Eloisa · Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Letter CXXXVII. To Lord B----.
We have had visitors for some days past. They left us yesterday, and we renewed that agreeable society subsisting between us three, which is by so much the more delightful, as there is nothing, even in the bottom of our hearts, that we desire to hide from each other. What a pleasure do I take, in resuming a new being, which renders me worthy of your confidence. At every mark of esteem which I receive from Eloisa and her husband, I say to myself, with an air of self- sufficiency, At length I may venture to appear before Lord B----. It is with your assistance, it is under your eyes, that I hope to do honour to my present situation by my past follies. If an extinguished passion casts the mind into a state of dejection, a passion subdued adds to the consciousness of victory, a new elevation of sentiment, a more lively attachment to all that is sublime and beautiful. Shall I lose the fruit of a sacrifice, which hath cost me so dear? No, my Lord; I feel that, animated by your example, my heart is going to profit by all those arduous sentiments it has conquered. I feel, that it was necessary for me to be what I was, in order for me to become what I am.
After having thrown away six days, in frivolous conversation with persons indifferent to us, we passed yesterday morning, after the manner of the English, in company and silence; tasting at once the pleasure of being together and the sweetness of self-recollection. How small a part of mankind know any thing of the pleasures of this situation! I never saw a person in France who had the least idea of it. The conversation of friends, say they, can never be exhausted. It is true, the tongue may easily find words for common attachments: but friendship, my Lord, friendship! thou animating celestial sentiment! what language is worthy of thee? What tongue presumes to be thy interpreter? Can any thing spoken to a friend equal what is felt in his company? Good God I how many things are conveyed by a squeeze of the hand, by an animating look, by an eager embrace, by a sigh that rises from the bottom of the heart! And how cold in comparison is the first word which is spoken after that! I shall never forget the evenings I passed at Besancon, those delightful moments sacred to silence and friendship. Never, Oh B----! Thou noblest of men! sublimest of friends! No, never have I undervalued what you then did for me; never have my lips presumed to mention it. It is certain, that this state of contemplation affords the greatest delight to susceptible minds. But I have always observed, that impertinent visitors prevent one from enjoying it, and that friends ought to be by themselves, to be at liberty to say nothing. At such a time one should be, if one may use the expression, collected in each other; the least avocation is destructive, the least constraint is insupportable. It is then so sweet to pronounce the dictates of the heart without restraint. It seems as if one dared to think freely only of what one can as freely speak; it seems as if the presence of a stranger restrained the sentiment, and compressed those hearts, which could so fully dictate themselves alone.
Two hours passed away in this silent extasy, more delightful, a thousand times, than the frigid repose of the deities of Epicurus. After breakfast, the children came, as usual, into the apartment of Eloisa; who, instead of retiring and shutting herself up with them in the work-room, according to custom, kept them with her, as if to make them some amends for the time they had lost without seeing us:----and we none of us parted till dinner. Harriot, who begins to know how to handle her needle, sat at work before Fanny, who was weaving lace, and rested her cushion on the back of her little chair. The two boys were busy at a table turning over the leaves of a book of prints, the subject of which the eldest explained to the younger; Harriot, who knew the whole by heart, being attentive to, and correcting him when wrong: and sometimes, pretending to be ignorant what figures they were at, she made it a pretence to rise, and go backwards and forwards from the chair to the table. During these little lessons, which were given and taken with little pains and less restraint, the younger boy was playing with some counters which he had secreted under the book.
Mrs. Wolmar was at work on some embroidery near the window opposite the children, and her husband and I were still sitting at the tea-table, reading the Gazette, to which she gave but little attention. But when we came to the article, which mentions the illness of the king of France, and the singular attachment of his people, unequalled by any thing but that of the Romans for Germanicus, she made some reflections on the disposition of that affectionate and benevolent nation, whom all the world hate, whilst they have no hatred to any one; adding, that she envied only a sovereign the power of making himself beloved. To this her husband replied, You have no need to envy a sovereign, who have so long had us all for your subjects. On which she turned her head, and cast a look on him so affecting and tender, that it struck me prodigiously. She said nothing indeed; for what could she say equal to such a look? Our eyes met: and I could perceive, by the manner in which her husband pressed my hand, that the same emotion had affected us all three, and that the delightful influence of her expansive heart diffused itself around, and triumphed over insensibility itself. We were thus disposed when that silent scene began, of which I just now spoke: you may judge, that it was not the consequence of coldness or chagrin. It was first interrupted by the little management of the children; who, nevertheless, as soon as we left off speaking, moderated their prattle, as if afraid of disturbing the general silence. The little teacher was the first that lowered her voice, made signs to the others, and ran about on tip toe, while their play became the more diverting by this light constraint. This scene, which seemed to present itself in order to prolong our tenderness, produced its natural effect.
