But this digression, like many others, is drawing me unawares away from my subject; and my digressions are too frequent to be borne with patience.  I therefore return to the point.

Do not reason coldly with youth.  Clothe your reason with a body, if you would make it felt.  Let the mind speak the language of the heart, that it may be understood.  I say again our opinions, not our actions, may be influenced by cold argument; they set us thinking, not doing; they show us what we ought to think, not what we ought to do.  If this is true of men, it is all the truer of young people who are still enwrapped in their senses and cannot think otherwise than they imagine.

Even after the preparations of which I have spoken, I shall take good care not to go all of a sudden to Emile’s room and preach a long and heavy sermon on the subject in which he is to be instructed.  I shall begin by rousing his imagination; I shall choose the time, place, and surroundings most favourable to the impression I wish to make; I shall, so to speak, summon all nature as witness to our conversations; I shall call upon the eternal God, the Creator of nature, to bear witness to the truth of what I say.  He shall judge between Emile and myself; I will make the rocks, the woods, the mountains round about us, the monuments of his promises and mine; eyes, voice, and gesture shall show the enthusiasm I desire to inspire.  Then I will speak and he will listen, and his emotion will be stirred by my own.  The more impressed I am by the sanctity of my duties, the more sacred he will regard his own.  I will enforce the voice of reason with images and figures, I will not give him long-winded speeches or cold precepts, but my overflowing feelings will break their bounds; my reason shall be grave and serious, but my heart cannot speak too warmly.  Then when I have shown him all that I have done for him, I will show him how he is made for me; he will see in my tender affection the cause of all my care.  How greatly shall I surprise and disturb him when I change my tone.  Instead of shrivelling up his soul by always talking of his own interests, I shall henceforth speak of my own; he will be more deeply touched by this.  I will kindle in his young heart all the sentiments of affection, generosity, and gratitude which I have already called into being, and it will indeed be sweet to watch their growth.  I will press him to my bosom, and weep over him in my emotion; I will say to him:  “You are my wealth, my child, my handiwork; my happiness is bound up in yours; if you frustrate my hopes, you rob me of twenty years of my life, and you bring my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.”  This is the way to gain a hearing and to impress what is said upon the heart and memory of the young man.

Hitherto I have tried to give examples of the way in which a tutor should instruct his pupil in cases of difficulty.  I have tried to do so in this instance; but after many attempts I have abandoned the task, convinced that the French language is too artificial to permit in print the plainness of speech required for the first lessons in certain subjects.