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Studies in French Education 
 
 from 
 
 Rabelais to Rousseau 
 
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Studies in French Education 
 
 from 
 
 Rabelais to Rousseau 
 
 %^ 
 
 by 
 
 GERALDINE HODGSON, B.A. 
 
 SOMETIME COBDEN SCHOLAR OF NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 LECTURER ON THE HISTORY AND THEORY OF EDUCATION* AT 
 UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, BRISTOL 
 
 Cambridge : 
 
 at the University Press 
 
 1908 
 
1 
 
 
 Cambriiije: 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 *" I "'HIS book has been written in response to a sugges- 
 -*- tion from Dr S. S. F. Fletcher of Cambridge, whose 
 kindness and whose subsequent interest in it I desire to 
 acknowledge. 
 
 No book dealing exclusively with French Education seemed 
 to exist in English ; yet the History of Education is singularly 
 incomplete if the contribution of the great French Educators 
 be omitted. 
 
 The Chapter on Rabelais is short, because the subject is 
 elaborated, and accompanied by Translations from Gargantua 
 and Pantagruel in my Teacher^s Rabelais. 
 
 GERALDINE HODGSON. 
 
 University College, 
 Bristol. 
 
 August, 1908. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction ... i 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. FRAN901S Rabelais ... 11 
 
 II. Michel de Montaigne 18 
 
 III. The Gentlemen of Port Royal. ... 51 
 
 IV. Jacqueline Pascal and Girls' Education . 80 
 
 V. Madame de Maintenon 93 
 
 VI. M. de F^NELON ... . . Ill 
 
 VII. Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues . 131 
 
 VIII. J. J. Rousseau 157 
 
 IX. J. J. Rousseau on Women's Education . .188 
 
 X. Madame d'Epinay - 197 
 Addendum. The Abb^ Galiani 230 
 Index . . . 238 
 
Light-hearted heroine of tragic story ! 
 
 Nation whom storm on storm of ruining fate 
 
 Unruined leaves, — nay, fairer, more elate, 
 
 Hraigrier for action, more athirst for glory ! 
 
 World-witching queen, from fiery floods and gory 
 
 Rising eternally regenerate. 
 
 Clothed with great deeds and crowned with dreams more great 
 
 Spacious as Fancy's boundless territory ! 
 
 Immortal and indomitable France. 
 
 William Watson. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Appreciation of the theory that there are no gaps in 
 history, no definitely drawn boundary lines to prevent the 
 merging of successive generations, though helpful in many 
 directions, yet brings in its train one practical difficulty. It 
 may be expressed in a question : How shall the student of 
 a special period — and life is too short, capacity too limited for 
 any adequate treatment by one individual of the whole — know 
 where to begin ? This question proposes itself at the outset of 
 such an inquiry as the present. The best answer that can be 
 given in the particular instance is perhaps this, the student 
 should begin with a brief consideration of the revival of 
 learning which occurred in all the most civilised countries 
 of Europe as they drew themselves slowly out of that partial 
 twilight which, lit though it was sparsely by " bright particular 
 stars," stole over the nations after the collapse of the Roman 
 Empire. 
 
 The word Renaissance has been used often with too little 
 accuracy. The period to which the name belongs really began 
 in Italy with Petrarch and Dante in the 14th century ; whence 
 it spread later on to England and to France. 
 
 Yet, there had been a kind of false dawn in England under 
 Alfred the Great, in France under Charlemagne. Moreover, in 
 the 14th century itself, some few straggling rays from Petrarch's 
 lamp reached the Courts of Charles V and Charles VI of 
 France. But that was a feeble revival, limited almost entirely 
 to a few scholars, and killed all too soon by internecine strife 
 and foreign wars. 
 
2 Introduction 
 
 The Renaissance proper began in Italy in the 14th century, 
 reached England next, then France in the isth, and spread 
 into Holland, Belgium and Germany, wherewith the names of 
 Erasmus and Philip Melancthon are for ever linked. 
 
 The first period of humanism in Italy was, in one sense, 
 a reproduction of the first youth of European intellectual life. 
 It is, at least so we must believe, only through the limitations 
 of human capacity, and hence of human knowledge, that the 
 world and its history can ever even seem to consist of disjoined 
 parts. The history of the world, to an intelligence sufficiently 
 capacious to grasp it, would, we must suppose, appear con- 
 tinuous and interrelated as to its parts both in time and space. 
 We are justified in supposing this, because the continuity and 
 interrelation increase obviously with every addition to our 
 knowledge of the past, with every improvement in the means 
 of communication. No doubt, as time passes on, and scholar- 
 ship is more and more able to reveal the secrets of the past, it 
 will be shewn that Greece was deeply indebted to the East. 
 But practically, for the student of education to-day, it is reason- 
 able to regard ancient Greece as a main, even if intermediate, 
 source of European intellectual life. 
 
 The Greeks, if we may so express it, had everything to do. 
 It fell to them to reconstruct an alphabet, to formulate grammar : 
 to write down their thoughts in manuscripts, to form libraries 
 and to found schools. 
 
 It is when we regard Greece from this point of view, that 
 we see that the first period of Italian humanism was, in some 
 respects, a reproduction of this earlier era of intellectual activity; 
 a time devoted to the collection of the raw materials of know- 
 ledge, specially of manuscripts. In such periods there is behind 
 the material activity, which every one can see, a spiritual energy, 
 inspiration: it precedes and is essential to the other. Men 
 will not seek for anything, whatever that thing may be — know- 
 ledge, gold, lions, butterflies or what not — unless something, 
 someone, has kindled their interest, fired their enthusiasm. 
 
Introduction 3 
 
 In the Italian Renaissance, we find first the inspiration 
 and then its outcome, that diligent activity which left nothing 
 undone in the task of recovering authors, of garnering up the 
 ancient wisdom, partially and temporarily ecUpsed after the 
 barbarian attack on the Roman Empire. 
 
 Without in any way forgetting the immense debt due from 
 later ages to Dante, it may be claimed nevertheless, from the 
 pedagogue's standpoint, that by his personal character, special 
 predilections, and by his material wealth, Petrarch was enabled 
 to play the role of Inspirer of the Revival of Learning, and to 
 assist and foster the collection of the necessary materials for it. 
 
 It is not given to every man, or to many men, to foresee the 
 salient characteristics of the time to come : it is given perhaps 
 to fewer still to perceive these, and also to possess both the 
 power of influencing others to prepare themselves to meet the 
 dawning day, and the wealth which is subsidiary no doubt but 
 still essential to thfe progress and full development even of 
 intellectual movements, so hard is it in any and every depart- 
 ment of life to disconnect wholly the material and the spiritual. 
 
 Petrarch was one of this small elect band thus trebly 
 dowered. He laid very great stress on the importance of 
 visible tangible aids to learning : Symonds^ speaks of him as 
 "the first to understand the value oi public libraries; the first 
 to accumulate coins and inscriptions as the sources of accurate 
 historical information, the first to preach the duty of preserving 
 ancient monuments." 
 
 Yet perhaps he perceived that there is a more real reality 
 even than that which resides in these outward things : for he 
 pleaded that only that is fruitful which comes " straight from 
 a man's soul, speaking to the soul of one who heard him^" 
 
 1 Renaissance, Vol. ii. p. 54. 
 
 2 What poets feel not, when they make, 
 
 A pleasure in creating, 
 The world, in its turn, will not take 
 
 Pleasure in contemplating. (Matthew Arnold.) 
 
 I 2 
 
4 Introduction 
 
 And then Petrarch was the inspirer of that restless nomadic 
 teacher, John of Ravenna ; and where this man's influence 
 will stop, no one can say. The men he stirred are, some of 
 them at any rate, masters of modern students : that is true 
 obviously of Vittorino da Feltre, Peter Paul Vergerius, Guarino 
 da Verona, and Lionardo Bruni. 
 
 The first period of Italian humanism is more truly to be 
 described however as one of learning than of teaching : it was 
 a time devoted rather to the collection of the raw materials of 
 scholarship than to the elaboration of pedagogic method, or 
 the framing of actual curricula. This harvesting of materials 
 was absolutely essential to the development of that system of 
 learning and education which followed. 
 
 The second period of the Italian Renaissance was an 
 enthusiastic age of the advancement and development of 
 learning ; combined with efforts to mark out a definite system 
 of education. In the Universities of Italy, and still more 
 markedly in the princely and ducal courts, under the patronage 
 of men like Cosimo and Lorenzo dei Medici, Alfonso of Naples, 
 Gian Francesco Gonzaga, Ludovico Sforza, and of Popes like 
 Eugenius IV', and, to a far greater extent, Nicholas V^, 
 learning enjoyed freedom, the resources of comparative wealth, 
 and esteem ; while education, as an art to be practised, engaged 
 the attention of the most capable and devoted scholars; among 
 the artists, architects, litterati and poets, there rose to places 
 of honour and distinction a class of men not invariably singled 
 out for reward, the great schoolmasters, Peter Paul Vergerius, 
 Vittorino da Feltre, Guarino da Verona. 
 
 The present inquiry does not aim at being a chapter in the 
 History of Scholarship, but, so far as the two can be divided, 
 
 ^ Eugenius became Pope in 1431. 
 
 ^ Nicholas V was born of humble parents at Pisa in 1 398. He became 
 Pope in 1447. "The profuse liberality of Nicholas," Symonds obse'rves, 
 "brought him thus into relation with the whole learned world of Italy." 
 {Renaissance, Vol. ii. p. 165.) 
 
Introduction 5 
 
 of Education. What then was the aim of education ? Put in 
 a few words the answer is — the creation of character, which was 
 to be effected first by discipline physical, intellectual, moral 
 (with the addition, in the practice of Vittorino da Feltre, 
 definitely religious) ; and, secondly, by the provision and as- 
 similation of suitable mental and moral food. By this clearly 
 formulated scheme, the greater schoolmasters sought to solve 
 the problem of giving their due to form and matter. 
 
 No student of the educational method of this period can 
 doubt that while much importance was attached to the matter 
 of the classic literature, considerable effort and time were 
 devoted also to the acquisition of the more formal parts of 
 the classic tongues. Grammar, as we understand it, — not 
 as it was understood, for example, by Quintilian, when it 
 seemed to take "all knowledge for" its "province," — was 
 insisted upon as the foundation of linguistic and literary 
 knowledge ; " Grammar it is allowed is the portal to all know- 
 ledge whatsoever,'' wrote ^neas Sylvius, and he is careful to 
 state that though " Grammar is identical with literature," yet 
 one part of it is concerned with the "right choice both of 
 vocabulary and construction." Maffeo Vegio, the author of 
 the De Educatione Liberorum, urges the necessity of voice- 
 training and production : " vox distincta sit, robusta, sonora." 
 Pellegrino Morato and ^neas Sylvius will give attention to 
 handwriting, to the actual formation of the several letters 
 in a word: "it is worth while," writes ^neas, "to be 
 careful over so small a thing as the shape of the letters : 
 let round letters be round, looped letters shew their loops, 
 and so on." 
 
 It may be argued that this is to descend to the very triviali- 
 ties of technique. But there is another possible point of view, 
 ^neas wrote in an age that cared with passion for beautiful 
 craftsmanship. The zeal which fired the architect, and the 
 artist, glowed in the souls of lesser men. It was not a time, 
 like our own, loving cheapness and allowing rough work and 
 
6 Introduction 
 
 scamped methods to pass muster'.' And this spirit was edu- 
 cational. By such means disciphne was ensured, discipline of 
 intellect and of temper : the desire and the power to overcome 
 difficulties, the present sacrifice for the future gain, thorough- 
 ness — even down to the last detail of a crossed ^ or a dotted i 
 — firmness and coherence of structure, all the qualities and 
 methods in fact which together build up a well-knit character, 
 were sought after and secured often. Language, style, metre, 
 rhythm, handwriting, enunciation and all the rest of the literary 
 technicalities were really bent into the service of man. Nothing 
 was absolutely trivial in a system which, all the while and 
 to a remarkable degree, contrived to keep its due sense of 
 perspective. 
 
 And then, when care for form had been exercised, there 
 still remained the matter, the contents, of literature, history 
 and philosophy. As education was to be the concern of the 
 State, so citizenship, — the capacity to quit one's self like a 
 man, like a woman, the power to satisfy what is due to the 
 individual while paying the debt to the commonweal, — so true 
 fine citizenship was to be the finest flower of scholarship, the 
 uttermost result of education. To this end, the matter of the 
 ancient and newly recovered literatures was to be pressed, like 
 technique, into the service of man : its polity, its philosophy, 
 its ethics, its serenity, its reasonableness, its light were to form 
 the mind and soul. And, as an outcome of this, in theory 
 always, in practice sometimes, the minds of men were relieved 
 from the overshadowing of petty conceptions. We cannot 
 forget, for instance, that in the practice and theory of the finer 
 
 ' " The speech of the Italians at that epoch, their social habits, their 
 ideal of manners, their standard of morality, the estimate they formed 
 of men, were alike conditioned and qualified by art. ...On the meanest 
 articles of domestic utility, cups and platters, door-panels, chimney-pieces, 
 coverlets for beds and lids of linen-chests, a wealth of artistic invention 
 was lavished by innumerable craftsmen, no less skilled in technical 
 details than distinguished by rare taste." (J. A. Symonds, Renaissance, 
 Vol. iii. p. 3.) 
 
Introduction 7 
 
 minds of the Renaissance, ability, not birth, position or sex, 
 was accounted the sole test of worth. "In all departments 
 open to a man of talents," says Symonds, "birth was of less 
 
 importance than natural gifts It followed that men were 
 
 universally rated at what they proved themselves to be^." And 
 Dr Creighton, writing of i6th century Italy, observes, "There 
 was no notion of rivalry between the sexes, any more than 
 between classes in the State. All were at liberty to do their 
 best; and they had an audience sufficiently critical to take 
 whatever was said at its real worth ^." The fact dwelt on in 
 this closing sentence is of great importance, since an age 
 willing to accept ability as the test of worth, and yet without 
 the critical faculty to appraise it justly, would be deplorably at 
 the mercy of any noisy charlatan. Such a disability, Italy 
 seems most fortunately to have escaped^ 
 
 It may be urged that we are confronted with the facts that 
 in spite of this environment of freedom and criticism, Alex- 
 ander VI could sit in the chair of Peter, and Savonarola 
 could meet a shameful death on the Piazza at Florence. But 
 the freedom which leaves men and women free to do their 
 best, also — and that surely of necessity — leaves them free to do 
 their worst. It has been affirmed and denied that by means 
 of gold, poured out with profligate lavishness, Alexander VI 
 succeeded to the Papacy : whatever the truth about his 
 expenditure may have been it is probably true to say that no 
 one was deceived : men estimated him at his real worth, at 
 least that is suggested by Cardinal Giovanni dei Medici's 
 remark to his kinsman^. It was easily possible, in a moment 
 
 ^ Renaissance, Vol. ii. p. 3. 
 
 ° Historical Essays and Reviews, p. 159. 
 
 ' " We are in the wolf's jaws : he will gulp us down unless we make 
 our flight good." Similarly Guicciardini observes, " The King of Naples, 
 though he dissembled his grief, told the queen, his wife, with tears... that 
 a Pope had been made who would prove most pestilent to the whole 
 Christian commonwealth." (Symonds, Renaissance, Vol. i. p. 321.) 
 
8 Introduction 
 
 of popular passion, to kill Savonarola's body, but there was no 
 power in Italy strong enough to quench his spirit, or to suppress 
 the great example which he offered to his own and succeeding 
 ages. Indeed, men enjoyed then the kind of environment for 
 which Milton craved when he wrote : " If every action, which 
 is good or evil in man at ripe years, were to be under pittance 
 and prescription and compulsion what were virtue but a name, 
 what praise could be then due to well-doing, what gramercy to 
 be sober, just or continent?... For God sure esteems the growth 
 of and completing of one virtuous person more than the 
 restraint of ten vicious.... What is it but a servitude like that 
 imposed by the Philistines, not to be allow'd the sharpening of 
 our own axes and coulters^?" A period which affords free scope 
 for all abilities, all classes, both sexes, must, of necessity, watch 
 sometimes the rise and undue development of extremes. Then, 
 after they had provided thus carefully for the development 
 of character and intellect, the men of the Renaissance were 
 solicitous for the welfare of the -human body. No one needs 
 to be reminded that in this matter the Greeks had preceded 
 the Italians : nor can it be denied that the latter headed 
 a reaction against that section of the Christian Church which 
 regarded the body as necessarily and essentially adverse to the 
 soul, or, if they held a less rigorous view, still considered it 
 as, in the most favourable circumstances, at least a clog and 
 a hindrance. For, in the Mediaeval Church, the distinction 
 suggested by Dr Creighton between the "body" and the 
 " flesh "—between the body which is the "temple of the 
 Holy Ghost," and the "flesh" which is only that body 
 deteriorated and degraded to ignoble, selfish and base uses, 
 that distinction which seems so rational — was not defined and 
 drawn clearly. 
 
 In the Renaissance scheme of education bodily exercises 
 played their part; courtesy of demeanour, physical grace 
 extending even to a fine carriage, became scholarly aims. 
 ' Areopagilica. ' 
 
Introduction 9 
 
 It must surely be admitted that the ideal of the best men 
 in the best age of the Italian Revival of Learning was a 
 notable one in the History of Education. 
 
 Then followed the gradual declension from learning to 
 pedantry, a process linked with the name, among others, of 
 Pietro Bembo. As the light flickered down in Italy, it burned 
 to greater brightness in other European countries. Erasmus 
 of Rotterdam felt the first dawn of it in the lessons given on 
 Festivals, to the whole school, by the Head Master, Alexander 
 Hegius. Almost at the same time Colet and, a little later, 
 More grew alive to the new influences working in England. 
 But though learning may have lapsed into pedantry, no one 
 can study the Italian Renaissance and remain ignorant of the 
 fact that the greater scholars, the practical schoolmasters, the 
 theoretical educators and the cultured ladies realised that the 
 end of learning should be not preciosity but conduct : and in 
 spite of the later decline in scholarship, and though an 
 occasional and strange divorce of theology, ethics and religion 
 from everyday conduct must be admitted, this remains broadly 
 true. 
 
 Colet, in his life and work, resembles this aspect of the 
 Italian Revival of Letters. In his University teaching, in his 
 sermons as Dean of S. Paul's, in his practical dealings with 
 S. Paul's School, we find always this fine blend of learning and 
 conduct. 
 
 Erasmus, on the other hand, seems, at any rate from time 
 to time, as if he were insisting disproportionately on pure 
 scholarship, on Letters qua Letters : or, if that seem too strong 
 a statement, it may at least be argued that we miss in the bulk 
 of his writings the direct emphatic stress laid e.g. by Vergerius 
 on the connexion between Letters and Conduct : " we call 
 those studies liberal" says the Italian, " which are worthy of 
 a free man, those studies by which we attain and practise virtue 
 and wisdom : that education which calls forth, trains and develops 
 those highest gifts of body and mind which ennoble men, and 
 which are rightly judged to rank next in dignity to virtue only." 
 
lo Introduction 
 
 Yet, if Erasmus does not express himself in these terms, it 
 does not follow that he underrated good citizenship or fine 
 conduct. It is desirable that a leader of men should not only 
 perceive the circumstances of his own age, but that he should 
 gauge the needs and forecast the tendencies of that which is 
 coming. The circumstances of Italy in the 14th and isth 
 centuries differed materially from those of northern Europe at 
 the end of the 15 th and in the i6th centuries. The favoured 
 protigis of Lorenzo the Magnificent, of Ludovico and Beatrice 
 Sforza, of Alfonso of Naples, of Niccolo III of Ferrara, of 
 Gian Francesco Gonzaga found themselves in circumstances 
 more favourable to the flowering of humanism than Erasmus 
 did when he wandered about that Germany which .^neas 
 Sylvius had dismissed as so barbarous and intolerable. While 
 scholarship in the North would thus need all the help which 
 Erasmus could give it, morals perhaps, owing, it seems likely, 
 to the efforts and successes of the Brothers of the Common 
 Life, were in a less parlous condition there than in Italy. 
 
 Again, how almost hypersensitively fastidious Erasmus was : 
 is it possible that the crudeness, the tiresomeness of perpetual 
 appeals for right conduct might have repelled him? And 
 lastly, since perversity is human, and not even the finest 
 scholars are immune from mortal frailty, Erasmus may have 
 said all the less on the subject of right conduct, just because 
 Colet said so much\ 
 
 When we turn to the Renaissance in France, we find our- 
 selves in quite a new atmosphere : whatever Rabelais and 
 Montaigne were, they were not mere imitators of the great 
 men who were their predecessors or co-temporaries in the other 
 awakened countries of Europe. 
 
 ' We know from a letter of More to Erasmus that Colet could be 
 perverse : " perhaps it will be better to leave him to his own impulse. He 
 is apt, as you know, to resist persuasion for the sake of a dispute, even if 
 one wants to persuade him to do the very thing to which he is himself most 
 inclined." (Sept. 11, 1516.) If the grave and self-controlled Colet, why 
 not the irritable Erasmus ? 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 FRANgOIS RABELAIS. 
 
 One circumstance in the lives of Rabelais and Montaigne 
 marks them off from the humanist educators of Italy and 
 England : the Frenchmen, each of them, pursued a solitary 
 way. The great Italians enjoyed, on the other hand, all 
 the advantages of fellowship, of the companionship, involving 
 counsel, appreciation, suggestion, criticism, of those actually 
 engaged in the same occupation : they enjoyed also the 
 society of those who, if they pursued different ends, still did 
 so as participators in a great movement of Revival, which, 
 manifesting itself in many different directions, was in reality 
 a vast, complex and finally harmonious whole. And so again, 
 in England, Grocyn, Linacre, William Latimer, Colet, More — 
 with Erasmus on his various visits to England — and to some 
 extent Lupset and Dancaster, were associated together in the 
 furtherance of learning and education. 
 
 But Rabelais appeals to us, on the educational problem at 
 any rate, as an isolated thinker. All that there is of seeming 
 originality in his scheme is indeed his : though it is admitted 
 that he studied the writings of Erasmus, yet it is difficult to 
 trace the main sources of his wisdom if they are not to be 
 found in himself. 
 
 The year and place of his birth are disputed: 1483 is 
 usually chosen for his birth. Nothing certain is known con- 
 cerning his youth, though he is believed to have had the 
 
12 Frangois Rabelais 
 
 Du Bellay brothers among his school-fellows. Supposing him 
 to have been born in 1483, the first reliable fact relates to 
 his 36th year. He was then a member of the Franciscan 
 Monastery at Fontenay-le-Comte. It was probably not from 
 that source that he imbibed a love of letters, love of knowledge 
 for its own sake. However, five years later, Clement VII 
 permitted him to change his Order: he moved to the Bene- 
 dictine Monastery at Maillezais. Though the world of letters, 
 the world of education owe more perhaps to the Society 
 founded by S. Benedict than they have always cared to ac- 
 knowledge, yet it was not to a Benedictine House that one 
 interested in educational reforms would have gone in the 
 1 6th century. We find pretty clear evidence of the fact 
 that his new companions were not congenial, when we learn 
 that he remained with them but six years. In 1530, he 
 renounced the Benedictine habit, and became a secular priest. 
 Next, he proceeded to join to his priestly office a profession 
 sometimes esteemed inharmonious with it. With startling 
 rapidity — the whole process taking some three months — he 
 graduated at Montpellier in Medicine, and then settled down 
 at Lyons as physician to the hospital there. For the first time 
 in his life he found himself among men who could appreciate 
 his rare abilities at something near their full worth; and with 
 more or less assiduity he attended to his medical duties for five 
 years. Through the many human generations which separate 
 us from the priestfturned doctor, there penetrates the sense of 
 his worth as a beloved physician, of his cheery consolations, 
 of his confident decisiveness, of his manly strength which 
 renewed the failing, and restored the downcast : for if Rabelais 
 were not always orthodox, if sometimes he incurred rebuke, he 
 at any rate fulfilled the Pauline behest and "had charity." 
 
 It is supposed, though the fact is not undisputed, that 
 Gargantua and Pantagruel were written while he was at Lyons. 
 The precise date, another literary bone of contention, is of no 
 interest to the student of education. 
 
Franfois Rabelais 13 
 
 In 1550, he held two benefices, one in the diocese of Paris, 
 the other in that of Mans. These he resigned a short time 
 before his death, which occurred probably in 1553. 
 
 Rabelais' educational views are contained in a few chapters 
 of Gargantua .and in one of Pantagruel. 
 
 The scheme enabling him to expound his opinions is simple 
 in the extreme. That "good fellow Grandgousier" becomes 
 aware of the "excellent sense and extraordinary understanding 
 of his son, Gargantua." The proud father arrives rapidly at 
 the conclusion that the said Gargantua "will attain to a great 
 height of wisdom if only he be well taught." He therefore 
 confides the boy to the care of a "famous doctor of divinity — 
 one Master Tubal Holofernes." A brief outline of the method 
 adopted by this man follows; and all goes well until Master 
 Tubal is unfortunate enough to die^ prematurely it would 
 seem ; worn out no doubt with the effort of teaching his pupil 
 on a scheme which began with saying the alphabet backwards 
 and ended with a study of the almanack. Master Tubal is 
 followed by another tutor of similar capacity, Master Jobelin 
 Bride. Suddenly into the midst of calm, the bolt falls. 
 Grandgousier observed "that the boy was not profiting in 
 the least by it all, that, quite the contrary, he was growing 
 dull, foolish, gloomy, absent." In these dismal circumstances, 
 Grandgousier appeals to a friend, Don Philip des Marays, 
 who insinuates delicately that there are newer, brighter lights 
 in education than the dim flickerings of Master Bride's muddle- 
 headed methods. To prove his words, he introduces a youth 
 trained on the new plan. The striking contrast between this 
 charming boy and the unfortunate Gargantua, whose embarrass- 
 ment was such that he "could do nothing but stream with 
 tears like a cow,' is only too apparent. Master Bride, lucky — 
 so terrific was the torrent of Grandgousier's wrath — to escape 
 with his life, is sent unceremoniously to the right about, and 
 one Ponocrates is installed in his stead. 
 
 Up to this point, Rabelais has only let fall vague hints 
 
T4 Frangois Rabelais 
 
 concerning the way in which Gargantua has been trained. It 
 should be remembered that the description when it comes is 
 intended to be a picture of the current educational practice of 
 the time. By an ingenious device, he sets forth pitilessly this 
 plan, with all its crude inefficiency, unpracticalness of aim arid 
 superstitious hypocrisy. Ponocrates, too wise, too experienced 
 to work an instant revolution, invites Gargantua to spend the 
 first day just as he has been wont to do under the old tutors. 
 An amazing picture of sloth, superstition, slovenliness, greed 
 and utter disregard for the things of the intellect is unrolled as 
 this day moves on heavily to its close. 
 
 Rabelais forces home our sense of the shocking results 
 of such a plan when he represents Ponocrates as applying to 
 a learned physician to provide such a draught for Gargantua 
 as would destroy "all the degeneration and perverse tendency 
 of his brain," and also cause "him to forget everything which 
 his former tutors had taught him." 
 
 Then in a couple of memorable chapters Rabelais proceeds 
 to give a vivid sketch of the plan with which the new tutor 
 superseded the vicious methods of his predecessors. And 
 here it is that we find Rabelais' own idea of practical education. 
 Later on when Gargantua, who has come to honoured age, 
 writes to his son Pantagruel, a student at Paris, we are shewn 
 Rabelais' ideal of education. Wonderfully comprehensive it is, 
 even measured by the scale of a giant, including the classic 
 tongues, Hebrew, Chaldaic, Arabic, geometry, arithmetic, music, 
 astronomy, all the physical sciences so far as these were then 
 developed, medicine, a study of the Sacred Books. The limit 
 of his intellectual achievement was just simply to be co- 
 extensive with possible human knowledge: Gargantua, in his 
 own phrase, will have his son "ignorant of nothing that exists." 
 
 For the sake of system, it has seemed best to transpose 
 Rabelais' order, and to describe his ideal first. But it is in 
 his practice, as that is propounded in Gargantua}, that he is so 
 ^ Gargantua, Bk i. chs. xxiii. xxiv. 
 
Franfois Rabelais 15 
 
 strikingly original. Indeed, had the world from the i6th to 
 the present century listened to Rabelais, instead of merely 
 laughing at and with him, perhaps Professor Emil Reich would 
 have had no shadow of an excuse for writing: — "Despite all the 
 great debt which we owe to the Renaissance we must admit 
 that it has foisted one great incubus upon us, and that is the 
 blind admiration of words ^" 
 
 It was Rabelais' distinction, that, without rejecting the 
 literary side of education, he managed to put on an equality 
 with it a knowledge of things as they are in the material world: 
 an appreciation of the material sciences : a regard for reality, a 
 desire to connect intimately the practical and ideal sides of 
 life. It may well be asked if any other writer of his time, or 
 of succeeding times, has achieved such a feat as successfully as 
 he did? The more carefully the aims and doings of other 
 educators are studied side by side with Rabelais', the more 
 surely will his distinction emerge. 
 
 Within the small compass of two chapters, he outlines a 
 scheme of education which surely omits nothing essential, 
 nothing from the practical details of daily life to the high 
 matters of science and literature. We find here the progress 
 from the familiar to the unknown, before Pestalozzi; "many- 
 sidedness" before the coming of a Herbart is dreamed of; we 
 have hygiene and sanitation in an age when Erasmus, as 
 Rabelais knew, could say truly of a French College, "I only 
 carried away disease and a plentiful supply of vermin"; we 
 find an experimental interest in the processes of nature long 
 before science was popularised; we have, with all that, a 
 care for ancient literature, a reverence for religion, and a regard 
 for seemly order, which, in some more modern schemes, are 
 not combined with scientific truths into a harmonious. whole. 
 
 As we read these chapters, we become sensible of eagerness, 
 definiteness, activity everywhere. We are told expressly that 
 
 1 Contemporary Review, Feb. 1905. 
 
1 6 Frangois Rabelais 
 
 "every minute was used up in the study of letters and of 
 sound knowledge." This same zeal is carried into Gargantua's 
 athletic training; indeed these pages are so picturesque and 
 vivid that the most casual reader cannot forget them. Had 
 we only Gargantua, we might imagine that study of the classics 
 and care for philosophy played a subordinate part in Rabelais' 
 plan: such a notion is dispelled by the letter to Pantagruel. 
 Here, we find Rabelais passing far beyond the ordinary 
 practice of advanced scholars of his day. If we ask 'WTiat is 
 the striking novelty of Rabelais' method ? this is to be found 
 in his comprehensiveness, in his insistence first on the necessit3r 
 for studying physical phenomena along with the humanities; 
 and then secondly on the method of doing this. And this 
 method is new in the days of the Renaissance, when men had 
 begun to fancy that all wisdom reposed in the pages of the 
 classics. Rabelais came to remind them that there is a book 
 of Nature. "A dull book for a dull fellow'' was a phrase 
 coined once by Erasmus in a moment of exasperation. We 
 may take this phrase, and changing its application, may press 
 it into Rabelais' service. Most emphatically would he have 
 -held that the book of Nature is only dull when it is perused 
 by "a dull fellow." Out of doors, under the wide heavens, 
 in broad day-light, at noontide, in "the hiding receiving night 
 that talks not," Gargantua learned to observe the signs of the 
 weather, to watch the movements of the heavenly bodies: in 
 the fields and woods, filled with myriad varieties of life, he 
 learned the nature, habits and uses of plants and animals : in 
 the factories and workshops he learned directly and immedi- 
 ately, as he stood and looked on, how materials are taken 
 and fashioned for the use of man. Only Erasmus perhaps, of 
 the other humanists, lays any real stress on the observation 
 of nature and the mechanical arts; and even with him, it is 
 doubtful whether such matters are regarded as accessory or of 
 prime importance. 
 
