ho,
although not admired in youth, will make themselves respected in
manhood.

Emile shall never learn anything by heart, not even fables such as
those of La Fontaine, simple and charming as they are. For the words
of fables are no more the fables themselves than the words of history
are history itself. How can we be so blind as to call fables moral
lessons for children? We do not reflect that while these stories amuse
they also mislead children, who, carried away by the fiction, miss the
truth conveyed; so that what makes the lesson agreeable also makes it
less profitable. Men may learn from fables, but children must be told
the bare truth; if it be veiled, they do not trouble themselves to lift
the veil.[14]

Since nothing ought to be required of children merely in proof of their
obedience, it follows that they can learn nothing of which they cannot
understand the actual and immediate advantage, whether it be pleasant
or useful. Otherwise, what motive will induce them to learn it? The
art of conversing with absent persons, and of hearing from them, of
communicating to them at a distance, without the aid of another, our
feelings, intentions, and wishes, is an art whose value may be
explained to children of almost any age whatever. By what astonishing
process has this useful and agreeable art become so irksome to them?
They have been forced to learn it in spite of themselves, and to use it
in ways they cannot understand. A child is not anxious to perfect the
instrument used in tormenting him; but make the same thing minister to
his pleasures, and you cannot prevent him from using it.

Much attention is paid to finding out the best methods of teaching
children to read. We invent printing-offices and charts; we turn a
child's room into a printer's establishment.[15] Locke proposes
teaching children to read by means of dice; a brilliant contrivance
indeed, but a mistake as well. A better thing than all these, a thing
no one thinks of, is the desire to learn. Give a child this desire,
and you will not need dice or reading lotteries; any device will serve
as well. If, on the plan I have begun to lay down, you follow rules
exactly contrary to those most in fashion, you will not attract and
bewilder your pupil's attention by distant places, climates, and ages
of the world, going to the ends of the earth and into the very heavens
themselves, but will make a point of keeping it fixed upon himself and
what immedi