“... Let him learn to make jumps, now long, now high; to climb a tree, to leap a wall. Let him always find his equilibrium; and let all his movements and gestures be regulated according to the laws of gravity, long before the science of statics intervenes to explain them to him.... When a child plays at shuttlecock he trains his eye and arm in accuracy; when he whips a top he increases his strength by using it, but without learning anything. I have sometimes asked why we do not offer children the same games of skill which men have, such as tennis, fives, billiards, bow and arrow, football, and musical instruments. I have been told, in reply, that some of these sports are beyond the strength of children, and that their limbs and organs are not sufficiently developed for the others. I find these reasons bad.... I do not mean that he shall knock the balls in our tennis courts, nor that his little hands shall be made to hold the racket of an expert; but that he shall play in a hall whose windows are protected; that at first he use only soft balls; that his first rackets shall be of wood, then of parchment, and finally of catgut stretched to accord with his progress.... To spring from one end of the hall to another, to estimate the bound of a ball still in the air, and to send it back with a strong and steady hand, such sports do not befit a man but they serve to train a youth.... “... I insist absolutely that Émile shall learn a trade,” Rousseau continues, in Book III. This is not so much for the trade itself, as for overcoming the prejudices that despise it. “His apprenticeship is already more than half done, through the tasks with which we have occupied our time up to the present moment.... He already knows how to handle the spade and the hoe; he can use the lathe, the hammer, the plane, and the file; the tools of all the trades are already familiar to him. All he has to do in addition is to acquire of some of these tools such a prompt and facile use as to make him equal in speed to good workmen using the same tools, and in this point he has a great advantage over all others; he has an agile body and flexible limbs, which can assume all sorts of attitudes without difficulty and prolong all sorts of movement without effort.... All things considered, the trade which I would rather have be to the taste of my pupil is that of cabinetmaker. It is cleanly, it is useful, and it may be practised at home; it keeps the body sufficiently exercised; it requires of the workman skill and ingenuity, and in the form of the products which utility determines, elegance and taste are not excluded....”