 It will be noticed that in all the above nothing is said of 
 
Franfois Rabelais ly 
 
 the education of women and girls: and yet learned women 
 existed as they have done since the first ages of the Christian 
 era, as they did before. Rabelais' silence with regard to 
 women is almost but not quite complete. The one passage 
 in Gargantua's Letter to Pantagruel should not be forgotten : — 
 "The very brigands, butchers, soldiers of fortune, grooms are 
 more learned now than doctors and preachers were in my day. 
 What am I saying? Women and girls have aspired to partake 
 of this inheritance, of this manner of sound learning." 
 
 When we consider Rabelais' scheme in its entirety, we may 
 feel that in originality, extent, in balanced appreciation of every- 
 thing really worthy inclusion in an educational system, it far 
 transcends the recommendations and practice of all the rest of 
 the humanist educators, even perhaps of the greatest school- 
 master among them, Vittorino da Feltre hirjiself. That Rabelais 
 has received such scant justice from the general public as 
 a pedagogic theorist, may perhaps be accounted for partly by 
 the fact that the educational chapters form such a small pro- 
 portion of the whole, and that, for most people, the whole has 
 a "very different interest. But it may be equally true that his 
 coarseness has limited his real audience; so that many people 
 have talked of him on hearsay without really knowing him, and, 
 as a natural consequence, have talked quite inadequately. 
 
 H. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 MICHEL DE MONTAIGNEi. 
 
 In the previous chapter, it has been pointed out that Rabelais 
 differed from the humanists of Italy and England in his com- 
 parative isolation. Between the Italians and the Englishmen, 
 there are points of likeness and points of difference. Alike, 
 they were addicted with a devotion, which some men might 
 deem extravagant and exaggerated, to the study of the classics : 
 they almost thought, so far as we of such a much later age can 
 judge, that all wisdom was enshrined in the pages of the Greek 
 and Latin writers; an error this according to sober John X^ocke^: 
 " There is another partiality very commonly observable in men 
 of study no less prejudiced nor ridiculous than the former, and 
 that is a fantastical and wild attributing all knowledge to the 
 ancients alone, or to the moderns.... Some will not admit an 
 opinion not authorised by men of old who were then all giants 
 in knowledge. Nothing is to be put into the treasury of truth 
 or knowledge which has not the stamp of Greece, of Rome 
 upon it ; and will scarce allow that since their days men have 
 been able to see, think or write." 
 
 ^ A great part of this chapter was read as a paper to the Reading 
 Branch of the P.N.E.U., at University College, Reading, and was 
 published subsequently in the Oct. 1906 and November 1906 numbers of 
 The Parents' Review. It has been re-written and enlarged since. The 
 edition of the Essais used here is that of Le Clerc, published at Paris 
 in 1836. 
 
 ^ Condtut of the Understanding. 
 
Michel de Montaigne 19 
 
 Yet however this may have appeared in the cold Hght of 
 the 1 8th century, it was surely a venial error among those who 
 had recovered so lately the mislaid masterpieces of ancient 
 Greece and Rome. In this respect for antiquity, cultivated 
 Italians and Englishmen resembled each other; but, as we look 
 closer, differences emerge. If we compare Vittorino da Feltre, 
 for example, with Dean Colet,- there is certainly at times in the 
 Englishman a chilly practicalness which stands out in signal 
 contrast to the enthusiasm, to the affectionate, personal solicitude 
 for his pupils, exhibited by the Italian. 
 
 And again, in More, instead of a daring satirical temper 
 like that of ^neas Sylvius, or the pleasant, cheerful satisfaction 
 of lives successful in their practical issues, we find a wit sobered 
 by grey experience, and that humour, never far removed from 
 some touch of sadness or melancholy reflection, which appears 
 to be a native quality among the more northerly nations. 
 
 If again we compare Vergerius with Colet, we shall be 
 struck by the former's zeal for large ideals ; in Colet's case, we 
 shall find the ideal resolved into the actual details of everyday 
 life — there still, but transformed in practice. Colet not only 
 desires that the " lytell babes " of " Paules School " shall " in 
 contynuance be substancially taughte and lernyd in latin 
 tong," but he informs Henry VIII that he would also have 
 these children "instructe and informed in vertuous condiciouns 
 which by Goddes grace shall largely extende and habunde to 
 the cornon well of this your realme, and to the grete coumfort 
 and commoditie of your grace and to your heires." 
 
 What seems somewhat abstract in the Italian is reduced to 
 a concrete aim here in the Englishman's plan. 
 
 Rabelais and Montaigne however stand in a kind of 
 isolation : they enjoyed no companionship in a friendly coterie 
 attracted and bound by a common interest like that which 
 held More, Erasmus and Colet together, for the society of 
 learned men ■ which Rabelais enjoyed at Lyons was of a 
 different nature. Each of these Frenchmen was self-depen- 
 
20 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 dent, markedly original ; though it is interesting to remember 
 that Rabelais was acquainted with the writings of Erasmus. 
 More than this, the two men are differentiated from each 
 other : if the common concatenation Rabelais and Montaigne 
 be taken to imply personal resemblance or similarity of aim it 
 is to a large extent misleading. The salient characteristics of 
 Rabelais' method are his attention to hygiene and his insistence 
 on scientific education, not an education in which the curriculum 
 is made up solely, or even mainly, of the various branches of 
 physical science; but one in which all the subjects, humanistic 
 or scientific, are taught rationally, with a due regard to the 
 observation of cause and effect, of logical sequence ; for this, 
 after all, should be the meaning of " scientific education," 
 since the powers of observation and experiment are as appli- 
 cable to a literary composition as to a rare beetle or a chemical 
 compound. 
 
 And yet, in his chosen loneliness, in his deliberate detach- 
 ment, perhaps Montaigne is the most original of the whole 
 band of illumined men who adorned Europe from the 13th 
 ,to the 1 6th century. He was no copyist of rare mss. like 
 Poggio Bracciolini, no curious bibliophile like Cosimo dei 
 Medici, no wandering scholar Uke Giovanni da Ravenna, no 
 practical schoolmaster like Vittorino, no patron of sound 
 learning like John Colet. Montaigne used the classics as 
 material whereupon his own leisurely sceptical thoughts might 
 work. In his case, biographical details are of real and signifi- 
 cant interest. As he informs us with a quaint contentedness 
 of conviction that we must be interested, his birth occurred 
 "between eleven o'clock and noon" on Feb. 28, 1533, at the 
 Chiteau de Montaigne on the borders of Perigord and Bordelais. 
 The hasty reader may be inclined to say that Michel esteemed 
 his own aristocracy at an exaggerated rate: and indeed he 
 mentions the estate Montaigne as the descendant of a long 
 line of territorial nobles might speak of the cradle of his race : 
 " C'est le lieu de ma naissance, et de la plupart de mes ances- 
 
Michel de Montaigne 21 
 
 tres, ils y ont mis leur affection et leur nom." The bubble 
 can be pricked quickly, easily. His pedigree is only traceable 
 with certainty through three antecedent generations, to a grand- 
 father, Ramon Eyquem, a good bourgeois, an honest banker, 
 who acquired the small estate of Montaigne by the simple 
 expedient of buying it. Grimon, his son, was undistinguished, 
 save by a business ability even greater than that of Ramon. 
 Pierre, the son of Grimon, however, profiting by the results of 
 the more prosaic virtues of his forbears, added to wealth the 
 glamour bestowed by a successful military career. On his 
 return from an expedition into Italy, he married a Jewish lady, 
 Antoinette des Louppes, and settled down, en seigneur, at 
 Montaigne, where Michel, the first of his race to be born 
 there, entered the world as he informs us between eleven 
 o'clock and noon upon that so favoured day of February, 
 1533. By some undescribed process, he appears — with the 
 , noble prefix and a territorial surname — as Michel de Montaigne, 
 Eyquem having somehow and conveniently disappeared. In 
 an age like ours, devoted to a species of bustling democracy, 
 to hurry and to quick oblivion, it may seem that such details 
 are vain conceits, that such a pretension should be swept aside. 
 But as a matter of fact the claim to aristocracy was not empty 
 vanity, but of the fibre of Montaigne's very self, a clue too to 
 the nature of the inner man. No student of his Essays can 
 help being struck by his detachment from everyday life, his 
 intentional cultivated individuality of thought, taste and opinion, 
 by his aloofness which never degenerates into that kind of 
 vulgarity, which, with a touch of irony, we call "superiority," 
 by his leisurely attitude towards men and things, by his philo- 
 sophic doubt. Surely, all these issue from the fundamental 
 stuff of the man, which made him an aristocrat not only in 
 pretension but in fact. They are the marks of a man who has 
 never been required to depend on other men, to depend on 
 them in that sense which means checking or changing himself 
 in order to concihate them ; not merely to depend on them 
 
22 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 for such material things as the necessaries of Ufe, but for those 
 subtler accommodations, consideration, appreciation and even 
 a kind of deference. 
 
 It may be conceded that throughout the Essays, the average 
 reader will find Montaigne — however charming — to some extent 
 a creature apart. Yet he argues that his goal might be attained 
 by all : " In truth our laws are free enough ; the burden of 
 Government scarcely touches a Gentleman of France twice in 
 , his life. Essential effective subjection only concerns those 
 who choose to take it upon themselves, who love winning 
 honours and wealth so : because any man who desires to retire 
 to his own hearth, and who has sense enough to manage his 
 own business without quarrels and law-suits, is as free as the 
 Duke of Venice: for Seneca says 'Service holds few, but many 
 hold service.' " 
 
 It is indeed the eclectic wisdom of the leisured gentleman 
 which becomes the finest flower of Renaissance education in 
 France. 
 
 As an infant, Montaigne was consigned to the care of 
 a tutor who spoke only Latin and German, the latter his 
 native speech. "This man," writes Montaigne, "whom my 
 father had sent for of purpose and to wliom he gave very great 
 entertainment, had me continually in his arms, and was my 
 only overseer. There were also joined unto him two of his 
 countrymen ; whose charge was to attend, and now and then, 
 to play with me ; and all these together did never entertain- 
 me with other than the Latin tongue. As for others of his 
 household, it was an inviolable rule, that neither himself, nor 
 my mother, nor man, nor maidservant, were suffered to speak 
 one word in my company, except such Latin words as everyone 
 had learned to chat and prattle with me.... My father and my 
 mother learned so much Latin, that for a need they could 
 understand it- when they heard it spoken; even so did all the 
 household servants, namely,, such as were nearest and most 
 about me. To be short, we were all so Latinised, that the 
 
Michel de Montaigne 23 
 
 towns about us had their share of it ; inasmuch as, even at 
 this day, many Latin names, both of workmen and their tools, 
 are yet in use among them. And as for myself, I was about 
 six years old, and could understand no more French, or the 
 tongue of Pdrigord than Arabic, and that without art, without 
 rules or grammar, without whipping or whining.'' 
 
 During his father's life-time, Michel became a Magistrate 
 of Bordeaux ; it is characteristic of him that the first record of 
 him in the Court Registers relates to a hoUday he had given 
 himself. In this capacity, he met Etienne de Boetie, of whom 
 he uttered that wonderful epigram concerning friendship upon 
 which no one since has improved. Asked to account for their 
 mutual affection he remarked — " Parce que c'estoit luy, parce 
 que c'estoit moy." Here, as elsewhere, if the reader does not 
 understand the explanation, so much the worse for him : the 
 Sieur de Montaigne remains imperturbably content. 
 
 When Pierre died in 1568, Michel became "head of the 
 family." At once, he threw aside his lightly borne magisterial 
 duties, and retired with his wife and children to the Chiteau 
 de Montaigne, where, in the famous tower, he established 
 himself to enjoy a life of scholarly ease. His study was 
 a circular room, save that the circumference was in one place 
 cut across by the chimney and fire-place. Just there, Montaigne 
 put his writing-table and arm-chair. On the joists and beams 
 of this chamber, where the curious visitor may read them, 
 legible still on the old darkened wood, Michel pencilled his 
 favourite quotations — from Ecclesiastes, the Pauline Epistles, 
 from Stobaeus and Sextus Empiricus, mingling, with true 
 humanist cathoHcity, sentences which other men separate 
 into sacred and secular. It has been said, "Shew me a 
 man's friends and I will shew you his character." But in 
 some cases we have a truer test if we substitute books -for 
 friends, and this may be so with Montaigne, though his 
 devotion to the memory of his father, his affection and years- 
 long regret for his friend Etienne de Bodtie testify sufficiently 
 
24 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 to the warmth and strength of his natural affection. For his 
 era, Montaigne's library was considerable ; it contained one 
 thousand volumes, bound, for the most part, as became a man 
 so conscious of his high descent, in white vellum. Some sixty, 
 with his name in them, exist stiU : but amongst them those of 
 his favourite authors do not appear, — "suddenly, as rare things 
 will," these "vanished." 
 
 In his original collection, there were, among the Latins, 
 Cicero, Seneca, Virgil, Catullus, Lucretius, Horace, Lucan, 
 Juvenal, Martial and Persius. Among the Greeks were 
 Plutarch, Xenophon and Diogenes Laertius. Conspicuously 
 fond as he was of history, he possessed also Livy, Quintus 
 Curtius, Tacitus, Caesar and Sallust Nor did he neglect the 
 modem poets among his own countrymen, Ronsard, Marot, 
 •Saint Gelais and Du Bellay. In comparing his library with 
 those of other humanists, notably with Grocyn's, or with that of 
 Erasmus, we shall be struck with the absence of the Fathers. 
 Yet when, in Essay xxv, he speaks of "a man of birth, who 
 follows Letters not for gain (since so abject an end is unworthy 
 of the Muse's grace and favour, and besides concerns and 
 depends on entirely different causes), nor for external show, 
 but rather for the enriching and adorning of his real self," we 
 seem to catch an echo not merely in thought but almost in 
 words of S. Bernard's aphorism : — " There are who desire to 
 know only in order that they may know, and this bears the 
 taint of curiosity ; to know that they may be known, and this 
 is but vanity ; to sell their knowledge, and that is a shameful 
 trade; and some that they may be built up in the love and fear 
 of God, and that is wisdom." 
 
 Montaigne admits us to the secret of his personal tastes : 
 " History is my chief study, poetry my only delight to which 
 I am particularly affected." There is no doubt that he held 
 History in as high esteem as the great men of Renaissance 
 Italy did. But what in the Italians sprang from a regard for 
 citizenship, and from an appreciation of the value of history as 
 
Michel de Montaigne ' 25 
 
 contributing to produce a lofty and intelligent patriotism, was 
 in Montaigne surely a personal predilection. His affection 
 for Italian writers was great : for poets, romanciers, historians, 
 moralists, letter-writers. It is all quite easy to explain. Above and 
 before everything else, the problems of human nature attracted 
 Montaigne. Where could he hope to glean more information 
 about them than from the Italian writers upon human affairs ? 
 When we consider the complicated web of life woven by men 
 and events from the 13th century to his own day, when we 
 reflect upon the crowded scenes, the changing fortunes, the 
 mixed motives, the subtle and tortuous policies, the daring 
 speculations, the artistic aims and achievements of that era, 
 we cannot fail to understand the attraction of it all for so close 
 and curious an observer of men and of human affairs. In this 
 penchant of Montaigne, there is a practical application to modern 1 
 education. It may suggest the wisdom of restoring history to its 
 due and reasonable place in the curriculum of our schools — in 
 boys' schools not less than those for girls. And history should, 
 for this purpose, mean, as it did to Michel, not the history of lists 
 and dates, but that of elucidation, guidance and inspiration. 
 Dr Fitch once suggested that the writers of Israel compiled 
 history in the spirit of wisdom. As he pointed out, in the 
 Bible a period of exceptional interest and importance is de- 
 scribed with even minute detail : the sacred historians trouble 
 to record that it was a young lion that roared against Samson, 
 and that the stones which David chose out of the brook were 
 smooth, thereby adding to the effect of the mental picture. 
 Then having worked up these periods with an extraordinary 
 and patient skill, they pass over the arid unproductive eras, or 
 with the true flair of genius they seize the central fact and 
 leave all the rest. How often, for example, is it recorded of 
 some king that he did that which was evil, and that his 
 mother's name was so and so, effect and cause being thus 
 gathered up in a single phrase, so that the imaginative reader 
 can supply for himself all the rest of the dismal unrecorded 
 
26 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 truth. This is the kind of history which, had Montaigne 
 chosen that form of literary expression, he would have written ; 
 he would have drawn the bold outlines, and then would have 
 known with unerring instinct how and when to fill in the fore- 
 ground with minute touches. 
 
 When the modern reader is dwelling on the general trend 
 of Montaigne's intellectual pursuits, he should notice that it is 
 preeminently characteristic of the great essayist to have preferred 
 psychology to metaphysics. In his eulogy on Socrates^ he 
 writes : " It was he who brought human wisdom down from 
 the skies — where she was wasting her time — to restore her 
 to man, for there her most useful, her most laborious work 
 needs to be done." 
 
 There is one other lesson, of general significance rather 
 than of pedagogic detail, which educators may gather from 
 his pages. As readers of to-day linger over the Essays of 
 Montaigne, they must grow conscious of a subtle atmospheric 
 change. It is not that there is any slackness about him ; 
 perhaps, indeed, he is more thorough than we are, at any rate 
 he will spend years in the study of an author. His copy of 
 Casar is preserved still at Chantilly. It contains about 336 
 pages, on the margins of which there are about 600 notes in 
 his handwriting. A few spare leaves are bound up with the 
 text, and upon these he recorded his impressions, his general 
 estimate of the book ; and Ccesar was not one of his favourite 
 authors. The real difference between him and us is that he | 
 was leisurely, we are hurried. All the fuss and bustle, the 
 noise and publicity of so many of our modern efforts are 
 utterly foreign to him, who lived, after all, before this present 
 day when advertisement seems the most materially successful 
 of the fine arts. If we cannot recall the atmosphere which 
 surrounded Montaigne, we may at least borrow a useful hint 
 from his methods when we are scheming educationally. He 
 seems to tell us how foolish it is, like a child with a garden 
 ' Book HI. Essay iii. 
 
Michel de Montaigne 27 
 
 recently acquired, to pull up the plants so often by the roots : 
 to demand such quick, and which is worse, such obvious, such 
 measurable results : to watch with such ferocious zeal for 
 
 " Each little drop of wisdom as it falls 
 Into the dimpling cistern of the heart." 
 
 With the Son of Sirach, Montaigne realised that "the 
 wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure " ; ' 
 his tmsdom as distinct from mere knowledge. If we learned 
 from him nothing but the desirability of going slowly at least 
 sometimes, of taking time and thought — according to Vittorino's 
 plan — for quiet reflection upon and digestion of what we have 
 heard and seen before we hasten to someone else to explain to 
 us that which, with a little pains, we could quite well discover 
 for ourselves, then, if it were possible that he could be aware 
 of us, Montaigne might perceive that he had left behind him 
 in this world of men and things which interested him so in- 
 tensely,, the lesson which we of this 20th century could by 
 no means refuse, the lesson, perhaps, which we need most of 
 all. We flatter ourselves that our knowledge is greater than 
 that possessed by our i6th century predecessors. But it 
 will not profit us much in the long run if we wear ourselves 
 out prematurely with the haste, fret, and, worst of all, with the 
 superficiality of life. This plea for leisure is really part of that 
 quality which is Montaigne's salient characteristic — his entire, 
 his deliberately chosen moderation. As Sainte-Beuve wrote : 
 "His is an age of contrasts in their utmost crudeness.... Every- 
 thing collides, knocks up against everything else : nothing 
 blends, nothing shades in. Ferment and confusion reign 
 everywhere : every gleam of sun brings a storm. It is not 
 a mild age, nor one of light : it is a time of strife and battle. 
 Montaigne's great peculiarity, the quality which makes him 
 phenomenal, is that he could be moderation, discretion, fine 
 temper even in such an age as that." These qualities, modera- 
 tion, discretion, fine temper, Montaigne would fain have 
 
Michel de Montaigne 
 
 in education. Surely the 20th century with its love of 
 pleasure at — may I say ? — almost any cost ; its fierce craving 
 for excitement, pleasurable or painful ; its unconsidered praise 
 of smaU achievements; its advertisement of matters best left 
 in oblivion without even the pitiful distinction lent by con- 
 demnation, surely the 20th century with all these qualities on 
 the surface, obscuring the fine old ways of the race, ways we 
 decline to believe are extinct, would do well to return to 
 Montaigne, and karn from him to wait, to balance, to dis- 
 criminate. , 
 
 His views on education proper are scattered casually over 
 the Essays : it is possible that he may not have been aware 
 always that he was writing on education at all. He lived, we 
 may remember, before the man in the street was fortunate 
 enough to know that a Science of Pedagogy exists. Neverthe- 
 less, there is one Essay, which by common consent stands out 
 from the rest as his special contribution to educational know- 
 ledge, the famous 25th Essay of the ist Book, entitled Con- 
 cerning the Education of Children. Just as Quintilian dedicated 
 his Institutes of Oratory to Marcellus Victorius, not only 
 because that noble Roman was "animated by an extraordinary 
 love of letters," but because, as the author says, "my treatise 
 seemed likely to be of use for the instruction of your son, 
 whose early age shews his way clear to the full splendour 
 of genius " ; just as our own Locke first embodied the matter 
 which appeared later as Thoughts Concerning Education in 
 a series of letters to Edward Clarke of Chipley to guide that 
 gentleman in the education of his own children, so Montaigne 
 composed this 25th Essay for the benefit of the Comtesse de 
 Gurson, confronted, as she was, with a son's educational needs. 
 It is not surprising that parents do thus, in different times and 
 places, seek aid in this work : for, as Erasmus said, with a depth 
 of conviction which almost wafts his heavy sigh across the 
 centuries to those similarly burdened — " It is no light task to 
 educate our children aright." 
 
Michel de Montaigne 29 
 
 In this 2Sth Essay, Montaigne sets to work deliberately to 
 think out a plan of education; only doing it, however, as friend- 
 ship's offering, because he is very careful to proclaim his total 
 unworthiness to occupy the pedagogue's chair : " I see better 
 than any one else can that what I have set down is nought but 
 the fond imagination of him, who in his youth tasted nothing 
 but the paring, and hath seen nothing but the superficies of 
 learning ! whereof he hath retained nothing but a general 
 shapeless form, a smack of everything in general, but nothing 
 to the purpose in particular." 
 
 Just precisely as he is not a scholar for the sake of scholar- 
 ship, so he is not an educational thinker for the sake of 
 pedagogy. Because his one prime essential interest is human 
 nature, literature — humanity's expression of its thoughts — is 
 dear to him. Similarly, because the child is father to the 
 man, and because the child's circumstances mould the man's 
 character, education, with all its problems and requirements, 
 seems important in his eyes. We might expect that he would 
 suggest some reason why we should embark on education. 
 He does nothing of the kind. We have to turn to an earlier 
 Essay, the eighth. On Idleness, to fill this gap. There he 
 writes: "Just as we may see untilled fields, which are naturally 
 rich and fertile, yielding innumerable kinds of rank and useless 
 weeds, and, just as, if we wish to use such fields, we are forced 
 to bring them under cultivation and to sow them with useful 
 seeds, so it is exactly with human minds. If we do not keep 
 these employed on some subject which curbs and guides them, 1 
 they wander at random, now here, now there, in the vague 
 realm of fancy." 
 
 The meaning of this metaphor for us is that the mind 
 needs to be given material for its occupation, and also needs 
 to be so trained that it can concentrate its attention on that' 
 material : instruction and mental training he demands, in 
 a phrase which contains the kernel of a whole science of 
 school education. 
 
30 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 The question of suppljdng mental material grows in im- 
 portance in an age like this so enthusiastically devoted to 
 sports. A person need not depreciate games, nor share 
 Malvolio's objection to cakes and ale. At the same time 
 there is a mean between Malvolio and Sir Toby, and though 
 the educational world may be shocked if it be told this 
 crudely, yet many signs indicate its tendency towards Sir 
 Toby's theory. In the presence of some of the athletic 
 young women to be met everywhere, the spectator may be 
 pardoned if he wonders what their lives will be — say at forty, 
 when games are becoming less and less possible, and the 
 otherwise empty mind falls back on its own vacuity. 
 
 Upon the other matter, mental training or the capacity to 
 concentrate attention, to go on (a thing less easy to do than to 
 talk about), Montaigne insists almost vehemently. Erasmus, 
 we remember, did not despise painted mottoes, copy-book 
 maxims, inscriptions on cups, as instruments in education. 
 How would it be were we to follow his lead, and write in 
 conspicuous places Montaigne's terse reminder about con- 
 centration ? — " The mind which has no fixed aim comes to 
 ruin ; for, as it has been well said, to be everywhere is to 
 be nowhere." 
 
 Education then is to provide the stuff of knowledge, and 
 to train the mind rightly to assimilate and to use that know- 
 ledge. Montaigne realised the essential difference between 
 these two processes as we gather from the 24th Essay, where 
 he attacks the pedantry current in his day. 
 
 Quoting from Rabelais, the motto Magis magnos clericos 
 non sunt magis magnos sapientes, a motto not original in 
 wording because Chaucer, in the Reeves Tale, had written 
 "the greatest clerks ben not the wisest men"; not original 
 in meaning as Heraclitus, in the 6th century B.C., had declared 
 that " much learning does not teach sense " ; still, quoting the 
 phrase, Montaigne proceeds to wonder why minds full of 
 knowledge should sometimes be so useless, why simple. 
 
Michel de Montaigne 31 
 
 illiterate folk should sometimes shew themselves capable of 
 sound judgment. The passage runs as follows^: "these 
 sciolists... really, often they seem to be stripped even of 
 common-sense : for the peasant or the shoemaker, you may 
 watch them going simply and naturally about their business, 
 talking of the things they understand; whereas, the others... 
 muddle and entangle themselves ceaselessly. Beautiful words 
 escape their lips, but other people must explain their meaning : 
 ...they know the theory of everything, other men must reduce 
 it to practice." 
 
 In simpler words, Montaigne seems to ask why it is that 
 a mind, stored with knowledge, can be utterly futile; while one 
 poor in knowledge may be capable of sound and excellent ' 
 judgment. It is interesting to compare a remark of "Vauve- 
 nargues. Writing, towards the middle of the i8th century — not 
 much less, that is, than 150 years after Montaigne — he says, 
 " I listen to these simple folk, I see that they treat only of 
 commonplace matters; that they have no thought-out principles, 
 that their minds are really as barbarous as those of our ancestors, 
 that is to say, they are uncultivated and uncivilised : but I do 
 not find that even in that state they draw more false conclusions 
 than men of the world do : I see, on the contrary, that, taking 
 it all in all, their thoughts are more natural ; and that the sim- 
 plicity of ignorance is very much nearer the truth than are the 
 subtleties of knowledge and the deceit of affectation ^" 
 
 At first sight Vauvenargues' contrast seems to differ slightly 
 from Montaigne's : we have the man of the world instead of 
 the pedant set over against the simple uneducated person. 
 But at the end of the sentence the comparison grows closer, 
 we have the contrast between the "simplicity of ignorance," 
 and the "subtleties of knowledge." 
 
 Now here, if anywhere, Montaigne (and Vauvenargues too) 
 
 ' Book I. Essay xxiv. 
 
 2 Discours sur le caractire des differents sticks, CEuvres de Vauvenargues, 
 Vol. i. p. 155- 
 
32 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 have touched upon a problem that is of the first urgency to-day. 
 Our public secondary schools for boys have not, perhaps, 
 suffered so great changes in recent years as a part of their 
 well-wishers would desire. Certainly, some of the diatribes 
 directed against them suggest that, in spite of occasional 
 spasmodic efforts, they have, on the whole, remained in a 
 groove. But our girls' secondary schools have been altered 
 radically; so also have our elementary schools both for boys 
 and for girls. The question may be propounded — Have those 
 responsible for these changes kept in mind sufficiently this 
 fact to which Montaigne draws attention, this melancholy fact 
 that a "stored mind" may be "futile"? Are the products 
 of our sixth Forms in High Schools cultivated, resourceful, 
 practical; or are they partly stored vessels awaiting eagerly 
 fresh streams of facts and fancies? Those best qualified to 
 answer the question are their parents, and the authorities at the 
 Women's Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, the authorities of 
 the Metropolitan and Provincial Universities and University 
 Colleges, to which women resort for higher education, as it 
 is called. But then, if we will draw comparisons, we must 
 remember how high were Montaigne's " school-fees " ; they 
 amounted to this, that he spent the income of a landed 
 magnate upon his pursuit of wisdom, and we cannot buy 
 for a High School's annual charge such mature and refined 
 fruit as fell into his outstretched waiting hands. 
 
 Once more, are the children who are sent out from our 
 elementary schools ready to begin to face life in a handy 
 craftsmanlike way ? It is not to be supposed or desired that 
 they should leave school instructed fully in the differentiated 
 needs of agricultural, factory or workshop life, but are they 
 accustomed to face difficulties for themselves, or do they 
 expect someone else to find the solution for them? To put 
 the question differently : Have their lessons in school seemed to 
 them to have any connexion with real life as they know it, 
 even in a small degree, or are the two halves of their lives 
 
Michel de Montaigne 33 
 
 entirely disparate ? This is a matter of great importance, there- 
 fore it may be permissible to accentuate it by a quotation 
 from the French educationalist, M. Octave Greard : " What is 
 really important," he says, "is to furnish the child with the 
 most precious instrument for work, with the instrument which 
 is useful in each and every case, as useful in the study of 
 language as in the study of the physical sciences, viz. the 
 spirit of analysis^." 
 
 From this standpoint, the question propounded above may 
 be worded freshly ; Is the work in our primary schools done 
 in such a way that the children learn to take a problem to 
 pieces, so that they attack every new thing from the point 
 of view of its origin and composition, so that they learn to 
 handle circumstances which chance to be toward in the best 
 possible way ; or so, that if these chance to be untoward, they 
 can, understanding the construction of them, alter them ad- 
 vantageously so far as possible? 
 
 It is difficult to put this question so that it does not involve 
 too much or too little, perhaps the first form was the best — 
 (for after all the spirit of analysis, which M. Greard advocates 
 explicitly and Montaigne implicitly, leads to deftness), — Has 
 their education made them handy? 
 
 In this case an appeal for the answer cannot be made so 
 confidently to the parents, since it is unfortunately evident 
 that at any rate some of those in the classes from which 
 "elementary" children are drawn are not a little averse to 
 compulsory education. The answer must come from those 
 who employ the children when they leave school. 
 
 If the answers should chance to be uncomplimentary to 
 our present systems, the national outlook is gloomy. And for 
 this reason. Montaigne not only reminds us that a "stored 
 mind" may be "futile," but that "one poor in knowledge may 
 be excellent in judgment." This, from our own experience, 
 we know to be true. It is easy to meet men and women 
 1 Education et Instruction (Enseignement Secondaire), Vol. i. p. 29. 
 H. 3 
 
34 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 innocent of what is called education, who yet in the practical 
 affairs of life are capable and shrewd, whose general morality, 
 whose honesty of purpose, whose whole lives might often 
 shame those whose advantages have been more and greater. 
 In support of the capacity of the unlearned, the witness of 
 the late Bishop of London may be quoted. He was writing 
 on Mediaeval Universities and he said : " When Universities 
 came into being, the great mass of mankind were ignorant, 
 and were content to remain in ignorance : in a sense they 
 were what we call uneducated. But we must not be misled 
 by words and phrases. Men might not be able to read or 
 write, but they were not for that reason unintelligent and 
 incapable of forming a judgment about what affected their 
 own life. They could understand and transact their necessary 
 business with as much keenness as we can. They knew on 
 what points their opinion was of importance, and on what 
 points it was of little value.'' Happy Middle Ages ! 
 
 But if, we need only say if, we are rtiaking stored minds 
 which are futile, we are no longer leaving ourselves these 
 other minds which though "poor in knowledge," are "ex- 
 cellent in judgment." The widely flung, minutely meshed 
 education net lets but a poor few of our minnows slip through 
 and pursue their happy path of ignorance towards excellence 
 in judgment. In sober earnest, this is a matter into which we 
 ought to look. Let us recall the famous remark of Pascal in 
 the second of his damaging Lettres Provindales : " The world 
 pays itself with words : few men look deeply into things." 
 
