Some of my readers, even of those who agree with me, will think that it is only a question of a conversation with the young man at any time.  Oh, this is not the way to control the human heart.  What we say has no meaning unless the opportunity has been carefully chosen.  Before we sow we must till the ground; the seed of virtue is hard to grow; and a long period of preparation is required before it will take root.  One reason why sermons have so little effect is that they are offered to everybody alike, without discrimination or choice.  How can any one imagine that the same sermon could be suitable for so many hearers, with their different dispositions, so unlike in mind, temper, age, sex, station, and opinion.  Perhaps there are not two among those to whom what is addressed to all is really suitable; and all our affections are so transitory that perhaps there are not even two occasions in the life of any man when the same speech would have the same effect on him.  Judge for yourself whether the time when the eager senses disturb the understanding and tyrannise over the will, is the time to listen to the solemn lessons of wisdom.  Therefore never reason with young men, even when they have reached the age of reason, unless you have first prepared the way.  Most lectures miss their mark more through the master’s fault than the disciple’s.  The pedant and the teacher say much the same; but the former says it at random, and the latter only when he is sure of its effect.

As a somnambulist, wandering in his sleep, walks along the edge of a precipice, over which he would fall if he were awake, so my Emile, in the sleep of ignorance, escapes the perils which he does not see; were I to wake him with a start, he might fall.  Let us first try to withdraw him from the edge of the precipice, and then we will awake him to show him it from a distance.

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.  I divert his senses by other objects of sense; I trace another course for his spirits by which I distract them from the course they would have taken; it is by bodily exercise and hard work that I check the activity of the imagination, which was leading him astray.  When the arms are hard at work, the imagination is quiet; when the body is very weary, the passions are not easily inflamed.  The quickest and easiest precaution is to remove him from immediate danger.  At once I take him away from towns, away from things which might lead him into temptation.  But that is not enough; in what desert, in what wilds, shall he escape from the thoughts which pursue him?  It is not enough to remove dangerous objects; if I fail to remove the memory of them, if I fail to find a way to detach him from everything, if I fail to distract him from himself, I might as well have left him where he was.