should behave like them and change as he grows up.  The whole difference is in this, that instead of merely being active in sport or for food, he has, in the course of his sports, learned to think.  Having reached this stage, and by this road, he is quite ready to enter upon the next stage to which I introduce him; the subjects I suggest for his consideration rouse his curiosity, because they are fine in themselves, because they are quite new to him, and because he is able to understand them.  Your young people, on the other hand, are weary and overdone with your stupid lessons, your long sermons, and your tedious catechisms; why should they not refuse to devote their minds to what has made them sad, to the burdensome precepts which have been continually piled upon them, to the thought of the Author of their being, who has been represented as the enemy of their pleasures?  All this has only inspired in them aversion, disgust, and weariness; constraint has set them against it; why then should they devote themselves to it when they are beginning to choose for themselves?  They require novelty, you must not repeat what they learned as children.  Just so with my own pupil, when he is a man I speak to him as a man, and only tell him what is new to him; it is just because they are tedious to your pupils that he will find them to his taste.

This is how I doubly gain time for him by retarding nature to the advantage of reason.  But have I indeed retarded the progress of nature?  No, I have only prevented the imagination from hastening it; I have employed another sort of teaching to counterbalance the precocious instruction which the young man receives from other sources.  When he is carried away by the flood of existing customs and I draw him in the opposite direction by means of other customs, this is not to remove him from his place, but to keep him in it.

Nature’s due time comes at length, as come it must.  Since man must die, he must reproduce himself, so that the species may endure and the order of the world continue.  When by the signs I have spoken of you perceive that the critical moment is at hand, at once abandon for ever your former tone.  He is still your disciple, but not your scholar.  He is a man and your friend; henceforth you must treat him as such.

What!  Must I abdicate my authority when most I need it?  Must I abandon the adult to himself just when he least knows how to control himself, when he may fall into the gravest errors!  Must I renounce my rights when it matters most that I should use them on his behalf?  Who bids you renounce them; he is only just becoming conscious of them.  Hitherto all you have gained has been won by force or guile; authority, the law of duty, were unknown to him, you had to constrain or deceive him to gain his obedience.  But see what fresh chains you have bound about his heart.  Reason, friendship, affection, gratitude, a thousand bonds of affection, speak to him in a voice