 Montaigne casts about for a reason which shall account 
 for this condition of human affairs. It dods not seem to 
 occur to him just then that there is such a thing as difference 
 of ability, of temperament. He is not alone in forgetting this. 
 For various reasons, the financial being the main one, all 
 education, or very nearly all, is too little individual, personal 
 to this particular child, and then, in a different fashion, to 
 the next, and to the next, and so on. 
 
Michel de Montaigne 35, 
 
 -:-//' 
 But, for our purpose, it is rather fortunate that Montaigne 
 should have chosen to throw the whole blame on education, 
 because the weakness he descries is rampant among our- 
 selves : " I think it better to say that this evil arises from 
 the bad methods of education, and that, considering how we 
 are taught it is not surprising that both scholars and tutors fail 
 to beconie more able though they may become more learned." 
 This antithesis between able and learned is merely another 
 form of the previous idea of a "stored mind" which is 
 "futile." Montaigne does not content himself with indicting 
 the methods in vogue, he puts his finger right on the weak 
 spot : " We only labour to fill the memory, while we leave 
 the understanding and the conscience empty." He crystallizes 
 his contention in the terse phrase — " Sfavoir par cceur n'est 
 pas Sfavoir; c'est tenir ce qu'on a donne en garde a sa\ 
 memoire.'' Then he proceeds to shew in what the weakness 
 of the weak spot consists. The particular vice of memory- 
 work dwells in its essential superficiality. This notion he fixes 
 by a picture. Montaigne's study was situated on the upper 
 floor of the castle tower. When we remember the leisureliness 
 of his life, we can hardly imagine that, even during the hours 
 which he devoted to his books, he remained there with his 
 eyes glued to the printed page. Pater reminds us that all 
 around the Chateau lay "the fat noon-day Gascon scenery." 
 Often enough, one fancies, he must have lifted his eyes from 
 Seneca, or Cicero, or some Italian memoir-writer, and letting 
 them wander over the wide domains, must have grown ac- 
 customed to the picture he draws concerning the shallowness 
 of memory-work. Florio has rendered it so quaintly that it 
 is worth while to quote his translation : " Even as birds 
 flutter and skip from field to field to picke up come or anie 
 graine, and without tasting the same, carrie it in their bils, 
 therewith to feed their little ones ; so doe our pedantes gleane 
 and picke learning from books and never lodge it further than 
 their lips, only to degorge and cast it to the winds.'' 
 
 3—2 
 
36 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 In this picture is there nothing familiar, no suggestion of 
 twentieth century practice when whole forms are prepared 
 simultaneously for this, that or the other examination? 
 
 But Montaigne goes on to attack another form of memory- 
 work — the wholesale shallow borrowing of other men's I 
 opinions. "We take the opinions and knowledge of others 
 into our protection and that is all : I tell you they must be 
 enfeoffed in us and made our own." Dr Creighton spoke 
 strongly once against those among us who "collect opinions" 
 as some men collect butterflies, merely to stick them in 
 a cabinet, and not in order that their habits and relationships 
 may be studied and known. It is against this habit that 
 Montaigne protests, this baneful habit which he declares 
 follows us all through life : " Would I arm myself against 
 the fear of death ? I do it at Seneca's expense. Do I long 
 for consolation for myself or for some other man ? I borrow 
 it from Cicero." And then he points to the right way : 
 " I could have relied on myself, had I only been trained to 
 do so." With unwonted fire, he adds — " I do not like this 
 relative, begged provision." 
 
 It may be argued that the knowledge of the best of us is, 
 after all, but "relative, begged": that Cicero and Seneca 
 themselves depended for the stuff of knowledge, just as we 
 do, upon the data of sense, and the records of experience. 
 But that does not affect the core of Montaigne's argument, 
 because the matter does not end with the stuff of knowledge. 
 Though he knew how dependent we are for the material, 
 though he realised the debt we owe to our surroundings, he 
 still requires of us an intellectual response, a mental effort of 
 some real and efficient sort, answering to those more or less 
 external stimuli : he asks us to take all that not merely into 
 our memories, but into our judgments, into our understandings. 
 He suggests to every human creature that what he calls his 
 knowledge may be, shall be his in fact and not only nominally : 
 that it shall be something he has made, not something he has 
 
Michel de Montaigne 37 
 
 picked up already shaped and fashioned, something he has 
 swallowed without any thought of or attempt at digestion. 
 It is difficult to believe that anyone who had read Montaigne's 
 appeal could be content thereafter to have "la souvenance 
 assez pleine, mais le jugement entierement creux." 
 
 Here, without any difficulties of terminology and nomen- 
 clature, we seem to find in Montaigne — writing, let us re- 
 member, before Psychology was allotted a separate department 
 in the house of Philosophy or was given a name to itself — 
 some foreshadowing of the Herbartian doctrine of Apper- 
 ception. 
 
 No alert reader of Montaigne's Essays can avoid seeing 
 how particularly careful he is everywhere, and at all times, 
 to pursue, and to recommend to others, those paths of know- 
 ledge which tend to train judgment, to exercise reason, to' 
 develop capacity. The mere filling of memory seemed to 
 him — is it too much to say ? — rather worse than useless : 
 "truly should... learning be less prized than judgment^." 
 
 This seems to be the right place to advert to the extreme 
 individuality of Montaigne's point of view, a difficult element — 
 perhaps, in its extreme form, an undesirable element — to in- 
 corporate into school-life, but nevertheless an aspect of the 
 case very valuable as suggestion. Speaking of his use of 
 books, he says^: " Ce sont icy mes fantasies, par lesquelles 
 ie ne tasche point de donner a cognoistre les choses, mais 
 moy." Again he writes of them^, "Si i'estudie, ie n'y cherche 
 que la science qui traicte de la connoissance de moy mesme.'' 
 He goes further still when he declares'', "ce que i'en opine, 
 c'est aussi pour declarer la mesure de ma veue, non la mesure 
 des choses." 
 
 Perhaps he carries this doctrine of the resolution of know- 
 ledge into personal furniture to an exaggerated pitch. And 
 critics of Montaigne have not been slow to seize on this 
 
 1 Bk I. xxiv. ^ Essais, Bk II. x. 
 
 3 Ibid. * Ibid. 
 
38 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 aspect. In the Chapter in Gaston de Latour entitled " Sus- 
 pended Judgment," Pater quotes Montaigne's remark — "I 
 have no other end in writing, but to discover myself.'''' And 
 Pater continues^: "And what was the purport, what was the 
 justification, of this undissembled egotism ? It was the re- 
 cognition, over against, or in continuation of that world of 
 floating doubt, of the individual mind, as for each one 
 severally, at once the unique organ, and, the only matter, of 
 knowledge, — the wonderful energy, the reality and authority 
 of that, in its absolute loneliness, conforming all things to 
 its law, without witness, as without judge, without appeal, save 
 to itself." 
 
 "At once the unique organ and the only matter of know- 
 ledge." It is a tremendous claim, and Pater seems to have 
 overstated Montaigne's view. It is no doubt true, as Dr 
 lUingworth has argued, that "personality is the gateway of 
 knowledge," but still for each of us surely knowledge con- 
 tains two parts, first that which each has (or can have at the 
 price of effort) as "one in the endless multitude of men," , 
 i.e. his share in the general experience of humanity; and 
 then, secondly, that which is "properly of his own having 
 and substance." Montaigne insists over and over again on 
 this latter: perhaps he makes too little of the former, and 
 Pater carries the statement on beyond the point where the 
 Frenchman left it. 
 
 It was no doubt this recognition of the formative use of 
 education, which led him to esteem history so highly. Human 
 motives, strangely mixed as the best of them sometimes seem 
 to be, striking actions, dramatic sacrifices, great refusals, all 
 those — the stuff of which real history is made — ask of the spec- 
 tator the exercise not of memory, but of appreciation, of under- 
 standing, of judgment. It does no one any particular good to 
 know that William I landed in 1066, that Henry VIII defied 
 the Pope, that Elizabeth was something of a coquette, and 
 
 • Gaston de Latour, p. 132. 
 
Michel de Montaigne 39 
 
 that Cromwell found it a " hard necessity " to cut off Charles' 
 head. But it does probably make a difference even to our 
 judgment of current affairs, and of our own infinitesimal share 
 of responsibihty to them, if we have learned to trace the con- 1 
 sequences of the Norman inroad ; if we have taken the trouble 
 to understand the tangle of motives in Henry's life which led 
 him to act as he did ; if we have sufficient sense to realise that 
 Elizabeth might have had a high political purpose when she 
 seemed to behave like a commonplace flirt, a purpose which she 
 achieved, so that she ought to have won her people's gratitude 
 rather than their criticism : if lastly we could learn a lesson of 
 tolerance and condemn wholly neither Charles nor Cromwell. 
 
 And then, if we consider history not only on its constitu- 
 tional but on its personal side, we shall find that this makes 
 even more palpable appeals to our powers of reasoning. How, 
 we ask ourselves, did effect, in such and such an instance, 
 issue from cause : what is the lesson for us to draw from such 
 another instance : and elsewhere, shall we copy or shall we 
 reject the past ; or shall we discriminate, taking a part and 
 leaving the rest? And if so, why? Such intellectual effort 
 as this is likely to effect that which Montaigne desired; it 
 would teach men not to swallow facts whole, but to consider 
 them, look at them, weigh them, and finally digest them. 
 This spirit introduced into education with a wise realisation of 
 the precise measure of tolerance, waiting and suspension of 
 judgment possible to youthful faculties would save many a 
 child from growing up dogmatic, unreasoning and obstinately 
 blind to part of the contributory evidence. 
 
 This appeal for personal effort in the winning of wisdom 
 opens the way for Montaigne's observations on bent, a matter , 
 too lightly considered in education generally. Montaigne 
 declines point blank to pass over the individual's share in the 
 creation of knowledge, or his inclination towards this, away 
 from that. In this connexion, let us remember the expression 
 of his own settled conviction : " Sure I am we can never be 
 
40 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 wise, but by our own wisdom." If that be true, it is reasonable 
 that Montaigne should, as he does, invite the teacher to approach 
 each several mind suitably to its inclinations and capacities; to 
 put it otherwise, to suit his discourse to his hearer. This 
 same insistance on the importance of individuality appears 
 under another aspect in his Essay Que philosopher dest 
 apprendre a mourir^. Perhaps he never wrote a more charac- 
 teristic sentence than this — " La vie n'est de soy ny bien ny 
 mal : c'est la place du bien et du mal selon que vous la leur 
 faictes." Still fingering the same string, he continues: "L'u- 
 tilite du vivre n'est pas en I'espace ; elle est en I'usage : tel a 
 vescu longtemps qui a peu vescu. Attendez vous y pendant 
 que vous y estes : il gist en votre volonte, non au nombre des 
 ans que vous ayez assez vescu.'' 
 
 And yet how few human beings, comparatively, behave as 
 if they believe that life is merely the arena of good and ill, 
 the arena where the drama depends wholly on themselves, the 
 players ; how little education is designed to convince youth of 
 its own overwhelming responsibility as to the final result, to 
 urge upon those, who will be so soon adolescent, the all- 
 importance of will in the struggle we call life, to warn them 
 effectively lest they waste the days which never return. A self- 
 reliant personality, that is Montaigne's aim. He differs perhaps 
 from the Greeks and from the Italian humanists in seeming to 
 desire this primarily because it is a man's duty, which he owes 
 to himself, to be a man. And so he brings us to that difficult 
 problem in education, character. It is a word used glibly, i 
 often without any attempt at definition, consequently in different 
 mouths it means different things. Originally the Greek 
 equivalent meant something furrowed, impressed, graven in. 
 It was with a meaning which had in some measure strayed 
 from this that Dr Creightoh observed that the great marks of 
 character are teachableness and a capacity for growth. A little 
 thought will convince us that, in consonance with the primitive 
 1 Bk I. Essay xix. 
 
Michel de Montaigne 41 
 
 meaning of the word, character may be good or bad. We can 
 call a distinguished Saint or a notorious criminal a man of 
 character, meaning that he has developed himself, that he has 
 so grown that we distinguish him readily from his fellow-men. 
 It is this individuality, this personal uniqueness that Montaigne , 
 values, that education should not destroy, which our present 
 trust in machinery may destroy. It was Herbart who wrote, 
 the teacher " cheerfully leaves undiminished to his indi- 
 viduality the only glory of which it is capable, namely to be 
 sharply defined and recognisable even to conspicuousness, he 
 makes it a point of honour that the clear impression of person, 
 family, birth and nationality may be' seen undefaced in the 
 person submitted to his will'." To that advice Montaigne 
 would have subscribed willingly. That character should be 
 good, we all agree. It belongs to the individual, to parents, 
 to teachers, to friends, to religious effort, even to enemies, to 
 make it so. 
 
 But this character the tutor cannot hope to make if he 
 treats his pupils en masse. In the 25 th Essay, Montaigne 
 urges this ; " Those who, according to our common fashion, 
 undertake, with one self-same lesson and like manner of 
 education, to direct many spirits of divers forms and different 
 humours, it is no marvel if, among a multitude of children, 1 
 they scarce meet with two or three that reap any good fruit by 
 their discipline, or that come to any perfection." 
 
 There is no method urged by Montaigne which is more 
 important in the education of to-day than individuality in 1 
 teaching. What would he have thought of our huge classes ? 
 The difficulty is in some measure financial, for, in spite of 
 anybody, there is no such thing in this world and never has 
 been as cheap education. All education, worthy the name, 
 has been costly to someone. But in some measure, the 
 difficulty is a question of the personality, the skill, the fidelity 
 to a high ideal of the teacher, for, even with our huge classes, 
 
 ' Science of Education , ch. il. § iii. 
 
42 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 a. fine teacher may do much to encourage bent. To know 
 the children committed to one's care, that is at once the 
 task and the reward of the genuine teacher, not to group 
 them all together in a mass, but as the shepherd knows each 
 one in that immense flock, which presents to the mere spectator 
 only a dull expanse of homogeneity. When children are really 
 known like that, then, in a lesson, a word to one, a look to 
 another, an aside to a third are only some of the devices by 
 which individual bent may be recognised and encouraged. 
 
 Bound up with individual creation of knowledge and with 
 recognition of bent is Montaigne's plea for private judgment. 
 He will not have the learner take things unnecessarily upon 
 trust, unnecessarily — for we cannot picture the Sieur de 
 Montaigne as a supporter of idle empty contentiousness : 
 "I would have him" (i.e. the tutor) "make his scholar sift 
 all things narrowly, with discretion, and harbour nothing in his 
 head by mere authority, or upon trust. ...Truth and reason are 
 common to all, and no more belong to him who said them first 
 than to him who shall say them after." 
 
 Most practical teachers will admit that large classes and 
 sacrifices to examinations make it very hard to lead children to 
 this kind of reflectiveness. The necessity of " getting on with 
 the lesson" prevents the teacher too often from encouraging 
 those questions which arise out of exercise of judgment, and 
 not merely out of contentiousness and desire to obstruct. 
 Nevertheless, in so far as this is so, education is the loser. 
 
 Montaigne does not imagine that education ends with the 
 walls of the schoolroom. Sometimes we speak as if "those 
 divine men of old time" cared comparatively little for obser- 
 vation and alertness. At any rate Montaigne realised the 
 importance of being aware of one's environment : — " Warn 
 him, being in company, to have his eyes everywhere." 
 
 There is a quality which Montaigne denies to his "gentle- 
 man." An Englishman would call it insularity, but a Conti- 
 nental writer has no such convenient name to give it, yet he 
 
Michel de Montaigne 43 
 
 knows the thing and taboos it : "All strangeness and idiosyn- 
 crasy in our manners and habits should be avoided as inimical 
 to society." 
 
 Montaigne's aim in education was before all things definite 
 and practical. Near the beginning of Essay 25 he writes : 
 "The good that comes of study (or at least should come) is to 
 prove better, wiser, honester." And with this judgment, we must 
 couple the well-known remark which occurs towards the end 
 of the same Essay: "we seek to frame not a grammarian, not 
 a logician, but a complete gentleman." The accusation of 
 planning an educational scheme for gentlemen only is often 
 brought against John Locke. As a matter of fact it is truer of 
 Montaigne, though of course in this he was the man of his 
 time rather than the Seer some would have him to be. 
 Women, and the lower classes, seem hardly to exist for him. 
 Yet, perhaps he was behind his time, for in Germany there 
 were the learned sisters of Bilibald Pirkheimer; in England 
 there were, or had been, cultured ladies, Lady Jane Grey, 
 Elizabeth, Margaret Roper; in Italy the Estensi Princesses, 
 Cecilia Gonzaga, Olympia Morata ; in France Renee, daughter 
 of Louis XII, and Anne of Brittany. 
 
 Only once does Montaigne discuss the position of women. 
 He seems unwilling that they should be educated, yet if they 
 will read, let them study poetry, history and philosophy. In 
 advancing his reasons for the last, his better side towards 
 women appears : " It is for them to honour the arts, and 
 beautify the beautiful. What do they ask more than to live 
 beloved and honoured ? They have and know plenty for that, 
 they read but to arouse and enkindle the faculties they have 
 already. When I see them meddling with rhetoric, law, logic 
 and such like trash so futile and useless to them, I always fear 
 that men who encourage them in such things only do it to 
 bring them further into subjection. What other explanation 
 of it can I give ? It is sufficient that without our help they 
 can appear cheerful, severe, or gracious, and flavour a refusal 
 
44 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 with bluntness, or doubt, or towardness, and do not need an 
 interpreter of things arranged for their advantage. With that 
 amount of learning, they rule without a rod, and over-rule the 
 Regent Masters and the Schools. Still, if they cannot bear 
 that we should be superior in anything, and must, just out of 
 curiosity share in books too, then poetry is a fitting recreation 
 for them; it is an amusing, subtle, disguised talkative art, all 
 pleasure, all outside show like themselves. From history too, 
 they could derive useful lessons. In that part of philosophy 
 which bears on human life, they may consider those parts which 
 will teach them to judge our humours, our states; to defend 
 themselves from our betrayals, to temper the rashness of their 
 own desires, to husband their freedom, to lengthen life's 
 pleasures, to bear a servant's infidelity gently, a husband's ill- 
 temper, the importunity of passing years and of wrinkles and 
 such like things. There, all told, is their share in knowledge^" 
 
 In this same Essay Montaigne speaks with, if possible, an 
 even greater lack of acumen of those in a lower social class : 
 "I should praise the man who... can discourse about all sorts 
 of things with his immediate neighbours, of building, of 
 hunting, of some personal quarrel, who can chat with pleasure 
 with the carpenter or gardener. I envy those who can be on 
 familiar terms with their humblest dependents, and make a 
 friend even of a servant. Plato's advice — that we should 
 always speak imperiously, without familiarity to servants, 
 whether men or women, does not please me." 
 
 How different is Montaigne's attitude from that of Vauve- 
 nargues. 
 
 It is interesting to see that Montaigne can concentrate 
 his attention upon detail almost as if he had really been a 
 schoolmaster. He seems to agree with Erasmus that if 
 teachers only possessed and exercised more skill and discretion, 
 the pupil's hours in school might be fewer and his knowledge ' 
 ampler. He also recommends due relaxation. Florio has 
 
 ^ Bk III. Essay iii. 
 
Michel de Montaigne 45 
 
 rendered his remarks on this subject quaintly enough to justify 
 quotation : " Yet would I not have this young gentleman pent 
 up, nor carelessly cast off to the heedless choler or melancholy 
 humour of the hasty schoolmaster. I would not have his 
 budding spirit corrupted with keeping him fast-tied, and, as it 
 were, labouring foureteene or fifteene houres a day poaring on 
 his booke as some doe, as if he were a day-labouring man." 
 
 It is not to be expected that any writer on education should 
 shirk the question of punishment. Montaigne describes at the 
 end of the 25 th Essay the manner in which he was himself 
 educated, without tears or undue suffering. His sage blending 
 of tenderness and sternness may be seen in the following 
 passage from the same Essay ; " I would have violence and 
 force abolished ; in my opinion nothing else so soon ruins and 
 brutalizes a well-born nature. If you want him to fear shame 
 and punishment, do not harden him to them : but harden him 
 to heat and cold, to wind and sun, to every danger which he 
 ought to despise: take away all luxury and effeminacy in clothes 
 and bedding, in eating and drinking, harden him to all that, 
 that he may not be a fine gentleman and a fop, but a strong, 
 vigorous youth." 
 
 The question of punishment belongs, of course, to the 
 ethical side of education. Montaigne's treatment of ethical 
 problems is original and interesting. Let us consider for 
 instance the Essay On Liars^. No one can doubt that duplicity 
 of every kind was most repugnant to this Gentleman of France. 
 We might have supposed that in his life of scholarly seclusion, 
 withdrawn as he was from the devious ways of common life, 
 he would not have given much thought to chicanery and 
 deceit ; but he expresses himself with force and warmth : " In 
 very truth, lying is a detestable vice. We are only men, we 
 can only deal with one another by good faith. If we once 
 realised its horror and importance, we should pursue it, and no 
 other crime more justly, with fire and sword." A little later, it 
 1 Bk I. Essay ix. 
 
46 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 seems to occur to him that fire and sword are not educational 
 instruments, and he proposes the easier, more obvious way, of 
 nipping lying in the bud. 
 
 But it is not in that part of his treatment of this too 
 common vice that the ethical interest lies. His originality 
 appears in his analysis of lying. " I am perfectly aware," he 
 writes, "that the grammarians draw a distinction between 
 uttering an untruth and lying. They hold that to utter an 
 untruth is to say that which is in fact false, but which is taken 
 (by the speaker) to be true: but that the etymological meaning 
 of metUiri, whence our French word (mentir) is derived, implies 
 that the speaker defies his conscience, and consequently applies 
 only to those who say what they know to be false." This 
 careful distinction Montaigne in another Essay, Of the Incon- 
 stancy of our Actions'^, applies to all conduct : and it is this 
 which marks him off from contemporary thinkers. The Italian 
 humanists, as no one can deny, had cared greatly for conduct. 
 Vergerius writes : " We call those studies liberal which are 
 worthy of a free man ; those studies by which we attain and 
 practise virtue and wisdom ; that education which calls forth, 
 trains and develops those highest gifts of body and mind 
 which ennoble men, and which are rightly judged to rank next 
 in dignity to virtue only^" 
 
 .(Eneas Sylvius who, raised to Peter's Chair, invited those 
 about him to " forget .(Eneas and remember Pius," was keenly 
 alive to the necessity of encouraging virtue in others, and to 
 the suitability of good literature as the means of doing so : 
 "Wherever excellence is commended, whether by poet, 
 historian or philosopher, we may safely welcome their aid in 
 building, up the character. For with the young, the early im- 
 pressions of moral worthiness are usually the most enduring. 
 To quote Horace : 
 
 ' After long years, the soul will still imbue 
 The jar of that which seasoned it when new.' 
 
 1 Bk II. Essay i. 2 j^^ ingenuis Moribus, § 3. 
 
Michel de Montaigne 47 
 
 Thus morals and learning are alike forwarded by the judicious 
 use of literature in education^." 
 
 Again, Rabelais desired by the inculcation of good habits, 
 and of religious practice, to form a virtuous character. A 
 perusal of those chapters of Gargantua and Pantagruel, 
 which are devoted to educational themes, will show that this 
 is true. 
 
 John Colet, too, in those terse "recommendations" which 
 he framed for his "lytell babes" of "Paule's School," exalted 
 this same ideal of right conduct. Lastly, Erasmus, and this 
 notably in a letter addressed to the fiery-tongued Luther, 
 esteemed conduct, right temper, as the first of Christian duties. 
 But Montaigne goes further than this. He, in the spirit of 
 Immanuel Kant years later, proceeds to analyse the nature 
 of virtue. What, he seems to ask, is the quality which dif- 
 ferentiates good conduct from bad ? Like Kant, he declines 
 to allow results to be the test of the morality of an action : it 
 is something subtler than that he seeks. And he finds, as he 
 casts about for an answer to his question, that lying is only one 
 branch of conduct, a specimen so to speak, but that it affords 
 a test for all the rest; good conduct is obedience to conscience, 
 to the inward light: bad conduct is defiance of consciejice. 
 Moreover, it is a safe test this, because, as Montaigne implies in 
 the Essay On Liars, every man is, in the last resort, a responsible 
 being : he, and only he of mortal men, can, in any exact sense 
 of the words, know himself: "Everywhere," says Montaigne, 
 "everywhere, my own eyes suffice to keep me straight; no 
 one else can watch me so closely as I watch myself; I respect 
 no other opinion in this matter so much as my own." 
 
 Some people may argue that such a view tends to an utter 
 anarchy of individualism. And yet it is a cogent question 
 whether differences of opinion as to moral right and wrong do 
 not come largely from undisciplined temper and indulged 
 prejudice. Intellectual differences of opinion are another 
 ^ De Liberorum Educatione, % 6, 
 
48 Michel de Montaigne 
 
 matter. But if men and women who really desire to do 
 rightly (in cases where they are called upon for action as 
 distinguished from opinion) are perfectly honest with them- 
 selves, will they not admit the final responsibility of each 
 soul to its own inward light? Perhaps Montaigne claims a 
 trifle too much when he says, " everywhere my own eyes suffice 
 to keep me straight"; because, somethiijg more than this 
 inward light is needed in order that conduct may be good : 
 knowing, unfortunately, is not always synonymous with doing. 
 The will must be touched even when the inner light burns 
 brightly. But, translated with some freedom, does he not 
 suggest, and truly, that the inward light, if not always sufficient, 
 is still the best guide each one of us has ? 
 
 Montaigne is described sometimes by the word easy-going, 
 "so tranquil a spectator of so average a world," as Pater called 
 him. Pascal went beyond this, and in his interview at Port 
 Royal with M. de Saci, said : " Montaigne is absolutely per- 
 nicious for those who have a tendency towards impiety and 
 vice." That such a view is, at any rate, not the whole truth, 
 that Montaigne was quite as aware as we can be of the 
 necessity for stimulating the will we may gather from a passage 
 in the 22nd Essay of Book I.: "One ought to teach children 
 carefully to hate vice for its own sake : to teach them its 
 inherent deformity: so that they may not only avoid it in 
 deed, but from their very hearts : that the very idea of vice, 
 however it may garb itself, may be loathsome to them." May 
 we not say that just because Montaigne's rapier is, as a rule, so 
 light and flashing, therefore these heavier strokes, laid on with 
 a broadsword, come with more telling force ? 
 
 It is usual to call Rabelais and Montaigne realists in edu- 
 cation, but their realism is not identical. Rabelais was a 
 doctor of medicine ; for his age, he was a scientific man : he 
 attached much importance to knowledge of physical phenomena, 
 of the tides, of the heavens, of plants, of minerals hidden in 
 the earth, and of the manufactures C9.rried on by men. 
 
Michel de Montaigne 49 
 
 Montaigne, on the other hand, was not a professional man, 
 he lived en grand seigneur. He had been a magistrate, called 
 upon to judge the motives of his fellow-men, to listen to their 
 tortuous pleadings, to pay attention to the sorry details of their 
 crimes. On an occasion even, he had been a courtier; he 
 had trodden the easy path of the leisured scholar: con- 
 sequently, his " realities " are found in the stuff of human life, 
 in psychology and ethics, in history, in the actual commerce of 
 society. 
 
 Yet, different as they were, they were both realists ; it was 
 not their practice to " pay themselves with words." Any account 
 of Montaigne, however brief and inadequate, must take notice 
 of one more matter, i.e. of his insistence on the all-im- 
 portance — not only in juvenile education, but in that wider, 
 longer education we call life — of habit. It is best to give the 
 indelible picture just in his own words ; " My opinion is that 
 he conceived aright of the strength of habit, who first invented 
 this tale : how a country woman having accustomed herself to 
 nurse a calf and carry it about in her arms, thereby formed 
 such a habit that she was able still to carry it when it had 
 grown to be a great ox'." 
 
 That Montaigne should add, " my opinion is that there is 
 nothing which habit does not, or cannot do," seems, after this, 
 really to be of the nature of an anti-climax. 
 
 Times have changed, knowledge has increased; in the most 
 highly civilised countries a measure of education is the birth- 
 right of all. What can we of this so altered era learn from 
 the Renaissance, and its greatest children ? From the Italians, 
 and from Colet, More and Erasmus, let us learn the worth 
 of fine literature, our duty to the State, the importance of 
 health and physical development, the supreme value of 
 character and individuality. From Rabelais let us learn that 
 all knowledge, all genuine growth are worth having, and let us, 
 remembering his theory and practice, accustom ourselves to 
 ' Bk I. Essay xxii. 
 
JO Michel de Montaigne 
 
 reality, and renounce the vulgar habit of "paying one's self 
 with words." And then from Montaigne let us learn the 
 wisdom of going slowly, the grace of suspending judgment 
 where full knowledge is not vouchsafed to us, the folly of one- 
 sidedness, the intrinsic interest to us of human nature, summed 
 up for ever in Terence's line. Homo sum, nihil humani a me 
 alienum puto, and lastly, the individual's inalienable responsi- 
 bility for himself 
 
 Doubtless, there will be some men at all times, and others 
 at some times, who will recoil from the passionless common 
 sense of this thinker who in a violent distracted age " could 
 be moderation, discretion, fine temper." They will argue that 
 the natural emotions, the common humours, the petty ideals of 
 ordinary men are glossed over or brushed aside to make room 
 for a system where a spirit of accommodation in the pupil is a 
 pre-essential- of the tutor's success. But that attitude is not 
 a condemnation, rather is it an unconscious, unintentional 
 tribute of praise, because, with all his power of detachment, 
 Montaigne was not a cold-blooded creature. Just picture John 
 Locke asked the reason for his affection for his friend. He 
 would not have replied Par ce que destoit luy, par ce que destoit 
 moy. The author of that phrase knew the sudden, unaccount- 
 able, irresistible way of the human heeu-t's passion. His faciUty, 
 his easy-goingness, as people call it, is no outcome of insensi- 
 bility, but the triumph of a deliberate method of discipline 
 over a naturally ardent, many-sided nature. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE GENTLEMEN OF PORT ROYAL. 
 
 The founder of Les Petites ^^coles de Port Royal was but 
 eleven years old when Michel de Montaigne died in 1592. 
 His work belongs to the 17 th century, and the most casual 
 student can hardly fail to observe the change which has come 
 over European life in the interval which separates the adult 
 lives of these two men. When studying the history of educa- 
 tion, it is an error to forget or overlook political changes : the 
 two are closely interwoven, as M. Grdard has written — "Chaque 
 siecle introduit dans son regime d'dducation le resultat de ses 
 ddcouvertes et de ses travaux, la preoccupation de ses intdrets 
 et de ses besoins. L'histoire de nos plans d'etudes n'est pas 
 un des chapitres les moins instructifs de l'histoire de I'esprit 
 humain\" 
 
 In the 15th century, though the general means of com- 
 munication were poorer than in the 17th, yet European 
 education approached more nearly to homogeneity ; for, after 
 all, nationality was not of prime importance to those united 
 by that interesting tie which bound every member of the 
 Republic of Letters to the rest. Learned persons, using the 
 tongue of the learned — Latin — could afford, if they chose, 
 to sink the differences suggested by the words Italian, French, 
 English, Dutch and so forth. Yet even by the end of that 
 century a significant event occurred which proved that the 
 
 ' Enseignemenl Secondaire par Oct. Greard, Tome ll"™, p. 12. 
 
