Now of these three factors in education nature is wholly beyond our control, things are only partly in our power; the education of men is the only one controlled by us; and even here our power is largely illusory, for who can hope to direct every word and deed of all with whom the child has to do.

Viewed as an art, the success of education is almost impossible, since the essential conditions of success are beyond our control.  Our efforts may bring us within sight of the goal, but fortune must favour us if we are to reach it.

What is this goal?  As we have just shown, it is the goal of nature.  Since all three modes of education must work together, the two that we can control must follow the lead of that which is beyond our control.  Perhaps this word Nature has too vague a meaning.  Let us try to define it.

Nature, we are told, is merely habit.  What does that mean?  Are there not habits formed under compulsion, habits which never stifle nature?  Such, for example, are the habits of plants trained horizontally.  The plant keeps its artificial shape, but the sap has not changed its course, and any new growth the plant may make will be vertical.  It is the same with a man’s disposition; while the conditions remain the same, habits, even the least natural of them, hold good; but change the conditions, habits vanish, nature reasserts herself.  Education itself is but habit, for are there not people who forget or lose their education and others who keep it?  Whence comes this difference?  If the term nature is to be restricted to habits conformable to nature we need say no more.

We are born sensitive and from our birth onwards we are affected in various ways by our environment.  As soon as we become conscious of our sensations we tend to seek or shun the things that cause them, at first because they are pleasant or unpleasant, then because they suit us or not, and at last because of judgments formed by means of the ideas of happiness and goodness which reason gives us.  These tendencies gain strength and permanence with the growth of reason, but hindered by our habits they are more or less warped by our prejudices.  Before this change they are what I call Nature within us.

Everything should therefore be brought into harmony with these natural tendencies, and that might well be if our three modes of education merely differed from one another; but what can be done when they conflict, when instead of training man for himself you try to train him for others?  Harmony becomes impossible.  Forced to combat either nature or society, you must make your choice between the man and the citizen, you cannot train both.