Book II - Age 5 to Age 12 - Page 2

or even to do itself any serious harm, unless
it has been foolishly left on a high place, or alone near the fire,
or within reach of dangerous weapons. What is there to be said for
all the paraphernalia with which the child is surrounded to shield
him on every side so that he grows up at the mercy of pain, with
neither courage nor experience, so that he thinks he is killed by
a pin-prick and faints at the sight of blood?

With our foolish and pedantic methods we are always preventing children
from learning what they could learn much better by themselves, while
we neglect what we alone can teach them. Can anything be sillier
than the pains taken to teach them to walk, as if there were any
one who was unable to walk when he grows up through his nurse's
neglect? How many we see walking badly all their life because they
were ill taught?

Emile shall have no head-pads, no go-carts, no leading-strings;
or at least as soon as he can put one foot before another he shall
only be supported along pavements, and he shall be taken quickly
across them. [Footnote: There is nothing so absurd and hesitating
as the gait of those who have been kept too long in leading-strings
when they were little. This is one of the observations which are
considered trivial because they are true.] Instead of keeping him
mewed up in a stuffy room, take him out into a meadow every day;
let him run about, let him struggle and fall again and again, the
oftener the better; he will learn all the sooner to pick himself
up. The delights of liberty will make up for many bruises. My
pupil will hurt himself oftener than yours, but he will always be
merry; your pupils may receive fewer injuries, but they are always
thwarted, constrained, and sad. I doubt whether they are any better
off.

As their strength increases, children have also less need for tears.
They can do more for themselves, they need the help of others less
frequently. With strength comes the sense to use it. It is with
this second phase that the real personal life has its beginning; it
is then that the child becomes conscious of himself. During every
moment of his life memory calls up the feeling of self; he becomes
really one person, always the same, and therefore capable of joy
or sorrow. Hence we must begin to consider him as a moral being.

Although we know approximately the limits of human life and our
chances of attaining those limits, nothing is more uncertain than
the length of the life of any one of us. Very few reach old age.
The chief risks occur at the beginning of life; the shorter our
past life, the less we must hope to live. Of all the children who
are born scarcely one half reach adolescence, and it is very likely
your pupil will not live to