52 The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 idea of nationality, of the existence of separate states with 
 distinct and possibly hostile interests, was working in the 
 political mind. The avowed basis of the League which, in 
 1496, Spain, the Pope, the Empire, Milan and Venice renewed 
 against Charles VIII of France was " the mutual preservation 
 of States so that the more powerful might not oppress the less 
 powerful, and that each should keep what rightly belongs to 
 him\" 
 
 Throughout the i6th century, with waxings and wanings, 
 this idea of separate nationalities grew stronger, till by the 
 17 th century it was well established and reigned as securely 
 perhaps as it does at the present time. We should remember 
 that though it is true, as M. Greard said, that " every century 
 introduces into its educational scheme the results of its own 
 discoveries, the preoccupation of its own interests and needs,'' 
 yet times of activity — in a nation or an individual — seem to 
 be followed always by longer or shorter periods of inactivity. 
 From an educational point of view, the latter part of the 
 1 6th century in Europe presents a spectacle of stagnation, as 
 if men's energies were spent in struggles over religion. And 
 this, we may say, without forgetting Montaigne, who was 
 almost a solitary protester against, not a supporter of, the 
 methods in vogue there, in the Universities and Seminaries 
 of France. The worst feature of European public education, 
 that also which conduced to this stagnation, was the dull 
 unreflecting idolatry of the more arid side of the Humanities. 
 The stuff of the Classic Literatures which attracted and in- 
 spired the great men of the Renaissance had suffered an 
 eclipse by the general installation of the dreary process of 
 the acquisition of the languages in which they were written. 
 This fact is not marvellous. In the 14th and isth centuries, 
 the classics fell into the hands of grown men, already versed 
 in the affairs of human life. As years and generations passed 
 
 ^ Cardinal Wolsey, by the Rt Rev. Mandell Creighton, D.D., pp. 6 
 and 7. 
 
The Gentlemen of Port Royal 53 
 
 on, belief in the value of the Wisdom of Antiquity did not die, 
 and so it came to pass that small boys were required to learn 
 the old languages in order that they in their turn might drink 
 from the same fountains which had nourished their immediate 
 forefathers. But often the teachers were unskilled in pedagogic 
 method, unversed in any knowledge of the way of a child's 
 mind. In such circumstances youth often proved unapt, and 
 the study of humanism deteriorated gradually into a dull grind 
 at dry elements of Latin Grammar everywhere, and of Greek 
 Grammar wherever circumstances allowed that to be super- 
 added : a sterilizing effort too seldom followed by any know- 
 ledge or appreciation of the contents of the two great 
 literatures. So tough was the struggle that the vernacular 
 perhaps ran some risk of extinction. This miserable business 
 of forcing dreary matter on childish minds by unskilled' 
 methods, accounts perhaps for the terrible indictments 
 launched by Erasmus, Montaigne, Ascham and Comenius 
 against the brutality current in schools. Montaigne speaks 
 of "bloudy burchen twigs^"; Comenius quietly calls schools 
 "terrors for boys, shambles of young intellects^"; Erasmus 
 mentions them as "slave-galleys and prison houses'"'; Ascham 
 repeatedly regrets the harsh beating which led boys to hate 
 learning before they knew its nature. 
 
 These men, taken together, had wide knowledge of the 
 schools of their day ; for if Montaigne did choose seclusion 
 in his tower, yet Erasmus and Comenius were perpetual 
 wanderers on the face of the earth, and wanderers with a 
 constant bias towards things academic and scholastic: Ascham 
 also, the Royal Messenger, was a frequent traveller, as well as 
 an interested spectator of the schools of his own country. 
 
 We can scarcely doubt that the vernacular languages were 
 neglected if we consider the following facts. 
 
 ' Essais de Montaigne, I. xxv. 
 2 The Great Didactic, ch. XI. 
 ■* The Praise of Folly. 
 
54 The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 M. Greard quotes from the Statutes of the Faculty of Arts 
 of the University of Paris the following: "Nemo scholasticorum 
 in collegio lingua vernacula loquatur, sad latinus sermo eis sit 
 usitatus at familiarise" 
 
 He records further that in 1612 at the college de Trdguier, 
 the professor of philosophy was suspended for lecturing in 
 French. This enmity against the mother tongue is accentuated 
 further by the fact that it was permissible to substitute Greek 
 for Latin. Thus Dr Hastings Rashdall records that in 1537 
 " a new era is marked " (i.e. at the University of Montpelliar) 
 "by the announcement of a course of lectures upon Hippo- 
 crates in the original Greek by the illustrious Rabelais, and 
 from this time the Greek influence again becomes predominant 
 at Montpellier"." It is right to add that the prevailing in- 
 fluence at Montpellier, thus driven out by Greek, had been 
 Arabic not French. 
 
 M. Greard admits that the University of Paris allowed the 
 use of French instead of Latin for catechetical purposes, in 
 those lower classes where the pupils were insufficiently ad- 
 vanced to understand the gist of questions put in Latin. 
 In French seminaries, Latin was enforced, though it was 
 permissible to substitute Greek. The University of Nimes, 
 founded by Margaret of Navarre, was one of the centres of 
 "Reformed" teaching in France. Its rector, Claude Baduel, 
 a cultured humanist and avowed Protestant, wrote in 1548: 
 
 ".La principale etude et celle du Latin Que nul done ne 
 
 neglige I'habitude de parler Latin, ni ne se permette I'habitude 
 d'une autre langue, sauf le grec et I'he'breu aux heures fixees 
 par les professeurs. Mais il ne suffit pas de parler Latin, il 
 faut le faire correctement." Not all the Reformers, therefore, 
 were careful for the vernaculars. 
 
 If we turn to the pages of Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, we 
 shall see that he, travelling about Europe at the close of the 
 
 ' Enseignement Secondaire, Tome 11""', p. 13, note. 
 " The Universities of Europe, Vol. 11. p. 135. 
 
The Gentlemen of Port Royal 55 
 
 1 6th century, found the study of the grammatical side of 
 the classical languages the staple of education, as the process 
 was still called. 
 
 A typical school of the i6th century was that at Strasburg, 
 of which John Sturm was rector from 1538 to 1583. Con- 
 cerning this school Mr Oscar Browning has written : " Of the 
 nine years spent at the gymnasium seven were to be devoted 
 to the mastery of pure idiomatic Latin, the next two to the 
 acquisition of an elegant style, and in the five collegiate years 
 the pupil was to be fashioned into a consummate speaker'." 
 
 A student of the College de Bourgogne, Henri de Mesme, 
 wrote the following words in 1542: "Au College de Bourgogne 
 oil mon pere me mit au troisieme classe, j'appris k r^pdter, 
 disputer, haranguer en public... et a r^gler mes heures tellement 
 que, sortant de la, je rdcitai — Homere d'un bout a I'autre^" 
 
 Monsignor Barnes, in his account of Eton in Catholic 
 Days^, shews the predominance of Latin in that great school. 
 Nor can we forget that John Colet, reformer and pioneer 
 though he was, in laying down the qualifications for the 
 "Highe Maister" of " Paule's School," requires only these 
 two on the strictly pedagogic side, that he should be " lerned 
 in good and clene Latin Literature, and also in Greke if such 
 may be gotten." And if we turn to the curriculum which 
 Colet drew up, we find no provision made for anything but 
 Latin and Greek, except for the " catechizon in English." It 
 is fair to add that Colet did not tie the school down in 
 perpetuity to that narrow curriculum : he says, " as touching 
 in this scole what shall be taughte of the maisters and lerned 
 of the scholars it passeth my wit to devyse and determyne in 
 particular, but in general to speke and seeme what, to saye my 
 minde, I would they were taughte always in good Literature 
 bothe Laten and Greke." 
 
 ' Educational Theories, p. 48. 
 
 2 Quoted by RoUin, Ti-aiU des Atudes, 11. ii. § 81. 
 
 3 Downside Review, Dec. 1897 and March 1898. 
 
56 The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 It is interesting to remember that very soon after this 
 Ascham will think it worth while to write in English because 
 "as for the Greek and Latin tongue everything is so excellently 
 done in them that none can do better : In the English tongue 
 contrary everything in a manner so meanly both for the matter 
 and handling that no man can do worse '." 
 
 This single instance of insistence indicates the general 
 tendency to neglect the mother tongue. 
 
 Then it is impossible to forget that scathing criticism of 
 public education uttered by Montaigne in his Essay On 
 Pedantry^: "See but one of these our University men or 
 bookish scholars return from School after he hath there spent 
 ten or twelve years under a Pedant's Charge ; who is so unapt 
 for any matter ? who so unfit for any company, who so to seek 
 if he come into the world : all the advantage you discover of 
 him is that his Latin and Greek have made him more sottish, 
 more stupid, and more presumptuous than before he went 
 from home." 
 
 The Society of Jesus, founded by a Bull of Paul III in 1540, 
 has this great claim to distinction that in the i6th century it 
 allowed the use of French in France. In the Ratio Studiorum 
 (published in 1599) among the Regula rectoris this eighth 
 rule was promulgated ; " Domi lingtim latinm usum inter 
 scholasticos diligenter conservandum curet : ab hac autem latine 
 loquendi lege non eximantur, nisi vaccUionum dies et recreationis 
 horce." 
 
 It is with a sigh of relief that one thinks of this portion of 
 French youth eased from the yoke of Latin on holidays and 
 at play times. A mighty opponent of the Catholic Church 
 resembled and exceeded the Jesuits in caring for the verna- 
 cular. Professor Fairbairn, writing of Calvin's departure from 
 the University of Paris, observes that he left for "Orleans, 
 possibly as he descended the steps of the College de Montaign, 
 
 ' The Scolemaster. 
 ^ Essais, I. xxiv. 
 
The Gentlemen of Port Royal 57 
 
 brushing shoulders with a Spanish freshman Ignatius Loyola \"' 
 So brief a contact, though not without dramatic interest, was, of 
 course, without influence on either man. 
 
 At the end of his student career, Calvin was an accom- 
 plished humanist: "Erasmus is, in Calvin's eyes, the ornament 
 of letters, though his large edition of Seneca is not all it ought 
 to have been : but even Erasmus could not at twenty-three 
 have produced a work so finished in its scholarship, so real in 
 its learning, or so wide in its outlook'," as Calvin's Com- 
 mentary on Seneca's de dementia. Perhaps this testimony is 
 sufficient to establish Calvin's claim to humanistic scholarship. 
 From Compayre, the student might suppose that Calvin's 
 educational influence did not traverse that of the ordinary 
 grammar school pedagogue of the i6th century; he writes: 
 "Calvin, absorbs par les luttes religieuses et les polemiques, 
 ne s'occupa que sur la fin de sa vie de fondations scolaires, et 
 encore le College qu'il installa a Geneve en 1559 n'etait guere 
 qu'une ecole de Latin^" This may be true, but it is not the 
 whole truth. In Geneva men preached and taught and argued 
 in the vernacular (French) ; from Geneva men went to other 
 countries, specially to France, to preach in French. Our 
 concern here is not with the matter of their preaching, but 
 with its form; and that form was the native tongue. "The 
 Reformed Minister was essentially a preacher, intellectual, 
 exegetical, argumentative, seriously concerned with the subjects 
 that most appealed to the serious-minded. Modern oratory 
 may be said to begin with him, and indeed to be his creation. 
 He helped to make the vernacular tongues of Western Europe 
 literary. He accustomed the people to hear the gravest and 
 most sacred themes discussed in the language which they knew; 
 and the themes ennobled the language, the language was never 
 allowed to degrade the themes. And there was no tongue and 
 no people that he influenced more than the French''." 
 
 ^ Cambridge Modern History, vol. II. ch. xi. p. 352. ^ Ibid. 
 
 ^ Histoire de la Pedagogie, p. 91. ^ Camb. Mod. Hist. Vol. II. p. 373. 
 
58 The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 It would be going beyond the scope of an historian of 
 education to inquire whether the person so vividly described 
 by Dr Fairbairn was or was not the most desirable type of 
 cleric : the quotation is introduced here merely to indicate 
 one source of strength from which the vernaculars derived 
 assistance. Moreover, the student of education, even though 
 he were no lover of the theology of Ignatius Loyola or of 
 Calvin, should still possess sufficient tolerance to feel gratitude 
 for the aid they rendered to the vulgar tongues, an assistance 
 not less valuable for the fact that both knew Latin and Greek, 
 and that Calvin at any rate was an able classical scholar. 
 Though to the wider practice and outlook, in this respect, of 
 the Jesuits and Calvin must be joined that of the Gentlemen 
 of Port Royal, it still remains broadly true that European 
 public school and University education in the i6th century 
 was concentrated on the acquisition of a thorough knowledge 
 of Latin, to which, in some cases, Greek and even Hebrew 
 were added. 
 
 A brief account of the history of Port Royal must suffice 
 here. The Abbey was founded in the year 1204, in the flat 
 lands of Port Royal about 15 miles from Paris. Among other 
 derivations, Sainte-Beuve quotes that of the Abbe Lebeuf, 
 which derived the name Port Royal from Porrois, and then 
 from Porra, meaning in Low Latin " a hole full of brushwood 
 where water stagnates." This seems to describe the unhealthy 
 spot accurately enough, until the days when its proprietor 
 awoke to its condition and drained it. This little community 
 of women of the Order of Citeaux^ did not become famous till 
 the 17 th century, when the youthful Angelique Arnauld, its 
 new Abbess, set about reforming it on the severest lines. She 
 proved a prophet in her own country : members of her own 
 
 1 A Benedictine monlc, Saint Robert, abbe de Moleme, retired in 1098 
 with 20 companions to a place called Clteaux, about 12J miles from Dijon. 
 In 1113, Saint Bernard brought thither 30 more monks, and the Order of 
 CJteaux came to be called Bernardines in France. 
 
The Gentlemen of Port Royal 59 
 
 family joined the Order, and men of the world left their gay 
 life in Paris, to live a life of solitude, contemplation and 
 penitence near this Abbey. Owing to the unhealthiness of 
 the locality, Mere Angelique moved the community to Paris 
 in 1625, and in 1633 they took up their abode in a new 
 Convent near the Louvre. 
 
 The Abbe de Saint Cyran became the director of the 
 Community. He it was who founded Les Petites Ecoles, 
 which were established in the rue Saint Dominique at Paris. 
 
 Les Petites Ecoles de Port Royal achieved a result out of 
 all proportion to the brevity of their existence, for they lasted 
 only from 1637 to 1661, in which latter year Louis XIV 
 closed them formally by Royal decree. Founded originally by 
 Duvergier de Hauranne, Abbd de Saint Cyran, at the instance 
 of a well-known magistrate, M. Jerome Bignon, these schools 
 were begun outside Port Royal. M. Bignon insisted that his 
 two sons should be Saint Cyran 's pupils, the abbe's devotion 
 to children being no secret. In words that remind us of 
 Pestalozzi, the great priest had exclaimed, "je voudrais que 
 vous pussiez lire dans mon cceur I'affection que je porte aux 
 enfants\" "To children," not to this or that individual child, 
 nor to children in any imaginary abstract, but to each and 
 every child, whether he were the son of a friend, or the offspring 
 of that lieutenant of the prison who treated Saint Cyran with 
 such undeserved harshness. 
 
 Bound up with this intense love for children, there was a 
 conviction in his mind at least equally intense of the importance 
 of education, of its importance to the family, to the Church, to 
 the State. Lancelot, in his Memoires of Saint Cyran, refers 
 continually to this: e.g. "he said whatever other virtues parents 
 might display, if they did not do their utmost to give their 
 children a good education, that was enough to condemn 
 them": and again, "it happens only too often that those whom 
 parents have fancied they were bringing into the world for the 
 
 ' Letter written by M. de Saint Cyran from the Bois de Vincennes. 
 
6o The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 support and credit of their family, became its shame and ruin 
 simply for want of a good education." 
 
 Saint Cyran himself once expressed this opinion in words 
 which leave us no room to doubt his serious meaning, when 
 we remember the importance attached by all Catholics to 
 Baptism : " As they hasten to Baptism, so they should hasten 
 to education : and all that they do without education merely 
 draws down God's curse on the father and mother, who are the 
 visible Guardian Angels'." 
 
 It is only reasonable that a man who attached such over- 
 whelming importance to education should also magnify the 
 teacher's office, I quote again from Lancelot's Memoires : 
 
 " M. de Saint Cyran thought so highly of the love of those 
 who brought children up in a Christian manner, that he said 
 there was no office in the Church more worthy of a Christian : 
 that next to charity of which it is said majorem hoc dilectionem 
 nemo habet, which induces us to die for our brethren, this is 
 the greatest virtue : that it is a summary method of erasing 
 and expiating one's youthful sins : that at death one of the 
 greatest consolations a man could have would be the knowledge 
 that he had contributed to the sound upbringing of even one 
 single child; and that this employment sufficed by itself for the 
 sanctification of a soul, provided that it was undertaken with 
 love and patience." 
 
 When we reflect upon the character and opinions of Saint 
 Cyran we shall perhaps admit that no intentionally higher 
 praise of the profession of teaching has ever been penned. 
 Lest any one should suppose however that this eulogy were the 
 chance effusion of an inexperienced enthusiast, it is necessary 
 to add Saint Cyran's recognition of the teacher's heavy burden : 
 "this function of teaching children is in its very nature so toil- 
 some" (the words he applies to the work of teaching axepenible 
 andi f&cheuse) "that I have never seen a good man who did not 
 weary of it, however short his experience of it may have been : 
 
 1 Lettres chretiennes et spirituelles de Saint Cyran, t. n. p. 326. 
 
The Gentlemen of Port Royal 6i 
 
 and the most saintly members of the Order of Saint Benedict 
 have found teaching the hardest of all penances. You can 
 see an instance of this in the life of Saint Arsenius\" 
 
 An important corollary follows from Saint Cyran's ac- 
 knowledgment of the dignity and arduousness of the profession, 
 viz. that teaching is a vocation, not a chance occupation, to be 
 taken up lightly and cast aside as carelessly, as a man might 
 determine to gather shells on the sea-shore, and weary of it 
 after a time. If teaching be so all important and yet so fraught 
 with weariness, he argues, then only those should teach whose 
 gift, whose calHng is sure, palpable: "pour moi, j'ai toujours 
 estim^ cette occupation si facheuse que je n'y ai jamais employ^ 
 personne k qui Dieu n'ait fait ce don ; ou, si je me suis 
 trompe dans le choix que j'en ai fait, que je ne I'aie retire aussitot 
 que j'ai reconnu qu'il ne I'avait pas." 
 
 Like the rest of the great educators Saint Cyran attributed 
 an overwhelming importance to the start, as Lancelot in the 
 Memoires writes : " He considered that the whole of the after-life 
 depended upon the early years." 
 
 Once more, we may detect in the founder of the Port 
 Royal Schools a breath of that spirit which, surviving from the 
 palmy days of Greece, inspired the great teachers of the 
 Renaissance to regard education as having failed, partially at 
 least, unless it formed good citizens : " He considered," Lancelot 
 writes, "that provided that youth was brought up well, one 
 might hope that the Public Services would be manned with 
 worthy officials, the Church with more virtuous souls." 
 
 The salient points then of Saint Cyran's general attitude 
 towards education are these, his unusual love for children, his 
 insistence on the prime importance of education, and on the 
 dignity of the teaching profession ; his recognition of the fact 
 that teaching is a vocation ; his appreciation of the value of a ■ 
 
 1 Arsenius (350 — 455 A.D.) was tutor to the children of Theodosius the 
 Great. He is said to have resigned his charge in order to retire to a 
 monk's cell in Egypt. 
 
62 The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 sound beginning; his generous belief that education rightly 
 conducted would result in fine conduct, in sane and sound 
 citizenship. It may be said that all this was not very new : 
 that is hardly true of his view of the dignity of the teaching 
 profession, or of his sense of the teacher's vocation, since those 
 points are not admitted generally even now. It is not of much 
 importance whether or no he were original in the rest; the 
 propositions he set forth were important and needed to be 
 pressed. 
 
 Besides these more fundamental principles, there are 
 certain details of practical management advocated by Saint 
 Cyran, which are not without relevance to our modern 
 difficulties. For example, he does not think it peddling to 
 draw attention to the teacher's demeanour : " He would not 
 allow them," Lancelot writes, " to manifest to the children too 
 severe a manner, nor over-imperious conduct, tinged with con- 
 tempt, which might break their spirits and make them cowardly. 
 
 " Rather, he would have the teacher treat children with a 
 wholesome geniality, likely to win their hearts by disciplined 
 gentleness and truly fatherly love." 
 
 That this is no exaggeration we may gather from one of 
 Saint Cyran's letters : he is writing to a " person of quality," 
 and he suggests the wisdom of " leading them " {i.e. children) 
 " by watchfulness and gentleness ; sometimes even requesting 
 instead of commanding them ; giving in somewhat for the 
 moment, in order to prevent them from needing so much con- 
 sideration for the future." 
 
 Even now perhaps, too little attention is paid to the 
 teacher's outward manner. We know that in ordinary life 
 "manners makyth man," too often, indeed, make him singularly 
 objectionable : here as elsewhere we are apt to draw too sharp 
 a line of demarcation between the school-room and the outside 
 world. This recommendation of gentleness is noteworthy, 
 for though no doubt the terrible conditions in schools men- 
 tioned by Erasmus, Ascham and Comenius had passed away to 
 
The Gentlemen of Port Royal 63 
 
 some extent, yet the 1 7th century was still considerably "harder" 
 than our own. 
 
 We must not suppose that Saint Cyran abolished punish- 
 ment ; he even retained the rod. He advocates its use for 
 faults which a modern teacher, in all probability, would trace 
 to fear and would therefore correct by any means rather than 
 fear, viz. frivolity and excitement (legirete, emportement). He 
 specially recommends beating as the remedy for " laughter on 
 the most solemn occasions." The careful modern teacher will 
 realise that this error, so unseemly at first sight, too often has 
 its roots in some nervous defect. 
 
 Saint Cyran is not partial or pompous. He realises that 
 teacher and taught are alike human and therefore imperfect : 
 and he turns the pedagogue's eye inwards in a most wholesome 
 fashion when he suggests that the immediate cause of a child's 
 fault may lie in the teacher's negligence or hastiness. Every 
 observant teacher knows the reality and truth of such counsel. 
 Finally, though his whole aim is "to exercise as continued 
 a vigilance as that of the devil who strives incessantly to 
 win an entry into these little souls," yet his means are not 
 what the ignorant and prejudiced might suppose. He not only 
 puts no reliance upon long exhortations to piety, or an abun- 
 dance of rules, but he expressly urges the utter fatuity, in the 
 case of children, of both. M. Lancelot fashions his whole- 
 some faith into something very like an epigram when he writes: 
 " il fallait plus prier que crier, et plus parler d'eux a Dieu, que 
 leur parler de Dieu." 
 
 Like all other educational institutions which really deserve 
 the adjective, the schools of Port Royal were two-sided ; they 
 had a definite practice based upon a theory. It seems orderly 
 and logical then to sketch the outline of that theory first. It 
 is, of course, enshrined in the various treatises written by 
 several members of the Community. The four men who 
 seem to have influenced the pedagogic theory of Port Royal 
 most forcibly are Lancelot, Nicole, Guyot and Coustel. The 
 
64 The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 first of these was that somewhat rare bird, a brilUant theorist 
 and a successful teacher. He spent twenty-one years in the 
 school of Port Royal, and during his time his main publications 
 were the following : 
 
 (1644) (i) La Nouvelle Methode pour apprendre facilement la 
 
 langue latine. 
 (1655) (2) La Nouvelle Methode pour apprendre facilement la 
 
 langue grecgue. 
 (1657) (3) Jardin des racines grecques. 
 (1660) (4) La Grammaire generate et Raisonnte. 
 (1660) (5) La Nouvelle Metliode pour apprendre facilement la 
 
 langue italienne. 
 (1660) (6) La Nouvelle Methode pour apprendre facilement la 
 
 langue espagnole. 
 
 Of these, the fourth, founded upon conversations between 
 the author and " le grand Arnauld," is incomparably the most 
 famous. This book dealt with human speech, with its funda- 
 mental principles ; with the cause of similarities and differences 
 between the various main languages, and it closed with observa- 
 tions on the French language. This then was a learned 
 treatise. But the versatility of Lancelot was shewn in his 
 willingness and ability to treat of so elementary a matter as 
 teaching a child to read. Dr Hayward, writing on Pestalozzi's 
 work at Burgdorf, says, " Our syllabic and phonic methods of 
 reading... all date from these years at Burgdorf." Yet in 
 1660, just 139 years before Pestalozzi's appearance in the 
 Burgdorf school, Lancelot, rewriting the General Rational 
 Grammar (under Arnauld's direction we should remember), 
 penned the following words : 
 
 " It is certain that it is no great trouble to beginners simply 
 to learn their letters : but it is a trouble to put them together. 
 What makes the latter still more difficult is this, that each 
 letter having its own name, one pronounces it in one way when 
 
 ^ RducationcU Ideas of Pestalozzi and Froebelf'^. 18. 
 
The Gentlevten of Port Royal 65 
 
 it stands alone, and in another when it is with other letters. 
 For example, if we put the letters /, r, y before a child, we 
 make him pronounce them ef, er, y grec: which inevitably 
 puzzles him when we afterwards invite him to put the three 
 sounds together, and make the sound of the syllable fry^ 
 After this undeniable impeachment, Lancelot advances his 
 remedy, which is practically that for which Pestalozzi has 
 received the inventor's credit. We may notice too that 
 Lancelot says modestly that he himself was not the first to 
 think of the remedy : its invention has been attributed by some 
 to Pascal. 
 
 " It seems then," Lancelot writes, " that the most natural 
 way, as some intelligent people have already observed, would 
 be for those who teach reading to make the children recognize 
 the letters, from the outset, by their pronunciation : in teaching 
 Latin, for instance, to represent e, a, ce, all by ^; i and jc, by /; 
 and au, by 0. 
 
 "Then that they should pronounce the consonants naturally, 
 simply adding on e mute; caUing b like the final sound in 
 tombe, d like the final sound in ronde. 
 
 "For those consonants which have several sounds, like c, g, 
 i, s, one would call them by their most general and ordinary 
 sound; t: \\ke que, g like gue, t like the final sound va forte, 
 s like the final sound in bourse.'' 
 
 He elaborates his whole scheme on similar principles. 
 Guyot, in his Teaching of Reading and Writing, etc., makes 
 somewhat different suggestions ; " one should," he maintains, 
 "first of all, make children see the figures and characters of 
 words in an alphabet, getting them to pronounce the vowels 
 and dif)hthongs alone, and the consonants always along with 
 the vowels and diphthongs in the ordinary combinations into 
 syllables and words. 
 
 "We make a mistake in our usual method of teaching 
 reading when we let the children pronounce the letters — vowels 
 and consonants — separately. Now, consonants are only so 
 
 H. 5 
 
66 The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 called because, in isolation, they have no sound, but must be 
 joined to and sounded along with vowels." 
 
 There is much more by Lancelot and Guyot upon these 
 lines ; but enough has been quoted to prove that they worked 
 out a scheme closely similar to that for which Pestalozzi gets, 
 so commonly, the main credit. All students of education 
 surely know with what triumphant hilarity he repudiated all 
 knowledge of his predecessors' efforts : he had as little love for 
 anything " monastic " as Rousseau himself, so possibly he 
 would not have been overjoyed to acknowledge Port Royal 
 inspiration. As he studied the past so little, his work in this 
 direction may have been entirely his own : but he was not, 
 what he has been called, the pioneer. If any ask why the 
 great world is as ignorant, as perhaps Pestalozzi was, of this 
 piece of work done by the Port Royalists, it may be suggested 
 that the Society of the Jansenists was not popular save as a 
 butt for controversy and hard hits, that the petites icoles lasted 
 but 24 years, and finally, that most people in all times and 
 places spend more interest on, pay more attention to theology 
 than to pedagogy; as no doubt they should, though they expend 
 little enough on both. 
 
 Closely connected with this technique of teaching reading 
 is Guyot's plan of cultivating the art of composition. Here 
 again, Port Royal appears to have anticipated Pestalozzi. 
 When the latter, at the outset of his career as a teacher, was 
 practising upon his own infant son, he exclaimed suddenly 
 one day, " Why have I been so crazy as to let him utter word% 
 important words, unless at the same time he had a clear idea 
 of their meaning?" 
 
 The truth underlying that exclamation became one of the 
 leading principles of his science of teaching : his doctrine of 
 Anschauung, of sense-impression as the starting-point of know- 
 ledge, developed from it. Had he but studied the writings of 
 his forerunners, Pestalozzi might have gathered inspiration 
 from the following passage in Guyot's treatise ; " We ought to 
 
The Gentlemen of Port Royal 67 
 
 be careful in allowing them to practise writing or speaking, to 
 see that they do so clearly and lucidly, and, which is indeed 
 the only method whereby they can, in accordance with the 
 
 clear and definite knowledge of things which they possess For 
 
 this reason, we should, as a rule, make them write about things 
 of which they know rhost, and in the way and in the words to 
 which they are most accustomed; otherwise, they can only 
 speak confusedly, just as they think : and thus they will grow 
 accustomed to speak of and to be satisfied with matters they 
 do not understand; and this is the main cause of a very 
 common fault among grown people, that they talk much about 
 that of which they understand little." 
 
 Guyot began with the simplest matters of elementary 
 teaching : but here in this passage he works up to a position 
 which, in its terse simplicity, embodies a whole scheme of 
 education. How much of the world's error would disappear 
 if every individual talked clearly and lucidly and only about 
 matters which he understood it is not easy to calculate ; one 
 might surmise that the quantity would be large. 
 
 If a list of " subjects for composition,'' set in one week in 
 all the schools of England could be collected, no additional 
 proof would be needed that we are at present very far from 
 acting on Guyot's advice that children should "write about 
 things of which they know most.'' 
 
 Not all the gentlemen of Port Royal wrote on technical 
 matters. One of the most interesting of the treatises which has 
 come down to us is Nicole's General Recommendations for the 
 Education of a Prince. The fact that most of us do not have 
 princes to educate need not deter us from reading a book which 
 is applicable to human nature in general. 
 
 A point on which the author lays great stress is the 
 character, the nature of the man to whom the prince's educa- 
 tion is to be entrusted. Every student of Locke will remember 
 how that wise man attached more importance to the tutor's 
 capacity to train than to instruct. The emphatic passage in 
 
 5—2 
 
68 The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 § 147', may serve as an instance of this: "Learning must be 
 had but in the second Place, as subservient only to greater 
 Qualities. Seek out somebody that may know how discreetly 
 to frame his Manners : Place him in hands where you may, as 
 much as possible, secure his Innocence : cherish and nurse up 
 the good and weed out any bad Inclinations, and settle in him 
 good Habits. This is the main point, and this being provided 
 for. Learning may be had into the Bargain, and that as I think 
 at a very easy rate, by Methods that may be thought on." 
 
 Of course Nicole was writing a few years before Locke, 
 and what he writes is Locke with a difference : " The most 
 essential quality in a prince's tutor is a certain nameless one, 
 which belongs to no one profession: it is not simply a question 
 of proficiency in history, mathematics, languages, political 
 science, philosophy or court ceremonial : one can secure all 
 that^." 
 
 The reader naturally asks, what then is it ? Nicole replies, 
 " One cannot explain it better than by saying it is that quality 
 which makes a man blame that which is blameworthy, praise 
 that which is laudable, contemn the base, exalt the great ; 
 which makes him judge everything wisely and fairly, and pro- 
 pound those judgments so that they attract and win his hearers; 
 the quality in fact which makes a man lead his pupil's mind 
 consistently to the truth.'' 
 
 Nicole adds that this tutor is to be untiring ; he is not to 
 allow himself fixed and terminable hours of work : "this man 
 has no set hour for his lesson; or rather, every hour is his 
 lesson hour." 
 
 How can we sum up this paragon of tutors ? Surely he is 
 Locke's "man of the world " plus the Jansenist religion. 
 
 When he has thus outlined the teacher, Nicole proceeds to 
 indicate the right method by which the tutor may convey 
 ethics to his pupil. Mr John Morley, in his essay on Vauve- 
 
 ' Thoughts Concerning Education, § 147. 
 2 Vues ginh-ales pour Hen elever un prince. 
 
