slavish worship of authority, they were the daring dreams of an
enthusiast, the seeming impossible prophecy of a new era. Aristocratic
mothers were converts to his theories, and began nursing their
children as he commanded them. Great lords began to learn handicrafts;
physical exercise came into vogue; everything that Emile did, other
people wanted to do.

With all Rousseau's vagaries, oddities, misconceptions, posings, he
rescued the individuality of the child and made a tremendous plea for
a more natural, a more human education. He succeeded in making people
listen where Rabelais and Montaigne had failed; and he inspired other
teachers, notably Pestalozzi and Froebel, who knit up his ragged seams
of theory, and translated his dreams into possibilities.

Rousseau vindicated to man the right of "Being." Pestalozzi said
"Grow!" Froebel, the greatest of the three, cried "Live! you give
bread to men, but I give men to themselves!"

The parent whose sole answer to criticism or remonstrance is "I have
a right to do what I like with my own child!" is the only impossible
parent. His moral integument is too thick to be pierced with any shaft
however keen. To him we can only say as Jacques did to Orlando, "God
be with you; let's meet as little as we can."

But most of us dare not take this ground. We may not philosophize or
formulate, we may not live up to our theories, but we feel in greater
or less degree the responsibility of calling a human being hither, and
the necessity of guarding and guiding, in one way or another, that
which owes its being to us.