Plants are improved by cultivation, and men by education. If man were born large and strong, his size and strength would be useless to him until he had learned to use them. They would be prejudicial to him, by preventing others from thinking of assisting him; and left to himself he would die of wretchedness before he had known his own necessities. We pity the state of infancy; we do not perceive that the human race would have perished if man had not begun by being a child. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born destitute of all things, we need assistance; we are born stupid, we need judgment. All that we have not at our birth, and that we need when grown up, is given us by education. This education comes to us from nature itself, or from other men, or from circumstances. The internal development of our faculties and of our organs is the education nature gives us; the use we are taught to make of this development is the education we get from other men; and what we learn, by our own experience, about things that interest as, is the education of circumstances. Each of us is therefore formed by three kinds of teachers. The pupil in whom their different lessons contradict one another is badly educated, and will never be in harmony with himself; the one in whom they all touch upon the same points and tend toward the same object advances toward that goal only, and lives accordingly. He alone is well educated. Now of these three different educations, that of nature does not depend upon us; that of circumstances depends upon us only in certain respects; that of men is the only one of which we are really masters, and that solely because we think we are. For who can hope to direct entirely the speech and conduct of all who surround a child? As soon, therefore, as education becomes an art, its success is almost impossible, since the agreement of circumstances necessary to this success is independent of personal effort. All that the utmost care can do is to approach more or less nearly our object; but, for attaining it, special good fortune is needed. What is this object? That of nature itself, as has just been proved. Since the agreement of the three educations is necessary to their perfection, it is toward the one for which we ourselves can do nothing that we must direct both the others. But perhaps this word "nature" has too vague a meaning; we must here try to define it.