In this way the child passes six or seven years in the hands of women, the victim of his own caprices or theirs, and after they have taught him all sorts of things, when they have burdened his memory with words he cannot understand, or things which are of no use to him, when nature has been stifled by the passions they have implanted in him, this sham article is sent to a tutor.  The tutor completes the development of the germs of artificiality which he finds already well grown, he teaches him everything except self-knowledge and self-control, the arts of life and happiness.  When at length this infant slave and tyrant, crammed with knowledge but empty of sense, feeble alike in mind and body, is flung upon the world, and his helplessness, his pride, and his other vices are displayed, we begin to lament the wretchedness and perversity of mankind.  We are wrong; this is the creature of our fantasy; the natural man is cast in another mould.

Would you keep him as nature made him?  Watch over him from his birth.  Take possession of him as soon as he comes into the world and keep him till he is a man; you will never succeed otherwise.  The real nurse is the mother and the real teacher is the father.  Let them agree in the ordering of their duties as well as in their method, let the child pass from one to the other.  He will be better educated by a sensible though ignorant father than by the cleverest master in the world.  For zeal will atone for lack of knowledge, rather than knowledge for lack of zeal.  But the duties of public and private business!  Duty indeed!  Does a father’s duty come last. [Footnote:  When we read in Plutarch that Cato the Censor, who ruled Rome with such glory, brought up his own sons from the cradle, and so carefully that he left everything to be present when their nurse, that is to say their mother, bathed them; when we read in Suetonius that Augustus, the master of the world which he had conquered and which he himself governed, himself taught his grandsons to write, to swim, to understand the beginnings of science, and that he always had them with him, we cannot help smiling at the little people of those days who amused themselves with such follies, and who were too ignorant, no doubt, to attend to the great affairs of the great people of our own time.] It is not surprising that the man whose wife despises the duty of suckling her child should despise its education.  There is no more charming picture than that of family life; but when one feature is wanting the whole is marred.  If the mother is too delicate to nurse her child, the father will be too busy to teach him.  Their children, scattered about in schools, convents, and colleges, will find the home of their affections elsewhere, or rather they will form the habit of oaring for nothing.  Brothers and sisters will scarcely know each other; when they are together in company they will behave as strangers.  When there is no confidence between relations, when the family society ceases to give savour to life, its place is soon usurped by vice.  Is there any man so stupid that he cannot see how all this hangs together?