Lecture on Emile

Emile

(Throughout, quotations are in italics.)

First, some recap from the Second Discourse . . .

Three options for how to deal with the genealogy presented in the second Discourse (drawn in part from footnote 9).

1. Human development is bad. Let's try to go back to state of nature.
2. Human development is irreversible, even if bad. Let's just do the best with where we are.
3. Human development is good, but only if we make the best of where we are.

The main evidence for (1) in Rousseau is the tone of the second Discourse, a tone that Rousseau ascribed (in his Confessions) to the influence of Diderot. In footnote 9, Rousseau explicitly distances himself from this option, suggesting that it is a proposal "in the style of my adversaries."

Rousseau explicitly embraces (2) and (3) at different points in his later writings. (3) is pretty clear from the footnote (9) to the second Discourse that we looked at in the last class. More support for (3) is found in Emile:

The supreme being wanted to do honor to the human species in everything. While giving man inclinations without limit, He gives him at the same time the law which regulates them, in order that he may be free and in command of himself. While abandoning man to immoderate passions, He joins reason to these passions in order to govern them . . .. In addition, he adds yet another real recompense for the good use of one's faculties -- the taste we acquire for decent things when we make them the rule of our actions. All this, it seems to me, is worth more than the instinct of beasts. (Emile, 359)

Also, there is support for this view in the Social Contract. We'll look at these passages below.

There is also some support for (2), especially in Rousseau's immediate reactions to the criticisms of his first and second Discourses. For instance, he says,

For in the first place, since a vicious people never returns to virtue, the problem is not how to make good those who are no longer so, but how to keep good those who are fortunate enough to be so. In the second place, the same causes that have corrupted peoples sometimes help prevent a greater corruption; thus, a man who has ruined his temperament by an injudicious use of medicine is forced to continue to rely on doctors in order to stay alive; and that is how the arts and sciences, having fostered the vices, become necessary to keep them from turning into crimes; at least they coat them with a varnish that prevents the poison from being exuded quite so freely. They destroy virtue, but preserve its public semblance, and this at least is a fine thing to do. (in The Discourses and other early political writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 103)

Also in Emile,

By leaving the state of nature, we force our fellows to leave it too. No one can remain in it in spite of the others, and it would really be leaving it to want to remain when it is impossible to live there, for the first law of nature is the care of preserving oneself.
Thus the ideas of social relations are formed little by little in the child's mind, even before he can really be an active member of society. Emile sees that, in order to have instruments for his use, he must in addition have instruments for the use of other men with which he can obtain in exchange the things which are necessary to him and are in their power. I easily bring him to feel the need for these exchanges and to put himself in a position to profit from them. (Emile, 193)

In both (2) and (3), the practical consequences of the genealogy are similar -- we need to make the best of living in the civil condition. We cannot go back to being savages.

What does it mean to make the best of the civil condition. Well, it means trying to have all of the advantages of both society and the state of nature. What are those advantages?

Briefly, here's my take on it:

Advantages in Nature: contentment (having everything one wants), self-sufficiency (since strength is proportional to desire), natural goodness (since we have no need nor desire to do evil), freedom in the negative sense (since we are generally not prevented from doing what we want), equality since all people are basically able to get by on their own and there is no moral (i.e. customary or social) inequality.
Basically: (1) Freedom, (2) Self-sufficiency, (3) Contentment, (4) Equality.

Advantages in Civil Society: Reason, reflection, imagination, capacity to regulate one's passions (freedom in the positive sense), increased perfection (perfectibility in the positive sense), moral virtue (i.e. reflective and deliberate choosing to do one's duty rather than merely follow inclinations).
Basically: (5) Intellectual development, (6) Self-governance, (7) Moral virtue.

Getting the best of both worlds through Education: Emile.

(Much of this is directed towards how one should educate one's children, which might be a little far from your minds right now, but is always worth thinking about. More immediately important for you, Emile can be taken in large measure as an outline of an ethics . . . how to live our lives best, even how to educate ourselves.)