_Ammutiscon le lingue, e parlan l’alme._ How many things may be said without opening one’s lips! How warm the sentiments that may be communicated, without the cold interposition of speech! Eloisa insensibly permitted her attention to be engaged by the same object. Her eyes were fixed on the three children; and her heart, ravished with the most enchanting extasy, animated her charming features with all the affecting sweetness of maternal tenderness. Thus given up to this double contemplation, Wolmar and I were indulging our reveries, when the children put an end to them. The eldest, who was diverting himself with the prints, seeing the counters prevented his brother from being attentive, took an opportunity, when he had piled them up, to give them a knock and throw them down on the floor. Marcellin fell a crying; and Eloisa, without troubling herself to quiet him, bid Fanny pick up the counters. The child was immediately hushed; the counters were nevertheless not brought him, nor did he begin to cry again as I expected. This circumstance, which however was nothing in itself, recalled to my mind a great many others, to which I had given no attention; and when I think of them, I don’t remember ever to have seen children, with so little speaking to, give so little trouble. They hardly ever are out of their mother’s sight, and yet one can hardly perceive they are in company. They are lively and playful, as children of their age should be, but never clamorous or teizing; they are already discreet, before they know what discretion is. But what surprizes me most, is, that all this appears to be brought about of itself; and that, with such an affectionate tenderness for her children, Eloisa seems to give herself so little concern about them. In fact, one never sees her very earnest to make them speak or hold their tongues, to make them do this or let that alone. She never disputes with them; she never contradicts them in their amusements: so that one would be apt to think she contented herself with seeing and loving them; and that when they have passed the day with her, she had discharged the whole duty of a mother towards them.
But, though this peaceable tranquility appears more agreeable in contemplation than the restless solicitude of other mothers, yet I was not a little surprized at an apparent indolence, so little agreeable to her character. I would have had her even a little discontented, amidst so many reasons to the contrary; so well doth a superfluous activity become maternal affection! I would willingly have attributed the goodness of the children to the care of the mother; and should have been glad to have observed more faults in them, that I might have seen her more solicitous to correct them. Having busied myself with these reflections a long time in silence, I at last determined to communicate them to her. I see, said I, one day, that heaven rewards virtuous mothers, in the good disposition of their children; but the best disposition must be cultivated. Their education ought to begin from the time of their birth. Can there be a time more proper to form their minds, than when they have received no impression that need to be effaced? If you give them up to themselves in their infancy, at what age do you expect them to be docile? While you have nothing else to teach them, you ought to teach them obedience. Why, returned she, do my children disobey me? That were difficult, said I, as you lay no commands upon them. On this she looked at her husband and laughed; then, taking me by the hand, she led me into the closet, that we might converse without being heard by the children.
Here, explaining her maxims at leisure, she discovered to me, under that air of negligence, the most vigilant attention of maternal tenderness. I was a long time, said she, of your opinion with regard to the premature instruction of children; and while I expected my first child, was anxious concerning the obligations I should soon have to discharge. I used often to speak to Mr. Wolmar on that subject. What better guide could I take than so sensible an observer, in whom the interest of a father was united to the indifference of a philosopher? He fulfilled, and indeed surpassed my expectations. He soon made me sensible, that the first and most important part of education, precisely that which all the world neglects, [78] is that of preparing a child to receive instruction. The common error of parents, who pique themselves on their own knowledge, is to suppose their children capable of reasoning as soon as they are born, and to talk to them as if they were grown persons before they can speak. Reason is the instrument they use, whereas every other means ought first to be used in order to form that reason; for it is certain, that, of all the knowledge which men acquire, or are capable of acquiring, the art of reasoning is the last and most difficult to learn. By talking to them, at so early an age, in a language they do not understand, they learn to be satisfied with mere words; to talk to others in the same manner; to contradict every thing that is said to them; to think themselves as wise as their teachers: and all that one thinks to obtain by reasonable motives, is in fact acquired only by those of fear or vanity.
