had ever
seen one, who, through his nurse's negligence, did not know how to walk
when grown! On the contrary, how many people do we see moving
awkwardly all their lives because they have been badly taught how to
walk!

Emile shall have no head-protectors, nor carriages, nor go-carts, nor
leading-strings. Or at least from the time when he begins to be able
to put one foot before the other, he shall not be supported, except
over paved places; and he shall be hurried over these. Instead of
letting him suffocate in the exhausted air indoors, let him be taken
every day, far out into the fields. There let him run about, play,
fall down a hundred times a day; the oftener the better, as he will the
sooner learn to get up again by himself. The boon of freedom is worth
many scars. My pupil will have many bruises, but to make amends for
that, he will be always light-hearted. Though your pupils are less
often hurt, they are continually thwarted, fettered; they are always
unhappy. I doubt whether the advantage be on their side.

The development of their physical strength makes complaint less
necessary to children. When able to help themselves, they have less
need of the help of others. Knowledge to direct their strength grows
with that strength. At this second stage the life of the individual
properly begins; he now becomes conscious of his own being. Memory
extends this feeling of personal identity to every moment of his
existence; he becomes really one, the same one, and consequently
capable of happiness or of misery. We must therefore, from this
moment, begin to regard him as a moral being.

Childhood is to be Loved.

Although the longest term of human life, and the probability, at any
given age, of reaching this term, have been computed, nothing is more
uncertain than the continuance of each individual life: very few attain
the maximum. The greatest risks in life are at its beginning; the less
one has lived, the less prospect he has of living.

Of all children born, only about half reach youth; and it is probable
that your pupil may never attain to manhood. What, then, must be
thought of that barbarous education which sacrifices the present to an
uncertain future, loads the child with every description of fetters,
and begins, by making him wretched, to prepare for him some far-away
indefinite happiness he may never enjoy! Even supposing the object of
such an education reasonable, how can we without indig