The challenge of Emile = to combine public with private education, to educate a man who is also a citizen. (See Emile, Bloom pp. 40-41).

He who in the civil order wishes to preserve the primacy of the sentiments of nature does not know what he wants. Always in contradiction with himself, always floating between his wishes and his duties, he will be neither a man nor a citizen. He will be good neither for himself nor for others. He will be a man of our day -- a Frenchman, an Englishman, a bourgeois. Hewill be nothing . . ..
From these contradictions arise the one which we experience ceaselessly within ourselves. Drawn this way by nature and that way by men, forced to divide ourselves between divergent impulses, we make a compromise and reach neither goal. Thus buffeted and floating throughout the course of our lives, we end it without having been able to be in harmony with ourselves -- and without having done anything good either for ourselves or for others.
There remains finally domestic education or the education of nature. But what will a man raised uniquely for himself become for others? If perhaps the proposed double aim could be resolved into one, then by removing man's contradictions we would remove a great obstacle to his happiness. To judge you must see this man full-grown; you must have observed his inclinations, watched his progress, followed his steps. In a word, natural man would have to be known. When you have read this work, I think you will have made some progress in this research. (40-41)

General tone of Emile: Working with nature!! The strategy is to raise a man by raising in accordance with nature, to raise a citizen by cultivating natural benevolence and useful perfections.

The child is at birth already a disciple, not of the governor, but of nature. The governor only studies under this first master and prevents its care from being opposed. (61, see too 363, 389).

Let us set it down as an incontestable maxim that the first movements of nature are always right. There is no original perversity in the human heart. There is not a single vice to be found in it of which it cannot be said how and whence it entered . . .. A child must respond only to what nature asks of him, and then he will do nothing but good. (92-93, see too 370).

My pupil, or rather nature's, . . . gets his education from nature and not from men. He instructs himself so much the better because he sees nowhere the intention to instruct him. (119)

So why do we need an educator at all?
The dangers of society make art and care all the more indispensable for us to forestall in the human heart the depravity born of their new needs. (214)

Although I want to form the man of nature, the object is not, for all that, to make him a savage and to relegate him to the depths of the woods. It suffices that, enclosed in a social whirlpool, he not let himself get carried away by either the opinions or the passions of men, that he see with his eyes, that he feel with his heart, that no authority govern him beyond that of his own reason. (255, see too rest of passage).

Let us not confound what is natural in the savage state with what is natural in the civil state. (406, specifically about differences in finding a suitable woman).

So how does this sort of education give the advantages of both the savage and the civil state?

1. Freedom. Emphasize the early development, no rules, letting nature take its course. Rules brought in only later, and only as self-imposed. Thus (6) takes the place of (1), but only over time. Negative freedom is transformed, through cultivation of nature, into positive freedom.

2. Self-sufficiency is emphasized in two ways.
(a) every effort is made to prevent unnecessary and unnatural desires, especially desires related to amour propre, from springing up. (See 80-81)

The truly free man wants only what he can do and does only what he pleases. That is my fundamental maxim. It need only be applied to childhood for all the rules of education to flow from it. (84, see too the rest of this passage).

Every lesson comes with the question "What is that good for?" so the pupil learns always to cultivate knowledge, skills, and even desires that are useful for meeting natural inclinations.

Use natural curiosity to promote self-perfection:
At first children are only restless; then they are curious; and that curiosity, well directed, is the motive of the age we have now reached. Let us always distinguish between the inclinations which come from nature and those which come from opinion. There is ardor to know which is founded only on the desire to be esteemed as learned; there is another ardor which is born of a curiosity natural to man concerning all that might have a connection, close or distant, with his interests. (167, see too rest of passage).

(b) Emile learns practical skills, (His first book is Robinson Crusoe. (See 184.)) Develops physical strength, etc.
But in the civil condition, self-sufficiency is also fundamentally social. Emile is a craftsman, but he has a trade that, though dependent on commerce, does not depend on opinion. He is self-sufficient in the way appropriate to one who is a member of a society.

