He is now first freed from the necessities of the immediate present, and can look for other things than those pertaining to self-preservation. Consequently, “he should throw ... the superfluity of his present being into his future existence. The robust child should provide for the subsistence of the feeble man; ... to appropriate his acquisitions to himself, he will secure them in the strength and dexterity of his own arms, and in the capacity of his own head. This, therefore, is the time for employment, for instruction, for study” (17: i, p. 259). During the preceding period we had to lose time. “The case is now altered, and we have not time sufficient for everything that might be useful.” The moment of emotional storm is approaching; “the term of impassionate intelligence is short and transitory.” Yet art is long. The principle, therefore, should be not to make the child “an adept in the sciences, but to give him a taste for them, and point out the method of improving it” (17: i, p. 270). As to the subjects of study and their order, the standard must be our natural inclination and interest. And, according to Rousseau, our intellectual curiosity and efforts as well as physical activities are prompted by our fundamental instinct: the constant pursuit of happiness and avoidance of unhappiness. “Our innate desire of happiness, and the impossibility of fully gratifying that desire, are the cause of our constant researches after new expedients to contribute to that end” (17: i, p. 261). And with the development of the organism, with the increase of its powers and desires, the sphere of its intellectual interest expands. “During our infant state of weakness and incapacity, all our thoughts, influenced by self-preservation, are confined within ourselves. On the contrary, in a more advanced age, as our abilities increase, the desire of improving our existence carries us out of ourselves, and our ideas extend to the utmost limits. As the intellectual world, however, is as yet unknown to us, our thoughts cannot extend further than we can see; but our comprehension dilates itself with the bounds of the space” (17: i, p. 202). This is the age we have now reached. So the first science to be taught shall be physics, in its widest sense--the study of the phenomena of Nature. As to the method of teaching natural sciences, Rousseau was the first who truly and fully embodied the Baconian principle in pedagogy. His way was to let a child-study the concrete, living nature, with his own eyes and hands, under the guidance of an expert, who understands the child nature as well as the objective nature. Although these ideas may be considered impractical and one-sided, they, nevertheless, sound with a good ring, in this present age, when science instruction has sunk into a second scholasticism and verbalism. Let me quote a few passages: