Young people who are found to be aware of these matters, without our knowing how they obtained their knowledge, have not obtained it with impunity.  This unwise teaching, which can have no honourable object, stains the imagination of those who receive it if it does nothing worse, and it inclines them to the vices of their instructors.  This is not all; servants, by this means, ingratiate themselves with a child, gain his confidence, make him regard his tutor as a gloomy and tiresome person; and one of the favourite subjects of their secret colloquies is to slander him.  When the pupil has got so far, the master may abandon his task; he can do no good.

But why does the child choose special confidants?  Because of the tyranny of those who control him.  Why should he hide himself from them if he were not driven to it?  Why should he complain if he had nothing to complain of?  Naturally those who control him are his first confidants; you can see from his eagerness to tell them what he thinks that he feels he has only half thought till he has told his thoughts to them.  You may be sure that when the child knows you will neither preach nor scold, he will always tell you everything, and that no one will dare to tell him anything he must conceal from you, for they will know very well that he will tell you everything.

What makes me most confident in my method is this:  when I follow it out as closely as possible, I find no situation in the life of my scholar which does not leave me some pleasing memory of him.  Even when he is carried away by his ardent temperament or when he revolts against the hand that guides him, when he struggles and is on the point of escaping from me, I still find his first simplicity in his agitation and his anger; his heart as pure as his body, he has no more knowledge of pretence than of vice; reproach and scorn have not made a coward of him; base fears have never taught him the art of concealment.  He has all the indiscretion of innocence; he is absolutely out-spoken; he does not even know the use of deceit.  Every impulse of his heart is betrayed either by word or look, and I often know what he is feeling before he is aware of it himself.

So long as his heart is thus freely opened to me, so long as he delights to tell me what he feels, I have nothing to fear; the danger is not yet at hand; but if he becomes more timid, more reserved, if I perceive in his conversation the first signs of confusion and shame, his instincts are beginning to develop, he is beginning to connect the idea of evil with these instincts, there is not a moment to lose, and if I do not hasten to instruct him, he will learn in spite of me.