A manual and useful trade (not a high intellectual one, nor a frivolous one that Crusoe would not have needed) is not dependent on opinion, so Emile will choose a trade like that (197). Also, unlike agriculture, a trade is mobile, hence does not depend on owning land, etc.

3. Contentment comes from self-sufficiency and resignation.
Early education, Emile must learn how to suffer.

To suffer is the first thing he ought to learn and the thing he will most need to know . . .. The well-being of freedom makes up for many wounds. My pupil will often have bruises. But, in compensation, he will always be gay. If your pupils have fewer bruises, they are always hindered, always enchained, always sad. I doubt whether the advantage will be theirs. (78).

Later, he develops a talent that does not depend on others. He learns to constrain his desires and can live with hard times when they come without suffering too much.

4. Equality. Emile will learn to esteem people based on their true merits, their virtue and service to society. Since he will also be virtuous and useful to society, he will always see himself as equal to others. Moreover, he will not look down on any, or at least not on any who do not deserve to be looked down upon.

Also, throughout early education, the main emphasis is on teaching Emile to embrace neither mastery nor servitude. Thus one must steer a balance early on between giving in to Emile and making him serve. This is accomplished by letting him do whatever he wants (though also letting him suffer the consequences) but not doing anything for him that is not either necessary for him or pleasant for the one expected to do it. That is, one must never make Emile either a master or a slave. (See e.g. p. 68, 73).

5. Intellectual development is encouraged "naturally." Recall that for Rousseau perfectibility is part of the state of nature, but there it is merely potential, The goal of education is to cultivate perfections without giving rise to unnatural desires and vices. Thus this intellectual development is always free (cuz never imposed by the teacher) and always part of self-sufficiency, since it is up to the pupil to determine what he thinks he should know to get ahead. Remember the question: "What is that good for?" which guides all knowledge. The art of the teacher is to help the student recognize what sorts of knowledge will be truly useful. This means that the student will have very little "head-knowledge" but lots of genuine knowledge. Recall that his first book is Robinson Crusoe.

An example of learning what is relevant (this is a little long, but pretty cool). I've taken this from the Emile web site mentioned above.

Suppose that while I am studying with my pupil the course of the sun and the way to find our bearings, all of a sudden he interrupts me to ask what the use of all of this is. What a fine speech I might give him! How many things I might take the opportunity to teach him in reply to his question, especially if there are any witnesses to our conversation.[Note 1] I might speak of the utility of travel, the advantages of commerce, the particular products of each climate, the customs of different peoples, the use of the calendar, the calculation of seasonal cycles for agriculture, the art of navigation, how to steer on the sea and to follow a course exactly without knowing where one is. Politics, natural history, astronomy, even morals and international law would enter into my explanation in such a way as to give my pupil a grand idea of all these sciences and a great desire to learn them. When I had finished I would have made a great display of my pedantry, but he would have not have understood a single idea. He would long to ask me as before, "What is the use of taking one's bearings?" but he would not dare for fear of making me angry. He finds it pays best to pretend to listen to what he is forced to hear. This is the way our fine education is practiced.
[622:] But Emile, who has been more simply raised and to whom we have taken pains to give a solid understanding, will hear nothing of all this. At the first word he does not understand he will run away; he will prance about the room and leave me to speechify by myself. Let us seek a more commonplace explanation; my scientific baggage is of no use to him.
[623:] We were observing the position of the forest to the north of Montmorency when he interrupted me with the usual question, "What is the use of that?" "You are right," I said. "Let us take time to think it over, and if we find that this work is not good for anything we will not take it up again, for we have plenty of useful games." We find something else to do and geography is put aside for the day.
[624:] The next morning I suggest a walk before lunch. There is nothing he would like better. Children are always ready to run, and this one has good legs. We climb up to the forest, we wander through its clearings, we get lost. We have no idea where we are, and when we want to retrace our steps we cannot find our path. Time passes. It gets hot; we get hungry and go faster; we wander vainly this way and that; we find nothing but woods, quarries, plains, with not a landmark to guide us. Very hot, very tired, very hungry, we only go further astray. We finally sit down to rest in order to deliberate. Emile, whom I assume has been raised like other children, does not deliberate, he cries. He does not know that we are at the gate of Montmorency and that a small thicket hides it from us. But a thicket is a forest to him; a man of his size is buried among bushes.
[625:] After a few moments of silence I say to him with a worried tone: my dear Emile, how are we going to get out of here?
[626:] ÉMILE, in a sweat and crying hot tears: I don't know. I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty. I can't go any further.

