The position of the tutor is one of the most curious and one of the most mistaken things in "Émile." While in many respects the training described in the book would tend to make a manly and independent boy, the pervading presence of the tutor would perhaps undo all the good of the system. It is true that absolute truth is recommended, that "a single lie which the master was shown to have told the pupil would ruin forever the fruit of the education." Yet the tutor is to interfere openly or secretly in every part of Émile's life. "It is important that the disciple shall do nothing without the master's knowing and willing it, not even what is wrong; and it is a hundred times better that the governor approve of a fault and be mistaken, than that he should be deceived by his pupil and the fault committed without his knowledge." Let the tutor, therefore, be the pupil's confidant, even; if necessary, his companion in vice. You must be a man to speak strongly to the human heart. The tutor is constantly deceiving Émile, and some of his tricks are so transparent that it is wonderful that Rousseau could have expected the simplest of boys to be taken in by them. Here is an instance. The object is to show Émile the origin of property, and to give him the first idea of its obligations. "The child, living in the country, will have got some notion of field-work; for that he will need only eyes and leisure, and both of these he will have. It belongs to every age, and especially to his, to wish to create, to imitate, to produce, to show signs of power and activity. He will not twice have seen a garden dug, vegetables sown, sprouting and growing, before he will want to be gardening too. "On the principles heretofore established, I do not oppose his desire; on the contrary, I favor it, I share his taste, I work with him, not for his pleasure, but for mine; at least he thinks so; I become his under-gardener; as his arms are not strong yet, I dig the earth for him; he takes possession of it by planting a bean; and surely that possession is more sacred and worthy of respect than that which Nunes Balbao took of South America, in the name of the king of Spain, by planting his standard on the shores of the South Sea. "We come every day to water the beans, we see them sprout with ecstasies of joy. I increase that joy by telling him, `This belongs to you;' and by explaining to him this term, `to belong,' I make him feel that he has spent here his time, his labor, his pains, his very person; that in this earth there is something of himself, which he can claim against every one, as he could draw his arm from the hand of a man who should try to hold it in spite of him.