the shape which, in many respects, so
unfortunately for France, finally attracted the bulk of the national
sentiment and sympathy. But the vivid, humane, and inspiring pages of
_Emile_ were not published until ten years after Turgot's letter to
Madame de Graffigny:[24] a circumstance which may teach us that in moral
as in physical discoveries, though one man may take the final step and
reap the fame, the conditions have been prepared beforehand. It is
almost discouraging to think that we may reproduce such passages as the
following, without being open to the charge of slaying the slain, though
one hundred and twenty years have elapsed since it was written.

[Footnote 24: Written in 1751. _OEuv._ ii. 785-794.]

'Let Zilia show that our too arbitrary institutions have too often made
us forget nature; that we have been the dupes of our own handiwork, and
that the savage who does not know how to consult nature knows how to
follow her. Let her criticise our pedantry, for it is this that
constitutes our education of the present day. Look at the Rudiments;
they begin by insisting on stuffing into the heads of children a crowd
of the most abstract ideas. Those whom nature in her variety summons to
her by all her objects, we fasten up in a single spot, we occupy them on
words which cannot convey any sense to them, because the sense of words
can only come with ideas, and ideas only come by degrees, starting from
sensible objects.[25] But, besides, we insist on their acquiring them
without the help that we have had, we whom age and experience have
formed. We keep their imagination prisoner, we deprive them of the
sight of objects by which nature gives to the savage his first notions
of all things, of all the sciences even. We have not the coup-d'oeil
of nature.

[Footnote 25: 'On sera surpris que je compte l'etude des langues au
nombre des inutilites de l'education,' etc.--_Emile_, bk. ii.]

'It is the same with morality; general ideas again spoil all. People
take great trouble to tell a child that he must be just, temperate, and
virtuous; and has it the least idea of virtue? Do not say to your son,
_Be virtuous_, but make him find pleasure in being so; develop within
his heart the germ of sentiments that nature has placed there.[26] There
is often much more need for bulwarks against education, than against
nature. Give him opportunities of being truthful, liberal,
compassionate; rely on the human heart; leave these precious s