SAVANTS. 37 



Bepresent to yourself one of our school play-hours: all 

 those open, ingenuous, cheerful countenances; these engaged 

 in running and jumping, those with their kites, others in 

 throwing and catching balls, and others, again, skilfully 

 striking marbles with other marbles from a great distance. 

 Recreation is the true education that belongs to this agej by 

 it we become healthy, vigorous, active, and brave. But the 

 fatal hour has struck. 



A man, with black clothes and a yellow visage, appears in 

 the court. Everything becomes silent, everything stops, 

 everything is sad. The sports of boyhood must all cease. 

 And why? No doubt, for the sake of learning a trade, an 

 occupation, to assure beforehand the independence of tlie 

 whole of their lives. Not at all. 



There are amusements for a riper age as well as for 

 childhood. Youth has no amusements : it despises them, it 

 does not want them — it requires happiness. 



Childhood in nowise desires other ages to partake of its 

 amusements. Youth would be furious if others wished to 

 take away a portion of its felicity. But mature age insists 

 upon having partakers of its amusements; which arises from 

 the circumstance of these amusements being very tiresome. 

 In fact, these said amusements consist in nothing but reading 

 and re-reading, for the hundredth time, the same Latin and 

 Greek books. 



For my part, I cannot see why each age should not be 

 left in the free enjoyment of its own pleasures, or why children 

 should be tormented during the whole of their joyous age, 

 by being taught a game which may amuse them at an age 

 they are not certain of attaining. I cannot see why they 

 should be forced to admire what they don't understand; why 

 an entirely literary education should be given to people who 

 are destined to be dispersed through all the conditions of 

 human life; or why literary studies should be confined, 

 during ten years, to the learning of the only two languages 

 that are never spoken. 



Jean Jacques Eousseau knew but very little Latin. I 

 have no need to tell you why Homer did not understand 

 Latin at all. 



That which savants do with regard to children, they do 