JEAN-JAQUES: Do you suppose I am any better off? I would cry too if I could make a lunch out of my tears. Crying is no use, we must look around us. Let's see your watch; what time is it?

ÉMILE: It is noon and I haven't eaten yet!

JEAN-JACQUES: That's true; it is noon and I haven't eaten yet.

ÉMILE: Oh you must be very hungry!.

JEAN-JACQUES: Unluckily my dinner won't come to find me. It's noon? This is exactly the time yesterday that we were observing the position of the forest from Montmorency. If only we could see the position of Montmorency from the forest --

ÉMILE: But yesterday we could see the forest, and here we cannot see the town.

JEAN-JACQUES: That's the problem . . . If we could only find our position without seeing it.

ÉMILE: Oh! my dear friend!

JEAN-JACQUES: Didn't we say the forest was --

ÉMILE: North of Montmorency.

JEAN-JACQUES: Then Montmorency must be----

ÉMILE: South of the forest.

JEAN-JACQUES: We have a way of finding the north at noon.

ÉMILE: Yes, by the direction of the shadows.

JEAN-JACQUES: But the south?

ÉMILE: What can we do?

JEAN-JACQUES: The south is opposite the north.

ÉMILE: That is true; we only need to find the opposite of the shadows. Oh, there is the south! There is the south! Montmorency must be over there! Let's look for it over there!

JEAN-JACQUES: You could be right; let's follow this path through the woods.

ÉMILE, clapping his hands and letting out a cry of joy: Oh, I see Montmorency! There it is, right in front of us, in plain view! Let's go have lunch, let's eat, let's run fast! Astronomy is good for something.

[627:] Be sure that if he does not say this last phrase, he will think it -- it does not matter which so long as I do not say it myself. He will certainly never forget this day's lesson as long as he lives, whereas if I had made him imagine all this in his room, my speech would have been forgotten the next day. One must speak as much as one can by actions and say only those things that one cannot do.

Throughout, Rousseau insists that progress occur naturally. Learning is connected back to basic natural functions and desires.

Man's first reason is the reason of his senses; this sensual reason serves as the basis of intellectual reason. Our first masters of philosophy are our feet, our hands, our eyes. To substitute books for all that is not to teach us to reason. It is to teach us to use the reason of others. It is to teach us to believe much and never to know anything. (125)

Eventually Emile does raise his mind to higher and higher sorts of knowledge, natural sciences, math, politics, etc., but always in the effort to find out stuff that is useful (for himself or others).

6. Real self-governance comes late. For most of childhood, the kid should just do whatever he wants, and then whatever he finds useful.
Here is a long section from a very important moment in Emile. Rousseau has just orchestrated a long and elaborate plot to get Emile to fall in love with a woman perfectly suited for him. The scene picks up after the two lovers have been apart for a couple days, during a time just after Emile has become engaged to her.

Again, this is a very long passage, taken from the Emile website. This is definitely worth reading closely.

