self-love of the great mass of men ground down by feudal injustices and
inequalities,--to the sense of justice, sophistically it is true, but in
a way which commanded the respect of the intellect. When he assailed
Christianity in its innermost fortresses, while professing to be a
Christian, he incurred the indignation of all Christians and the
contempt of all infidels,--for he added hypocrisy to scepticism, which
they did not. Diderot, D'Alembert, and others were bold unbelievers, and
did not veil their hostilities under a weak disguise. I have never read
a writer who in spirit was more essentially pagan than Rousseau, or who
wrote maxims more entirely antagonistic to Christianity.

Aside from these great falsities,--the perfection of natural impulse,
the inferiority of woman, and the worthlessness of Christianity,--as
inculcated in this book, "Émile" must certainly be ranked among the
great classics of educational literature. With these expurgated it
confirms the admirable methods inspired by its unmethodical suggestions.
Noting the oppressiveness of the usual order of education through books
and apparatus, he scorns all tradition, and cries, "Let the child learn
direct from Nature!" Himself sensitive and humane, having suffered as a
child from the tyranny of adults, he demands the tenderest care and
sympathy for children, a patient study of their characteristics, a
gentle, progressive leading of them to discover for themselves rather
than a cramming of them with facts. The first moral education should be
negative,--no preaching of virtue and truth, but shielding from vice and
error. He says: "Take the very reverse of the current practice, and you
will almost always do right." This spirit, indeed, is the key to his
entire plan. His ideas were those of the nineteenth, not the eighteenth
century. Free play to childish vitality; punishment the natural
inconvenience consequent on wrong-doing; the incitement of the desire to
learn; the training of sense-activity rather than reflection, in early