You will charge me with falling into the mistake of those fathers I have reproached for sacrificing their children's happiness to considerations of a far-away future that may never be. Not so; for the freedom I give my pupil will amply supply him with the slight discomforts to which I leave him exposed. I see the little rogues playing in the snow, blue with cold, and scarcely able to move their fingers. They have only to go and warm themselves, but they do nothing of the kind. If they are compelled to do so, they feel the constraint a hundred times more than they do the cold. Why then do you complain? Shall I make your child unhappy if I expose him only to those inconveniences he is perfectly willing to endure? By leaving him at liberty, I do him service now; by arming him against the ills he must encounter, I do him service for the time to come. If he could choose between being my pupil or yours, do you think he would hesitate a moment? Can we conceive of any creature's being truly happy outside of what belongs to its own peculiar nature? And if we would have a man exempt from all human misfortunes, would it not estrange him from humanity? Undoubtedly it would; for we are so constituted that to appreciate great good fortune we must be acquainted with slight misfortunes. If the body be too much at ease the moral nature becomes corrupted. The man unacquainted with suffering would not know the tender feelings of humanity or the sweetness of compassion; he would not be a social being; he would be a monster among his kind. The surest way to make a child unhappy is to accustom him to obtain everything he wants to have. For, since his wishes multiply in proportion to the ease with which they are gratified, your inability to fulfil them will sooner or later oblige you to refuse in spite of yourself, and this unwonted refusal will pain him more than withholding from him what he demands. At first he will want the cane you hold; soon he will want your watch; afterward he will want the bird he sees flying, or the star he sees shining. He will want everything he sees, and without being God himself how can you content him? Man is naturally disposed to regard as his own whatever is within his power. In this sense the principle of Hobbes is correct up to a certain point; multiply with our desires the means of satisfying them, and each of us will make himself master of everything. Hence the child who has only to wish in order to obtain his wish, thinks himself the owner of the universe. He regards all men as his slaves, and when at last he must be denied something, he, believing everything possible when he commands it, takes refusal for an act of rebellion. At his age, incapable of reasoning, all reasons given seem to him only pretexts. He sees ill-will in everything; the feeling of imagined injustice embitters his temper; he begins to hate everybody, and without ever being thankful for kindness, is angry at any opposition whatever.