An exclusive education, which merely tends to keep those who have received it apart from the mass of mankind, always selects such teaching as is costly rather than cheap, even when the latter is of more use.  Thus all carefully educated young men learn to ride, because it is costly, but scarcely any of them learn to swim, as it costs nothing, and an artisan can swim as well as any one.  Yet without passing through the riding school, the traveller learns to mount his horse, to stick on it, and to ride well enough for practical purposes; but in the water if you cannot swim you will drown, and we cannot swim unless we are taught.  Again, you are not forced to ride on pain of death, while no one is sure of escaping such a common danger as drowning.  Emile shall be as much at home in the water as on land.  Why should he not be able to live in every element?  If he could learn to fly, he should be an eagle; I would make him a salamander, if he could bear the heat.

People are afraid lest the child should be drowned while he is learning to swim; if he dies while he is learning, or if he dies because he has not learnt, it will be your own fault.  Foolhardiness is the result of vanity; we are not rash when no one is looking.  Emile will not be foolhardy, though all the world were watching him.  As the exercise does not depend on its danger, he will learn to swim the Hellespont by swimming, without any danger, a stream in his father’s park; but he must get used to danger too, so as not to be flustered by it.  This is an essential part of the apprenticeship I spoke of just now.  Moreover, I shall take care to proportion the danger to his strength, and I shall always share it myself, so that I need scarcely fear any imprudence if I take as much care for his life as for my own.

A child is smaller than a man; he has not the man’s strength or reason, but he sees and hears as well or nearly as well; his sense of taste is very good, though he is less fastidious, and he distinguishes scents as clearly though less sensuously.  The senses are the first of our faculties to mature; they are those most frequently overlooked or neglected.

To train the senses it is not enough merely to use them; we must learn to judge by their means, to learn to feel, so to speak; for we cannot touch, see, or hear, except as we have been taught.

There is a mere natural and mechanical use of the senses which strengthens the body without improving the judgment.  It is all very well to swim, run, jump, whip a top, throw stones; but have we nothing but arms and legs?  Have we not eyes and ears as well; and are not these organs necessary for the use of the rest?  Do not merely exercise the strength, exercise all the senses by which it is guided; make the best use of every one of them, and check the results of one by the other.  Measure, count, weigh, compare.  Do not use force till you have estimated the resistance; let the estimation of the effect always precede the application of the means.  Get the child interested in avoiding insufficient or superfluous efforts.  If in this way you train him to calculate the effects of all his movements, and to correct his mistakes by experience, is it not clear that the more he does the wiser he will become?