People try yet another way; they soon restore what he gave to the child, so that he gets used to giving everything which he knows will come back to him.  I have scarcely seen generosity in children except of these two types, giving what is of no use to them, or what they expect to get back again.  “Arrange things,” says Locke. “so that experience may convince them that the most generous giver gets the biggest share.”  That is to make the child superficially generous but really greedy.  He adds that “children will thus form the habit of liberality.”  Yes, a usurer’s liberality, which expects cent. per cent.  But when it is a question of real giving, good-bye to the habit; when they do not get things back, they will not give.  It is the habit of the mind, not of the hands, that needs watching.  All the other virtues taught to children are like this, and to preach these baseless virtues you waste their youth in sorrow.  What a sensible sort of education!

Teachers, have done with these shams; be good and kind; let your example sink into your scholars’ memories till they are old enough to take it to heart.  Rather than hasten to demand deeds of charity from my pupil I prefer to perform such deeds in his presence, even depriving him of the means of imitating me, as an honour beyond his years; for it is of the utmost importance that he should not regard a man’s duties as merely those of a child.  If when he sees me help the poor he asks me about it, and it is time to reply to his questions, [Footnote:  It must be understood that I do not answer his questions when he wants; that would be to subject myself to his will and to place myself in the most dangerous state of dependence that ever a tutor was in.] I shall say, “My dear boy, the rich only exist, through the good-will of the poor, so they have promised to feed those who have not enough to live on, either in goods or labour.”  “Then you promised to do this?” “Certainly; I am only master of the wealth that passes through my hands on the condition attached to its ownership.”

After this talk (and we have seen how a child may be brought to understand it) another than Emile would be tempted to imitate me and behave like a rich man; in such a case I should at least take care that it was done without ostentation; I would rather he robbed me of my privilege and hid himself to give.  It is a fraud suitable to his age, and the only one I could forgive in him.

I know that all these imitative virtues are only the virtues of a monkey, and that a good action is only morally good when it is done as such and not because of others.  But at an age when the heart does not yet feel anything, you must make children copy the deeds you wish to grow into habits, until they can do them with understanding and for the love of what is good.  Man imitates, as do the beasts.  The love of imitating is well regulated by nature; in society it becomes a vice.  The monkey imitates man, whom he fears, and not the other beasts, which