les leçons que les écoliers prennent entre eux dans la cour du collège leur sont cent fois plus utiles que tout ce qu’on leur dira jamais dans la classe.” (_Ém._ ij., 123.) § 30. On questions put by children, Rousseau says: “The art of questioning is not so easy as it may be thought; it is rather the art of the master than of the pupil. We must have learnt a good deal of a thing to be able to ask what we do not know. The learned know and inquire, says an Indian proverb, but the ignorant know not what to inquire about.” And from this he infers that children learn less from asking than from being asked questions. (_N. H._, 5th p. 490.) § 31. At twelve years old Émile is said to be fit for instruction. “Now is the time for labour, for instruction, for study; and observe that it is not I who arbitrarily make this choice; it is pointed out to us by Nature herself.” § 32. What novelties await us here? As we have seen Rousseau was determined to recommend nothing that would harmonise with ordinary educational practice; but even a genius, though he may abandon previous practice, cannot keep clear of previous thought, and Rousseau’s plan for instruction is obviously connected with the thoughts of Montaigne and of Locke. But while on the same lines with these great writers Rousseau goes beyond them and is both clearer and bolder than they are. § 33. Rousseau’s proposals for instruction have the following main features. 1st. Instruction is to be no longer literary or linguistic. The teaching about words is to disappear, and the young are not to learn by books or about books. 2nd. The subjects to be studied are to be mathematics and physical science. 3rd. The method to be adopted is not the didactic but the method of _self-teaching_. 4th. The hands are to be called into play as a means of learning. § 34. 1st. Till quite recently the only learning ever given in schools was book-learning, a fact to which the language of the people still bears witness: when a child does not profit by school instruction he is always said to be “no good at his book.” Now-a-days the tendency is to change the character of the schools so that they may become less and less mere “Ludi Literarii.” In this Rousseau seems to have been a century and more in advance of us; and yet we cannot credit him with any remarkable wisdom or insight about literature. He himself used books as a means of “collecting a store of ideas, true or false, but at any rate clear” (J. Morley’s _Rousseau_, j. chap. 3, p. 85), and he has recorded for us his opinion that “the sensible and interesting conversations of a young woman of merit are more proper to form a young man than all the pedantical philosophy of books” (_Confessions_, quoted by Morley j., 87). After this, whatever we may think of the merit of his suggestions we can sit at the Sage’s feet no longer.