the earliest English versions of the "New Heloise"
appeared in 1784.]

Young people who from their cradle have been brought up in ease and
effeminacy, who have been caressed by every one, indulged in all their
caprices, and have been used to obtain easily everything they desired,
enter upon the world with many impertinent prejudices; of which they
are generally cured by frequent mortifications, affronts, and chagrin.
Now, I would willingly spare my children this kind of education by
giving them, at first, a just notion of things. I had indeed once
resolved to indulge my eldest son in everything he wanted, from a
persuasion that the first impulses of nature must be good and
salutary; but I was not long in discovering that children, conceiving
from such treatment that they have a right to be obeyed, depart from a
state of nature almost as soon as born--contracting our vices from our
example, and theirs by our indiscretion. I saw that if I indulged him
in all his humors they would only increase by such indulgence; that it
was necessary to stop at some point, and that contradiction would be
but the more mortifying as he should be less accustomed to it; but,
that it might be less painful to him, I began to use it upon him by
degrees, and in order to prevent his tears and lamentations I made
every denial irrevocable.

It is true, I contradict him as little as possible, and never without
due consideration. Whatever is given or permitted him is done
unconditionally and at the first instance; and in this we are
indulgent enough; but he never gets anything by importunity, neither
his tears nor entreaties being of any effect. Of this he is now so
well convinced that he makes no use of them; he goes his way on the
first word, and frets himself no more at seeing a box of sweetmeats
taken away from him than at seeing a bird fly away which he would be
glad to catch, there appearing to him the same impossibility of having
the one as the other; and, so far from beating the chairs and tables,
he dares not lift his hand against those who oppose him. In everything
that displeases him he feels the weight of necessity, the effect of
his own weakness.

The great cause of the ill humor of children is the care which is
taken either to quiet or to aggravate them. They will sometimes cry
for an hour for no other reason in the world than because they
perceive we would not have them. So long as we take notice of their
crying, so long have they