People make a great fuss about discovering the beat way to teach children to read.  They invent “bureaux” [Footnote:  Translator’s note.—­The “bureau” was a sort of case containing letters to be put together to form words.  It was a favourite device for the teaching of reading and gave its name to a special method, called the bureau-method, of learning to read.] and cards, they turn the nursery into a printer’s shop.  Locke would have them taught to read by means of dice.  What a fine idea!  And the pity of it!  There is a better way than any of those, and one which is generally overlooked—­it consists in the desire to learn.  Arouse this desire in your scholar and have done with your “bureaux” and your dice—­any method will serve.

Present interest, that is the motive power, the only motive power that takes us far and safely.  Sometimes Emile receives notes of invitation from his father or mother, his relations or friends; he is invited to a dinner, a walk, a boating expedition, to see some public entertainment.  These notes are short, clear, plain, and well written.  Some one must read them to him, and he cannot always find anybody when wanted; no more consideration is shown to him than he himself showed to you yesterday.  Time passes, the chance is lost.  The note is read to him at last, but it is too late.  Oh! if only he had known how to read!  He receives other notes, so short, so interesting, he would like to try to read them.  Sometimes he gets help, sometimes none.  He does his best, and at last he makes out half the note; it is something about going to-morrow to drink cream—­Where?  With whom?  He cannot tell—­how hard he tries to make out the rest!  I do not think Emile will need a “bureau.”  Shall I proceed to the teaching of writing?  No, I am ashamed to toy with these trifles in a treatise on education.

I will just add a few words which contain a principle of great importance.  It is this—­What we are in no hurry to get is usually obtained with speed and certainty.  I am pretty sure Emile will learn to read and write before he is ten, just because I care very little whether he can do so before he is fifteen; but I would rather he never learnt to read at all, than that this art should be acquired at the price of all that makes reading useful.  What is the use of reading to him if he always hates it?  “Id imprimis cavere oportebit, ne studia, qui amare nondum potest, oderit, et amaritudinem semel perceptam etiam ultra rudes annos reformidet.”—­Quintil.

The more I urge my method of letting well alone, the more objections I perceive against it.  If your pupil learns nothing from you, he will learn from others.  If you do not instil truth he will learn falsehoods; the prejudices you fear to teach him he will acquire from those about him, they will find their way through every one of his senses; they will either corrupt his reason before it is fully developed or his mind will become torpid through inaction, and will become engrossed in material things.  If we do not form the habit of thinking as children, we shall lose the power of thinking for the rest of our life.