be examined, the tutor makes him display
his wares; and, after thus giving satisfaction, folds up his pack
again, and goes his way.

My pupil is not so rich; he has no pack at all to display; he has
nothing but himself. Now a child, like a man, cannot be seen all at
once. What observer can at the first glance seize upon the child's
peculiar traits? Such observers there are, but they are uncommon; and
among a hundred thousand fathers you will not find one such.

[1] _Puer_, child; _infans_, one who does not speak.

[2] Reading these lines, we are reminded of the admirable works of
Dickens, the celebrated English novelist, who so touchingly depicts the
sufferings of children made unhappy by the inhumanity of teachers, or
neglected as to their need of free air, of liberty, of affection: David
Copperfield, Hard Times, Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Son, Oliver
Twist, Little Dorrit, and the like.

[3] Here he means Xerxes, King of Persia, who had built an immense
bridge of boats over the Hellespont to transport his army from Asia
into Europe. A storm having destroyed this bridge, the all-powerful
monarch, furious at the insubordination of the elements, ordered chains
to be cast into the sea, and had the rebellious waves beaten with rods.

[4] The feeling of a republican, of the "citizen of Geneva," justly
shocked by monarchial superstitions. Louis XIV. and Louis XV. had had,
in fact, from the days of their first playthings, the degrading
spectacle of a universal servility prostrated before their cradle. The
sentiment here uttered was still uncommon and almost unknown when
Rousseau wrote it. He did much toward creating it and making it
popular.

[5] Civil bondage, as understood by Rousseau, consists in the laws and
obligations of civilized life itself. He extols the state of nature as
the ideal condition, the condition of perfect freedom, without seeing
that, on the contrary, true liberty cannot exist without the protection
of laws, while the state of nature is only the enslavement of the weak
by the strong--the triumph of brute force.

[6] In this unconditional form the principle is inadmissible. Any one
who has the rearing of children knows this. But the idea underlying
the paradox ought to be recognized, for it is a just one. We ought not
to command merely for the pleasure of commanding, but solely to
interpret to the child the requirements of the case in hand. To
command him for the sake of command