302. The Pedagogy of the Eighteenth Century. ВЂ”

The most striking of the general characteristics of French

pedagogy in the eighteenth century, is that in it the lay spirit

comes into mortal collision with the ecclesiastical spirit.

What a contrast between the clerical preceptors of the seven-

teenth century and the philosophical educators of the eight-

eenth ! The Jesuits, all-powerful under Louis XIV., are

to be decried, condemned, and finally expelled in 1762.

The first place in the theory and in the practice of education

will belong to laymen. Rousseau is to write the Emile.

D'Alembert and Diderot will be the educational advisers of

the Empress of Russia. The parliamentarians, La Chalotais

ROUSSEAU AND THE EMILE. 279

and Rolland, will attempt to substitute for the action of the

Jesuits the action of the State, or, at least, one of the powers

of the State. Finally, with the Revolution, the lay spirit

will succeed in triumphing.

Again, the pedagogy of the eighteenth century is distin-

guished by its critical and reformatory tendencies. The

century of Louis XIV. is, in general, a century of content ;

the century of Voltaire, a, century of discontent.

Besides, the philosophical spirit, which associates the

theory of education with the laws of the human spirit, which

is not content to modify routine by a few ameliorations of

detail, which establishes general principles and aspires to an

ideal perfection, — the philosophical spirit, with its excel-

lencies and with its defects, — will come to the light in the

Eraile, and in some other writings of the same period.

Finally, and this last characteristic is but the consequence

of the others, education tends to become national, and at the

same time humane. Preparation for life replaces preparation

for death. During the whole of the eighteenth century, a

conception is in process of elaboration which the men of the

Revolution will exhibit in its true light, — that of an educa-

tion, public and national, which makes citizens, which works

for country and for real life.

303. Precursors of Rousseau. — The greatest educational

event of the eighteenth century, before the expulsion of the

Jesuits and the events of the French Revolution, is the pub-

lication of the Emile. Rousseau is undeniably the first in

rank among the founders of French pedagogy, and his influ-

ence will be felt abroad, especially in Germany. But what-

ever may be the originality of the author of the Emile, his

system is not a stroke of genius for which no preparation

had been made. He had his precursors, and he profited by

their works. A Benedictine, who might have spent his

280 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

strength to better advantage, has written a book on the

Plagiarisms of J. J. Rousseau. 1

We do not propose to treat Rousseau as a plagiarist, for be

surely has inspiration of his own, and his own boldness in

invention ; but however much of an innovator be may be, he

was inspired by Montaigne, by Locke, and without speaking

of those great masters whom he often imitated, he had his

immediate predecessors, whose ideas on certain points are in

conformity with his own.

304. The Abbe de Saint Pierre (1658-1743). — Among

the precursors of Rousseau, a place among the first must be

assigned to the Abbe* de Saint Pierre, a dreamy, fantastic

spirit, fitted more to excite curiosity than to deserve admir-

ation, whom Rousseau himself called " a man of great pro-

jects and petty views." His projects in fact were great,

at least in number. Between " a project to make sermons

more useful, and a project to make roads more passable,"

there came, in his incoherent and varied work, several pro-

jects for perfecting education in general, and the education

of girls in particular.

The dominant idea of the Abbe" de Saint Pierre is his

anxiety in behalf of moral education. In proportion as we

advance towards the era of liberty, we shall notice a grow-

ing interest in the development of the moral virtues.

The Abbe de Saint Pierre requires of man four essential

qualities : justice, benevolence, the discernment of virtue or

judgment, and, lastly, instruction, which holds but the lowest

rank. Virtue is of more worth than the knowledge of Latin.

" It cannot be said that a great knowledge of Latin is not

an excellent attainment ; but in order to acquire this knowl-

1 Doca Joseph Cajet, Les Playiats de J. J. R. de Geneve sur I'e'ducation,

1768.

ROUSSEAU AND THE EMILE. 281

edge, it is necessary to give to it an amount of time that

would be incomparably better employed in acquiring great

skill iu the observation of prudence. Those who direct edu-

cation make a very great mistake in employing tenfold too

much time in making us scholarly in the Latin tongue, and

in employing tenfold too little of it in giving us a confirmed

use of prudence." 1

But what are the means proposed by the Abbe de Saint

Pierre ? All that he has devised for organizing the teaching

of the social virtues is reduced to the requirement of reading

edifying narratives, of playing moral pieces, and of accus-

toming young people to do meritorious acts in the daily inter-

course of the school. When the lessons have been recited

and the written exercises corrected, the teacher will sa}- to

the pupil : " Do for me an act of prudence, or of justice, or

of benevolence." This is easier to say than to do. College

life scarcely furnishes occasion for the application of the

social virtues.

But the Abb6 de Saint Pierre should be credited with his

good intentions. He is the first in France to give his thought '

to this matter of professional instruction. The mechanic

arts, the positive sciences, the apprenticeship to trades, —

these things he places above the study of languages. Around

his college, and even in his college, there are to be mills,

printing offices, agricultural implements, garden tools, etc.

