Oh, learned tutor, let us see which of our two scholars is most like the savage and which is most like the peasant.  Your scholar is subject to a power which is continually giving him instruction; he acts only at the word of command; he dare not eat when he is hungry, nor laugh when he is merry, nor weep when he is sad, nor offer one hand rather than the other, nor stir a foot unless he is told to do it; before long he will not venture to breathe without orders.  What would you have him think about, when you do all the thinking for him?  He rests securely on your foresight, why should he think for himself?  He knows you have undertaken to take care of him, to secure his welfare, and he feels himself freed from this responsibility.  His judgment relies on yours; what you have not forbidden that he does, knowing that he runs no risk.  Why should he learn the signs of rain?  He knows you watch the clouds for him.  Why should he time his walk?  He knows there is no fear of your letting him miss his dinner hour.  He eats till you tell him to stop, he stops when you tell him to do so; he does not attend to the teaching of his own stomach, but yours.  In vain do you make his body soft by inaction; his understanding does not become subtle.  Far from it, you complete your task of discrediting reason in his eyes, by making him use such reasoning power as he has on the things which seem of least importance to him.  As he never finds his reason any use to him, he decides at last that it is useless.  If he reasons badly he will be found fault with; nothing worse will happen to him; and he has been found fault with so often that he pays no attention to it, such a common danger no longer alarms him.

Yet you will find he has a mind.  He is quick enough to chatter with the women in the way I spoke of further back; but if he is in danger, if he must come to a decision in difficult circumstances, you will find him a hundredfold more stupid and silly than the son of the roughest labourer.

As for my pupil, or rather Nature’s pupil, he has been trained from the outset to be as self-reliant as possible, he has not formed the habit of constantly seeking help from others, still less of displaying his stores of learning.  On the other hand, he exercises discrimination and forethought, he reasons about everything that concerns himself.  He does not chatter, he acts.  Not a word does he know of what is going on in the world at large, but he knows very thoroughly what affects himself.  As he is always stirring he is compelled to notice many things, to recognise many effects; he soon acquires a good deal of experience.  Nature, not man, is his schoolmaster, and he learns all the quicker because he is not aware that he has any lesson to learn.  So mind and body work together.  He is always carrying out his own ideas, not those of other people, and thus he unites thought and action; as he grows in health and strength he grows in wisdom and discernment.  This is the way to attain later on to what is generally considered incompatible, though most great men have achieved it, strength of body and strength of mind, the reason of the philosopher and the vigour of the athlete.