The Gentlemen of Port Royal 69 
 
 nargues, remarked : " The stock moralist, like the common- 
 place orator of the pulpit, fails to touch the hearts of men or 
 to affect their lives, for lack of delicacy, of sympathy, or of 
 freshness : he attempts to compensate for this by excess of 
 emphasis, and that more often disgusts us than persuades^" 
 
 This, or something closely approaching it, is Nicole's 
 attitude : "No one must fancy," he says, "that the teacher can 
 always give vent to definite reflections, or that he can stop 
 perpetually to frame rules concerning good and evil, the false 
 and the true : he almost always proceeds, on the contrary, in an 
 unostentatious way ; he gives an ingenious twist to things, and 
 so brings the great matters, those which deserve notice, to 
 light; and hides those which should not be considered; he 
 makes vice ridiculous, and virtue attractive, he trains the 
 mind invariably to appreciate and love beautiful things, to 
 despise and detest the bad." And again he writes, "it is easy 
 enough to lecture on morals by the hour, but to bring every- 
 thing to the test of right and wrong in such a way that a child 
 neither notices it nor wearies of it, that requires a skill which 
 few men possess.'' 
 
 It is easy to see from this that Nicole esteems that goodness 
 as perfect, which is absolutely spontaneous, unconscious of 
 itself, natural. To be good in the same instinctive way as we 
 breathe, is to be truly good; though doubtless it is better to be 
 good by conscious effort than to be bad. Perhaps to the 
 refining minds of Port Royal the distinction between these two 
 conditions was akin to the well-known difference between con- 
 trition and attrition. 
 
 Not his least valuable contribution to the science of 
 pedagogics is Nicole's analysis of the phrase "training of 
 judgment." This is a process of which we hear much in 
 educational discussions : but the meaning of it, the method 
 on which it should proceed, is left to the imagination very 
 often. 
 
 ^ Miscellanies, Vol. II. p. T5. 
 
70 The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 Nicole inquires into the process carefully and with pene- 
 trating knowledge: "To train judgment is to endow the mind 
 with taste for and a perception of truth ; to make it quick to 
 recognise false reasonings skilfully concealed; to teach it not 
 to be dazzled by a vain show of empty meaningless verbiage ; 
 never to 'pay itself with words,' or confused principles; to 
 teach it never to be satisfied till it has probed to the bottom of 
 a thing; to make it quick to seize the point of a tangled 
 argument; to appreciate irrelevancies; to fill it with such 
 principles of truth as may enable it to discern truth every 
 where, and most of all in those regions which are the most 
 important." 
 
 If this does not exhaust the meaning of the expression 
 " training the mind," at any rate it suggests more definite ideas 
 than seem to actuate common practice. 
 
 Nicole adds a valuable warning about corporal training. 
 He declares, what no experienced person will deny, that the 
 habits permitted or encouraged in youth have much influence 
 on subsequent failure or success : "There are people who have 
 accustomed themselves to be so restless, impatient and hasty, 
 that they are totally incapable^ of following any sedentary or 
 quiet occupation : others have pampered themselves till they 
 are unable to endure the slightest discomfort." 
 
 These few extracts serve to shew that Nicole's theory 
 follows on from that of Rabelais and Montaigne, rather than 
 from the perversion of humanism which was gradually winning 
 a footht)ld in European schools, to the increase of instruction, 
 and to the decrease of anything which can, in the highest 
 sense, be called education. Much the same is true of Coustel, 
 who wrote a treatise called Regies de Peducation des enfants. He 
 premised that there is no human art devoid of special rules, 
 hence Christian Education must have those proper to it, of 
 which however he proposed to set forth only the most im- 
 portant. These may be summed up as recommendations to 
 the teacher to be assiduous, minutely watchful of himself and 
 
The Gentlemen of Port Royal 7 f 
 
 his demeanour, attentive to his pupils' manners, careful in 
 keeping all hurtful things from the children, loving towards 
 them, very patient when they are lazy at their work or indeed 
 guilty of any faults, gentle in treatment; the tutor is warned 
 further to rely always on persuasion rather than threats, and to 
 remember lastly that example is more potent than any precept. 
 
 We have seen that Saint Cyran laid stress on the teacher's 
 demeanour; and here we find Coustel insisting on the same 
 thing. That it was not merely a Port Royal "fad," that 
 people outside Les Petites Ecoles held similar views, we may 
 prove by referring to one of those interesting discourses which 
 Mme de Maintenon addressed to her mistresses at Saint-Cyr : 
 " Souvenez vous toujours, et celles qui viendront apres vous, 
 qu'il faut avec les enfants parattre irrdprochable. On ne 
 saurait s'imaginer combien ils voient clair, et le pen de cas 
 qu'ils font des personnes qu'ils n'estiment pas^" 
 
 Nor is JSIme de Maintenon the sole instance outside Port 
 Royal : Pere Girard observes, " L'enfant juge admirablement 
 bien du caractere des personnes qu'il a autour de lui^" 
 
 Coustel is not content with moral maxims ; he takes pains 
 to draw up rules of good manners for these children, and 
 descends to minute details concerning manners at table, con- 
 versation, and general demeanour in society. They have 
 perhaps the defects and tediousness incident to all remarks on 
 etiquette ; but it is pleasant in the sombre atmosphere of this 
 grave society, to find Coustel — though he admits that as a 
 rule the world does not admire jokers — yet warning us to 
 distinguish that jesting which is innocent from that which is 
 odious. 
 
 Some additional information upon the general aim of Port 
 Royal may be gleaned from a letter which M. de Saci wrote to 
 one of his friends. Under whatever aspect the Society of the 
 Jansenists be regarded, it must be remembered that its aim 
 
 ^ Entretien sur le ban exemple, decembre, 1705. 
 ^ De V enseignement rigulier de la langue maternelle. 
 
72 The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 was first and foremost religious. It may be a just criticism that 
 " the true flaw of the Port Royal religion was its joylessness," 
 but nevertheless religion was the end and aim of all who 
 belonged to the Society. And it is in entire conformity to this 
 general view that M. de Saci should say so positively of the 
 children of Port Royal, "The main aim of their education 
 ought to be to save their souls, and to save ourselves with 
 them.'' 
 
 This attitude was over-accentuated, most people will think, 
 in practice : yet though there was often exaggeration, sur- 
 passing perhaps what one might call ordinary asceticism, there 
 was also an element of sound common sense. No one devoid 
 of that useful quality would have tendered such useful advice 
 as this of M. de Saci : "if you see good in them, return thanks 
 to the God who put it there ; but do so secretly, and take care 
 not to talk much about it : if, on the contrary, you find there 
 is much work to be done, do not despair; they are still young." 
 Again, he reminds us as Coustel did, as all wise teachers 
 would, that in the inculcation of good deeds, example succeeds 
 far better than pious exhortations, especially with children. It 
 might seem unnecessary to insist on so obvious a truth, if we 
 did not so often meet slovenly teachers administering " order 
 marks " to untidy children ; illegible " corrections " scattered 
 about exercises which have lost marks for bad writing ; lessons 
 prolonged beyond the hour set down in the time table, with 
 children whose unpunctuality at the beginning is met with 
 severe punishment, and kindred anomalies. In these small, 
 as in greater matters, it remains eternally, universally true that 
 example is more efficacious than precept. Once more, M. de 
 Saci offers sound, if obvious, advice to the teacher when he 
 points out the high undesirability of seeing everything that 
 happens : one should be satisfied, he suggests, to correct the 
 most important faults. 
 
 It may interest those who can see " no use in psychology " 
 to learn that this 17th century philosopher studied it, though 
 
The Gentlemen of Port Royal jt, 
 
 perhaps under another name, and studied it to some purpose. 
 He drew from it two conclusions; first, that children are 
 taught less easily by appeals to their reason than to their senses; 
 and secondly that a new truth gains a readier entrance into all 
 young minds when it is introduced with an illustration of some- 
 thing already familiar. Here, in a tentative perhaps inchoate 
 but quite unmistakable form, we have the maxims attributed 
 generally to Pestalozzi : — 
 
 {a) appeal in youth to the senses, 
 
 {b) explain the unknown by the known. 
 
 So it is not only Lancelot and Guyot who preceded the 
 great Swiss teacher in a matter of technical method : here is 
 another gentleman of Port Royal anticipating him ; and, this 
 time, in a matter of fundamental principles. 
 
 It is not psychology, but ordinary, observant sympathetic 
 humanity perhaps which prompted M. de Saci to remark: "we 
 can never really know these little souls until we have brought 
 ourselves to their level." It is depressing to watch his natural 
 human regard passing again into the sombre rigour of the 
 Society when he agrees with his brethren in advocating that 
 relentless perpetual supervision to which they attached so much 
 importance: "Above all, never leave them alone; whether 
 they work or play, or whatever they do, one should always be 
 on the watch, either in one's own person, or in that of some 
 other discreet person, to whom one can entrust them." 
 
 M. de Saci ends by advising patience, which will preserve 
 the teacher from over precipitate utterance of rebukes ; and 
 silence, which will save the children from being overwhelmed by 
 matter which they cannot digest. 
 
 M. Cadet, a sympathetic historian of les petites ecoles, lays 
 stress on the following points : the " notable reforms " they in- 
 augurated ; the " serious progress " they achieved ; their " wise 
 supervision of studies"; their "art of training children"; their 
 "art of forming judgment and developing will." Finally, he 
 
74 The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 claims for the Jansenists that they were utterly disinterested 
 in their devotion to education, that their consciences were 
 ever on the alert, that they loved children sincerely, and that 
 they desired whole-heartedly to render intellectual work 
 attractive. 
 
 If we desire to put their characteristics in such a light as 
 may indicate their place in French education, we may say that 
 they desired to introduce, if slowly and gradually, yet surely, 
 into the public school curriculum the freshness, thoroughness, 
 reality and practical common-sense which characterised that 
 system of private tuition which Rabelais and Montaigne 
 proposed. At the same time, the religious rigour of the 
 Jansenists was an addition; not because Rabelais and Mon- 
 taigne did not care for religion, but because they distrusted 
 extreme severity. 
 
 It is probable that most students of Port Royal would 
 endorse the praise bestowed on the Society by M. Cadet. Yet 
 the criticism urged against Saint Cyran that he sacrificed the 
 intellectual to the spiritual life is, in some degree perhaps, true 
 of all his confreres. And this is not meant as any denial of 
 the all-importance of religion. It is possible to believe as 
 earnestly even as Saint Cyran that the soul is incomparably 
 more valuable than the body, that the things of Eternity out- 
 weigh incalculably those of time, and still to question the 
 entire wisdom of this austere, darkly-coloured scheme of life. 
 Did not S. Jerome, himself a rigorous ascetic, warn Laeta 
 against an excessive severity in the education of the youthful 
 Paula ? and he did so on the wise plea that excess may defeat 
 itself, may turn out to be 
 
 " The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard." 
 
 "I Strongly disapprove," he wrote, " — especially for those of 
 tender years — of long and immoderate fasts, in which week is 
 added to week, and even oil and apples are forbidden as food. 
 I have learned by experience that the ass toiling along the 
 
The Gentlemen of Port Royal 75 
 
 highway makes for an inn when it is weary. Our abstinence 
 may turn to glutting'." 
 
 An instance of the kind of impasse to which their own 
 principles might bring them is furnished by an event in 
 Lancelot's life. This most skilful teacher was, for two years 
 after the closing of les petiks koles, tutor to the princes 
 de Conti : he resigned his post rather than take his pupils 
 to the theatre. Sainte-Beuve, with neat dexterity, lays his 
 finger on the weak point of the episode: — "A quoi bon, 6 
 Lancelot, si bien apprendre aux enfants, le grec, I'espagnol, 
 I'italien, les finesses du Latin, pour d^fendre ensuite d'aller 
 au theatre entendre Chimhie, pour ne permettre ni le 
 Jerusalem, ni FAminte, ni Th'eagine, ni I'Anthologie, ni tout 
 Catulle^?" 
 
 As we await Lancelot's answer to this most pertinent 
 question, we may add another. Was such a plan really a wise 
 method of " forrning judgment," the process the Jansenists 
 valued so much? 
 
 An outline of an actual " day " in a Port Royal school may 
 interest modern compilers of time-tables. A record has been 
 left by Wallon de Beaupuis, who was head first of the Port 
 Royal School in the rue Saint Dominique at Paris, and after- 
 wards of that at Chesnai. 
 
 At 5 a.m. the elder boys arose quietly, said their prayers 
 and dressed. At 6 a.m. the little boys got up, and all together, 
 older and younger, they knelt before the Crucifix in the common 
 dormitory where masters and pupils slept together. There they 
 repeated the Veni Creator, the Pater Noster, the Ave Maria, 
 and the Credo. 
 
 That over, the bigger boys attended Prime, while the 
 younger ones dressed. Next, each boy went to his own desk 
 to learn his " Rep '' and to write a composition. At 7 a.m. 
 they said their "Rep.'' At 8 a.m., or thereabouts, breakfast 
 
 1 The Letters of S. Jerome, cvii. § lo. 
 ^ Port Royal, t. in. p. 531. 
 
76 The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 was served. Then the boys were free to talk, to read history, 
 or to look at maps as they preferred. They were better off 
 than their compeers at Eton, for at Port Royal a fire was 
 allowed in winter. At half-past eight they all returned to their 
 desks to prepare the second lesson. As little attention, 
 apparently, was paid then as now to the requirements of 
 digestion, brain-work followed closely upon meals. This second 
 lesson seems to have consisted of a piece of Greek to be 
 rendered into French or Latin prose ; the piece seems generally 
 to have been three in-folio pages of Plutarch. This use of 
 French for translation purposes, instead of Latin, was, of course, 
 one of the points of conflict between Jesuits and Jansenists, 
 the former insisting upon Latin. 
 
 The younger boys for this second lesson translated from 
 Livy, Justinian or Sulpitius Severus '. Just before 1 1 a.m. the 
 boys assembled in a large room, where each one was required 
 to examine his conscience, to repeat the Confiteor as far as the 
 Mea culpa, and to say a prayer. Then one of the older boys 
 repeated a sentence from the Book of Proverbs in Latin ; 
 after which they all went to wash their hands, and passed into 
 the Refectory for dinner. Here each child was served with 
 a porringer of broth, and, in accordance with the views laid 
 down by Coustel, great attention was paid to manners. During 
 the meal a book was read : history, such as Josephus, or French 
 or Roman Ecclesiastical History, on ordinary days ; while 
 on Sundays and other Feasts some devotional book, e.g. 
 S. Augustine's Confessions, was substituted. After dinner an 
 hour and a half was allotted to recreation which, in summer 
 time, took the form of strolls in the woods round the school. 
 In winter the boys ran races, or if the weather were bad, they 
 
 1 Sulpitius Severus (363 — 420 (<r) A.D.) was a primitive Christian writer 
 who attained to an almost classical excellence of style : he has been called 
 the "Christian Sallust." Scaliger considered him "the purest of all the 
 ecclesiastical writers." The work by which he is known best is his Life 
 of S. Martin of Tours. 
 
The Gentlemen of Port Royal jy 
 
 went into the big hall, and played billiards, backgammon, 
 draughts, chess, or a game of cards based on the first Six 
 Centuries of the Christian Church. On holidays, a master 
 took the boys for a long country walk. De Beaupuis suggests 
 that this opportunity should be seized for genial and serious 
 conversation, as a means of forming the boys' minds. 
 
 When recreation was over, the boys said a prayer and 
 returned to their work, which generally consisted of copying 
 the Scriptures, studying Virgil, or looking over lessons. At 
 3 p.m. they partook of the light meal known as " GoMer." 
 From half-past three until four they worked, and from four 
 to six they said the lessons they had committed to memory. 
 At six they had supper. At half-past six they began another 
 period of recreation. At 8 p.m. they went into the big school- 
 room to receive directions about their lessons for the next day. 
 At 8.30 evening prayers were recited, and by 9 p.m. every boy 
 was in bed. Analysis of their day's work shews that about 
 seven and a half or eight hours per diem were given to 
 intellectual work. It should be remembered that everywhere, 
 at all times, they were under supervision. 
 
 One more matter should be noticed. The boys in the 
 Port Royal schools, especially the younger ones, were not 
 allowed to go to mass every day. Such strict attention was 
 demanded in Church, that, even to these austere educators, 
 daily attendance seemed too intense a strain on little children. 
 Consequently two of the elder boys took turns to attend mass 
 daily, vicariously as it were, for the rest. This account of 
 the curriculum of the school at Chesnai may be supplemented 
 by a sketch of the treatise written by "le grand Arnauld," 
 on the Arrangement of Studies. He lays down the obvious 
 principles that this arrangement should be guided by the end 
 one has in view, and the means one selects to achieve that end. 
 The end ought to be that one — among the many which are 
 possible — which can be shewn to be the most useful, most 
 important, most general, and most lasting. He rules out verse- 
 
78 The Gentlemen of Port Royal 
 
 making', rhetoric, exercises designed only to exemplify rules, 
 theatrical representations, dictated lectures, and scanty acquaint- 
 ance with authors. The children's staple food was to be the 
 classical authors, which are to be dealt with as follows. In the 
 first place, no child is to be " moved up " until he shews that 
 he understands thoroughly all the authors which he is supposed 
 to have read in the class he is leaving. The next matter of 
 importance is the allotment of hours ; Arnauld reserves those 
 of the early morning and early afternoon for the explanation of 
 authors. He recommends extreme lucidity in these explana- 
 tions, which the children should be required to reproduce 
 in French or Latin. Lastly, the boys are to engage in con- 
 versation, courteous conversation, he stipulates, concerning the 
 substance of the authors perused during the week, their special 
 business being to consider the most remarkable thoughts and 
 the finest literary expressions in that author; and lastly they 
 should dwell, in these causeries, on the tutor's explanations and 
 criticisms of the text. A special task was laid on the form's 
 monitor ; he was expected to mark everything in any way note- 
 worthy in the book which was being studied, and to go over all 
 these points with the form at the end of the week. 
 
 Anyone who is acquainted with the Jesuit method of 
 studying the classics will see that their opponents, the Jansenists, 
 ran them very hard in their insistence upon thoroughness. 
 
 Besides all this care for style, Arnauld devised a plan of 
 teaching the art of composition to the younger boys. Every 
 day two boys were required to tell to their comrades some story 
 which they had read previously in Plutarch or Valerius Maximus. 
 The couples took turns at this exercise, until every child in the 
 form had done his share. Whether this verbal composition 
 
 ^ It may be of special interest nowadays to give his remarks on this 
 point: "as a rule it is just waste of time to give them verses to write in a 
 school. Out of 70 or 80 boys, there may be two or three from whom one 
 could extract something. The rest muddle or worry themselves for what, 
 in the end, is absolutely valueless." 
 
The Gentlemen of Port Royal 79 
 
 served all the purposes of written compositions, some may 
 doubt : but some successful modern teachers follow this method 
 with perhaps slight alterations of detail : the composition for 
 instance, after the tale has been told, is the joint work of 
 the whole form, and the teacher puts the essay, sentence by 
 sentence, on to the blackboard. At least, a method of this 
 kind ensures that the work is done by the children, that their 
 mistakes are corrected at the moment of committal, and further 
 it relieves the teacher of the burden of useless or almost useless 
 " corrections," which three gains are not slight. 
 
 It is interesting to notice a further point on which Arnauld 
 was singularly modern : he desired to include the history of 
 France in the course of study for the M. A. degree. 
 
 Other matters of interest there are in this treatise, but the 
 above are the chief. The student will observe that, among 
 them, the Gentlemen of Port Royal paid attention to matters 
 both elementary and advanced; that they cared for general 
 principles while, at the same time, they did not despise details : 
 that they encouraged high scholarship, and that not least when 
 they were scheming to lay the earliest foundations of infant 
 education solidly and well. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 JACQUELINE PASCAL AND GIRLS' EDUCATION'. 
 
 The story of the Jansenists' educational work is incomplete 
 without some account of their work among girls. The main 
 documentary sources of our knowledge concerning this side of 
 the system are The Constitutions of the Monastery of Port 
 Royal, by the Mere Agnes Arnauld, and JacqueUne Pascal's 
 Reglement pour les enfants de Port Royal. 
 
 The latter was the younger sister of Blaise Pascal. Writing 
 an account of his life, another sister, Mme Perier, spoke thus 
 of Jacqueline : — " ma sceur qui avait des talents d'esprit tout 
 extraordinaires, et qui etait des son enfance dans une reputation 
 oti peu de fiUes parviennent, fut tellement touchee des discours 
 de mon frere, qu'elle se r^solut de renoncer a tous ces avantages 
 qu'elle avait tant aime'e jusqu'alors, pour se consacrer a Dieu 
 tout entiere, comme elle a fait depuis, s'etant fait religieuse 
 dans une maison tres-sainte et tres austere, ou elle a fait un si 
 bon usage des perfections dont Dieu I'avait ornee, qu'on I'a 
 trouvee digne des emplois les plus difficUes, dont elle s'est 
 toujours acquittee avec toute la fidelite imaginable, et oil elle 
 est morte saintement le 4. octobre 1661, ag^e de trente-six ans." 
 
 ' As in the previous chapter, most of the quotations in this one are 
 given in the original. Wherever theolc^y and philosophy enter, it seems 
 important not to risk error or misrepresentation by the slightest shade of 
 untoward translation: enough conflict may ensue when men and women 
 are credited with what they have said on these all-important matters. 
 
Jacqueline Pascal and Girls Education 8i 
 
 It is said often that the teaching profession is hardly a 
 profession at all ; and that, as a rule, its rewards are scanty and 
 uncertain, its hardships many and probable. Yet, here is an 
 instance of a young, highly gifted woman with an intellectual 
 reputation above that of her compeers, who devoted herself 
 to "the most difficult task" of teaching th& pensionnaires of 
 Port Royal. The quintessence of the severe Jansenist spirit 
 is found in Jacqueline's treatise. The Preface, indeed, might 
 lead us to expect a gentler system than we find ; for therein is 
 -sounded a warning. Care, she argues, must be exercised lest 
 the intense silence and the life of strain should cause the 
 children to fall into depression and weariness ; and again lest 
 the mistresses in maintaining this rigid discipline should fail 
 to retain the children's affection. These excellent counsels 
 seem to drop out of sight almost immediately. S. Jerome was 
 quoted in the preceding chapter. Readers of his Epistles 
 might, with some justice, think that his asceticism would suffice 
 in rigour. In his Letter to Gaudentius, concerning that 
 Roman's little daughter Pacatula, S. Jerome writes : " How 
 can you speak of self control to a child who is eager for cakes, 
 who babbles on her mother's knee, and to whom honey is 
 sweeter than any words ? Will she hear the deep things of the 
 
 Apostle when all her delight is in nursery tales?. when she 
 
 has finished her lessons, she ought to have some recreation'." 
 
 There is too little of this sympathy with the natural tastes 
 and ways of childhood in the Reglement pour les enfants de 
 Port Royal: but only a selection of S. Jerome's Letters is 
 suggested in Jacqueline Pascal's list of permitted books; 
 perhaps those to Laeta and Gaudentius were not included. 
 
 To criticise this little treatise at all, one concession — that 
 religion should play some part in education— must be made: 
 those who demand a purely secular system may pass the 
 Rigkment by, because religious upbringing is woven into 
 its texture. Th^e general effect produced on the reader's mind 
 
 ^ Epistles of S. Jerome, cxxviii. 
 H. 6 
 
82 Jacqueline Pascal and Girls Education 
 
 is a sense of intolerable restraint ; of unhealthy over-insistence 
 on a single aspect of life ; an insistence which must, one is 
 tempted to think, issue at last in a morbid religiosity. From 
 what we have seen of the masculine side of the system, we 
 shall be prepared for the first element in this restraint, the 
 incessant supervision : " il faut veiUer parfaitement les enfants, 
 ne les laissant jamais seules en quelque lieu que ce soit, saines 
 ni malades, sans leur montrer que Ton le fait si exactement, 
 afin de ne pas les nourrir dans un esprit defiant, et qui soit 
 continuellement sur ses gardes'." One may well ask if the two 
 parts of this passage are not mutually contradictory : how could 
 any one manage to be always with the children "en quelque 
 lieu que ce soit " and still contrive that they should think that 
 the teacher's interminable presence might be accidental ? 
 
 Then again, though this is a general characteristic of 
 sisterhoods, and need not react upon the children, there is 
 the absolute dependence of the sisters upon the Superior to 
 be considered. As a tie binding the " religious," it would be 
 impertinent and superfluous to criticise it here. As an element 
 in an educational system it is open to criticism. Well, in aim 
 such dependence is admirable, for it seeks to achieve union 
 upon the staff, an end so desirable, so essential that a considerable 
 sacrifice is perhaps, if necessary, legitimate for its attainment. 
 But would not the spirit actuating the subjoined passage 
 succeed in practice in stifling all originality most eflFectively ? — 
 and, after all, originality has, or rather it should have, its place 
 in schools : "Comme il est fort important que nous ayons une 
 grande union et parfaite intelligence avec les soeurs qui nous 
 sont donnees pour aides, il I'est encore plus que ces sceurs 
 n'agissent que par I'ordre qu'elles trouveront et verront etabli, 
 et qu'elles soient tellement conformes \ tbus les sentiments de 
 la premiere, qu'elles ne parlent que par sa bouche, et ne voient 
 que par ses yeux^" 
 
 1 Sigletitent, § i8. 
 
 2 RigUment, § 9. 
 
Jacqueline Pascal and Girls Education 83 
 
 S. Benedict is surely the patron Saint of all those teachers 
 to whofti the word Saint has any real significance : the Holy 
 Rule has more cogency for teachers than the neglect into which 
 (outside the Benedictine Order) it has fallen would seem to 
 indicate. It is certainly fair to compare this ancient Code 
 with that of any other " teaching " Order. As the Rule is not, 
 nowadays, in the hands of many people, the two following 
 quotations, though long, may be allowed ; for they seem to 
 breathe the very opposite of the mechanical spirit which 
 inspires the above passage from Jacqueline Pascal. The first 
 is drawn from the chapter entitled What kind of man the Abbot 
 ought to be : " The Abbot ought always to remember what he 
 is, and what he is called, and to know that to whom more 
 is committed, from him, more is required; and he must consider 
 how difficult and arduous a task he hath undertaken, of ruling 
 souls and adapting himself to many dispositions. Let him so 
 accommodate and suit himself to the character and intelligence 
 of each, winning some by kindness, others by reproof, others by 
 persuasion, that he may not only suffer no loss in the flock 
 committed to him, but may even rejoice in their virtuous 
 increase'." If this passage — with its recognition of "many 
 dispositions " — seems very far above the cast-iron system of 
 " speaking through her mouth and seeing with her eyes," how 
 still further away from it is the appreciation, in the following 
 passage, of the advantage to be reaped from many minds 
 meeting in council, each contributing its "peculiar difference'': 
 " As often as any important matters have to be transacted in 
 the monastery, let the Abbot call together the whole Com- 
 munity, and himself declare what is the question to be settled. 
 And having heard the counsel of the brethren, let him consider 
 within himself and then do what he shall judge most expedient. 
 We have said that all should be called to council, because it is 
 
 ' The Rule of S. Benedict, edited with an English translation and 
 explanatory notes, by Dom Oswald Hunter Blair, Monk of Fort Augustus : 
 ch. ii. p. 21. 
 
 6—2 
 
84 Jacqueline Pascal and Girls Education 
 
 often to the younger that the Lord revealeth what is best. 
 But let the brethren give their advice with all subjection and 
 humility, and not presume stubbornly to defend their own 
 opinion ; but rather let the matter rest with the Abbot's 
 discretion that all may submit themselves to whatever he shall 
 judge to be best. Yet, even as it becometh disciples to obey 
 their master, so doth it behove him to order all things prudently 
 and with justice'." 
 
 Is it too much to suggest that a school presided over by 
 persons so minded would enjoy a larger chance of success, 
 final success, than one regulated according to Jacqueline 
 Pascal's rigid requirements? Again, in her system there is 
 an exaggerated and too incessant appeal surely to the religious 
 sense. What can be expected of girls, during the years when 
 they are passing from childhood to womanhood, a time when 
 many are prone enough to that sentiment which passes so 
 easily into sentimentality, what can be expected of them if they 
 be reminded incessantly that they are not cared for in a natural 
 human fashion, "qu'on les aime pour Dieu^" ; if, as she requires, 
 the staff is never to treat them with real familiarity and con- 
 fidence ? The term she uses is " too great confidence " ; in one 
 sense we all agree, but the general tenour of the discourse, the 
 implication, does not suggest "that attitude of friendly natural 
 intercourse between teacher and taught which is the very 
 essence of a fruitful relation. Moreover, this extremity of 
 self-conscious piety would be enhanced by the intense self- 
 examination which is required: "on doit fort exhorter les 
 enfants a se connaitre elles-memes, leurs inclinations, leurs 
 vices et leurs passions, et sonder jusques a la racine de leurs 
 ddfauts. II est bon aussi qu'elles connaissent k quoi leur 
 naturel les porte afin de retrancher en elles ce qui peut de'plaire 
 "k Dieu, et changer leurs inclinations naturelles en spirituelles'." 
 When every allowance has been made for expressing the things 
 
 ' Rule of S. Benedict, ch. iii. p. 25. 
 
 ^ Riglement, part ii. ' Ibid. 
 
Jacqueline Pascal and Girls Education 85 
 
 of religion in human language, there still remains a tendency 
 towards exaggeration which those who admire the Port 
 Royalists must regret. The girls were required to say a 
 prayer every hour, and in the middle of the day, after they 
 had examined their consciences, they might confess their 
 faults aloud. In a discourse which she delivered in 1703, 
 Mme de Maintenon, resting her case on the suppression by 
 the Primitive Church of public confession — a practice originally 
 enjoined and required by the Church — forbade it at Saint-Cyr. 
 Will any one, acquainted with the perversities of human nature, 
 challenge the wisdom of the Primitive Church, of Mme de 
 Maintenon ? since the experienced can hardly have failed to 
 meet those morbid mortals who seem to prefer the public 
 flaunting of their delinquencies to no notoriety at all. 
 
 Perhaps the climax of unwise zeal is reached when the 
 girls are required " de baiser les pieds a celle de leurs com- 
 pagnes qu'elles auraient offensee'." But it would be crassly 
 unfair to dwell on the ascetic side of the treatise and omit the 
 good points. For Jacqueline Pascal, if a Port-Royaliste, was 
 also a Frenchwoman, and it would seem that not Jansenism 
 itself could blunt penetration absolutely, nor wholly extinguish 
 Gallic wit. Moreover, as M. Cadet observes, "in practice 
 these over absolute rules were much mitigated." And even in 
 theory, the terrible severity is relaxed at times : " Nous devons 
 avoir beaucoup de charite et de tendresse pour elles, ne les 
 negligeant en quoi que ce soit pour I'interieur et I'exterieur^" 
 Yet, at once, the natural humanity of the passage changes into 
 stern duty as she continues with these words: "leur faisant 
 paraitre, en toutes sortes d'occasions que nous n'avons aucunes 
 bornes pour leur service, et que nous le faisons avec affection 
 et de tout notre coeur, parce qu'elles sont enfants de Dieu, 
 et que nous nous sentons obligees de ne rien epargner pour 
 les rendre dignes de cette sainte quality." 
 
 ' Riglement, part iv. 
 ^ Ibid, part i. § 2. 
 
86 Jacqueline Pascal and Girls Education 
 
 It must be admitted, however, that Jacqueline Pascal is not 
 so utterly absorbed in the religious point of view as to omit the 
 study of the ordinary human child. An example may be found 
 in her counsel concerning simplicity : " We ought to ask God 
 most earnestly to make our children simple ; and to work with 
 Him by removing them from all roundabout ways and cunning: 
 but we must do this with simplicity, lest in exhorting them to 
 be simple we make them cunning. Sometimes just by telling 
 them not to be sly, one suggests it to them." This is an 
 important and interesting point. Without doubt, to some 
 children a warning not to commit a fault is the first suggestion 
 of it : this is markedly so perhaps in the region of imagination. 
 " Make-believe " rarely, if ever, strikes a child as insincerity until 
 some bungling elder puts the notion into its head. In the 
 region of action, the same thing occurs: "don't walk in the 
 puddles" may be to some children the earliest intimation of 
 the delight of doing it. When once suggested and forbidden, 
 it becomes almost irresistible. 
 