Was it not also an idea at once new and wise, to establish

a continuous department of public instruction, a sort of per-

manent council, charged with the reformation of methods

and with establishing, as far as possible, uniformity in all

the colleges of the kingdom ?

Finally, we shall commend the Abbe de Saint Pierre for

having persistently urged the necessity of the education of

1 (Euvrcs diverses, Tome I. p. 12.

282 THE HISTORY OP PEDAGOGY.

women. From Fenelon to the Abbe 1 de Saint Pierre, from

1680 to 1730, great progress was made in this question. We

seem already to hear Condorcet when we read the following

passage : —

"The purpose should be to instruct girls in the elements

of all the sciences and of all the arts which can enter into

ordinary conversation, and even in several things which re-

late to the different employments of men, such as the history

of their country, geography, police regulations, and the prin-

cipal civil laws, to the end that they can listen with pleasure to

what men shall say to them, ask relevant questions, and easily

keep up a conversation with their husbands on the daily

occurrences in their occupations."

For the purpose of sooner attaining his end, the Abb6 de

Saint Pierre, anticipating the centuries, demanded for women

national establishments, colleges of secondary instruction.

He did not hesitate to cloister young girls in boarding-schools,

and in boarding-schools without vacations ; and he entreated

the State to organize public courses for those who, he said,

" constitute one-half of the families in society."

305. Other Inspirers oe Rousseau. — With the eight-

eenth century there begins for modern thought, in education

as in everything else, an era of international relations, of

mutual imitation, of the action and reaction of people on

people. The Frenchman of the seventeenth century had al-

most absolutely ignored Comenius. Rousseau knows Locke,

and also the Hollander Crousaz, 1 whom, by the way, he treats

rather shabbily, speaking of him as "the pedant Crousaz."

Crousaz, however, had some good ideas. He criticised

the old methods, which make "of the knowledge of Latin

1 De Veducation des enfants, la Haye, 1722; Pense'es libres sur les in-

structions publiques des bas colleges, Amsterdam, 1727.

ROUSSEAU AND THE EMILE. 283

and Greek the principal part of education " ; and he preached

scientific instruction and moral education.

In the Spectacle of Nature, which was so popular in its

day, the Abbe Pluche also demanded that the study of the

dead languages should be abridged l : —

" Experience with the pitiable Latiuity which reigns in the

colleges of German}", Flanders, Holland, and in all places

where the habit of alwa3"s speaking Latin is current, suffices

to make us renounce this custom which prevents a young

man from speaking his own tongue correctly."

The Abb6 Pluche demanded that the time saved from

Latin be devoted to the living languages. On the other

hand, he insisted on early education, and on this point he

was the complement to his master, Rollin, who, he said,

wrote rather ' ' for the perfection of studies than for their

beginning."

Still other writers were able to suggest to Rousseau some

of the ideas which he developed in the Entile. Before him,

La Condamine declared that the Fables of La Fontaine are

above the capacity of children. 2 Before him, Bonneval, much

interested in physical education, violently criticised the use of

long clothes, and claimed for children an education of the

senses. He demanded, besides, that in early instruction, the

effort of the teacher should be limited to the keeping of evil

impressions from the childish imagination, and that instruc-

tion in the truths of religion should be held in abeyance.

We shall discover in the Emile all these ideas in outline

revived and developed with the power and with the brilliancy

of genius, sometimes transformed into boisterous paradoxes,

hut sometimes, also, transformed into solid and lasting

truths.

i Spectacle di hi nature, Paris, 1732, Vol. VI. Entretien sur V Education.

2 Lettre critique sur V Education, Paris, 1751.

284 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

306. Publication of the Emile (1762). — Rousseau has

made striking statements of nearly all the problems of edu-

cation, and he has sometimes resolved them with wisdom,

and always with originality.

Appearing in 1762, at the moment when the Parliament

was excluding the Jesuits from France, the Emile came at

the right moment in that grand overthrow of routine and

tradition to disclose new hopes to humanity, and to announce

the advent of philosophic reason in the art of educating men.

But Rousseau, in writing his book, did not think of the

Jesuits, of whom he scarcely speaks ; he wrote, not for the

man of the present, but for the future of humanity ; he com-

posed a book endowed with endless vitality, half romance,

half essay, the grandest monument of human thought on the

subject of education. The Emile, in fact, is not a work of

ephemeral polemics, nor simply a practical manual of peda-

gogy, but is a general system of education, a treatise on

psychology and moral training, a profound analysis of human

nature.

