But beware of anticipating teaching which demands more maturity of mind.  Emile will not long be a workman before he discovers those social inequalities he had not previously observed.  He will want to question me in turn on the maxims I have given him, maxims he is able to understand.  When he derives everything from me, when he is so nearly in the position of the poor, he will want to know why I am so far removed from it.  All of a sudden he may put scathing questions to me.  “You are rich, you tell me, and I see you are.  A rich man owes his work to the community like the rest because he is a man.  What are you doing for the community?” What would a fine tutor say to that?  I do not know.  He would perhaps be foolish enough to talk to the child of the care he bestows upon him.  The workshop will get me out of the difficulty.  “My dear Emile that is a very good question; I will undertake to answer for myself, when you can answer for yourself to your own satisfaction.  Meanwhile I will take care to give what I can spare to you and to the poor, and to make a table or a bench every week, so as not to be quite useless.”

We have come back to ourselves.  Having entered into possession of himself, our child is now ready to cease to be a child.  He is more than ever conscious of the necessity which makes him dependent on things.  After exercising his body and his senses you have exercised his mind and his judgment.  Finally we have joined together the use of his limbs and his faculties.  We have made him a worker and a thinker; we have now to make him loving and tender-hearted, to perfect reason through feeling.  But before we enter on this new order of things, let us cast an eye over the stage we are leaving behind us, and perceive as clearly as we can how far we have got.

At first our pupil had merely sensations, now he has ideas; he could only feel, now he reasons.  For from the comparison of many successive or simultaneous sensations and the judgment arrived at with regard to them, there springs a sort of mixed or complex sensation which I call an idea.

The way in which ideas are formed gives a character to the human mind.  The mind which derives its ideas from real relations is thorough; the mind which relies on apparent relations is superficial.  He who sees relations as they are has an exact mind; he who fails to estimate them aright has an inaccurate mind; he who concocts imaginary relations, which have no real existence, is a madman; he who does not perceive any relation at all is an imbecile.  Clever men are distinguished from others by their greater or less aptitude for the comparison of ideas and the discovery of relations between them.

Simple ideas consist merely of sensations compared one with another.  Simple sensations involve judgments, as do the complex sensations which I call simple ideas.  In the sensation the judgment is purely passive; it affirms that I feel what I feel.  In the percept or idea the judgment is active; it connects, compares, it discriminates between relations not perceived by the senses.  That is the whole difference; but it is a great difference.  Nature never deceives us; we deceive ourselves.