you truth, in simplicity of heart, and never let yourself be turned aside by pride or weakness.  Dare to confess God before the philosophers; dare to preach humanity to the intolerant.  It may be you will stand alone, but you will bear within you a witness which will make the witness of men of no account with you.  Let them love or hate, let them read your writings or despise them; no matter.  Speak the truth and do the right; the one thing that really matters is to do one’s duty in this world; and when we forget ourselves we are really working for ourselves.  My child, self-interest misleads us; the hope of the just is the only sure guide.”

I have transcribed this document not as a rule for the sentiments we should adopt in matters of religion, but as an example of the way in which we may reason with our pupil without forsaking the method I have tried to establish.  So long as we yield nothing to human authority, nor to the prejudices of our native land, the light of reason alone, in a state of nature, can lead us no further than to natural religion; and this is as far as I should go with Emile.  If he must have any other religion, I have no right to be his guide; he must choose for himself.

We are working in agreement with nature, and while she is shaping the physical man, we are striving to shape his moral being, but we do not make the same progress.  The body is already strong and vigorous, the soul is still frail and delicate, and whatever can be done by human art, the body is always ahead of the mind.  Hitherto all our care has been devoted to restrain the one and stimulate the other, so that the man might be as far as possible at one with himself.  By developing his individuality, we have kept his growing susceptibilities in check; we have controlled it by cultivating his reason.  Objects of thought moderate the influence of objects of sense.  By going back to the causes of things, we have withdrawn him from the sway of the senses; it is an easy thing to raise him from the study of nature to the search for the author of nature.

When we have reached this point, what a fresh hold we have got over our pupil; what fresh ways of speaking to his heart!  Then alone does he find a real motive for being good, for doing right when he is far from every human eye, and when he is not driven to it by law.  To be just in his own eyes and in the sight of God, to do his duty, even at the cost of life itself, and to bear in his heart virtue, not only for the love of order which we all subordinate to the love of self, but for the love of the Author of his being, a love which mingles with that self-love, so that he may at length enjoy the lasting happiness which the peace of a good conscience and the contemplation of that supreme being promise him in another life, after he has used this life aright.  Go beyond this, and I see nothing but injustice, hypocrisy, and falsehood among men; private interest, which in competition necessarily prevails over everything else,