307. Was Rousseau prepared to become a Teacher? —

Before entering upon the study of the Emile, it is well to

inquire how the author had been prepared by his character

and by his mode of life to become a teacher. The history of

French literature offers nothing more extraordinary than the

life of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Everything is strange in the

destiny of that unfortunate great man. Rousseau com-

mitted great faults, especially in his youth ; but at other

moments of his life he is almost a sage, a hero of private

virtues and civic courage. He traversed all adventures and

all trades. Workman, servant, charlatan, preceptor, all in

turn ; he lodged in garrets at a sou, and experienced days

when he complained that bread was too dear. Through all

ROUSSEAU AND THE EMILE. 285

these miseries and these humiliations a soul was in process

of formation made up, above all else, of sensibility and

imagination.

Rousseau's sensibility was extreme. The child who,

unjustly treated, experienced one of those violent fits of'

passion which he has so well described in his Confessions,

and who writhed a whole night in his bed, crying " Camifex,

carnifex!" was surely not an ordinary child. "I had no

idea of things, but all varieties of feeling were already

known to me. I had conceived nothing ; I had felt every-

thing." Even a mediocre representation of Alzire made him

beside himself, and he refused witnessing the play of trage-

dies for fear of becoming ill.

The sentiment of nature early inspired him with a passion

which was not to be quenched. His philosophic optimism

and his faith in providence were never forgotten. Other

pure and generous emotions filled his soul. The study of

Plutarch had inspired him with a taste for republican virtues

and with an enthusiasm for liberty. Falsehood caused him I

a veritable horror. He had the feeling of equity in a high

degree. Later, to the hatred of injustice there was joined in

his heart an implacable resentment against the oppressors of

the people. lie had doubtless received the first germ of this

hate when, making the journey afoot from Paris to Lyons,

he entered the cabin of a poor peasant, and there found, as

in a picture, the affecting summary of the miseries of the

people.

At the same time he was an insatiable reader. He nour-

ished himself on the poets, historians, and philosophers of

antiquity, and he studied the mathematics and astronomy.

As some one has said, " That life of reading and toil, inter-

rupted by so many romantic incidents and adventurous

undertakings, had vivified his imagination as a regular course

286 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

of study in the College of Plessis could uot possibly have

done."

It is iu this way that his literary genius was formed, and,

in due order, his genius for pedagogy. We need not seek in

the life of Rousseau any direct preparation for the composi-

tion of the Emile. It is true that for a time he had been

preceptor, in 1739, in the family of Mably, but he soon

resigned duties in which he was not successful. A little

essay which he composed in 1740 l does not }^et give proof

of any great originality. On the other hand, if he loved to

observe children, he observed, alas, only the children of

others. There is nothing sadder than that page of the Confes-

sions in which he relates how he often placed himself at the

window to observe the dismission of school, in order to listen

to the conversations of children as a furtive and unseen

observer !

The Emile is thus less the result of a patient induction and

of a real experience than a work of inspiration or a brilliant

improvisation of genius.

308. General Principles of the Emile. — A certain

number of general principles run through the entire work, and

give it a systematic form and a positive character.

The first of these is the idea of the innocence and of the

perfect goodness of the child. The Emile opens with this

solemn declaration : —

' ' Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the

Author of nature ; everything degenerates in the hands of

man." And iu another place, " Let us assume as an incon-

testable maxim that the first movements of nature are always

right ; there is no original perversity in the human heart."

Without doubt Rousseau was right in opposing the pessi-

1 Projet pour V education cle M. de Ste~3Iarie.

ROUSSEAU AND THE EMILE. 287

mism of those who see in the child a being thoroughly wicked

and degraded before birth ; he is deceived in turn when he

affirms that there is no gerrn of evil in human nature.

Society is wicked and corrupt, he says, and it is from

society that all the evil comes ; it is from its pernicious

influence that the soul of the child must be preserved ! But,

we reply, how did society itself happen to be spoiled and

vitiated ? It is nothing but a collection of men ; and if the

individuals are innocent, how can the aggregate of individu-

als be wicked and perverse ? But let the contradictions of

Rousseau pass ; the important thing to note is that from his

optimism are derived the essential characteristics of the

education which he devises for Emile. This education will

be at once natural and negative : —

" Emile," says GrВЈard, " is a child of nature, brought up/

by nature, according to the rules of nature, for the satisfac-

tion of the needs of nature. This sophism is not merely in-

scribed at random on the frontispiece of the book, but is its

very soul ; and it is by reason of this sophistry that, sepa-

rated from the body of reflections and maxims that give it so

powerful an interest, Rousseau's plan of education is but a

dangerous chimera."

Everything that society has established, Rousseau con-

demns in a lump as fictitious and artificial. Conventional

usnges he despises ; and he places Emile at the school of

nature, and brings him up almost like a savage.

On the other hand, the education of Emile is negative, at

least till his twelfth year ; that is, Rousseau lets nature have

her way till then. For those who think nature evil, educa-

tion ought to be a work of compression and of repression.

But nature is good ; and so education consists simply in let-

ting her have free course. To guard the child from the shock

of opinions, to form betimes a defence about his soul, to