led on by his cunning tutor to a series of inferences from the position of the sun and so forth, which convince him that his home is just over the hedge, where it is duly found to be.[285] Here, again, is the way in which the instructor proposes to stir activity of limb in the young Emilius.  “In walking with him of an afternoon, I used sometimes to put in my pocket two cakes of a sort he particularly liked; we each of us ate one.  One day he perceived that I had three cakes; he could easily have eaten six; he promptly despatches his own, to ask me for the third.  Nay, I said to him, I could well eat it myself, or we would divide it, but I would rather see it made the prize of a running match between the two little boys there.”  The little boys run their race, and the winner devours the cake.  This and subsequent repetitions of the performance at first only amused Emilius, but he presently began to reflect, and perceiving that he also had two legs, he began privately to try how fast he could run.  When he thought he was strong enough, he importuned his tutor for the third cake, and on being refused, insisted on being allowed to compete for it.  The habit of taking exercise was not the only advantage gained.  The tutor resorted to a variety of further stratagems in order to induce the boy to find out and practise visual compass, and so forth.[286] If we consider, as we have said, first the readiness of children to suspect a stratagem wherever instruction is concerned, and next their resentment on discovering artifice of that kind, all this seems as little likely to be successful as it is assuredly contrary to Rousseau’s general doctrine of leaving circumstances to lead.

In truth Rousseau’s appreciation of the real nature of spontaneousness in the processes of education was essentially inadequate, and that it was so, arose from a no less inadequate conception of the right influence upon the growing character, of the great principle of authority.  His dread lest the child should ever be conscious of the pressure of a will external to its own, constituted a fundamental weakness of his system.  The child, we are told with endless repetition, ought always to be led to suppose that it is following its own judgment or impulses, and has only them and their consequences to consider.  But Rousseau could not help seeing, as he meditated on the actual development of his Emilius, that to leave him thus to the training of accident would necessarily end in many fatal gaps and chasms.  Yet the hand and will of the parent or the master could not be allowed to appear.  The only alternative, therefore, was the secret preparation of artificial sets of circumstances, alike in work and in amusement.  Jean Paul was wiser than Jean Jacques.  “Let not the teacher after the work also order and regulate the games.  It is decidedly better not to recognise or make any order in games, than to keep it up with difficulty and send the zephyrets of pleasure through artistic bellows and air-pumps to the little flowers."[287]