The most consummate patience would be wearied out, by endeavouring to educate a child in this manner: and thus it is that, fatigued and disgusted with the perpetual importunity of their children, their parents, unable to support the noise and disorder they themselves have given rise to, are obliged to part with them, and to deliver them over to the care of a master; as if one could expect in a preceptor more patience and good-nature than in a father. Nature, continued Eloisa, would have children be children before they are men. If we attempt to pervert that order, we produce only forward fruit, which has neither maturity nor flavour, and will soon decay; we raise young professors and old children. Infancy has a manner of perceiving, thinking and feeling, peculiar to itself. Nothing is more absurd than to think of substituting ours in its stead; and I would as soon expect a child of mine to be five foot high, as to have a mature judgment, at ten years old. The understanding does not begin to form itself till after some years, and when the corporeal organs have acquired a certain confidence. The design of nature is therefore evidently to strengthen the body, before the mind is exercised. Children are always in motion; rest and reflection is inconsistent with their age; a studious and sedentary life would prevent their growth and injure their health; neither their body nor mind can support restraint. Shut up perpetually in a room with their books, they lose their vigour, become delicate, feeble, sickly, rather stupid than reasonable; and their minds suffer, during their whole lives, for the weakness of their bodies.
But, supposing such premature instruction were as profitable as it is really hurtful to their understandings, a very great inconvenience would attend the application of it to all indiscriminately, without regard to the particular genius of each. For, besides the constitution common to its species, every child at its birth possesses a peculiar temperament, which determines its genius and character; and which it is improper either to pervert or restrain; the business of education being only to model and bring it to perfection. All these characters are, according to Mr. Wolmar, good in themselves: for nature, says he, makes no mistakes. [79] All the vices imputed to malignity of disposition are only the effect of the bad form it hath received. According to him, there is not a villain upon earth, whose natural propensity, well directed, might not have been productive of great virtues; nor is there a wrong-head in being, that might not have been of use to himself and society, had his natural talents taken a certain bias; just as deformed and monstrous images are rendered beautiful and proportionable, by placing them in a proper point of view. Every thing, says he, tends to the common good in the universal system of nature.
Every man has his place assigned in the best order and arrangement of things; the business is to find out that place, and not to disturb such order. What must be the consequence then of an education begun in the cradle, and carried on always in the same manner, without regard to the vast diversity of temperaments and genius in mankind? Useless or hurtful instructions would be given to the greater part, while at the same time they are deprived of such as would be most useful and convenient; nature would be confined on every side, and the greatest qualities of the mind defaced, in order to substitute in their place mean and little ones, of no utility. By using indiscriminately the same means with different talents, the one serves to deface the other, and all are confounded together. Thus, after a great deal of pains thrown away in spoiling the natural endowments of children, we presently see those transitory and frivolous ones of education decay and vanish, while those of nature, being totally obscured, appear no more: and thus we lose at once what we have pulled down, and what we have raised up. In a word, in return for so much pains indiscreetly taken, all these little prodigies become wits without sense, and men, without merit, remarkable only for their weakness and insignificancy.
I understand your maxims, said I to Eloisa; but I know not how to reconcile them with your own opinion on the little advantage arising from the display of the genius and natural talents of individuals, either respecting their own happiness or the real interests of society. Would it not be infinitely better to form a perfect model of a man of sense and virtue, and then to form every child by education after such a model, by animating one, retraining another, by regulating its passions, improving its understanding, and thus correcting nature?----Correcting nature! says Mr. Wolmar, interrupting me, that is a very fine expression; but before you make use of it, pray reply to what Eloisa has already advanced. The most significant reply, as I thought, was to deny the principle on which her arguments were founded; which I accordingly did. You suppose, said I, that the diversity of temperament and genius, which distinguish individuals, is the immediate work of nature; whereas nothing is less evident. For, if our minds are naturally different, they must be unequal; and if nature has made them unequal, it must be by endowing some, in preference to others, with a more refined perception, a greater memory, or a greater capacity of attention. Now, as to perception and memory, it is proved by experience, that their different degrees of extent or perfection are not the standard of genius and abilities; and as to a capacity of attention, it depends solely on the force of the passions by which we are animated; and it is also proved that all mankind are by nature susceptible of passions, strong enough to excite in them that degree of attention necessary to a superiority of genius.
