contract, Rousseau also finds the ideal state, not in that of nature, but in a society managed by the people, where simplicity and natural wants control, and aristocracy and artificiality do not exist. Purpose of the Emile. But the work that has made the name of Rousseau famous and most concerns us here is his Emile. This treatise and the two prize discourses their author declared to be "three inseparable works, which together form a single whole." He might well have included also the New Heloise and the Social Contract, especially as the Emile assumes more nearly the modified position of the later works, and undertakes to show how education might minimize the drawbacks of civilization and bring man as near to nature as possible. As the Social Contract and his discourses were written to counteract the oppressive social and political conditions, the Emile aims to replace the conventional and formal education of the day with a training that should be natural and spontaneous. We learn that under the current ancien régime little boys had their hair powdered, wore a sword, "the chapeau under the arm, a frill, and a coat with gilded cuffs," that a girl was dressed in equally ridiculous imitation of a fashionable woman, and that education was largely one of deportment and the dancing master, for "this is to be the great thing for them when they become men and women, and for this reason it is the thing of chief importance for them as children." 1 On the intellectual side, education was 1 Taine, The Ancient Régime, p. 137. Read S. C. Parker's clear and interesting presentation of this 'dancing-master education' in his History of Modern Elementary Education, Chap. VII. In the first period, Emile's education consists of physical activities; largely traditional and consisted chiefly of a training in Latin grammar, words, and memoriter work. Rousseau scathingly criticised these practices and pleaded for reform. In the Emile he applies his 'negative' and naturalistic principles to the education of an imaginary pupil of that name "from the moment of his birth up to the time when, having become a mature man, he will no longer need any other guide than himself." He begins the work with a restatement of his basal principle that "everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author of Nature; but everything degenerates in the hands of man." After elaborating this, he shows that we are educated by "three kinds of teachers—nature, man, and things, and since the coöperation of the three educations is necessary for their perfection, it is to the one over which we have no control (i. e. nature) that we must direct the other two." Education must, therefore, conform to nature. The Five Books of the Emile.-Now the natural objects, through which Emile is to be educated, remain the same, but Emile himself changes from time to time. In so far, therefore, as he is to be the guide of how he is to be educated in a natural environment, his impulses must be examined at different times in his life. Hence the work is divided into five parts, four of which deal with Emile's education in the stages of infancy, childhood, boyhood, and youth respectively, and the fifth with the training of the girl who is to become his wife. The characteristics of the different periods in the life of Emile are marked by the different things he desires. In the first book, which takes him from birth to five years of age, his main desire is for physical activities, and he should, therefore, be placed under simple, free, and healthful conditions which will enable him to make the most of these. He must be removed to the country, where he will be close to nature, and farthest from the contaminating influences of civilization. His growth and training must be as spontaneous as possible. He must have nothing to do with either medicine or doctors, "unless his life is in evident danger; for then they can do nothing worse than kill him." His natural movements must not be restrained by caps, bands, or swaddling clothes, and he should be nursed by his own mother. He should likewise be used to baths of all sorts of temperature. In fact, the child should not be forced into any fixed ways whatsoever, since with Rousseau, habit is necessarily something contrary to impulse and so unnatural and a thing to be shunned. "The only habit," says he, "which the child should be allowed to form is to contract no habit whatsoever." His playthings should not be "gold or silver bells, coral, elaborate crystals, toys of all kinds and prices," but such simple products of nature as "branches with their fruits and flowers, or a poppy-head in which the seeds are heard to rattle." Language that is simple, plain, and hence natural, should be used with him, and he should not be hurried beyond nature in learning to talk. He should be restricted to a few words that express real thoughts for him. The education of Emile during infancy is thus to be 'negative' and purely physical. The aim is simply to keep his instincts and impulses, which Rousseau holds in the second, training, al of sense though inci dentally he is to be good by nature, free from vice, and to afford him given some the natural activity he craves. Next, in the period of idea of conchildhood, between the years of five and twelve, which property; duct and is treated in the second book, Emile desires most to touch, to see, and in other ways to sense things. This, therefore, is the time for training his senses. "As all that enters the human understanding comes there through the senses, the first reason of man is a sensuous reason. Our first teachers of philosophy are our feet, our hands, and our eyes. In order to learn to think, we must then exercise our limbs, our senses, and our organs, which are the instruments of our intelligence." To obtain this training, Emile is to wear short, loose, and scanty clothing, go bareheaded, and have the body inured to cold and heat, and be generally subjected to a 'hardening process' similar to that recommended by Locke.1 He is to learn to swim, and practice long and high jumps, leaping walls, and scaling rocks. But, what is more important, his eyes and ears are also to be exercised through natural problems in weighing, measuring, and estimating masses, heights, and distances. Drawing and constructive geometry are to be taught him, to render him more capable of observing accurately. His ear is to be rendered sensitive to harmony by learning to sing. This body and sense training should be the nearest approach to an intellectual training at this period. Rousseau condemns the usual unnatural practice of requiring pupils to learn so much before they have reached the proper years. In keeping with his 'negative' education, he asks rhetorically: "Shall I venture to state at this point the most important, the most useful, rule of all education? It is not to gain time, but to lose it." During his childhood 1 See Graves, History of Education during the Transition, p. 308; Great Educators, p. 62. |