[1560:] One morning when they have not seen each other for two whole days, I enter Emile's room with a letter in my hands, and looking fixedly at him I say to him, "What would you do if some one told you Sophie were dead?" He utters a loud cry, gets up and strikes his hands together, and without saying a single word, he looks at me with eyes of desperation. "Answer me," I continue with the same calmness. Vexed at my composure, he then approaches me with eyes blazing with anger; and checking himself in an almost threatenning attitude, "What would I do? I do not know; but this I do know, I would never set eyes again upon the person who. brought me such news." "Comfort yourself," I say, smiling, "she lives, she is well, and they are expecting us this evening. But let us go for a short walk and we can talk things over."
[1561:] The passion which engrosses him will no longer permit him to devote himself as in former days to discussions of pure reason; this very passion must be called to our aid if his attention is to be given to my teaching. That is why I made use of this terrible preface; I am quite sure he will listen to me now.
[1562:] "We must be happy, dear Emile. It is the aim of every feeling creature; it is the first desire taught us by nature, and the only one which never leaves us. But where is happiness? Who knows? Every one seeks it, and no one finds it. We spend our lives in the search and we die before the end is attained. My young friend, when I took you, a new-born infant, in my arms, and called God himself to witness to the vow I dared to make that I would devote my life to the happiness of your life, did I know myself what I was undertaking? No; I only knew that in making you happy, I was sure of my own happiness. By making this useful inquiry on your account, I made it for us both.
[1563:] "So long as we do not know what to do, wisdom consists in doing nothing. Of all rules there is none so greatly needed by man, and none which he is less able to obey. In seeking happiness when we do not know where it is, we are perhaps getting further and further from it; we are running as many risks as there are roads to choose from. But it is not every one that can keep still. Our passion for our own well-being makes us so uneasy that we would rather deceive ourselves in the search for happiness than sit still and do nothing; and when once we have left the place where we might have known happiness, we can never return.
[1564:] "In ignorance like this I tried to avoid a similar fault. When I took charge of you I decided to take no useless steps and to prevent you from doing so too. I kept to the path of nature, until she should show me the path of happiness. It turned out that their paths were the same, and without knowing it this was the path I followed.
[1565:] "Be at once my witness and my judge; I will never refuse to accept your decision. Your early years have not been sacrificed to those that were to follow, you have enjoyed all the good gifts which nature bestowed upon you. Of the ills to which you were by nature subject, and from which I could shelter you, you have only experienced such as would harden you to bear others. You have never suffered any evil, except to escape a greater one. You have known neither hatred nor servitude. Free and happy, you have remained just and kindly; for suffering and vice are inseparable, and no man ever became bad until he was unhappy. May the memory of your childhood remain with you to old age! I am not afraid that your kind heart will ever recall the hand that trained it without a blessing upon it.
[1566:] "When you reached the age of reason, I secured you from the influence of human prejudice; when your heart awoke I preserved you from the sway of passion. Had I been able to prolong this inner tranquillity till your life's end, my work would have been insecure, and you would have been as happy as man can be. But, my dear Emile, it was in vain that I dipped your soul in the waters of Styx, for I could not make you completely invulnerable. A fresh enemy has appeared, whom you have not yet learnt to conquer, and from whom I cannot save you. That enemy is yourself. Nature and fortune had left you free. You could face poverty, you could bear bodily pain; the sufferings of the heart were unknown to you; you were then dependent on nothing but your position as a human being. Now you depend on all the ties you have formed for yourself; you have learnt to desire, and you are now the slave of your desires. Without any change in yourself, without any insult, any injury to yourself, what sorrows may attack your soul, what pains may you suffer without sickness, how many deaths may you die and yet live! A lie, an error, a suspicion, may plunge you in despair.
[1567:] "At the theatre you used to see heroes abandoned to depths of woe, making the stage re-echo with their wild cries, lamenting like women, weeping like children, and thus securing the applause of the audience. Do you remember how shocked you were by those lamentations, cries, and groans, in men from whom one would only expect deeds of constancy and heroism. 'What? you said, 'are those the patterns we are to follow, the models set for our imitation! Are they afraid man will not be small enough, unhappy enough, weak enough, if his weakness is not enshrined under a false show of virtue?' My young friend, from now on you must be more merciful to the stage; you have become one of those heroes.