If a diversity of genius, therefore, instead of being derived from nature, be the effect of education; that is to say, of the different ideas and sentiments, which objects excite in us during our infancy, of the various circumstances in which we are engaged, and of all the impressions we receive; so far should we be from waiting to know the character of a child before we give it education, that we should, on the contrary, be in haste to form its character by giving it a proper education. To this he replied, that it was not his way to deny the existence of any thing, because he could not explain it. Look, says he, upon those two dogs in the court-yard. They are of the same litter; they have been fed and trained together; have never been parted; and yet one of them is a brisk, lively, good-natured, docible cur; while the other is lumpish, heavy, cross-grained, and incapable of learning any thing. Now their difference of temperament, only, can have produced in them that of character, as the difference of our interior organization produces in us that of our minds: in every other circumstance they have been alike.----Alike! interrupted I; what a vast difference may there not have been, though unobserved by you? How many minute objects may not have acted on the one, and not on the other! How many little circumstances may not have differently affected them, which you have not perceived! Very pretty indeed, says he; so, I find you reason like the astrologers; who, when two men are mentioned of different fortune yet born under the same aspect, deny the identity of circumstances. On the contrary, they maintain, that, on account of the rapidity of the heavenly motions, there must have been an immense distance between the themes, in the horoscope, of the one and the other; and that, if the precise moment of their births had been carefully noted, the objection had been converted into a proof.
But, pray, let us leave these subtilties, and confine ourselves to observation. This may teach us, indeed, that there are characters which are known almost at the birth, and children that may be studied at the breast of their nurses: but these are of a particular class, and receive their education in beginning to live. As for others, who are later known, to attempt to form their genius before their characters are distinguished, is to run a risk of spoiling what is good in their natural dispositions, and substituting what is worse in its place. Did not your master Plato maintain, that all the art of man, that all philosophy could not extract from the human mind what nature had not implanted there; as all the operations in chemistry are incapable of extracting from any mixture more gold than is already contained in it? This is not true of our sentiments or our ideas; but it is true of our disposition or capacity of acquiring them. To change the genius, one must be able to change the interior organization of the body; to change a character, one must be capable of changing the temperament on which it depends.
Have you ever heard of a passionate man’s becoming patient and temperate, or of a frigid methodical genius having acquired a spirited imagination? For my own part, I think it would be just as easy to make a fair man brown, or a blockhead a man of sense. ’Tis in vain then to attempt to model different minds by one common standard. One may restrain, but we can never change them: one may hinder men from appearing what they are, but can never make them really otherwise; and, though they disguise their sentiments in the ordinary commerce of life, you will see them reassume their real characters on every important occasion. Besides, our business is not to change the character, and alter the natural disposition of the mind, but, on the contrary, to improve and prevent its degenerating; for by these means it is, that a man becomes what he is capable of being, and that the work of nature is compleatd by education. Now, before any character can be cultivated, it is necessary that it should be studied; that we should patiently wait its opening; that we should furnish occasions for it to display itself; and that we should forbear doing any thing, rather than doing wrong. To one genius it is necessary to give wings, and to another shackles; one should be spurred forward, another reined in; one should be encouraged, another intimidated; sometimes it should be checked, and at others assisted. One man is formed to extend human knowledge to the highest degree; to another it is even dangerous to learn to read. Let us wait for the opening of reason; it is that which displays the character, and gives it its true form: it is by that also it is cultivated, and there is no such thing as education before the understanding is ripe for instruction.
As to the maxims of Eloisa, which you think opposite to this doctrine, I see nothing in them contradictory to it: on the contrary, I find them, for my own part, perfectly compatible. Every man at his birth brings into the world with him, a genius, talents and character peculiar to himself. Those, who are destined to live a life of simplicity in the country, have no need to display their talents in order to be happy: their unexerted faculties are like the gold mines of the Valais, which the public good will not permit to be opened. But in a more polished society, where the head is of more use than the hands, it is necessary that all the talents nature hath bestowed on men should be exerted; that they should be directed to that quarter, in which they can proceed the furthest; and above all, that their natural propensity should be encouraged by every thing which can make it useful. In the first case, the good of the species only is consulted; every one acts in the same manner; example is their only rule of action; habit their only talent; and no one exerts any other genius than that which is common to all: Whereas in the second case we consult the interest and capacity of individuals; if one man possess any talent superior to another, it is cultivated and pursued as far as it will reach; and if a man be possessed of adequate abilities, he may become the greatest of his species. These maxims are so little contradictory, that they have been put in practice in all ages. Instruct not therefore the children of the peasant, nor of the citizen, for you know not as yet what instruction is proper for them. In every case let the body be formed, till the judgment begins to appear: then is the time for cultivation.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.