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BOOK I, CHAPTER XXVI
221

Thus, doubtless, he will have not so many holidays[1] as the others; but as the steps that we take in walking in a gallery tire us less, although there may be three times as many, than those we take on some highway, so our lessons, coming about as if by accident, without set obligation of time and place, and being mingled with all our acts, will flow on without making themselves felt. Even games and bodily exercises will be a part of his study: running, wrestling, (c) music, (a) dancing, hunting, the management of horses and the use of weapons. I would have his exterior agreeableness and social demeanour (c) and his personal bearing (a) shape themselves at the same time with his inner being. It is not a spirit, it is not a body that we are training: it is a man; we must not separate them.[2] And, as Plato says, we must not train one of them without the other, but drive them side by side, like a pair of horses fastened to the same pole. [3] (c) And, listening to him, does he not seem to allot more time and care to the exercises of the body, and to judge that the mind may be exercised at the same time, and not the opposite?[4] (c) Meanwhile, this instruction should be carried on with grave gentleness, not as it is. Instead of inviting children to study, they bring them, in truth, nothing but fear and cruelty. Away with violence and compulsion; there is nothing, in my opinion, which so debases and stupefies a well-born nature. If you wish him to fear disgrace and punishment, do not harden him to them; harden him to sweat and cold, to the wind, to the sun, and to the chances which he ought to despise; take from him all sensitiveness and fastidiousness about his clothing and his bed, about eating and drinking; accustom him to every thing; let him not be a pretty boy and effeminate, but sturdy and vigorous. (c) In youth, in middle age, and in old age, I have always believed and thought this. But, among other things, this method of government of the greater part of our schools has always offended me. Failure would perchance be less harmful in the direction of indulgence. They are veritable prisons

  1. ↑ Il chomera moins.
  2. ↑ Il n'en faut pas faire à deux.
  3. ↑ See Plutarch, Of the preservation of health.
  4. ↑ See Plato, Laws, book VII.
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