When we have reached this point, what a fresh hold we have got over
our pupil; what fresh ways of speaking to his heart! Then alone
does he find a real motive for being good, for doing right when he
is far from every human eye, and when he is not driven to it by
law. To be just in his own eyes and in the sight of God, to do his
duty, even at the cost of life itself, and to bear in his heart
virtue, not only for the love of order which we all subordinate
to the love of self, but for the love of the Author of his being,
a love which mingles with that self-love, so that he may at length
enjoy the lasting happiness which the peace of a good conscience
and the contemplation of that supreme being promise him in another
life, after he has used this life aright. Go beyond this, and I see
nothing but injustice, hypocrisy, and falsehood among men; private
interest, which in competition necessarily prevails over everything
else, teaches all things to adorn vice with the outward show of
virtue. Let all men do what is good for me at the cost of what is
good for themselves; let everything depend on me alone; let the
whole human race perish, if needs be, in suffering and want, to
spare me a moment's pain or hunger. Yes, I shall always maintain
that whoso says in his heart, "There is no God," while he takes
the name of God upon his lips, is either a liar or a madman.
Reader, it is all in vain; I perceive that you and I shall never
see Emile with the same eyes; you will always fancy him like your
own young people, hasty, impetuous, flighty, wandering from fete to
fete, from amusement to amusement, never able to settle to anything.
You smile when I expect to make a thinker, a philosopher, a young
theologian, of an ardent, lively, eager, and fiery young man,
at the most impulsive period of youth. This dreamer, you say, is
always in pursuit of his fancy; when he gives us a pupil of his
own making, he does not merely form him, he creates him, he makes
him up out of his own head; and while he thinks he is treading in
the steps of nature, he is getting further and further from her.
As for me, when I compare my pupil with yours, I can scarcely find
anything in common between them. So differently brought up, it is
almost a miracle if they are alike in any respect. As his childhood
was passed in the freedom they assume in youth, in his youth he
begins to bear the yoke they bore as children; this yoke becomes
hateful to them, they are sick of it, and they see in it nothing
but their masters' tyranny; when they escape from childhood, they
think they must shake off all control, they make up for the prolonged
restraint imposed upon them, as a prisoner, freed from his fetters,
moves and stretches and shakes his limbs. [Footnote: There is no
one who looks down upon childhood with such lofty scorn as those
who are barely grown-up; just as there is no country where rank is
more strictly regarded than that where there is little real inequality;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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