Your main object should be to keep out of your scholar’s way all idea of such social relations as he cannot understand, but when the development of knowledge compels you to show him the mutual dependence of mankind, instead of showing him its moral side, turn all his attention at first towards industry and the mechanical arts which make men useful to one another.  While you take him from one workshop to another, let him try his hand at every trade you show him, and do not let him leave it till he has thoroughly learnt why everything is done, or at least everything that has attracted his attention.  With this aim you should take a share in his work and set him an example.  Be yourself the apprentice that he may become a master; you may expect him to learn more in one hour’s work than he would retain after a whole day’s explanation.

The value set by the general public on the various arts is in inverse ratio to their real utility.  They are even valued directly according to their uselessness.  This might be expected.  The most useful arts are the worst paid, for the number of workmen is regulated by the demand, and the work which everybody requires must necessarily be paid at a rate which puts it within the reach of the poor.  On the other hand, those great people who are called artists, not artisans, who labour only for the rich and idle, put a fancy price on their trifles; and as the real value of this vain labour is purely imaginary, the price itself adds to their market value, and they are valued according to their costliness.  The rich think so much of these things, not because they are useful, but because they are beyond the reach of the poor.  Nolo habere bona, nisi quibus populus inviderit.

What will become of your pupils if you let them acquire this foolish prejudice, if you share it yourself?  If, for instance, they see you show more politeness in a jeweller’s shop than in a locksmith’s.  What idea will they form of the true worth of the arts and the real value of things when they see, on the one hand, a fancy price and, on the other, the price of real utility, and that the more a thing costs the less it is worth?  As soon as you let them get hold of these ideas, you may give up all attempt at further education; in spite of you they will be like all the other scholars—­you have wasted fourteen years.

Emile, bent on furnishing his island, will look at things from another point of view.  Robinson would have thought more of a toolmaker’s shop than all Saide’s trifles put together.  He would have reckoned the toolmaker a very worthy man, and Saide little more than a charlatan.

“My son will have to take the world as he finds it, he will not live among the wise but among fools; he must therefore be acquainted with their follies, since they must be led by this means.  A real knowledge of things may be a good thing in itself, but the knowledge of men and their opinions is better, for in human society man is the chief tool of man, and the wisest man is he who best knows the use of this tool.  What is the good of teaching children an imaginary system, just the opposite of the established order of things, among which they will have to live?  First teach them wisdom, then show them the follies of mankind.”