These are the specious maxims by which fathers, who mistake them for prudence, strive to make their children the slaves of the prejudices in which they are educated, and the puppets of the senseless crowd, which they hope to make subservient to their passions.  How much must be known before we attain to a knowledge of man.  This is the final study of the philosopher, and you expect to make it the first lesson of the child!  Before teaching him our sentiments, first teach him to judge of their worth.  Do you perceive folly when you mistake it for wisdom?  To be wise we must discern between good and evil.  How can your child know men, when he can neither judge of their judgments nor unravel their mistakes?  It is a misfortune to know what they think, without knowing whether their thoughts are true or false.  First teach him things as they really are, afterwards you will teach him how they appear to us.  He will then be able to make a comparison between popular ideas and truth, and be able to rise above the vulgar crowd; for you are unaware of the prejudices you adopt, and you do not lead a nation when you are like it.  But if you begin to teach the opinions of other people before you teach how to judge of their worth, of one thing you may be sure, your pupil will adopt those opinions whatever you may do, and you will not succeed in uprooting them.  I am therefore convinced that to make a young man judge rightly, you must form his judgment rather than teach him your own.

So far you see I have not spoken to my pupil about men; he would have too much sense to listen to me.  His relations to other people are as yet not sufficiently apparent to him to enable him to judge others by himself.  The only person he knows is himself, and his knowledge of himself is very imperfect.  But if he forms few opinions about others, those opinions are correct.  He knows nothing of another’s place, but he knows his own and keeps to it.  I have bound him with the strong cord of necessity, instead of social laws, which are beyond his knowledge.  He is still little more than a body; let us treat him as such.

Every substance in nature and every work of man must be judged in relation to his own use, his own safety, his own preservation, his own comfort.  Thus he should value iron far more than gold, and glass than diamonds; in the same way he has far more respect for a shoemaker or a mason than for a Lempereur, a Le Blanc, or all the jewellers in Europe.  In his eyes a confectioner is a really great man, and he would give the whole academy of sciences for the smallest pastrycook in Lombard Street.  Goldsmiths, engravers, gilders, and embroiderers, he considers lazy people, who play at quite useless games.  He does not even think much of a clockmaker.  The happy child enjoys Time without being a slave to it; he uses it, but he does not know its value.  The freedom from passion which makes every day alike to him, makes any means of measuring time unnecessary.  When