 JacqueUne Pascal's prescriptions concerning punishment are 
 original. In the hands of an extremely accurate observer her 
 first recommendation might be followed safely. Having made 
 certain that the child has committed the fault, the teacher, she 
 suggests, should inflict the punishment without saying anything. 
 That being accomplished, the child is to be asked — "You 
 know why you are punished?" The aim of this somewhat 
 drastic, not to say hazardous method, is the removal of all 
 temptation to lie. It is no doubt true that children who dread 
 punishment deny faults : obviously nothing is gained by denial 
 after the infliction of punishment, unless the child feels the 
 pain of confession per se. Given an observant, reliable, cool- 
 headed elder and a patient child not addicted to expostulation, 
 the plan might work. 
 
 Her advice that the teacher should talk about faults and 
 kindred subjects as little as possible is no doubt sound, for, as 
 she says, otherwise "elles s'accoutument a toujours entendre 
 
Jacqueline Pascal and Girls Education 87 
 
 parler." Her further advice that some faults should be over- 
 looked, that the teacher " should not see everything," is not 
 less sound for being the common property of the educationally 
 skilful.- Again, where she says that when we have decided that 
 a certain fault is serious then we should never pass it over, she 
 is on tenable ground : her theory is evidently based on obser- 
 vation of actual children, for. she argues that if we allow a thing 
 one day and punish it the next, we simply make no impression, 
 and gain no hold on their minds ; a fact which will be recognised 
 by every experienced teacher. 
 
 If the truth about idleness, which she proclaims, were more 
 widely recognised, there might be less scope for punishment. 
 She reminds us that there is no real satisfaction in idleness ; 
 and further that when children are very young they tire quickly, 
 and that not from idleness. Occupation then is a healthy 
 necessity, but it miist be organised carefully — " Encore que les 
 enfants soient fort jeunes, comme de quatre ou cinq ans, il ne 
 faut pas leur laisser sans rien faire tout le jour, mais partager 
 leurs petits temps, les faisant lire un quart d'heure, et puis jouer 
 un autre, et puis travailler un autre petit temps^." 
 
 In the region of ethics Jacqueline Pascal takes the view on 
 which, later, Immanuel Kant dwelled with so much emphasis, 
 viz. that right action is to be judged not by result but by 
 intention, by motive ; it is the " heart's impulse,'' the " purity 
 or impurity of intention," which is the determining factor in 
 an action's quality''. No doubt, the system is over-severe: yet 
 she admitted an important truth when she wrote : " II est 
 besoin d'une grande discretion pour leur parler en temps et 
 lieu^"; and it is to be hoped that her injunctions were borne 
 in mind. An instance of her charming wit may be used to 
 round off this picture of her methods, and to save it from 
 exaggeration. It seems a pity to attempt a translation of this 
 passage which contains her recommendations concerning the 
 
 1 Riglement, part i. § i%. 
 
 2 Ibid, part ii. ^ Ibid, part iii. 
 
88 Jacqueline Pascal and Girls Education 
 
 treatment of children who sham illness, who malinger : 
 " Quand cela arrive, il ne faut pas faire semblant de croire 
 qu'elles nous veuillent tromper, mais au contraire, il faut les 
 plaindre beaucoup, at leur dire qu'il est vrai qu'elles sont mal, 
 et aussit6t les mettre au lit dans una chambre a part avec una 
 sceur qui les garde, mais qui ne leur parle pas point de tout, 
 leur disant que cela leur ferait mal da leur parler et qu'il leur 
 faut du repos. On les met un jour ou deux aux bouillons et 
 aux ceufs. Si le mal etait effectif, ce regime leur est fort bon, 
 et, s'il ne Test pas, il est sans doute que dfes le landamain elles 
 diront qu'elles n'ont point de mal; et ainsi on les guerit de leur 
 hypocrisie sans leur donner occasion de murmurer : ce qui 
 arrive quand on laur dit qu'elles- n'ont point de mal, dont elles 
 se plaignent, et meme les expose de faire des mensonges, et 
 k feindre encore davantage^." 
 
 This most amusing paragraph closes her treatise. It is 
 possible that as we look back upon it all we may feel inclined 
 to say, "though training of character is, no doubt, the first 
 aim of education, yet training of intellect is an important 
 second, and what is its place in the system of Jacqueline 
 Pascal, who after all was the sister of the great philosophic 
 moralist Blaise ? " Alas ! not an important one. She scarcely 
 mentions the curriculum. Towards the end of her little treatise 
 she propounds the question of suitable books : these are all 
 theological or devotional, such as the Imitation, the Tradition 
 of the Church, The Letters of M. de Saint Cyran, Familiar 
 Theology, Christian Maxims from the Book of the Hours, Saint 
 Teresa on the Pater Noster, S. Teresa's Way of Perfection, and 
 Select Letters of S. Jerome. 
 
 Besides the above, the girls were to have a Latin and 
 French Psalter, which hardly suggests a profound knowledge 
 of Latin. Further than this her care for the curriculum does 
 not go. To glean additional information we must turn to the 
 Constitutions of the Monastery of Port Royal, written by Mfere 
 ' Rigletiient, part iii. 
 
Jacqueline Pascal and Girls Education 89 
 
 Agn^s Arnauld, and even here the scheme is still painfully 
 restricted. It seems indeed to include only reading, writing, 
 working in linen, and some vaguely designated performances — 
 " d'autres ouvrages utiles " — which one shrewdly suspects to 
 have been some form of sewing. M. Cadet informs us that 
 an "hour's arithmetic on festivals'' was permitted. He gives 
 no authority for this statement ; but even admitting its entire 
 truth, there are some of us, not hopelessly depraved, to whom 
 arithmetic seems but a meagre colourless form of festivity; 
 and, when taken alone, not much more convincing as an 
 instrument of intellectual cultivation. 
 
 Mere Agnfes shares Jacqueline Pascal's dread lest the 
 mistresses should be too fond of the children, or play with 
 them beyond the amount essential to securing due amusement; 
 a point so difficult to determine, as all points are when we set 
 about measuring the intangible. 
 
 It is all very strained. As a corrective of sentimentality it 
 is well enough: "but with ordinary healthy children a little more 
 naturalness, a little more spontaneity, could do nothing but 
 good. It is perhaps legitimate to notice that la mere Agnes 
 seems to have resembled Saint Cyran in feeling that children 
 can be "facheux." 
 
 M. Compayre, writing of the Convent system of the 17th 
 century, remarks : " Partout on n'elevait la femme que pour le 
 ciel, ou pour la vie devote : les exercices de spirituality faisaient 
 la seule occupation des e'lfeves, et il n'etait guere question 
 d'etudes'." 
 
 M. Cadet draws our attention to another fact, viz. the 
 educational superiority of the boys' schools over those for the 
 girls : " en resume les ecoles des filles de Port Royal sont 
 bien loin d'interesser I'historien de la pedagogic comme les 
 Petites Ecoles des gardens, celles-la marquent une epoque 
 de notables reformes et de serieux progres. Si nous sommes 
 souvent en disaccord avec leurs venerables maitres, si nous 
 ^ Histoire de la Pedagogic, p. 177. 
 
go Jacqueline Pascal and Girls Education 
 
 n'avons ni le meme point de depart, ni le meme point d'arrivee, 
 si la pedagogic s'est degagee de leurs conceptions theologiques, 
 que de profit pouvons nous eependant encore retirer d'un 
 commerce intime avec eux ! que de legons autorise'es ils 
 peuvent continuer a nous donner sur la bonne direction des 
 etudes, sur I'art de conduire les enfants, de former leur juge- 
 ment et leur coeur ! Leurs ouvrages, une des gloires de la 
 pedagogie frangaise, meritent encore d'etre lus et raedites. 
 Leurs exemples surtout doivent rester vivants. On n'a jamais 
 vu un devouement plus absolu et plus desinteressd a la grande 
 oeuvre de I'education, une conscience plus en eveil, un amour 
 plus sincere et plus actif de I'enfance, un plus vif desir de 
 rendre I'etude facile et attrayante\" 
 
 Up to this point I have tried to criticise the system of 
 education, both for boys and girls, at Port Royal just precisely 
 as if it resembled any one of the other many schemes of 
 education which in all times, races and lands, since the 
 establishment of any considerable degree of civilisation, have 
 emanated from the busy brains of men. Before I close this 
 chapter, it is surely permissible to recollect that it is, as 
 M. Sainte-Beuve pointed out, for ever distinguished from 
 the ordinary run of educational schemes by one salient fact. 
 We have traced the discipline, the scholastic methods ; we 
 have criticised the perpetual supervision, and the meagre 
 intellectual fare allotted to the girls. But the whole plan, 
 with its faults and its merits, is an organism, built with faultless 
 logic upon a theological position. The Gentlemen of Port 
 Royal postulated three propositions, the certainty of "the 
 Fall"; the redeeming Grace of Baptism; and thirdly, the 
 necessity, when each child approaches the "age of reason," 
 of translating the redeeming Grace of Baptism into an appre- 
 hended verity of Reason. Perhaps Sainte-Beuve's precise 
 words should be quoted ; " L'idee des Ecoles, con9ue par 
 M. de Saint Cyran, reposait, comme tout ce qui entrait dans 
 ' V Education h Port Royal, pp. 68, 69. 
 
Jacqueline Pascal and Girls' Education 91 
 
 cette tete meditative, sur la racine meme de la doctrine 
 chretienne, telle qu'il j'entendait, sur le dogme approfondi de 
 la Chute. 
 
 " L'enfance sans le bapteme est I'image par excellence, si 
 Ton peut dire, et le produit direct de I'homrae declus : la liberie 
 niille, la parole nulle (infans) et qu'il faut rapprendre, tout I'etre 
 soumis au sens, au premier desir, a la concupiscence; I'imitation 
 continuelle et irresistible de ce qu'on voit, I'ignorance de tout, 
 une desobeissance de tous les instants. II s'agit de restaurer 
 cela, et de refaire I'homme, I'homme d'avant la Chute, autant 
 qu'il se peut. 
 
 " Le bapteme rend la Grace, il couvre et revet d'une 
 innocence prealable devant Dieu tous ces mouvements de 
 la machine et de I'animal non raisonnable, jusqu'a ce que 
 I'enfant ait atteint I'age de raison. Mais des que cet age de 
 raison commence, pour que I'effet salutaire du bapteme ne soit 
 pas comme non avenu, il faut I'expliquer a mesure, le traduire 
 en raison chez I'enfant ; tellement que cette etat de Grace, qui 
 lui a ete acquis par un bienfait ineffable sans qu'il I'ait compris 
 ni voulu, lui devienne un etat reflechi, senti, et pratique. II faut 
 effectuer et faire vivre en lui cette seconde naissance." 
 
 Nothing perhaps could convey with greater clarity of 
 expression the fundamental clauses of the Jansenist faith. 
 
 As admirably lucid is Sainte-Beuve's account of the edu- 
 cational means devised by M. de Saint-Cyran: "On s'atta- 
 chait a ne choisir pour maitres que des personnes dont on 
 connaissait la piete, la capacite, la discretion, et les desinteresse- 
 ment. Le seul motif pour accepter cette charge devait etre la 
 charite, le seul but de conserver dans les enfants la Grace du 
 bapteme." 
 
 Sainte-Beuve quotes later some confirmatory words of 
 M. de Beaupuis : "Voila ce qui tachaient de faire les maitres 
 qui etaient aupres de ces enfants : et c'etait pour pouvoir 
 s'acquitter de leurs obligations, qu'ils veillaient continuellement 
 
92 Jacqueline Pascal and Girls^ Education 
 
 sur ce petit troupeau, sans le perdre jamais de vue, et en le 
 considerant comme un dep6t precieux dont Dieu devait un 
 jour leur redemander un compte terrible, de sorte qu'ils 
 pouvaient dire comme Jacob ^, ' Die noctuque aestu urebar 
 et gelu, fugiebatque somnus ex oculis meis^'" 
 
 Whether modern readers have much, little or no sympathy 
 with the theological position and the perfectly logical scheme 
 erected upon it, they can hardly avoid seeing that the asceticism, 
 the severity, the ceaseless supervision were very far removed 
 from that pitiless harshness condemned, in their time, .by 
 Erasmus, Montaigne, Elyot, Mulcaster, Ascham and Mme de 
 Maintenon. Behind the plan of everyday life, with its wan 
 depressing discipline and silence, burned the white light of 
 logic, glowed the ruddy flame of devoted love. The brilliance, 
 the warmth and the greyness are all there, equally evident. 
 The strange fact and manner of their combination is but one 
 more added to the puzzles of human life. Only the Mystics 
 perhaps can solve the problem : but no one who has ever 
 studied the story of Port Royal Education can throw oif its 
 spell entirely. 
 
 ^ Gen. xxxi. 40. 
 
 ^ Port Royal, Vol. III. L. iv'*". 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 MADAME DE MAINTENON. 
 
 FRAN901SE d'Aubign^, afterwards Madame de Maintenon, 
 was born in the porter's lodge of the prison of Niort in 1635. 
 Her father, Constant d'Aubigne, contrived to spend a large 
 portion of his time in prison, exhibiting in crime a versatility 
 which, had it been turned into some more desirable channel, 
 should have stood himself and his family in good stead. His 
 death which occurred in the island of Martinique in 1647, five 
 years after his last release from prison, deprived his family of 
 their means of livelihood. Madame d'Aubigne managed to 
 return to France. On the voyage out, five years earlier, the 
 little Fran§oise, destined to so striking a future, only escaped 
 death by what men call chance. She was so ill that Ufe was 
 pronounced extinct, and the gun announcing her burial was all 
 ready to be fired, when her mother noticed that her pulse still 
 beat, and said, apparently with aniazing nonchalance, "Ma fille 
 n'est pas morte." It is not surprising then that finding herself in 
 France without income or resources, Madame d'Aubigne should 
 have abandoned the child to an aunt's care. Madame de 
 Villette had loved her brother, the ne'er-do-weel Constant, and 
 she became, as M. Greard observes, the "real mother" of 
 Frangoise. It must, however, in justice be said that during 
 the time when she was able to keep her three children with 
 her, Madame d'Aubigne succeeded in instilling into their 
 minds principles of life remote indeed from those which 
 appear to have actuated their father. It is quite probable 
 
94 Madame de Maintenon 
 
 that her mother's sound sense and uprightness inspired Fran- 
 9oise all through her life. 
 
 The child's earliest years were harassed by the claims of 
 rival religious systems. Her mother, having promised that 
 she should be educated as a Roman Catholic, for some 
 unexplained reason brought her up in the reformed religion, 
 to which Madame de Villette also adhered. But after some 
 time, another aunt, Madame de Neuillant, took charge of 
 Frangoise, that is if relegating the child to the poultry-yard, 
 where she looked after the turkeys, can be dignified as taking 
 charge. Later she was sent to the convent at Niort, where, 
 owing to her affection for one of the Sisters, she appears to 
 have been fairly happy. Then her mother intervened again 
 in her life of vicissitudes, and she was removed to the Convent 
 of the Ursuline sisters in the rue Saint Jacques. 
 
 Here, according to her own shewing, she was exceedingly 
 unhappy, and, in her distress, she turned to " sa vraie mere," 
 Madame de Villette. The piteous letter is extant, and even in 
 a translation exhales the little girl's despair : 
 
 " Madame and Aunt, 
 
 The remembrance of the great kindnesses it pleased 
 you to shower on little abandoned children induces me to hold 
 up my hands to you, and to beg you to use your influence and 
 your care to deliver me from this place, life here, being to me 
 worse than death. Ah ! Madame and Aunt you cannot imagine 
 what a hell this so-called House of God is to me, and what 
 ill-treatment, harshness and cruel ways these people indulge in, 
 who are guardians of my body, and only not of my soul because 
 they cannot get hold of it. Rivette will tell you at length of 
 all my agony and suffering, being here alone and with no one 
 to trust. I beg you to send me help, Madame and Aunt, and to 
 take pity on your brother's daughter and your humble servant 
 
 Franc^gise." 
 
 It is certain that Madame de Villette must, for some reason 
 
Madame de Maintenon 95 
 
 or other, have been deeply impressed by her own inabiUty to 
 help, because, whether or no the child exaggerated, her distress 
 was obvious, and her aunt did not even reply to this moving 
 appeal. It is perhaps useless to ask whether the sisters were 
 really, as Frangoise said, guilty of " rudoiements, durtes." 
 People of opposed faiths seldom judge each other with any- 
 thing approaching to fairness, and when centuries have elapsed 
 any contentious problem is more impossible of solution than 
 it was at the time of its occurrence. One thing is clear how- 
 ever : no one denies that an effort was made to obtain her 
 conversion to the Roman Church, and made successfully at 
 last ; though it is said of her — " Fran5oise resista longtemps 
 encore, se defendant pied a pied, discutant les textes, fatiguant 
 les ministres et les abbes la Bible a la main, et ne consentit 
 ^ se rendre que lorsqu'elle crut reconnaitre de quel c6te etait 
 la droiture." A very satisfactory state of affairs that, if the 
 account be true, for it indicates serious consideration and final 
 conviction, which are not universal even where assertions are 
 dogmatic, and condemnation of opponents severe. It is further 
 related of her that "she only consented to turn on condition 
 that she should not be obliged to believe that this aunt" 
 (Madame de Villette) "whose saintly life she had seen would 
 be damned." That Fran9oise should have thought it necessary 
 to make such a stipulation shews that either she misunder- 
 stood the doctrine of the Roman Church on this p.oint, or that 
 it was not made so clear in 1647, as it is in the 20th century'. 
 It may be urged that all these matters have little to do with 
 education. As a matter of fact it is exceedingly hard to rule 
 anything, which affects human thought and conduct, out of the 
 sphere of education. Surely, all this logical faculty, this loyal 
 affection, this mental and moral strength, so striking in a child, 
 are a true index to the fine, well-knit character, which in after 
 years made Madame de Maintenon the inspiring directress of 
 Saint Cyr. 
 
 ' Cf. Ecclesia, chh. ii. and ix. 
 
96 Madame de Maintenon 
 
 It is unnecessary to sketch her career, when after the death 
 of her mother, which occurred when the child was sixteen and 
 a half, she married the poet Scarron. When he died, she was 
 brought to the notice of Madame de Montespan, and hence- 
 forth she was a member of the brilliant court of Louis XIV, 
 first as the governess of his children and last as his wife. 
 
 In 1674 she bought the estate of Maintenon, and in the 
 following year, at the King's command, she assumed the terri- 
 torial name, and was known no longer as Madame Scarron, but 
 as Madame de Maintenon. 
 
 At the death of Louis XIV, fearing lest she should fall 
 a victim to the popular insults from which his corpse was not 
 preserved, she fled to the school which, in happier days, he had 
 founded for her. Her life at the French Court is not of 
 essential interest to the student of the History of Education, 
 but the following dates are important. Her first educational 
 effort was made in 1680, at a place near Montmorency. It 
 may serve to quiet over-intense suspicions as to the solid 
 grounds for her letter to Madame de Villette if it be recorded 
 that in this, her first school, she cooperated with an Ursuline 
 sister. In two years the number of her pupils had risen to 50. 
 Apparently this school was divided into two departments ; the 
 larger consisted of 40 poor children who were taught such 
 elementary subjects as " to read, to spin, and to pray," so she 
 expressed it. The smaller section numbered but 10, some- 
 times 12. These were girls of good family, either poor or 
 converts from Protestantism : they received a more liberal 
 education. Madame de Maintenon left a great deal of the 
 practical work of this establishment to the Ursuline sister 
 Madame de Brinon : but she took sufficient interest in its 
 welfare to justify M. Greard's remark — " Ce fut le modeste 
 berceau de Saint-Cyr." In 1682 Madame de Maintenon 
 rented another house at Reuil, where she received 50 middle- 
 class girls, and 50 peasant children from her own estate. The 
 latter were taught mainly manual work. This school's two 
 
Madame de Maintenon 97 
 
 departments have been said to correspond roughly to our 
 modern division of secondary and primary. When she was 
 48, and at the zenith of her influence with the king, he 
 granted her the Chateau de Noisy, in the royal park at 
 Versailles, as a school-house for the accommodation of 100 
 girls of the upper classes. Then, in the following year, Louis 
 decided that a still larger and more important school should 
 be founded. His Minister, Louvois, selected the site close to 
 Versailles ; Mansard was the architect. Workmen were requi- 
 sitioned from the army, indeed every outward sign pointed to 
 its being a state provision of education. In reality, Madame 
 de Maintenon drew up the regulations, "constitutions" as 
 they were called; but, to put a more glorious aspect upon 
 things, the help of the Bishop of Chartres was invoked, for the 
 religious part of them ; while, strange as it may appear to us, 
 the actual wording of these school statutes was committed into 
 the skilled hands of the two great contemporary stars in the 
 literary heaven, Racine and Boileau, incomparable stylists in 
 an age which cared supremely for style. And when they had 
 all contributed their parts, le grand monarque himself surveyed 
 the result with meticulous care, lest any flavour of monasticism 
 should cling anywhere about the regulations which were to 
 fetter the destinies of a school designed to receive at a time 
 250 nobly born girls. The great school of Saint-Cyr was 
 founded. The immediate cause of its creation was the king's 
 desire that a school should exist where " nothing savoured of 
 monasticism, either in external practices, or in its customs, or 
 in its religious services, or in its daily life, which last must be 
 active, but free and easy." 
 
 Nor was this the only point on which the king laid stress. 
 He had another reason for desiring the foundation of Saint-Cyr. 
 He had established institutions for the sons of those nobles 
 who had served the nation, often to their own grievous loss 
 and hurt. And then, it seems to have occurred to him, good 
 enlightened man, that there might be daughters as well as sons. 
 
 H. 7 
 
98 Madame de Maintenon 
 
 In the preamble to the document concerning the building of 
 Saint-Cyr, Louis, having referred to these Boys' schools, 
 observed, "We have decided that it is not less just nor less 
 useful to provide for the upbringing of young ladies of rank, 
 above all of those whose fathers have died in the Service, 
 or who, having impoverished themselves by expenses for the 
 benefit of their country, find themselves unable to give their 
 daughters the assistance necessary to their education." 
 
 From these royal remarks, two definite ideas may be 
 extracted : we must expect, what we find, an aristocratic school; 
 and we are not to expect anything like an ecclesiastical or 
 monastic regime. Concerning the aim of the school M. Greard 
 writes — " The very conception of an establishment of this sort, 
 the idea of making France pay France's debt by educating the 
 children of those men who had given their lives for her, pro- 
 ceeded from a sentiment hitherto unknown^." 
 
 If the king's motive in founding the school were praise- 
 worthy and notable, not less happy and fortunate was his 
 choice of Madame de Maintenon for its, guiding spirit. " Elle 
 dtait nde institutrice," writes M. Grdard. " Madame de Mainte- 
 non avait une veritable vocation d'institutrice," write MM. Cadet 
 and Darin, as they swell the chorus of praise. M. Grdard is not 
 afraid to attribute to her the main success of Saint-Cyr: "We 
 must follow her in the details of her teaching," he says, " if we 
 wish to appreciate the new stamp which she put upon the 
 education of her time^" 
 
 To realise the novelty of her method, it is necessary to 
 recall the system which in the hands of Jacqueline Pascal had 
 issued in terrible silence, a cast iron routine, a perpetual super- 
 vision, a blighting of natural affection as some sad supposed 
 tribute to Vamour de JDieu. What were, as a matter of fact, 
 the main tendencies of Madame de Maintenon's method? 
 What was her new w^y? Or, to put the question in another 
 form, what were the chkracteristics of her method which justify 
 1 Mdzuation et Instruction, vol. i. p. 164. ' Jbid. 
 
Madame de Maintenon 99 
 
 M. Gr^ard in saying that "in certain respects we may place 
 Madame de Maintenon among those who have struck off the 
 fetters from women's education?" The following are among 
 them, even if the list be not exhaustive : activity and energy ; 
 gaiety ; simplicity and genuineness ; knowledge of child-nature 
 and appreciation of individuality ; justice and equal treatment ; 
 reality; reasonableness; religion without religiosity. A con- 
 sideration of the manner in which Madame de Maintenon 
 exhibits these in her pedagogical writings ought to lead to an 
 appreciation of her method in its entirety. Let us take them in 
 order then, and first activity and energy. Writing to one of the 
 former pupils of Saint-Cyr, to Madame de la Lande — a truly 
 admirable woman doing her duty in the most trying untoward 
 circumstances — Madame de Maintenon wrote, in 1695, these 
 words : " Aimez vos devoirs si vous voulez les remplir. Soyez 
 laborieuse : nous sommes tous nes pour le travail, et aucun 
 des moments de notre vie n'est a nous." 
 
 "Even in a palace, life may be well led! 
 So spake the imperial sage, purest of men, 
 Marcus Aurelius." 
 
 Perhaps not every one would expect to hear issuing from 
 the brilliant court of le grand monarque the stern warning, 
 "aucun des moments de notre vie n'est a nous." 
 
 It was even more by example than by precept that Madame 
 de Maintenon encouraged activity : the following description 
 gives a vivid notion of her omnipresent energy : " Nothing 
 which concerned these children left her indifferent or cold. 
 She busied herself with the menu of their meals as she did with 
 the school curriculum : with the development of their bodies 
 as with that of their characters. She was in the dormitory 
 when they rose ; she was in a class-room just when she was 
 least expected; she was no sooner there than she took the 
 lesson into her own hands. She was particularly addicted to 
 these class-lessons, and left models of them. But then she 
 was just as energetic in her private dealings ; she knew the past 
 
 7—2 
 
lOO Madame de Maintenon 
 
 history of every child, her character, her bent, and all that she 
 said was directed to the weak "spot in each. Virtues did not 
 always attract her most. She loved everything in her dear 
 girls, vices and virtues, efforts and failures, their work, their 
 recreation, everything about them, to their last ashes'." 
 
 A few of the "maxims" which she composed specially for 
 the use of these dearly loved children have come down to us : 
 the following seem connected with this subject of energy and 
 activity : — 
 
 (12) Learn good habits : there are none which do not at 
 last grow easy, however wearisome they seemed at first. 
 
 (b) Make yourselves capable in as many ways as possible, 
 because you never know for what God intends you. 
 
 (c) Be severe towards yourselves, indulgent towards 
 others. 
 
 (d) If you never waste any time, you will soon be 
 capable women. 
 
 (e) Work always, but without affectation. 
 
 (/) Acquire the good habit of filling every moment 
 of the day. 
 
 {g) Never go to bed without having learnt something. 
 In spite of their flavour of copy-book and platitude, such 
 counsels were worth attention. At the same time, strenuous as 
 Madame de Maintenon was, as she would have others be, she 
 still thought it worth while to leave behind her one discourse 
 entitled Do not overtire yourself uselessly. This begins with the 
 words — " You will have so many opportunities when you must 
 tire yourselves that I much wish that you would never do so 
 uselessly." Again she warns them — " You will not always be 
 young." And again — "After fatiguing one's self with some 
 stupid unnecessary self discipline, one is so weary for the rest of 
 the day that one is in a bad temper with one's self and with 
 every one else, because the body is worn out and so the spirit 
 ' Education et Instrtution, vol. I. p. 165. 
 
Madame de Maintenon loi 
 
 grows exhausted." And yet once more— "However vigorous 
 you may feel at six o'clock in the morning, remember that you 
 must go on being vigorous till nine o'clock at night, and, for that 
 reason, husband your strength." She is careful to force upon 
 the mistresses' attention the sense and reason of all this advice : 
 "I do not mean by this that you are to be self-indulgent 
 mistresses dreading work. I want teachers who will make the 
 utmost of some quarter of an hour's rest which they can take 
 without neglecting their duties, and who can lose three hours' 
 sleep and get up perhaps in the middle of the night when it is 
 freezing hard, to help some little girl, or to go round the 
 dormitory if it should be necessary." 
 
 There is one other warning uttered by her which seems 
 to the point in this present generation: "Try to distinguish 
 between activity and bustle or levity : dread frivolous, restless 
 undisciplined temperaments, who make a great deal of noise 
 and do very little work, who are a perpetual anxiety to those 
 who are set over them, who give a great deal of trouble and 
 take none." 
 
 It is natural perhaps that a Frenchwoman should esteem 
 gaiety highly. Certainly the hard conditions of her childhood 
 had not suffocated Madame de Maintenon's lightheartedness. 
 "At play,'' she writes, "watch those who are straightforward, 
 gay, accommodating, who take everything in good part, whom 
 nothing vexes; that is what I call being good tempered." 
 This was written for the mistresses : the following words occur 
 in an address to the second -class, la classe verte^ : " there is 
 nothing so pleasant as an accommodating temper ; that is what 
 one calls a good temper." 
 
 She lays great stress on the value of simplicity and genuine- 
 ness : suggestions about these recur again and again in her 
 
 ' The girls of Saint-Cyr were divided into four classes which were 
 distinguished by sashes of difl'erent colours, viz. les rouges, aged 7 to 11;' 
 les vertes, 11 to 14; les jaunes, 14 to 17; les bleues, 17 to 20. These 
 classes were subdivided again into families consisting of 8 or 10 pupils. 
 
I02 Madame de Maintenon 
 
 writings. There is a short exordium, addressed to Madame du 
 Perou, "the mistress of the newly admitted," entitled Simplicity. 
 In this, Madame de Maintenon writes : " The thing upon which 
 I cannot insist enough is simplicity. Let them be sincere, 
 frank, hostile to the faintest duplicity. Let this idea permeate 
 everything : watch lest they try to be cunning, or lest they wish 
 to be ; see if they are straightforward in speech and conduct, 
 because that rectitude of heart which is the essence of simplicity 
 shows everywhere. See if they will acknowledge their faults, 
 their weaknesses; if, in giving their confidence, they keep 
 nothing back ; if they tell the good in themselves as well as the 
 evil when they are asked for it : because simplicity is ingenuous, 
 it desires to speak the truth, not to praise or blame itself." 
 
 The acute critic may feel some surprise that Madame de 
 Maintenon should have written part of the above passage, 
 providing, as it seems to, for an intense and searching kind 
 of confession, with no formal safeguards. Is it unfair to wonder 
 if, like some other people, she could bear the methods of 
 priestly rule deprived of its name and its official resporisibiUty ? 
 
 To another mistress she writes : " Be simple in speech also, 
 avoid what is called twisted sense, or double meaning ; say yes 
 or no without exaggeration." Again she writes, "In class take 
 pains with those girls whose minds are straightforward, who 
 accept what is said to them quite simply, who are not difficult, 
 nor argumentative, nor suspicious, nor cavilling." One might 
 have supposed that such girls would do without so much care, 
 which would be expended more profitably on the tortuously 
 minded. But this quality, a cavilling temper, was particularly 
 repugnant to Madame de Maintenon. Writing to the mistresses 
 on another occasion, she observes : " This is a character which 
 you cannot eradicate too thoroughly from this school. Nothing 
 else is so bad as a cavilling spirit, which entrenches itself behind 
 sophisms, supports itself on suppositions which will never come 
 true, which adds subtlety to subtlety without end, and entangles 
 itself in countless refinements : nothing is better than a simple 
 
Madame de Maintenon 103 
 
 straightforward intellect which uses its natural light to find the 
 easy way in everything, which never creates difficulties." 
 Among the Maxims we find this : " Let your conduct always 
 be open, simple, frank, far removed from mystery." 
 
 It would be easy to multiply instances, but the above are 
 enough to indicate what importance Madame de Maintenon 
 attached to straightforward, unaffected simplicity. 
 
