Emile shall have no head-pads, no go-carts, no leading-strings; or at least as soon as he can put one foot before another he shall only be supported along pavements, and he shall be taken quickly across them. [Footnote:  There is nothing so absurd and hesitating as the gait of those who have been kept too long in leading-strings when they were little.  This is one of the observations which are considered trivial because they are true.] Instead of keeping him mewed up in a stuffy room, take him out into a meadow every day; let him run about, let him struggle and fall again and again, the oftener the better; he will learn all the sooner to pick himself up.  The delights of liberty will make up for many bruises.  My pupil will hurt himself oftener than yours, but he will always be merry; your pupils may receive fewer injuries, but they are always thwarted, constrained, and sad.  I doubt whether they are any better off.

As their strength increases, children have also less need for tears.  They can do more for themselves, they need the help of others less frequently.  With strength comes the sense to use it.  It is with this second phase that the real personal life has its beginning; it is then that the child becomes conscious of himself.  During every moment of his life memory calls up the feeling of self; he becomes really one person, always the same, and therefore capable of joy or sorrow.  Hence we must begin to consider him as a moral being.

Although we know approximately the limits of human life and our chances of attaining those limits, nothing is more uncertain than the length of the life of any one of us.  Very few reach old age.  The chief risks occur at the beginning of life; the shorter our past life, the less we must hope to live.  Of all the children who are born scarcely one half reach adolescence, and it is very likely your pupil will not live to be a man.

What is to be thought, therefore, of that cruel education which sacrifices the present to an uncertain future, that burdens a child with all sorts of restrictions and begins by making him miserable, in order to prepare him for some far-off happiness which he may never enjoy?  Even if I considered that education wise in its aims, how could I view without indignation those poor wretches subjected to an intolerable slavery and condemned like galley-slaves to endless toil, with no certainty that they will gain anything by it?  The age of harmless mirth is spent in tears, punishments, threats, and slavery.  You torment the poor thing for his good; you fail to see that you are calling Death to snatch him from these gloomy surroundings.  Who can say how many children fall victims to the excessive care of their fathers and mothers?  They are happy to escape from this cruelty; this is all that they gain from the ills they are forced to endure:  they die without regretting, having known nothing of life but its sorrows.