(_c_) The child's second period begins with his ability to speak and continues till the twelfth year. No attempt must be made to educate the child for his future, but he must be allowed to get the full enjoyment of childhood by freedom to play as he will. Let him run, jump, and test his strength, thereby acquiring judgment of the material forces about him, and learning how to take care of himself. Leave him free to do what he will, let him have what he wishes, but, as far as possible, he should be led to depend upon himself to satisfy his wants. Give him perfect freedom, for freedom is the fundamental law of education. If he disobeys, do not punish him,--disobedience works its own punishment; therefore, do not command him. The training of the senses is the important work of this period; therefore, there should be as little moral training as possible, and absolutely no religious training. The only moral idea for the child to learn is that of ownership. He is to be prevented from vice in a negative manner, that is, by never being allowed to meet it. "The only habit that a child should be allowed to form is to contract no habit." He is to have a preceptor devoted entirely to him, not to instruct or control him, but to lead him to discover and experience for himself. In regard to his intellectual instruction, Rousseau says of _Emile_ at twelve years of age, "that he has not learned to distinguish his right hand from his left." Books are entirely proscribed, and, indeed, they are useless to him as he cannot read; the only intellectual knowledge the child receives is that which comes from things through his own experience. This is a brief outline of the erratic, impossible, and inconsistent training that Rousseau provides for _Emile_ during this period when the foundation of character in the child must be laid. Greard says, "Rousseau goes beyond progressive education to recommend an education in fragments, so to speak, which isolates the faculties in order to develop them one after another, which establishes an absolute line of demarkation between the different ages, and which ends in distinguishing three stages of progress in the soul. Rousseau's error on this point is in forgetting that the education of the child ought to prepare for the education of the young man."