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Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
page 18 of 783 (02%)
which has never been confirmed by experience. Out of all the crowds
of children who grow up with the full use of their limbs among
nations wiser than ourselves, you never find one who hurts himself
or maims himself; their movements are too feeble to be dangerous,
and when they assume an injurious position, pain warns them to
change it.

We have not yet decided to swaddle our kittens and puppies; are
they any the worse for this neglect? Children are heavier, I admit,
but they are also weaker. They can scarcely move, how could they
hurt themselves! If you lay them on their backs, they will lie
there till they die, like the turtle, unable to turn itself over.
Not content with having ceased to suckle their children, women no
longer wish to do it; with the natural result motherhood becomes a
burden; means are found to avoid it. They will destroy their work
to begin it over again, and they thus turn to the injury of the race
the charm which was given them for its increase. This practice, with
other causes of depopulation, forbodes the coming fate of Europe.
Her arts and sciences, her philosophy and morals, will shortly
reduce her to a desert. She will be the home of wild beasts, and
her inhabitants will hardly have changed for the worse.

I have sometimes watched the tricks of young wives who pretend
that they wish to nurse their own children. They take care to be
dissuaded from this whim. They contrive that husbands, doctors,
and especially mothers should intervene. If a husband should let
his wife nurse her own baby it would be the ruin of him; they would
make him out a murderer who wanted to be rid of her. A prudent husband
must sacrifice paternal affection to domestic peace. Fortunately
for you there are women in the country districts more continent than
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