There is only one man who gets his own way—­he who can get it single-handed; therefore freedom, not power, is the greatest good.  That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires.  This is my fundamental maxim.  Apply it to childhood, and all the rules of education spring from it.

Society has enfeebled man, not merely by robbing him of the right to his own strength, but still more by making his strength insufficient for his needs.  This is why his desires increase in proportion to his weakness; and this is why the child is weaker than the man.  If a man is strong and a child is weak it is not because the strength of the one is absolutely greater than the strength of the other, but because the one can naturally provide for himself and the other cannot.  Thus the man will have more desires and the child more caprices, a word which means, I take it, desires which are not true needs, desires which can only be satisfied with the help of others.

I have already given the reason for this state of weakness.  Parental affection is nature’s provision against it; but parental affection may be carried to excess, it may be wanting, or it may be ill applied.  Parents who live under our ordinary social conditions bring their child into these conditions too soon.  By increasing his needs they do not relieve his weakness; they rather increase it.  They further increase it by demanding of him what nature does not demand, by subjecting to their will what little strength he has to further his own wishes, by making slaves of themselves or of him instead of recognising that mutual dependence which should result from his weakness or their affection.

The wise man can keep his own place; but the child who does not know what his place is, is unable to keep it.  There are a thousand ways out of it, and it is the business of those who have charge of the child to keep him in his place, and this is no easy task.  He should be neither beast nor man, but a child.  He must feel his weakness, but not suffer through it; he must be dependent, but he must not obey; he must ask, not command.  He is only subject to others because of his needs, and because they see better than he what he really needs, what may help or hinder his existence.  No one, not even his father, has the right to bid the child do what is of no use to him.

When our natural tendencies have not been interfered with by human prejudice and human institutions, the happiness alike of children and of men consists in the enjoyment of their liberty.  But the child’s liberty is restricted by his lack of strength.  He who does as he likes is happy provided he is self-sufficing; it is so with the man who is living in a state of nature.  He who does what he likes is not happy if his desires exceed his strength; it is so with a child in like conditions.  Even in a state of nature children only enjoy an imperfect liberty, like that enjoyed by men in social life.  Each of