60 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



he must be led into the world of religion. Brought up as he has 

 been by the sense-world, the abstract scarcely finds entrance. God 

 withdraws himself from our senses. The word Spirit has meaning 

 only for the philosophers. In his fifteenth year Emile does not know 

 whether he has a soul or not. If I wished to represent stupidity 

 symbolically, I would paint a pedant teaching children out of a cate- 

 chism. They say a child should be reared in the religion of his father, 

 and prove this is the only true one, the others absurd. But suppose 

 the strength of the argument depends upon the district where they 

 use it, or upon authority, to which £mile pays no attention. How 

 then ? In what religion shall we educate him ? The answer is plain 

 — in none. We will place him in condition to choose that which the 

 best use of his reason may approve." 



The time, the thought, and the style of Rousseau's "ICmile" com- 

 bined to make it the most powerful word yet spoken for the true devel- 

 opment of education. " It was a vigorous blow against the science of 

 mere words, against the pitiable omniscience of children, against books 

 as means of instruction. Never before had the natural methods for 

 education been so forcibly thrust into the places of the miserable 

 middle-age apparatus." 



We need not delay for any extended criticism of Rousseau's 

 thought. Its radical deficiency has been often stated and acknowl- 

 edged. We phrased it as the personification of an abstraction. Be- 

 lieving in the total degeneration of humanity, believing that there was 

 nothing natural in the historic development, Rousseau would call men 

 back to Nature. How back to Nature ? Where was Nature f Not in 

 society — in Rousseau ? Certainly here, if anywhere, and with this 

 the entire thought fails, so far as respects its efficiency for a scientific 

 principle in education. Emile, separated from his unnatural fellow- 

 beings, must be guarded against the possibility of doing as they did ; 

 and yet he must be taught according to Nature. Rousseau was all 

 the nature £mi.le could have, and he would be educated naturally, 

 therefore, only so far as Rousseau corresponded to Nature. 



To break away from artificial restraints and to find Nature has fas- 

 cinated men from earliest times. One of the most beautiful illustra- 

 tions of this impossible undertaking is the Arabian romance, " Hai Ebn 

 Yokdahn " ("The Nature-Man "). This was written by Tophail, who 

 died in the year 1190, and is mentioned here merely as a reference for 

 those specially interested in these endeavors. 



It is among the Germans that we find a serious attempt to apply 

 the new ideas to the actual work of instruction. The philanthropists 

 attempted to realize the educational ideas of Rousseau. Their lead- 

 ing principles, both negative and positive, are as follows : "The uni- 

 versal condition of the world is infinitely bad. Church and state, 

 school and family, are marked by folly and wickedness. Above all, 

 the school is thoroughly defective in its very foundation. Every- 



