Emile | Page 5

a man nor a citizen. He will be of no use to himself nor to others. He will be a
man of our day, a Frenchman, an Englishman, one of the great middle class.
To be something, to be himself, and always at one with himself, a man must act as he
speaks, must know what course he ought to take, and must follow that course with vigour

and persistence. When I meet this miracle it will be time enough to decide whether he is a
man or a citizen, or how he contrives to be both.
Two conflicting types of educational systems spring from these conflicting aims. One is
public and common to many, the other private and domestic.
If you wish to know what is meant by public education, read Plato's Republic. Those who
merely judge books by their titles take this for a treatise on politics, but it is the finest
treatise on education ever written.
In popular estimation the Platonic Institute stands for all that is fanciful and unreal. For
my own part I should have thought the system of Lycurgus far more impracticable had he
merely committed it to writing. Plato only sought to purge man's heart; Lycurgus turned
it from its natural course.
The public institute does not and cannot exist, for there is neither country nor patriot. The
very words should be struck out of our language. The reason does not concern us at
present, so that though I know it I refrain from stating it.
I do not consider our ridiculous colleges [Footnote: There are teachers dear to me in
many schools and especially in the University of Paris, men for whom I have a great
respect, men whom I believe to be quite capable of instructing young people, if they were
not compelled to follow the established custom. I exhort one of them to publish the
scheme of reform which he has thought out. Perhaps people would at length seek to cure
the evil if they realised that there was a remedy.] as public institutes, nor do I include
under this head a fashionable education, for this education facing two ways at once
achieves nothing. It is only fit to turn out hypocrites, always professing to live for others,
while thinking of themselves alone. These professions, however, deceive no one, for
every one has his share in them; they are so much labour wasted.
Our inner conflicts are caused by these contradictions. Drawn this way by nature and that
way by man, compelled to yield to both forces, we make a compromise and reach neither
goal. We go through life, struggling and hesitating, and die before we have found peace,
useless alike to ourselves and to others.
There remains the education of the home or of nature; but how will a man live with
others if he is educated for himself alone? If the twofold aims could be resolved into one
by removing the man's self-contradictions, one great obstacle to his happiness would be
gone. To judge of this you must see the man full-grown; you must have noted his
inclinations, watched his progress, followed his steps; in a word you must really know a
natural man. When you have read this work, I think you will have made some progress in
this inquiry.
What must be done to train this exceptional man! We can do much, but the chief thing is
to prevent anything being done. To sail against the wind we merely follow one tack and
another; to keep our position in a stormy sea we must cast anchor. Beware, young pilot,
lest your boat slip its cable or drag its anchor before you know it.

In the social order where each has his own place a man must be educated for it. If such a
one leave his own station he is fit for nothing else. His education is only useful when fate
agrees with his parents' choice; if not, education harms the scholar, if only by the
prejudices it has created. In Egypt, where the son was compelled to adopt his father's
calling, education had at least a settled aim; where social grades remain fixed, but the
men who form them are constantly changing, no one knows whether he is not harming
his son by educating him for his own class.
In the natural order men are all equal and their common calling is that of manhood, so
that a well-educated man cannot fail to do well in that calling and those related to it. It
matters little to me whether my pupil is intended for the army, the church, or the law.
Before his parents chose a calling for him nature called him to be a man. Life is the trade
I would teach him. When he leaves