If you contrive that young people passing from one stage of life to another do not despise what has gone before, that when they form new habits, they do not forsake the old, and that they always love to do what is right, in things new and old; then only are the fruits of your toil secure, and you are sure of your scholars as long as they live; for the revolution most to be dreaded is that of the age over which you are now watching.  As men always look back to this period with regret so the tastes carried forward into it from childhood are not easily destroyed; but if once interrupted they are never resumed.

Most of the habits you think you have instilled into children and young people are not really habits at all; they have only been acquired under compulsion, and being followed reluctantly they will be cast off at the first opportunity.  However long you remain in prison you never get a taste for prison life; so aversion is increased rather than diminished by habit.  Not so with Emile; as a child he only did what he could do willingly and with pleasure, and as a man he will do the same, and the force of habit will only lend its help to the joys of freedom.  An active life, bodily labour, exercise, movement, have become so essential to him that he could not relinquish them without suffering.  Reduce him all at once to a soft and sedentary life and you condemn him to chains and imprisonment, you keep him in a condition of thraldom and constraint; he would suffer, no doubt, both in health and temper.  He can scarcely breathe in a stuffy room, he requires open air, movement, fatigue.  Even at Sophy’s feet he cannot help casting a glance at the country and longing to explore it in her company.  Yet he remains if he must; but he is anxious and ill at ease; he seems to be struggling with himself; he remains because he is a captive.  “Yes,” you will say, “these are necessities to which you have subjected him, a yoke which you have laid upon him.”  You speak truly, I have subjected him to the yoke of manhood.

Emile loves Sophy; but what were the charms by which he was first attracted?  Sensibility, virtue, and love for things pure and honest.  When he loves this love in Sophy, will he cease to feel it himself?  And what price did she put upon herself?  She required all her lover’s natural feelings—­esteem of what is really good, frugality, simplicity, generous unselfishness, a scorn of pomp and riches.  These virtues were Emile’s before love claimed them of him.  Is he really changed?  He has all the more reason to be himself; that is the only difference.  The careful reader will not suppose that all the circumstances in which he is placed are the work of chance.  There were many charming girls in the town; is it chance that his choice is discovered in a distant retreat?  Is their meeting the work of chance?  Is it chance that makes them so suited to each other?  Is it chance that they cannot live in the same place, that he is compelled to find a lodging so far from her?  Is it chance that he can see her so seldom and must purchase the pleasure of seeing her at the price of such fatigue?  You say he is becoming effeminate.  Not so, he is growing stronger; he must be fairly robust to stand the fatigue he endures on Sophy’s account.