What then is required for the proper study of men?  A great wish to know men, great impartiality of judgment, a heart sufficiently sensitive to understand every human passion, and calm enough to be free from passion.  If there is any time in our life when this study is likely to be appreciated, it is this that I have chosen for Emile; before this time men would have been strangers to him; later on he would have been like them.  Convention, the effects of which he already perceives, has not yet made him its slave, the passions, whose consequences he realises, have not yet stirred his heart.  He is a man; he takes an interest in his brethren; he is a just man and he judges his peers.  Now it is certain that if he judges them rightly he will not want to change places with any one of them, for the goal of all their anxious efforts is the result of prejudices which he does not share, and that goal seems to him a mere dream.  For his own part, he has all he wants within his reach.  How should he be dependent on any one when he is self-sufficing and free from prejudice?  Strong arms, good health, [Footnote:  I think I may fairly reckon health and strength among the advantages he has obtained by his education, or rather among the gifts of nature which his education has preserved for him.] moderation, few needs, together with the means to satisfy those needs, are his.  He has been brought up in complete liberty and servitude is the greatest ill he understands.  He pities these miserable kings, the slaves of all who obey them; he pities these false prophets fettered by their empty fame; he pities these rich fools, martyrs to their own pomp; he pities these ostentatious voluptuaries, who spend their life in deadly dullness that they may seem to enjoy its pleasures.  He would pity the very foe who harmed him, for he would discern his wretchedness beneath his cloak of spite.  He would say to himself, “This man has yielded to his desire to hurt me, and this need of his places him at my mercy.”

One step more and our goal is attained.  Selfishness is a dangerous tool though a useful one; it often wounds the hand that uses it, and it rarely does good unmixed with evil.  When Emile considers his place among men, when he finds himself so fortunately situated, he will be tempted to give credit to his own reason for the work of yours, and to attribute to his own deserts what is really the result of his good fortune.  He will say to himself, “I am wise and other men are fools.”  He will pity and despise them and will congratulate himself all the more heartily; and as he knows he is happier than they, he will think his deserts are greater.  This is the fault we have most to fear, for it is the most difficult to eradicate.  If he remained in this state of mind, he would have profited little by all our care; and if I had to choose, I hardly know whether I would not rather choose the illusions of prejudice than those of pride.