[1568:] "You know how to suffer and to die; you know how to bear the heavy yoke of necessity in the ills of the body, but you have not yet learned to give a law to the desires of your heart; and the difficulties of life arise rather from our affections than from our needs. Our desires are vast, our strength is hardly better than nothing. In his wishes man is dependent on many things; in himself he is dependent on nothing, not even on his own life. The more his connections are multiplied, the greater his sufferings. Everything upon earth has an end; sooner or later all that we love escapes from our fingers, and we behave as if it would last for ever. What was your terror at the mere suspicion of Sophie's death? Do you suppose she will live for ever? Do not young people of her age die? She must die, my son, and perhaps before you. Who knows if she is alive at this moment? Nature meant you to die only once; you have prepared a second death for yourself.
[1569:] "Thus subservient to your ungoverned passions, how pitiful you will be! Forever in the grip of deprivation, losses, fears -- you will not even enjoy what is left. You will possess nothing because of the fear of losing it. From wanting to follow only your passions you will never be able to satisfy them. You will forever be seeking repose but it will always vanish before you. You will be miserable and you will become wicked. How can you be otherwise, having no care but your unbridled desires? If you cannot put up with involuntary deprivations how will you voluntarily deprive yourself? How can you sacrifice desire to duty and resist your heart in order to listen to your reason? You would never see that man again who dared to bring you word of the death of your mistress; how would you behold him who would deprive you of her living self, him who would dare to tell you, 'She is dead to you; virtue puts a gulf between you'? If you must live with her whatever happens, whether Sophie is married or single, whether you are free or not, whether she loves or hates you, whether she is given or refused to you, no matter, it is your will and you must have her at any price. Tell me then what crime will stop a man who has no law but his heart's desires, who knows not how to resist his own passions?
[1570:] "My child, there is no happiness without courage nor virtue without a struggle. The word virtue is derived from a word signifying strength, and strength is the foundation of all virtue. Virtue is the heritage of a creature weak by nature but strong by will; that is the whole merit of the righteous man; and though we call God good we do not call Him virtuous, because He does good without effort. I waited to explain the meaning of this word, so often profaned, until you were ready to understand me. As long as virtue is quite easy to practise, there is little need to know it. This need arises with the awakening of the passions; your time has come.
[1571:] "When I brought you up in all the simplicity of nature, instead of preaching disagreeable duties I secured for you immunity from the vices which make such duties disagreeable. I made lying not so much hateful as unnecessary in your sight; I taught you not so much to give others their due as to care little about your own rights. I made you kindly rather than virtuous. But the kindly man is only kind so long as he finds it pleasant. Kindness falls to pieces with the shock of human passions; the kindly man is only kind to himself.
[1572:] "What is meant by a virtuous man? He who can conquer his affections. For then he follows his reason, his conscience; he does his duty; he is his own master and nothing can turn him from the right way. So far you have had only the semblance of liberty, the precarious liberty of the slave who has not received his orders. Now is the time for real freedom; learn to be your own master; control your heart, my Emile, and you will be virtuous.
[1573:] "There is another apprenticeship before you, an apprenticeship more difficult than the former. For nature delivers us from the evils she lays upon us, or else she teaches us to submit to them. But she has no message for us with regard to our self-imposed evils; she leaves us to ourselves; she leaves us, victims of our own passions, to succumb to our vain sorrows, to pride ourselves on the tears of which we should be ashamed.
[1574:] "This is your first passion. Perhaps it is the only passion worthy of you. If you can control it like a man, it will be the last; you will be master of all the rest, and you will obey nothing but the passion for virtue.