 If we turn to her knowledge of child-nature, to the attention 
 she paid to and the sympathy she felt with individuality, we 
 shall find her views in the singularly interesting essay called 
 Treating children according to their temperaments. The follow- 
 ing extracts from this will prove that she is not exaggerating 
 when she claims to have watched children carefully and 
 extensively : " One should be firm but not scold." " Often 
 one should close one's eyes and not see everything." "Above 
 all, take care not to irritate your children, and not to over drive 
 them. There are wretched days when they are in a bad 
 temper, or upset, or ready to grumble : all that you can do 
 then, all the remonstrances, all the scoldings will not reduce 
 them to order. You must simply let things go as quietly as 
 they will go... Very often, by the very next day, the children 
 will do marvels." 
 
 "There are children of such violent tempers, that when 
 they are once angry you may beat them ten times over', but 
 you will not master them : they are incapable for the time 
 of reason, and punishment is futile. You must give them time 
 to recover, and to recover by themselves.'' 
 
 "One must choose the right moment, select the suitable 
 method in correcting children. Sometimes a look, sometimes 
 a word, will bring them back to their duty; or a private 
 conversation ; or you can ma,ke them reasonable by a little 
 kindness." 
 
 There are other passages to the same effect, but the above 
 are sufficient. 
 
 ' The rod was terribly in vogue in Madame de Maintenon's day. 
 
I04 Madame de Maintenon 
 
 A single extract will suffice on the point of justice and equal 
 treatment : " I would not have you neglect a single child, nor 
 prefer some to others : and I beg of you to establish this rule 
 once for all in the school, that care shall be meted out equally 
 to all, that interest shall be the same for all, and that no one of 
 these children, belonging to God and the king, who have been 
 entrusted to you shall ever be justified in complaining that she 
 has been treated less well than the others." 
 
 As to reality, the desire to equip the girls of Saint-Cyr 
 for the realities of their after life appears in the address she 
 gave to the mistresses on the subject oi marriage. She blames 
 severely the false modesty which will not prepare girls for their 
 duties in the world : a single extract again will suffice : " How 
 can you fit them to fulfil the duties of the various states into 
 which God will call them, if you never mention these duties, or, 
 which is still worse, if you let your pupils see what pain such 
 subjects give you. There is certainly less modesty and fitness in 
 such methods than in speaking to them seriously, like a Christian, 
 about a sacred state which has great obligations to fulfil." 
 
 In all these ways, in her care for simplicity, genuineness, 
 in her attention to individual inclinations, in her care for 
 reality, Madame de Maintenon shews her reasonableness. 
 In practice she exhibited it not less conspicuously. When 
 Saint-Cyr was founded first, the girls were encouraged to 
 give dramatic representations. We must remember that it was 
 the great literary age in France, the age of Corneille, Racine 
 and Moliere among the dramatists, the age of Boileau the 
 satirist, of La Bruyere and La Rochefoucauld the moralists, 
 of Bossuet, Massillon and Bourdaloue among the theologians. 
 A quotation from a letter of Madame de Sdvigne will throw 
 light on this side of the school's work. She describes how she 
 and Madame de Coulanges, Madame de Bagnols and I'abb^ 
 Tetu went to Saint-Cyr to see a representation of Esther, how 
 Madame de Maintenon had kept a chair next to her own for 
 Madame de Coulanges, "Vous voyez quel honneur"; how 
 
Madame de Maintenon 105 
 
 Madame de Sevignd was left to choose her own seat. Then 
 she writes as follows : " I cannot tell you the extraordinary 
 charm of this piece ; it is a thing not easy to give, which can 
 never be imitated : it is so complete a harmony of music, verse, 
 song and persons that one can desire nothing further : the girls 
 who played the king's and the other parts were made for them ; 
 the only thing one regrets is that so beautiful a piece should 
 have an end. Everything in it is so simple, so innocent, so 
 sublime, so touching, one respects the fidelity to the sacred 
 story : all the songs, so suitable to the words which are taken 
 from the Book of Psalms or the Book of Wisdom, and set 
 in the play, are so beautiful that one cannot hear them without 
 tears : the praise one gives to this play is that of absolute 
 liking and attention. I was charmed, so was the marshal who 
 left his seat to express his pleasure to the king, and to tell him 
 he had sat near a lady who was' worthy to have seen Esther. 
 The king came towards us, and having turned, said to me, 
 ' Madam, I am convinced that you were pleased.' I, without 
 any embarrassment, answered, ' Sire, I was charmed, what I feel 
 is incapable of expression in words.' The king said to me, 
 'Racine has rare talent.' 'Sire,' I said, 'he has much, but 
 these young actresses have much also ; they enter into it as if 
 they had never done anything else.' ' Ah ! ' replied he, ' that is 
 very true.' And then his Majesty went away, leaving me the 
 object of envy : as I was the only new-comer, the king took 
 pleasure in seeing my quiet, sincere, unassumed pleasure. 
 The Prince and Princess came to say a word to me, and 
 Madame de Maintenon passed like a flash, she went with the 
 king : I spoke to them all, as I was in luck's way.'' 
 
 For any who are unacquainted with the facts, it may be 
 difficult to believe that both Esther and Athalie were written 
 for Saint-Cyr. Yet that is the truth. Anyone can appreciate 
 the lustre which such representations, court functions as they 
 became, would confer on the School; nevertheless, and 
 apparently quite suddenly, it dawned on Madame de Maintenon 
 
io6 Madame de Maintenon 
 
 that all this publicity and admiration were injurious to the girls. 
 M. Hebert, cur^ of Versailles, had -with rare courage declined 
 to countenance these plays : he had gone so far as to commit 
 his objections to writing : " Such pleasures ought to be pro- 
 scribed by all good education. All the convents look to Saint- 
 Cyr : they will follow the example set there, and instead of 
 educating novices they will turn out play-actresses.'' The year 
 1689 was the one signalised by these brilliant functions. In 
 1 69 1 Madame de Maintenon wrote to Madame de Fontaines — 
 whom we should call the Head Mistress — saying that everything 
 must be changed, that the girls were too much noticed, caressed 
 and spoiled : the plays must be given up, simplicity must reign 
 everywhere. With rare generosity she lays the whole blame on 
 herself: "My pride has spread through the whole house; it 
 was so great that it has swept all my good intentions away 
 before it." 
 
 With all her dread of what she called monasticism, Madame 
 de Maintenon sincerely desired that the girls of Saint-Cyr 
 should be educated religiously. It is difficult to differentiate 
 accurately in words between religiousness (if one might use 
 so cumbrous a word) and religiosity; that there is a funda- 
 mental difference all, probably, will admit. In her effort to 
 exclude the last Madame de Maintenon perhaps fell somewhat 
 short of a full achievement of the first. It is not an easy 
 matter to illustrate by extracts ; but her interest in and care 
 for this side of education runs through all her addresses to the 
 mistresses, all her remarks to the girls. She would have them 
 upright, sincere, virtuous, fearing God, honouring the king : 
 she has, at the same time, a possibly exaggerated dread of 
 anything and everything conventual. She was not wanting 
 in a very real kirid of reverence, as the following extract, touch- 
 ing on a familiar fact, will shew : " I have always thought one 
 should speak of God as if He were God, that is to say, seriously 
 and reverently: I wish people would leave off talking about 
 Him rather than talk of Him otherwise than reverently. That 
 
Madame de Maintenon 107 
 
 is what sometimes distresses me among nuns ; since their minds 
 are so full of God, they want to drag Him into all their 
 conversations, and since sometimes they must relax and unbend 
 the bow, they laugh and joke about religious matters as if they 
 were immaterial." 
 
 But though the above are the main characteristics of 
 Madame de Maintenon's system, it would make any sketch 
 of her work incomplete if her views on what would be called 
 nowadays pedagogic theory were omitted. In one of her 
 discourses she is occupied with the " way of teaching." She 
 handles the difficulty of questions. With her ever alert desire 
 to suppress captiousness, she argues that children should not 
 be allowed "to ask futile, inquisitive questions, which serve 
 no purpose in forming their intelligence or their morals." 
 Again, she would by all possible means prevent them from 
 talking of things which they do not, cannot understand ; and, 
 on this point, she utters a maxim worthy of Montaigne : " II 
 n'est pas question de remplir leur esprit, mais qu'elles com- 
 prennent ce qu'elles pratiquent." 
 
 M. Cadet has said, " Madame de Maintenon, il faut le 
 reconnaitre, a trop sacrifie I'instruction proprement dite k 
 I'education ; elle n'a pas assez compris que la culture in- 
 tellectuelle est indispensable i la culture morale ; elle se defie, 
 au contraire, du savoir.'' 
 
 M. Cadet perhaps overstates his point : amongst the 
 simple, almost illiterate, men and women of all climes and 
 times, it is possible to find instances of something as near 
 to moral perfection as human beings can attain. The history 
 of the Saints might surely furnish examples which would 
 suggest that the word indispensable exaggerates the truth. 
 But with that reservation, M. Cadet's remark is just : without 
 subscribing to the "clever devil" theory, we can afford to 
 admit that for average men and women, for average children, 
 intellectual progress is bound up with moral, and vice versd. 
 It is not more but less difficult to be good if you understand 
 
io8 Madame de Maintenon 
 
 and can apply deliberately the principles of human Ufe, of the 
 ordering of the physical world. People surely seldom sin 
 from excess of knowledge, intelligence is the support of 
 morality. 
 
 In this more accurate sense of the words, they are true 
 of this great French Educator. Her curriculum was wofully 
 restricted. She ruled out not, as we so often do, carelessly 
 or from want of time, but deliberately all Ancient History. 
 Perhaps some people may think that the same is very nearly 
 true of modern, for she permitted only enough Modern History 
 to prevent the girls from mixing up French princes with 
 those of other countries ; only enough General History to 
 prevent them from "taking a Roman Emperor for an Emperor 
 of China or Japan, a King of Spain or England for a King of 
 Persia or Siam." 
 
 And even this minimum of information, so she laid down 
 specifically, was to be learned "sans rfegles ni methodes." 
 Geography, save the most superficial knowledge of the main 
 facts, was excluded also. Composition exercises she rejected 
 lest the young ladies of Saint-Cyr should develope into Fredeuses. 
 Their very reading was restricted rigorously, specially among 
 profane authors. As to writing and spelling, she was content, 
 oddly enough, if these were free from gross mistakes ; she held 
 the strange theory that anyone who could spell correctly need not 
 do so, because " that savours too much of pedantry, of a desire 
 to play the learned Lady." This was a great declension from 
 the high standard of excellence in handwriting advocated by 
 Pope Pius II and Pellegrino Morato. At the same time we 
 should remember M. Greard's observation that the knowledge 
 of even illustrious women was, in the 17th century, unequal, 
 and the time devoted to their education brief. If some ladies 
 of high rank could, as they could, read Plato in the original, 
 some others could neither read nor write correctly in their 
 native tongue. The standard of scholarship seems too large 
 a phrase to use concerning Saint-Cyr; what it was may be 
 
Madame de Maintenon 109 
 
 gathered from the fact that its Head hoped that members of 
 the staff would confine themselves to five or six set books, viz. 
 the New Testament, the Imitation, Saint Franpis de Sales, and 
 two or three other devotional works. 
 
 Though there seemed so little provision for carrying it out, 
 she held the sane and sound theory that the girls should be 
 thoroughly well occupied : she went a step beyond and 
 maintained that reading is the best form of occupation. She 
 took pains to found a library, but it was restricted within the 
 same narrow limits, for it consisted of histories, written by 
 M. I'abb6 de Choisy, such as the story of David or Esther. 
 Those who know a good deal concerning the natural ways 
 of children will not be surprised to learn that, under such 
 circumstances, the little girls in the " red class " took upon 
 themselves to alter a play on the subject of Jonathan, which 
 had been written specially for Saint-Cyr. They substituted for 
 Saul and Samuel, and for other scriptural persons, animals — 
 "faisant de tout cela un assemblage bizarre." 
 
 Th^ elder girls seem to have sought relief by equally 
 natural and reprehensible means. Condemned to a perpetual 
 recital of the doings of David, of Ruth, of Esther and so forth, 
 it occurred to them to find an outlet by collecting any printed 
 matter which reached them as wrappings of parcels. In this 
 way they endeavoured to reconstruct le Mercure Galant, and 
 were caught in flagrante delicto. On these occasions, Madame de 
 Maintenon, most unfortunately blind to the extreme naturalness 
 of such efforts, created a terrible uproar. But again we ought 
 to remember that the department of modern literature labelled 
 juvenile, defective as it still is, hardly existed in the 17th 
 century. 
 
 A more serious blot on her system is the curious fact that 
 in spite of her desire to resist everything conventual, in spite 
 of her desire that they should be told the truth about life, yet 
 she invariably persists in painting the world as a bad and 
 terrible place. A common phrase in her mouth is "Those 
 
no Madame de Maintenon 
 
 of you who are unfortunate enough to return to the world." 
 There is an inconsistency about this part of her theory and 
 practice which it seems impossible to explain; for without 
 doubt she was keenly interested in preparing them to play 
 their part ably in the world: "Neglect no opportunity, my 
 children, of learning and discovering everything you ought 
 to know, so that you may not appear ridiculous in the world... 
 It is impossible to describe how embarrassing the people are 
 who do not know how to behave in Society." This seems to 
 indicate a desire for what is called society with a big S. And 
 this very same discourse closes with the following words : 
 " The woman, says the Holy Spirit in the Psalms, is in her 
 house like a fruitful vine. He does not put her upon the 
 doorstep, nor at the window, still less in the street, but in her 
 house, occupied with her home duties." 
 
 Well, perhaps the truest criticism is that, like most people 
 who talk much, Madame de Maintenon is at times inconsistent 
 with herself: and it is quite certain that most candid students 
 of her addresses will agree with M. Cadet when he observes 
 " S'il y a beaucoup a reprendre, il y a encore davantage a louer 
 et a imiter." 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 M. DE FENELON. 
 
 Madame de Maintenon began to write her discourses on 
 education in 1686. M. de Fenelon published his treatise 
 Concerning Girls' Education in the following year. It was not 
 the work of his ripest experience, since he was only 36 when 
 he wrote it ; but he had already studied some of the problems 
 of education, partly as "superior" of the House of the Nouvelles- 
 Catholiques at Paris, and partly as one taking an interest in 
 the young members of an intimate friend's family. For like 
 Quintilian, Montaigne and Locke, Fenelon wrote not so much 
 for the general public as for a private friend. As Quintilian 
 and Locke wrote in the interests of bays, so the gallant and 
 chivalrous Frenchmen, Montaigne and Fenelon, addressed 
 their treatises on education to women, and Fenelon, in this 
 particular book, wrote mainly of and for girls. Colbert's second 
 daughter had married an intimate friend of the abbe, the due 
 de Beauvilliers. She had a numerous family (eight daughters 
 and several sons is the description, as if the latter were too 
 numerous to be counted); and sharing her husband's regard 
 for the young priest, she asked his advice in the difficult matter 
 of bringing up children. The treatise embodies not only 
 Fe'nelon's views, but those which he had imbibed from his 
 friend the Abbe Fleury. It is quite true that, compared with 
 modern schemes, his is restricted ; how could it be other- 
 wise? It is quite true that as Locke wrote for "young 
 gentlemen'"' so Fenelon wrote for "young ladies." But both 
 
112 M. de Fdnelon 
 
 alike were men acquainted with the actual world of affairs ; 
 both were men accustomed to observe facts and to reflect 
 upon them : and so M. Defodon's remark about Fenelon is as 
 true of Locke as of him — "ce qui domine dans son livre, c'est 
 un bon sens supe'rieur, une sagacite penetrante et insinuante, 
 moins pre'occupee d'echauffer que d'ddairer." In Fenelon as 
 in Vauvenargues we have the fine flowering of the French 
 genius, the delicacy, the clarity, the sense of proportion which 
 seem to be the portion of France's more gifted sons ; and so his 
 book becomes something more than a mere text-book for 
 pedagogues. For the purpose of exhibiting it in its place in 
 the development of French educational theory, it may be best 
 to consider it in a twofold aspect, first as a contribution to 
 pedagogics in general, and secondly as a criticism of a guide 
 to the education of girls. At the outset, Fenelon seems to 
 shew that the 17th century, in France at any rate, had grasped 
 the great principle on which the men of the Renaissance laid 
 so much stress, viz. that education is an affair of state, for 
 he observes (ch. i) that while the education of boys Is regarded 
 as a matter of public moment, that of girls is left to custom 
 and the mother's whim. Not that he praises boys' education 
 indiscriminately; he hastens to admit that investigation might 
 shew that in practice as many mistakes are made about boys 
 as about girls ; but "his point is that the ideal for boys is higher. 
 His general theory of education is to be found in chapters three 
 to six. His hygiene can be described in very few words : he 
 advocates careful choice of food, a simple life, settled hours of 
 meals, sufficient food at meals to render any more between 
 them unnecessary, the avoidance of highly seasoned food, and 
 of too great variety of it at one time. 
 
 And then he lays stress on three other matters, of principle 
 rather than of detail. The first shews his originality, for he 
 gives advice of which modern educators are seeing the 
 importance increasingly — let the body grow strong, give it 
 time to settle itself, before you put any great pressure upon 
 
M. de Fdnelon 1 1 3 
 
 it. Secondly, he recommends the avoidance of anything 
 likely to awaken the lower passions, and, though many modern 
 readers will differ in detail with him here, most surely will they 
 welcome the principle. Finally, and our pleasure-loving age 
 might well lend an ear, he counsels us to accustom children 
 gradually to deny themselves things they have desired greatly, 
 so that they may learn self-mastery. 
 
 Psychology had not been differentiated from metaphysics 
 in Fenelon's time, yet the observation of the growth of the 
 human self began many centuries before a name for the 
 process was found. His remarks lack system, but he had 
 watched children, he had noted their salient traits. For 
 instance, he observel; their natural activity. It is a real thing, 
 he says; it begins with their life; consequently it should 
 be trained, and that at once : " Do not men say every day 
 ' I have taken my ply, I am too old to change, I was brought 
 up so? '...The strongest tendencies of all, are they not formed 
 in those early days ? All that only proves that the first im- 
 pressions, the first habits, are the strongest ^" 
 
 Like Quintilian, Fdnelon insists on the palpable fact that 
 memory is strongest, most sensitive in youth : and among 
 all the notable warnings, based by the great educators on 
 that fact, his falls on the ear with peculiar winning force: "One 
 should choose so carefully the impression to be engraved 
 therein ; into so tiny, so precious a treasury one should pour 
 none but the most exquisite things." 
 
 He realises that education is two-sided, depending on 
 teacher and taught. Through our own selfishness, we teachers, 
 so he says, spoil children ; the delight we take in their beauty, 
 in their precocious cleverness, the pleasure we feel in gratifying 
 their desires, all these tempt us to indulge them over much. 
 When we encourage precocity, we are sowing in them the 
 seeds of that most fatal " life-long habit of judging hastily, and 
 talking about things of which they have no really clear ideas^" 
 1 De V Education des Filles, ch. v. ^ Ibid. ch. iii. 
 
I r4 M. de Fdnelon 
 
 Again, our unwisely affectionate complaisance trains them 
 to expect too much in after life : " This pleasure which we 
 would fain derive from children produces another pernicious 
 result : they see that we watch them with pleasure, that we see 
 all they do, that we enjoy listening to them, in this way they 
 come to believe that the world will always be engrossed with 
 them^" Once he writes scathingly of teachers, quoting 
 S. Augustine as he does it: "S. Augustine tells us that in 
 his childhood he had observed the vanity of his tutors con- 
 cerning their studies. The best and most important task you 
 can perform is to know your own faults as clearly as your 
 pupils will come to know them. As a rule, those who bring 
 up children forgive them nothing, and forgive themselves 
 everything; that naturally breeds in the children a spirit of 
 criticism and malignity, so that when they have seen their 
 tutor err, they are delighted and despise him"." But F^nelon 
 is not content with mere criticism ; he can give advice. Be 
 patient, he says, always, and specially, in answering and en- 
 couraging genuine questions: "shew him" (your pupil) "always 
 that you have yourself well in hand, nothing will teach him 
 better than your own patience^" Avoid severity, he urges, 
 except in cases of absolute necessity, since, as a rule, children 
 ^' are only too diffident and shy*." Like Madame de Maintenon 
 he dwells on the wisdom of choosing — if necessary, of waiting — 
 
 ^ De Viducaiion des Filles, ch. iii. 
 
 " De rAducation des Filles, ch. v. The passage from S. Augustine runs 
 as follows: "the trifling occupations of older people are called 'business'; 
 but those of boys, being really the same, are punished by those elders; and 
 none commiserate either boys or men. ' For will any of sound judgment 
 approve my being beaten as a boy, because, by playing at ball, I made less 
 progress in studies which I was to leam, only that as a man, I might play 
 more odiously? And what else did he who flogged me? who if worsted 
 in some trifling discussion with his fellow-tutor was more embittered and 
 jealous than I, when beaten at ball by a play-fellow." Confessions of 
 S. Augustine, I. ix. 
 
 s Ibid. * Ibid. 
 
M. de Fdnelon 1 1 5 
 
 for the right, propitious moment : "often, we must put up with 
 things which call for correction, waiting for the moment when 
 the child's mind will be ready to profit by rebuke'." Closely 
 connected with this point, but too often neglected with 
 fatal results, is the following counsel : do not tell the child 
 of his fault, without suggesting some means of correcting it, 
 without encouraging him to correct it^. In all fields of human 
 endeavour, destruction is easier than construction : all can 
 carp and criticise, few can suggest the appropriate remedy. 
 F&elon was a priest, trained specially in the art of counsel; 
 and he touches on a matter which might well arrest the 
 attention of the teaching world. How many young men and 
 women tumble heedlessly into the teaching profession, imagining 
 apparently that their whole business will be to impart facts. 
 And yet, for good or ill, they are forced to find fault ; at any 
 moment, whether they are prepared or not, they may be asked 
 .for advice. 
 
 Finally, like Montaigne, he warns us never to act in haste 
 or anger ; to teach, if possible, by a jest. Possibly, the following 
 is one of his most useful counsels : " we ought to remember 
 that children have undeveloped reason, that their age renders 
 them most sensible to enjoyment, and that we often require 
 of them an accuracy and gravity of which they are absolutely 
 incapable^" Though his gentleness is conspicuous — particularly 
 so in an era when the rod was used unsparingly — yet, wisely, 
 he retains severity as a necessary element of every educational 
 scheme : " there are natural passions which must be ruled by 
 fear^" He is careful to supplement with an explanation ; the 
 fact he insists on is grasped too seldom, viz. that children do 
 not always understand why we are vexed, why we are pleased. 
 (Some may recall the fabled Eton boy sent by his form master 
 to the Head, on the charge of impertinence. " How," asked 
 the boy in self-defence, "how was I to know he would draw 
 
 1 De r Education des Filles, ch. v. 
 » Ibid. ^ Ibid. * Ibid. 
 
1 1 6 M. de Fdnelon 
 
 the line at white mice down his collar?") Make certain, says 
 F^nelon, that the child understands, and then fear may have 
 its uses ; but even so, " Fear is like those extreme remedies ; 
 they purge, but they weaken the body and the bodily organs'." 
 Shame, he regards in a similar light. The reader wonders 
 if Locke were familiar with Fenelon's words: "Cut off the 
 ordinary signs of affection till you see that he longs for 
 forgiveness; let this punishment be public or private, according 
 as you see the child will benefit most, by one's exposing him to 
 great shame, or by shewing him that one has spared him : keep 
 this public shame for your very last remedy ^" 
 
 Fenelon speaks feelingly of that heavy task, stirring up the 
 lazy; as he says, "One has no hold on the constitutionally 
 lazy." A great impetus in the direction of idleness is given, as 
 Fenelon implies, by the rather prevalent custom of assuming 
 that all work is wearisome, that pleasure can only be looked 
 for in games and recreation. Many people might be surprised, 
 if they watched their own remarks, to see how often this 
 erroneous view is implicit in them. " Idle words have to be 
 given account of at an unerring tribunal." Those words, 
 according to his biographer, were the last that Dr Pusey " ever 
 addressed to the world at large^" It is impossible to estimate 
 how much damage is wrought in education by the "idle words," 
 the loose opinions of that same " world at large." Fenelon 
 knew that very well. These indolent natures are in themselves 
 so hard to deal with : Fenelon does not hesitate to say that 
 there are "natures like barren fields, with which cultivation 
 can do very little^" He notes too the existence of the opposite 
 fault — which he thinks particularly characteristic of girls — of 
 unregulated desires, violent likings for useless things. Strong 
 opposition is useless here, the only method is wise patience^. 
 
 His advice about rewards and punishments'is as brief as it 
 
 ' De V Education des Miles, ch. v. ^ Ibid. 
 
 ^ Life of E. B. Pusey by Canon Liddon (and others), vol. IV. p. 382. 
 
 * De V Education des Filles, ch. v. ^ Ibid. 
 
M. de Fdnelon 1 1 7 
 
 is sensible, the core of it may be expressed in one sentence : 
 let the consequence (be it punishment or reward) be the 
 natural result of the circumstances. M. Defodon quotes here 
 Maria Edgeworth's admirable observation, "a cake is not the 
 natural consequence of telling the truth ; the taking away 
 of a sweet has no real connexion with a lie." Fenelon 
 considers the imitative tendency in children of such prime 
 importance that he devotes the whole of the fourth chapter 
 to it. An experienced teacher will probably agree with his 
 statement that they are "inclined to imitate everything they 
 see^"; and also with his corollary, that it is "essential to 
 offer them nothing but good models." Of course, in an ideal 
 state, children would only associate with those whose examples 
 they would do well to follow : as Gargantua wrote to Pantagruel, 
 so would they be advised — "Eschew the company of those 
 people whom you would not willingly resemble." Yet Fenelon 
 knows that this is a counsel of perfection. So, when children 
 must see bad and foolish people, then, he says, shew them the 
 dreadful results of ill-doing and foolishness. He goes further, 
 telling us to warn them beforehand, so that they may be 
 prepared to avoid evil. With his usual moderation, he insists 
 that the tendency towards imitation has its advantages ; by it, 
 children are enabled "to yield easily to all the good influences 
 one brings to bear on them." 
 
 Many years before the birth of Rousseau, of Pestalozzi, 
 Fenelon used the phrase, now connected irrevocably with their 
 names and work — "We must be content to follow and supple- 
 ment Nature^" Indeed, as one reads his book, one wonders 
 sometimes why the two later writers should have been praised 
 as pioneers, may one say so inordinately ? As observant as 
 Pestalozzi, so much more reasonable than Rousseau, the Abbe 
 de Fenelon has scarcely received the credit due to him. The 
 reason is not far to seek. To an eminent degree, he possessed 
 a sense of proportion : "I am not speaking of little things as if 
 1 De r £,dwation des Filles, ch. iv. ^ Ibid. ch. iii. 
 
1 1 8 M. de Fdnelon 
 
 they were big, but these infantile tendencies are beginnings 
 which should not be neglected, and this method of warning 
 children against distant perils has impalpable consequences 
 which make education easier \" Again, he is moderate: 
 "After all, it is futile to insist pigheadedly on trying to make 
 children like certain excellent people whose exteriors are 
 unattractive." A sense of proportion, the spirit of moderation 
 do not commend themselves to a large part of the world. 
 
 His actual scholastic method needs not to be dwelt on at 
 any length, but one instance of his common sense is worth 
 notice : in the practical task of teaching children to write, he 
 would never set them to write purposeless things, futile copies, 
 or sentences devoid of meaning to the mind of a child, rather 
 he would say to them "describe that for your brother or cousin; 
 write me a letter." 
 
 In the matter of languages he advocated the use of the 
 mother-tongue before Latin : give a child a book of short and 
 marvellous tales in the mother-tongue, is his advice ; let it be 
 an attractive, a well got- up book^ So important a factor in 
 education did stories appear to be to him, that he gave up 
 chapter vi to a consideration of their use. The reason of their 
 importance is to be found in children's natural taste for them. 
 Instead of tilting at imagination, Hke Rousseau, Fenelon 
 accepts it as a fact and asks what is the best use we can make 
 of it ? First, tell the story so that the child will be hungry for 
 another, but, all the same, wait until he asks for that other. 
 Then tell him connected stories; let your whole narration 
 be a chain where every link has a necessary place. What 
 a revolution would be worked in some of our present day 
 schools, if our children instead of regarding history as some- 
 thing to be learned, thought of it as a perpetually unfolding 
 tale, always to be expected eagerly. Of course, such a method 
 of teaching requires skill, imagination, and a high degree of 
 interest in the teacher ; but why should these not be required 
 ' De V Education des Filles, ch. iii. ^ /^^^f, (,j,_ y_ 
 
M. de Fdnelon 1 1 9 
 
 from those who take upon themselves so grave a responsibility 
 as educating the nation's next generation of citizens ? Fdnelon 
 suggests a method ; " put off the end to another day, keep the 
 children in suspense, make them impatient to see the end." 
 And then he adds that piece of advice which so many people 
 neglect : "make your stories dramatic, let the different persons 
 speak according to their respective roles." His illustration 
 is taken from divinity; no one will deny that it is an illustration. 
 He supposes that the lesson to be learned is the doctrine of 
 the Trinity. He observes that it might be possible by re- 
 peating to the child over and over again, "there are Three 
 Equal Persons, and They are God," to make him remember 
 it; "but,'' says the Abb^, "I doubt if he would understand 
 the sense of it." Then he suggests that if we tell the same 
 child the old story of the Baptism of Christ in the waters 
 of the Jordan, of the Voice of the Father, and the Descent 
 of the Spirit as a Dove upon the Son ascending out of the 
 water, then, by that picture, we shall impress upon his mind 
 a picture he will, at any rate, never forget. Once more, he 
 advises us to keep our story-telling as informal as possible, as 
 free from haste as we can : " let their curiosity grow by little and 
 little " ; and finally, let us, if possible, contrive that the children 
 shall repeat all their stories to some one of whom they are fond. 
 In chapter vii, one of the two which he devotes to the 
 question of religious instruction, Fenelon observes that children 
 do not reason well, not because, as Rousseau contended, they 
 have not reason, but because they possess, while young, so 
 little knowledge of facts. With Vauvenargues, Fenelon waits 
 to inquire into the reasons of things, not contenting himself, as 
 Rousseau does so often, by skimming the surface with a 
 temerarious statement. With as great energy as Rousseau, 
 Pestalozzi and Herbart, he pleads with us to make our teaching 
 real, "strike the imagination vividly; tell them nothing that 
 you cannot present in pictures^" Could the most modern 
 1 De r Education des Filles, ch. vii. 
 
I20 M. de F^nelon 
 
 realist say more ? " Make it real," is the burden of his chapter 
 on implanting the first principles of religion. His remarks 
 apply equally to secular teaching. "There is no new thing 
 under the sun," said the Preacher. And we really do not 
 know who thought first of the advantage of being "real" in 
 teaching. 
 
 From his general pedagogic theory, let us turn to his 
 special theory of the education of girls. It may fall into three 
 parts : an inquiry into the common faults in the schemes of 
 the day ; secondly, a consideration of the functions of women, 
 and lastly a proposal for their better education. In cori- 
 templating the common faults of women's education, he does 
 not choose Rabelais' happy method : we have no sage Pono- 
 crates standing spectator-wise by a blundering sample of bad 
 education. Fenelon just enumerates the mistakes briefly. 
 He complains that the first result of an ordinary girl's ignorance 
 is ennui; she has no idea of employing herself innocently. 
 And this daily lack of energy has a cumulative effect, and 
 at last her capacity for concentrating her attention, for carrying 
 on any consecutive work, atrophies and dies. This mental 
 idleness is accompanied or followed often by idleness of body. 
 S. Jerome, in one of his early Epistles, speaks of "idleness 
 acting like rust upon the intellect " ; Fdnelon calls it " the soul's 
 languor." Body and soul being so subtly interconnected, the 
 defect of one may work injury in the other. As the body 
 shares the mind's idleness, it loses its health : thence, says 
 Fenelon, arises a truly diseased craving for some excitement 
 which may divert the mind from the body's distress. 
 
