But whither am I going?  O Emile! what art thou now?  Is this my pupil?  How art thou fallen!  Where is that young man so sternly fashioned, who braved all weathers, who devoted his body to the hardest tasks and his soul to the laws of wisdom; untouched by prejudice or passion, a lover of truth, swayed by reason only, unheeding all that was not hers?  Living in softness and idleness he now lets himself be ruled by women; their amusements are the business of his life, their wishes are his laws; a young girl is the arbiter of his fate, he cringes and grovels before her; the earnest Emile is the plaything of a child.

So shift the scenes of life; each age is swayed by its own motives, but the man is the same.  At ten his mind was set upon cakes, at twenty it is set upon his mistress; at thirty it will be set upon pleasure; at forty on ambition, at fifty on avarice; when will he seek after wisdom only?  Happy is he who is compelled to follow her against his will!  What matter who is the guide, if the end is attained.  Heroes and sages have themselves paid tribute to this human weakness; and those who handled the distaff with clumsy fingers were none the less great men.

If you would prolong the influence of a good education through life itself, the good habits acquired in childhood must be carried forward into adolescence, and when your pupil is what he ought to be you must manage to keep him what he ought to be.  This is the coping-stone of your work.  This is why it is of the first importance that the tutor should remain with young men; otherwise there is little doubt they will learn to make love without him.  The great mistake of tutors and still more of fathers is to think that one way of living makes another impossible, and that as soon as the child is grown up, you must abandon everything you used to do when he was little.  If that were so, why should we take such pains in childhood, since the good or bad use we make of it will vanish with childhood itself; if another way of life were necessarily accompanied by other ways of thinking?

The stream of memory is only interrupted by great illnesses, and the stream of conduct, by great passions.  Our tastes and inclinations may change, but this change, though it may be sudden enough, is rendered less abrupt by our habits.  The skilful artist, in a good colour scheme, contrives so to mingle and blend his tints that the transitions are imperceptible; and certain colour washes are spread over the whole picture so that there may be no sudden breaks.  So should it be with our likings.  Unbalanced characters are always changing their affections, their tastes, their sentiments; the only constant factor is the habit of change; but the man of settled character always returns to his former habits and preserves to old age the tastes and the pleasures of his childhood.