[1575:] "There is nothing criminal in this passion, that I know. It is as pure as the hearts which experience it. It was born of honor and nursed by innocence. Happy lovers! For you the charms of virtue only add to those of love; and the blessed union to which you are looking forward is less the reward of your goodness than of your affection. But tell me, my sincere young man, though this passion is pure, are you any the less subjected to it? Have you been made less its slave? And if to-morrow it should cease to be innocent, would you stifle it right away? Now is the time to try out your strength; there is no time for that in hours of danger. Such dangerous tests should be made when peril is at a distance. We do not practise the use of our weapons when we are face to face with the enemy; we do that before the war; we come to the battle-field already prepared.
[1576:] "It is a mistake to distinguish between permitted and forbidden passions, so as to yield to the one and refuse the other. All passions are good if we are their masters; all are bad if we abandon ourselves to them. What nature forbids us is to extend our relations beyond the limits of our strength; reason forbids us to want what we cannot get; conscience forbids us not to be tempted but to yield to temptation. To feel or not to feel a passion is beyond our control, but we can control ourselves. Every sentiment that we can control is legitimate; those which control us are criminal. A man is not guilty if he loves his neighbour's wife as long as he keeps this unhappy passion bound by the law of duty; he is guilty if he loves his own wife so greatly as to sacrifice everything to that love.
[1577:] "Do not expect me to supply you with lengthy precepts of morality. I have only one rule to give you which sums up all the rest. Be a man; restrain your heart within the limits of your manhood. Study and know these limits. However narrow they may be, we are not unhappy within them. It is only when we wish to go beyond them that we are unhappy, only when, in our mad passions, we try to attain the impossible. We are unhappy when we forget our manhood to make an imaginary world for ourselves, from which we are always slipping back into our own. The only good things, whose loss really affects us, are those which we claim as our rights. If it is clear that we cannot obtain what we want, our mind turns away from it; wishes without hope cease to torture us. A beggar is not tormented by a desire to be a king; a king only wishes to be a god when he thinks himself more than man.
[1578:] "The illusions of pride are the source of our greatest ills; but the contemplation of human suffering keeps the wise humble. He keeps to his proper place and makes no attempt to depart from it; he does not waste his strength in getting what he cannot keep; and his whole strength being devoted to the right employment of what he has, he is in reality richer and more powerf in proprtion as he desires less than we. A mortal and perishable being, would I create eternal ties to this earth, where everything changes and disappears, and from where I myself will shortly vanish! Oh, Emile! my son! if I were to lose you, what would be left of myself? And yet I must learn to lose you, for who knows when you may be taken from me?
[1579:] "Do you wish to live in wisdom and happiness? Then attach your heart only to beauty that is eternal. Let your desires be limited by your position, let your duties take precedence over your wishes; extend the law of necessity into the region of morals; learn to lose what may be taken from you; learn to forsake all things at the command of virtue, to set yourself above the chances of life, to detach your heart before it is torn in pieces, to be brave in adversity so that you may never be wretched, to be steadfast in duty that you may never be guilty of a crime. Then you will be happy in spite of fortune, and good in spite of your passions. You will find a pleasure that cannot be destroyed, even in the possession of the most fragile things. You will possess them, they will not possess you, and you will realise that the man from whom everything escapes only enjoys what he knows how to lose. It is true you will not enjoy the illusions of imaginary pleasures; neither will you feel the sufferings which are their result. You will profit greatly by this exchange, for the sufferings are real and frequent, the pleasures are rare and empty. Victor over so many deceitful ideas, you will also vanquish the idea that attaches such an excessive value to life. You will spend your life in peace, and you will leave it without terror; you will detach yourself from life as from other things. Let others, horror-struck, believe that when this life is ended they cease to be. Conscious of the nothingness of life, you will think that you are only entering upon the true life. To the wicked, death is the close of life; to the just it is its beginning."
[1580:] Emile hears me with attention not unmixed with anxiety. After such a startling preface he feared some gloomy conclusion. He foresees that when I show him how necessary it is to practise the strength of the soul, I desire to subject him to this stern discipline; and like a wounded man who shrinks from the surgeon, he believes he already feels the painful but healing touch which will cure the deadly wound.

7. Moral virtue has a couple aspects. (See too 286ff., 325, 327, 381-83) First, Emile will have reason and concepts, because they are useful. Second, he will have genuine concern for the common good because one of his strongest sentiments is natural benevolence, pity cultivated into a cosmopolitan feeling. Third, he will have a deep attachment to virtue and duty itself, duties of justice as well as benevolence, because these constitute the natural basis of his self-esteem, and he has a natural interest in his self-esteem.

Passions are natural and should not be opposed (212). Benevolence springs naturally from a child's love for those around him, since those around him are beneficial to him (213).

So long as his sensibility remains limited to his own individuality, there is nothing moral in his actions. It is only when it begins to extend outside of himself that it takes on, first, the sentiments and, then, the notions of good and evil which truly constitute him as a man and an integral part of his species. (219-20).

Friendship --> pity --> humanity, beneficence, etc. . . We cultivate and broaden the scope of pity to create cosmopolitan fellow-feeling.

As soon as he loves, he depends on his attachments. Thus are formed the first bonds uniting him to his species . . .. It will be only after having cultivated his nature in countless ways, after many reflections on his own sentiments and on those he observes in others, that he will be able to get to the point of generalizing his individual notions under the abstract idea of humanity and to join to his particular affections those which can make him identify with his species. (233)

Gratitude & Friendship -->
Finally we enter the moral order. We have just made a second step into manhood. If this were the place for it, I would try to show how the first voices of conscience arise out of the first movements of the heart, and how the first notions of good and bad are born of the sentiments of love and hate. I would show that justice and goodness are not merely abstract words -- pure moral beings formed by the understanding -- but as true affections of the soul enlightened by reason, and hence only an ordered development of our primitive affections; that by reason alone, independent of conscience, no natural law can be established; and that the entire right of nature is only a chimera if it is not founded on a natural need in the human heart. (235, see too 286-90)

The exercise of the social virtues brings the love of humanity to the depths of one's heart . . .. Let the interests of indigents always be his. (250)

Since he takes so much interest in his fellows, it is impossible that he not learn early to weigh and appraise their actions, their tastes, and their pleasures and to evaluate what can contribute to or detract from men's happiness more accurately than can those who are interested in no one and never do anything for others . . .. It is of little importance to him who gets a greater share of happiness provided that is contributes to the greatest happiness of all. This is the wise man's first interest after his private interest, for each is part of his species and not of another individual. To prevent pity from degenerating into weakness, it must, therefore, be generalized and extended to the whole of mankind. Then one yields to it only insofar as it accords with justice, because of all the virtues justice is the one that contributes most to the common good of men. For the sake of reason, for the sake of love of ourselves, we must have pity for our species still more than for our neighbor . . . (253)

Also, NATURAL THEOLOGY --> ETHICS.

I adore the supreme power, and I am moved by his benefactions. I do not need to be taught this worship; it is dictated to me by nature itself (278).

Emile is brought to love and adoration of God by contemplating his creation. This gives a new motive to do one's duty.

It was simple to rise from the study of nature to the quest for its Author. When we have gotten there, what new holds we have given ourselves over our pupil. [But note that the holds are internal to the pupil. Self-governance.] how many new means we have for speaking to his heart. It is only then that he finds his true interest in being good, in doing good far from the sight of men and without being forced by the laws, in being just between God and himself, in fulfilling his duty, even at the expense of his life, and in carrying virtue in his heart. He does this not only for the love of order, to which each of us always prefers love of self, but for the love of the Author of his being -- a love which is confounded with that same love of self -- and finally, for the enjoyment of that durable happiness which the repose of a good conscience and the contemplation of the Supreme Being promise him in the other life after he has spent this one well. (314, see too rest of passage).

Development of child is from the "law of necessity," when his needs are greater than his ability, to the law of "what is useful" in his adolescence to the law of "what is suitable and good" (167).

The happiness of the natural man is as simple as his life. It consists in not suffering, health, freedom, and the necessities of life constitute it. The happiness of the moral man is something different. (177)

If he does not use polite formulas, he does have humane concerns. (336)

In the end, Rousseau says of his student Emile:

If he had been born in the heart of the woods, he would have lived happier and freer, but he would have had nothing ot combat in order to follow his inclination, and thus he would have been good without merit; he would not have been virtuous; and now he know how to be so in spite of his passions. The mere appearance of order brings him to know order and to love it. The public good, which serves others only as a pretext, is a real motive for him alone. He learns to struggle with himself, to conquer himself, to sacrifice his interest to the common interest. It is not true that he draws no profit from the laws/ they give him the courage to be just even among wicked men. It not true that they have not made him free. They have taught him to reign over himself.

And with that, we must turn to the Social Contract.