 He speaks next of curiosity. While he admits willingly 
 that an educated woman's curiosity is a moderate, well- 
 regulated quality, he condemns mercilessly the curiosity of 
 the uneducated. His description of the restless desire for 
 useless knowledge of the illiterate is scathing: "Elles veulent 
 ardemment savoir ce qui se dit, ce qui se fait; une chanson, 
 urie nouvelle, une intrigue; recevoir des lettres, lire celles que 
 
M. de F^nelon 1 2 [ 
 
 les autres regoivent : elles veulent qu'on leur disc tout, et elles 
 veulent aussi tout dire; elles sont vaines, et la vanitd fait parler 
 beaucoup; elles sont legeres, et la le'gerete empeche les reflexions 
 qui feraient souvent garder le silence'." In chapter ix he adds 
 a warning: "If you do not cultivate in them a reasonable 
 curiosity they will exhibit unregulated inquisitiveness." He 
 returns in chapter vii to the faults of women. He would 
 have them discouraged from speculation, specially on matters 
 of religion: "Keep their minds, as far as you can, in the 
 ordinary paths, make them feel shy of learning." He finds 
 them prone to superstition too — " La superstition est sans doute 
 a craindre pour la sexe"; but when he advocates ''solid 
 teaching" as its antidote, the reader wonders how that is to 
 be reconciled with "shyness of learning." 
 
 In one of her novels, Lucas Malet observed that of all 
 virtues the most fertile, the most admirable is courage. This 
 great quality Fdnelon not only allows to but demands from 
 women : "Although women have fewer opportunities than men 
 of displaying courage, they ought to possess it. Cowardice is 
 contemptible everywhere, and produces deplorable results... 
 when one is a Christian, no matter of which sex, one may 
 not be a coward ^" 
 
 In the ninth chapter he accuses girls and women of three 
 faults, three odious faults one might call them: he accuses 
 them of saying very little in a multitude of words; secondly 
 of being artificial and addicted to cunning; thirdly of being 
 timid and full of false shame. One might have expected that 
 the Abbe would have inquired into the cause of these defects. 
 Are they the result of natural depravity, of constitutional 
 inferiority bodily or mental, or the result of circumstances? 
 Had he believed them to be the last, surely he would have 
 mentioned them in his second chapter, where he dwells on the 
 faults and mistakes of the current scheme of education. And 
 
 ' De f Education des Filles, ch. ii. 
 ^ Jbid. ch. vii. 
 
122 M. de Fdnelon 
 
 yet most modern writers would opine that such faults are 
 probably the outcome of defective educafion. In chapter x 
 he goes on to warn us to dread no other feminine vice — the 
 catalogue is a long one — so much as vanity. He inveighs 
 against a senseless trust in beauty, so' soon destroyed by the 
 passing years; the equally senseless confidence in apparel, 
 ornaments, and outrageously dressed hair. As he says, 
 "woman might, without any oddness, cultivate a taste for 
 simplicity of dress, so noble, so gracious, and, besides all that, 
 so consistent with Christian sentiment." It is perhaps worth 
 while to suggest that- dress need not be drab, ugly and ungainly 
 because it is not extravagant, pointless and outrageous. He 
 declares that women should be taught that nothing is really 
 estimable save sound sense and virtue. But he seems scarcely 
 to grasp that hke man, woman after all is " of a reasonable soul 
 and human flesh subsisting." Like in some qualities,, unlike in 
 others, men and women do resemble each other in that funda- 
 mental fact. What provision was there in 17 th century France 
 for the "reasonable soul" of a woman? The speech of 
 .Clitandre in Les Femmes Savantes is a sufficiently accurate 
 rendering of Fenelon's view : 
 
 ''Je consens qu'une femme ait clartes de tout: 
 Mais je ne lui veux point la passion choquante 
 De se rendre savante afin d'etre savante ; 
 Et j'aime que souvent, aux questions qu'on fait, 
 Elle sache ignorer les choses qu'elle sait. 
 De son etude enfin je veux qu'elle se cache; 
 Et qu'elle ait du savoir sans vouloir qu'on le sache, 
 Sans citer les auteurs, sans dire de grand mots, 
 Et clouer de I'esprit k ses moindre propos'." 
 
 In his Advice to a Lady of Quality concerning her Daughter' s 
 Education Fenelon writes of learned women with almost bitter 
 severity: "Women are as a rule more passionately particular 
 about mental adornments than about their body. Those who 
 
 ' Les Femmes Savantes, [. iii. 
 
M. de F^nelon 123 
 
 are capable of study, and who hope to distinguish themselves 
 thereby, are more eager over their books than over their 
 clothes. They may hide their knowledge somewhat, but they 
 only half hide it, in order that they may get credit for modesty 
 and brains all at once. Other grosser vanities are corrected 
 more easily, because they are seen easily, therefore women 
 reproach themselves for such, and also because they are the 
 marks of a frivolous character. But a speculative woman, who 
 prides herself on knowing a great deal, flatters herself that she 
 is a genius superior to all the rest of her sex; she thinks she 
 has a right to despise the amusements and vanities of other 
 women; she thinks she has a solid knowledge of everything, 
 and nothing will cure her of this pigheadedness. As a rule, 
 she only knows half of a thing, she flatters herself she knows 
 the whole : she decides matters, she takes a particular view in 
 everything, even in religion : thence arises the fact that budding 
 sects come to power, because women have got into and supported 
 them." 
 
 Whenever he looks at the question from the more abstract 
 point of view, he sets the most rigid limits to women's legiti- 
 mate knowledge: forgetting Jeanne d'Arc, Lady Jane Grey, 
 the princesses of Este, the daughters of Sir Thomas More, and 
 Elizabeth Queen of England, Fe'nelon declares dogmatically — 
 rather in the vein of Erasmus' Abbe and the Learned Lady — 
 that they ought neither " to govern a state, nor to make war, 
 nor to take Holy Orders : therefore they can do very well with- 
 out certain parts of knowledge, which belong to political science, 
 to the military arts, to jurisprudence, philosophy and theology." 
 Perhaps it is permissible to point out that though Queen Eliza- 
 beth was not a candidate for Holy Orders, she was called 
 upon to possess no mean degree of theological acumen and 
 knowledge. 
 
 As he considers F^nelon's strictures, one reflection must 
 sadden the historian's mind — how educational theory has 
 deteriorated since the days of the Renaissance which knew 
 
124 M. de Fdnelon 
 
 so little of class and sex, and cared so much for ability, worth 
 and hard work. Yet there is quite another side to Fenelon's 
 theory, which emerges when he considers the functions of 
 women, looking at her not in the abstract but in the concrete. 
 As he expounds these functions at the beginning of the book, 
 they may seem narrow and dull: ■ "it is enough if they know 
 some day how to rule their households, and obey their husbands 
 without arguing about it\" Apparently, like a good many 
 other people, he does not at first apprehend how high a degree 
 of intelligence such a line of conduct may involve. He pro- 
 ceeds to pile up the indictment of their faults by adding 
 feebleness to all the rest^. But out of this very indictment 
 he draws an ingenious argument in favour of educating them : 
 " What follows from women's natural feebleness ? The feebler 
 they are the more important it becomes to strengthen them. 
 Have not they duties to fulfil, and duties too which lie at the 
 very root of human life ? Is it not they who mar or m^ke our 
 homes, who regulate every detail of domestic life, and who 
 consequently decide what touches the whole human race very 
 intimately ? In this way, they bear the principal responsibility 
 of the good or bad conduct of almost the whole world." One 
 wonders why Fenelon did not perceive that the closing admis- 
 sion gives away the whole case of the opposition to women's 
 education, more especially as his friend the Abbd Fleury had- 
 written "if they are not destined for such great employments as 
 men, they have very much more leisure, and this degenerates 
 into a very serious corruption of conduct if it be not tempered 
 by some study'." 
 
 The responsibility of women should have seemed all the 
 heavier, and therefore to involve the utmost care in preparation, 
 to Fdnelon, because he is of those who regard the family as the 
 core of the nation : " How can men hope for any pleasure in 
 life, if their narrowest circle, that formed by marriage, be turned 
 
 ^ De rEdiuation des Filles, ch. i. ^ Ibid. 
 
 ' Traitl du choix et de la mHhode des Atudes, ch. xxxviii. 
 
M. de Fdnelon 125 
 
 into bitterness? And the children, who will be the human 
 race, what will become of them, if the mothers spoil them from 
 their earliest years' ?" 
 
 But perhaps the most weighty tribute to the influence of 
 women, ever paid by friend or foe to their education, is 
 enshrined in this one sentence of F^nelon : " Men, themselves, 
 even though they have all the authority in public, cannot by 
 their deliberations establish any effectual system of right, if 
 women will not help them to carry it out^" From the abstract 
 point of view, from that standpoint of something approaching 
 to caricature popularised by Moliere, Fenelon condemns the 
 higher education of women: but when he turns the matter 
 round, when he looks at facts, when he analyses the functions 
 and duties of women, the matter strikes him in a curiously 
 different light: "The following then are a woman's duties, not 
 less important to the public than those of men, since they have 
 a house to rule, a husband to make happy, children to bring 
 up well. Let us add that virtue is as incumbent on women as 
 on men; without entering on the question of the public harm 
 or good they can do, they are, after all, one half of the human 
 race, redeemed by the Blood of Jesus Christ, and created for 
 eternal life What intrigues we see in History, what contra- 
 ventions of Law and good conduct, what sanguinary wars, what 
 heresies in religion, what revolutions in States due to the 
 unruliness of women. There then is the justification of their 
 education. Let us cast about for the right method^." 
 
 In the eleventh chapter Fenelon enumerates the duties of a 
 woman. It should be remembered that he was writing in the 
 main for the aristocracy, and also that his assumption that the 
 majority of women in society were mistresses of houses was not 
 far from the facts in an age when it was customary to relegate 
 to the " religious " life those daughters for whom the family 
 estate could not provide sufficient dowry to preserve them from 
 
 ' De V Education des Filles, ch. i. 
 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 
 
1 26 M. de Fdnelon 
 
 a mesalliance. The modern mixture of class, the possibility of 
 " bachelor women," providing for their own support, or the sale 
 of titles for American fortunes were matters undreamed of by 
 M. de Fdnelon and his contemporaries. To turn then to the 
 Abbe's scheme, which he planned not for events which might 
 happen in the future, but for circumstances then existent. 
 He lays down the sound principle that a woman's knowledge, 
 like a man's, should be regulated by her functions, and he 
 declares those functions to be — 
 
 (i) To educate her children, 
 
 (a) the boys up to a certain age, 
 
 (b) the girls till they marry or take the veil. 
 
 (2) Management of the servants, their morals, their work. 
 
 (3) Household management, the art of providing at once 
 
 economically and with dignity. 
 
 (4) To let the farms on the estate, and to receive the 
 
 revenues'. 
 
 The drama of a nation is some index to its current views. 
 Chrysale in Les Femmes Savantes draws a similar picture to 
 Fdnelon's of woman's functions; he only omits the fourth: 
 
 "II n'est pas bien honnSte, et pour beaucoup de causes, 
 Qu'une femme itudie et sache tant de choses. 
 Former aux bonnes mcEurs I'esprit de ses enfants, 
 Faire aller son menage, avoir I'oeil sur ses gens, 
 Et r^gler la depense avec economie 
 Doit etre son etude et sa philosophies." 
 
 After all, and this is what the men of the 17 th century do 
 not seem to have perceived, women can be, have been, well 
 educated and excellent wives, mothers, sisters: after all, every 
 good thing is liable to abuse, so as there are men pedants, so 
 there are, have been, will be woman pedants. There is no 
 
 ' De V Education des Filles, ch. xi. 
 ^ Les Femmes Savantes, 11. vii. 
 
M. de Fdnelon 127 
 
 doubt a substratum of fact under the admirable epigram in 
 which Chrysale hits oflf the deplorable results of the search for 
 wisdom conducted without sense: 
 
 " Raisonner est I'emploi de toute ma maison, 
 Et le raisonnement en bannit la raison...'!" 
 
 It is important to remember that there are two sides to 
 Fdnelon's scheme of education. What we might call the 
 scholastic curriculum is somewhat meagre: it includes reading, 
 writing, spelling, enough grammar to ensure accuracy in the use 
 of the mother tongue, the four rules of arithmetic in order that 
 they may keep accounts, the elementary principles of justice 
 (which he hopes will not give them a taste for the slippery 
 paths of litigation), and a knowledge of the simple customs of 
 their country. After that is accomplished, he would permit 
 them to read those profane authors who do not trifle with 
 serious matters, nor excite the passions, e.g. the historians of 
 Greece and Rome — in those they "will see prodigies of 
 courage and unselfishness." The more inspiring parts of the 
 national history he permits also. If they must learn a foreign 
 language, he prefers Latin to those fashionable in his time — 
 Italian and Spanish — for, as he remarks, the latter leave the 
 way open to "dangerous books," whereas Latin is the tongue 
 of the Church, and, as he adds with an almost naive simplicity, 
 " there is profit and inestimable consolation in understanding 
 the meaning of the words of those Divine Offices one hears so 
 often." Those who may smile at what they consider such 
 ingenuousness must remember that an elaborate ritual is a 
 mode of explanation open to those who chance to be ignorant 
 of Latin. Then Fenelon grants a further concession : if great 
 care in selection be exercised, women may read the orators 
 and poets. Music and painting, with due precautions, are 
 admissible, and even valuable; a knowledge of drawing would, 
 he thought, purify taste. 
 
 ^ Les Femmes Savantes, II. vii. 
 
128 M. de F^nelon 
 
 Well, there it is, his scheme of formal education. There is 
 not much light, not much air, not much freedom and courage, 
 not much faith in all that is good and high to hold its own at 
 last against what is base, low and false. How little confidence 
 he had in the ultimate power of truth to prevail we may gather 
 from two passages in the Advice to a Lady of Quality: "It 
 suffices if she knows enough of religion to believe and practise 
 it, without ever permitting herself to reason about it"; and 
 again, " Give her some piece of embroidery which will be 
 useful in your house, and which will help her to do without 
 the dangerous company of the world ; but never let her reason 
 about theology to the imminent peril of her faith." The better 
 way does not seem to occur to him : the way of training judg- 
 ment, of accustoming the mind to weigh evidence, to follow a 
 proof, to recognise the marks of truth, to distinguish them from 
 those of mere plausibility, partisan spirit, falsehood. Never- 
 theless, if we think Fenelon's plan lacking in courage, if we 
 sigh for the good days of the Renaissance, we must admit that 
 it was a considerable advance on the narrow scheme of 
 Jacqueline Pascal, and on that of Madame de Maintenon herself, 
 so anxious as she was to avoid everything she considered 
 conventual or obscurantist. 
 
 Moreover the scholastic curriculum is only one side of his 
 scheme. There was that other side which issued directly and 
 necessarily from his view of women's functions. 
 
 He expected a woman to educate her children; that 
 necessitates knowledge of the problems of psychology and 
 ethics: "What discernment she will need in order to know 
 the nature and intelligence of each of her children; in order to 
 discover the best line of conduct to adopt with them, in order 
 to appreciate their temper, their bent, their talent, to correct 
 their developing passions, to persuade them to adopt high 
 principles and to correct their faults." Now if Fenelon is 
 to be accepted as a genuine educator, he would surely desire 
 that such questions as these should be treated in a really 
 philosophical way, not by mere rule of thumb. 
 
M. de Fdnelon 129 
 
 The science of economics did not exist as an organised 
 branch of knowledge in Fenelon's time; but the facts of life 
 of which it takes cognisance were in existence. Consequently, 
 as it was the frequent custom to leave the administration of the 
 estate to the mistress of the house, it was necessary for women 
 to have a knowledge of the best way of cultivating land, of the 
 price of commodities, of the business methods connected with 
 letting lands, together with some knowledge of law. 
 
 Then, again, he thought it desirable that women should be 
 acquainted with that amalgam of facts and fancies which is now 
 called domestic economy. Fenelon would have girls taught 
 early how to manage the details of a house, he would have 
 them know accurately the respective functions of the different 
 servants : " Take as much care," he says, " over cleanliness as 
 over economy. Accustom girls to tolerate neither dirt nor dis- 
 order; teach them to notice the slightest irregularity in house- 
 management." He indicates the method by which all this 
 knowledge may be gained — companionship with the mother of 
 " this little republic which as a rule is extremely turbulent," as 
 she goes about, ordering the daily life and preventing and 
 calming disturbance, is the best possible training for the 
 daughter. This is in harmony with his general preference 
 for private education: writing to the "Lady of Quality" he 
 says, "I esteem education in good convents very highly: but 
 I put before that a good mother's education, when she can 
 devote herself to it. I conclude that your daughter is far 
 better off with you than in the best convent you could choose. 
 But there are very few mothers to whom I could give such 
 advice." Even in the case of the best convents he suggests a 
 serious drawback : " If a girl goes out of a convent, and passes 
 to the paternal mansion, where the world opens out, nothing is 
 to be more dreaded than that surprise, that tremendous shock 
 to a lively imagination.... She leaves the convent as a person 
 whom one has educated in the shadows of a cavern, who passes 
 thence suddenly into the full light of day." If only the 
 
 H. 9 
 
I30 
 
 M. de Fdnelon 
 
 majority of mothers were fit for the task, how much better 
 would it be for a girl, he argues, to be with her mother, who 
 teaches her to know the real world by httle and little, warning 
 her against its dangers and temptations, suggesting that all is 
 not gold that glitters. 
 
 It is unnecessary to recall here his advice concerning the 
 training of a governess; it is out of date perhaps, save for his 
 stipulation that every teacher should possess cornmon sense, 
 and a tractable temper, to which he adds a genuine fear 
 of God. 
 
 Any account of this book must fail to convey its charm : as 
 M. Defodon observes, "I'ouvrage est court, il faut le lire tout 
 entier." It seems impossible that any student of education 
 should read it without reaping a harvest of suggestion and 
 stimulus. No doubt we are conscious of a backward trend since 
 the good days of the Estensi princesses, of Olympia Morata, 
 of Erasmus' Learned Lady, of Margaret Roper: yet Fenelon's 
 scheme was a palpable and notable advance, so far as women 
 are concerned, on Rabelais who never considers their education, 
 on Montaigne who treats the subject with lordly ridicule, on 
 Jacqueline Pascal, on Mme de Maintenon herself It is strange 
 that modern readers should have exalted Rousseau who drew 
 the pitiful portrait of Sophie, and yet forget Fenelon. That 
 wise man, Vauvenargues, saw his value. In one of that 
 philosopher's imaginary Dialogues, Bossuet thus addresses 
 the Abbe de Fenelon: " Vous dtiez ne pour etre le precepteur 
 des maitres de la terre.'' 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUESi. 
 " There are many paths to the same goal." 
 
 Such are the words which Vauvenargues puts into the 
 mouth of Montaigne in an imaginary Dialogue between that 
 great Moralist and Charron. So one would speak to those 
 stiff and rigid pedagogues who would rule this young French 
 marquis out from the circle of educators. It is perhaps a mis- 
 fortune that in all regions of thought, the majority of men 
 persist in judging every theory by some — possibly arbitrary — 
 general standard, wheri they might take each as it comes for 
 just what it is; might indeed, in many cases, find a sufficiently 
 heavy task in discovering what it really is. At some time or 
 other, no doubt, human theories must be "placed"; after a 
 clear interval their intrinsic worth must be estimated ; but 
 " this is not a bow for every man to shoot in "; it is not 
 as if God sent a Montaigne into the world every day, or — ^for 
 let us be moderate — in every era; it is not even as if any 
 appreciable number of us had so much as a touch of his 
 quality. 
 
 The effort to make everything (but half understood as so 
 much of it is) conform at all times to a plan, and fit into its 
 place in a perfectly ordered sequence, is beyond the strength of 
 the bulk of mankind. Yet it is not outside the powers of many 
 
 ^ All quotations are taken, or translated, from the edition of Les CEuvres 
 de Vauvenargues, published by Monsieur D. L. Gilbert in 1857. 
 
 9—2 
 
132 Vauvenargues 
 
 to receive the rays of truth setting in from various directions, 
 and to focus them as a nimbus of possibility round that dull 
 working hypothesis which is all of which most of us are worthy, 
 and which is serviceable enough if we only remember its limits. 
 
 It may be conceded at the outset that Vauvenargues was 
 not a professional pedagogue, that he does not stand neatly, 
 essentially, in any strict line of succession of schoolmasters and 
 philosophers. Is this a matter for regret? ,The philosopher 
 pure and simple is apt to treat so largely and exclusively of the 
 abstract, or to handle the concrete so abstractly, that dealers in 
 the concrete, very human child, as he is- found in the mass of 
 an over large class, are inclined sometimes to fight shy of 
 theorist and theory. And again, the educational writer pure 
 and simple is at times so befogged in the mists of his doctrine 
 that we find ourselves agreeing with Professor Darroch when 
 he wrote of him, "he will make education interesting to the 
 child, if indeed there be a child at all in this theory, and not a 
 mere receptacle of ideas." 
 
 It is as a creature remote indeed from the schoolmaster as 
 he is conceived commonly that Vauvenargues comes before us. 
 He has been described briefly, justly as " L'athlete vaillant... 
 qui lutte et grandit jusqu'au bout de ses forces et quitte I'arfene 
 bless^ a mort mais invaincu, et emportant avec lui tout son 
 courage et tout son respect pour cette vie terrestre qui lui 
 echappe^." So that he is the man whom it was the aim of 
 Locke's Thoughts Concerning Understanding to produce, the 
 man who, knowing human life as it is, can value it still, neither 
 overrating its merits nor exaggerating its vices. 
 
 M. Gilbert, writing in 1857, presumably for French readers, 
 observed, " nevertheless, Vauvenargues is not widely known." 
 That fact, as well as the other that he does not lend himself to 
 "placing," may account for the omission of his name and his 
 views from the general run of text-books on the history of 
 education. 
 
 ' £loge de Vauvenargttes, p. xi. 
 
Vauvenargues 133 
 
 The distinctive point of interest, at the start, is that on 
 which M. Gilbert lays stress, namely, " the man of action takes 
 precedence of the writer in his [i.e. Vauvenargues'] case, and 
 always inspires him\" To illustrate the truth of this statement, 
 the briefest biographical outline must sufifice. 
 
 Born in 1715, of a family noble but poor, Luc de Clapiers, 
 Marquis de Vauvenargues, underwent a somewhat exiguous 
 education in a manor-house near Aix. From the outset of 
 life his health was poor, so indifferent indeed that though it 
 appears to be uncertain whether he even went to college, it is 
 known that he was unacquainted with both Latin and Greek. 
 He is therefore one of those rare persons, a stylist who could 
 not read the greatest masters of style in the original. When he 
 was 24, he joined the Regiment du Roi, in which eventually he 
 became a captain. Six years of arduous service left the delicate 
 man incapable of following further the profession he had chosen. 
 Disappointed but still undaunted, he turned to diplomacy. 
 In spite however of his most earnest appeals, and his offers 
 to serve without emolument if only those in high places would 
 put him to the proof, he was left to languish for two years in 
 unemployment and poverty. Yet unemployed is, in this con- 
 nexion, a relative term; it was impossible that Vauvenargues 
 should be idle, and his leisure was given to letters. At last, in 
 spite of his optimistic courage, he perceived the uselessness of 
 his efforts to enter the public service. Though, by this time, 
 his health was shattered and death was approaching palpably, 
 his devotion to literature and more especially to philosophy 
 only increased in intensity. With serenity and courage and 
 through severe bodily suffering he continued his philosophic 
 speculations. 
 
 "True Fortitude,'' Locke wrote, "I take to be the quiet 
 Possession of a Man's self, and an undisturb'd doing his Duty, 
 whatever Evil besets, or Danger lies in his Way," words which 
 seem to describe with prophetic precision this fine French 
 
 ^ &loge de Vauvenargues, p. xi. 
 
134 Vauvenargues 
 
 gentleman. Vauvenargues died on May 28, 1747, at the early 
 age of 32. That M. Gilbert's description of the "valiant 
 athlete" is not exaggerated, the following passage from a letter 
 which Vauvenargues wrote to his friend Saint- Vincens may 
 shew. It was despatched on Nov. 24, 1746, about six months 
 that is before his death: "I need your friendship my dear 
 Saint- Vincens : all Provence is in arms', and here am I sitting 
 quietly by my fireside, the wretched state of my eyes and health 
 are not sufficient justification, and I ought to be where the 
 rest of the gentlemen of my Province are. Therefore, I beg, 
 summon me at once if there be any post in our newly levied 
 forces, and if I shall be certain to be employed if I come to 
 Provence." 
 
 Well, surely all those,, who for any reason or for none, 
 distrust or are weary of the professional pedagogue, may give 
 a hearing to a man of such spirit ; for " spirit," so one would 
 think, must have an important part to play in education. 
 
 A critic, dealing with a writer upon a definite subject, has a 
 comparatively easy task. It is far otherwise when the author 
 is an eighteenth century thinker, intent on the origin, purpose 
 and performances of the human race, and when the critic 
 desires to extract his views on one part of Man's achievement, 
 on education for example. 
 
 Vauvenargues rejects explicitly the name philosopher which 
 Mirabeau had applied to him : " You do me too great an 
 honour when you try to stimulate me by the title of philosopher 
 it is a name I have not taken I do not deserve it°." 
 
 In order therefore to introduce something like method into 
 this survey, it may be as well to divide it, attending first to the 
 philosophic basis underlying the whole, and afterwards to the 
 details, practical points of everyday intention and management. 
 It is hardly disputable that the deplorable state of his health 
 
 ' This was on the occasion of the invasion of Provence by the Due de 
 Savoie. 
 
 " To Mirabeau, March 1, 1739. 
 
Vauvenargues 1 3 5 
 
 tinged Vauvenargues' thought with a streak of grey. Never- 
 theless, time after time, with an admirable courage, he drives 
 off the temptation to despond : " corriger son humeur, blanchir 
 ses idees\ se former un plan de vie, se conduire par principes, 
 se soustraire aux prejuges, epurer ses inclinations, s'y livrer 
 ensuite hardiment, et ne pas perdre de vue que la gaite est 
 le vrai bonheur; voilk, mon cher Mirabeau, I'essence de la 
 morale ^" In view of the closing sentence is it quite out of 
 place to remember that GrostSte once observed to a Friar 
 Preacher — "Tria sunt necessaria ad salutem tempora, cibus, 
 " somnus, jocus " ; to recall that the compilers of the Daily 
 Offices thought it worth while to include the wholesome petition, 
 "And make Thy chosen people joyful "? Yet, in this particular 
 matter, Vauvenargues was handicapped heavily. As some five 
 weeks later, he explains to the same correspondent, it remains 
 broadly true that the difference in physical health which 
 separated him from ordinary men, reflected itself in his atti- 
 tude to the whole of life. Of all men who think (and how 
 many never do), perhaps he is, so he argues, the only one who 
 is living actually "from hand to mouth"; "we all admit," he 
 seems to say to Mirabeau, his friend, who remained so oddly 
 insensible to the young philosopher's delicacy and constant 
 desperate suffering, " we all admit that each day may be our 
 last, but with me that is true, literally true." And so while, 
 acutely observant as he is, he realises that other men have an 
 object, in which all their happiness is bound up, in a future 
 which they have a reasonable hope of enjoying, Vauvenargues 
 snatches, with wistful hands, at the scanty opportunity of the 
 precarious passing day: "tous mes desirs se concentrent, et 
 forment une humeur sombre " (yet even here the " unconquer- 
 able hope " revives in the closing words), " que j'essaie d'adoucir 
 par toute sorte de moyens'." 
 
 1 Two phrases suggested to him by Mirabeau's letter of Feb. 7, 1739. 
 
 2 To Mirabeau, March 1, 1739. 
 
 3 To Mirabeau, April 9, 1739. 
 
136 Vauvenargues 
 
 Vauvenargues found himself in a literary period, a time 
 when, as Mirabeau reminded him, " les savants et les gens k 
 talent font un espfece de republique k part^" In such a com- 
 monwealth the young soldier-philosopher's talents would enable 
 him to shine. Every literary age has its own distinguishing 
 characteristic : that of the i8th century was its absorption 
 in ideas : ideas to which it applied a penetrating scepticism. 
 Vauvenargues was abundantly aware of this : " men talk of 
 many matters as if their principles were self-evident, and simul- 
 taneously they dispute every point as if everything were un- 
 certain ^" He himself holds no dubious view as to the real 
 existence somewhere of truth, — " la nature a son cours regie, 
 et elle a ses droits inviolables* " ; in the general flux of specula- 
 tion he will maintain that " the truth is independent of men's 
 opinions and interests^." Yet it is significant that these words 
 are made to fall from the lips of Demosthenes in his imaginary 
 conversation with Isocrates, as if Vauvenargues felt here some 
 necessity of falling back on antique authority. 
 
 If one idea more than another dominated the minds of 
 thinking men in France in the i8th century, it was probably 
 the conception of the perfection of primitive nature, a view 
 connected so irrevocably with the name of Rousseau. It is 
 quite true that Vauvenargues died two years at least before the 
 publication of the earliest of Rousseau's writings. To clear up 
 this point, it may be well to set down the important dates in 
 Rousseau's literary life. The first of his works, a pamphlet 
 which contained the germ of the theory developed and elabo- 
 rated afterwards in Le Contrat Social and J&mile, viz. Le Discours 
 sur les Sciences et sur les Arts, appeared in 1749 or 1750. This 
 was followed in 1754 by the Treatise entitled L'Origine et les 
 Fondements de I'Inkgalitk parmi les Hommes. Then in 1762 
 
 ^ To Vauvenargues, April 24, 1739. 
 
 ^ Discours sur le Caractire des diffh-ents sikles. Vol. I. p. 152. 
 
 ' Ibid. Vol. II. p. iij. 
 
 * Dialogues iv. Vol. 11. p. 18. 
 
Vauvenargues 137 
 
 appeared Le Contrat Social and i:,mile ; the latter, though written 
 first, being published last. Though it is thus clear that 
 Vauvenargues could not have been influenced directly by 
 Rousseau, yet a common cause may have operated on them 
 both. What men call an accident appears to have turned 
 Rousseau's attention to that line of thought from which nothing 
 can ever separate him again. 
 
 In 1749, the Acaddmie de Dijon set, as the subject of its 
 prize essay in the following year, this proposition : Si le progres 
 des sciences etdes arts a contribue a corrompre ou a kpurer les 
 mwurs. In a local newspaper, Rousseau saw a notice of this ; 
 his first Discours was the practical result. The mere fact that 
 such a subject should have been chosen indicates that the 
 minds of thinking men were directed towards this problem of 
 primitive v. civilised men, and that therefore neither Vau- 
 venargues nor Rousseau was original in considering it, but 
 rather both were carried along by a speculation just then be- 
 ginning to be popular. 
 
 Vauvenargues approaches the question in a fashion removed 
 from the common path. He is trying to inquire with philo- 
 sophical accuracy, in the minute exact way of the 1 8th century, 
 into the actual conditions of modern life, and that necessitates, 
 naturally enough, some treatment of the times preceding his 
 own. He conducts this examination without blame or pane- 
 gyric. Though he is ready enough to admit that the men of 
 early times knew less than the happy occupants of the i8th 
 century, yet he will not for that reason call them barbarians, he 
 will not even allow their inferiority. "I think,'' he observes 
 with one of his quiet flashes of wit, "I think I could have 
 lived very happily in Thebes, at Memphis, in Babylon. I could 
 do very nicely without our manufactures, our gunpowder, our 
 compass, and all the rest of our modern inventions, and with- 
 out our philosophy too'." 
 
 1 Discours sur le Caractere des diffirents sikles, Vol. I. p. 156. 
 
138 Vauvenargues 
 
 As he says a little further on, with a substratum of truth 
 which is at any rate valuable as suggestion — " Xenophon did 
 not enjoy all these luxuries, but he does not seem to have 
 been any less happy, any less a good man, any less a 
 great man." 
 
 A perusal of this treatise, a comparison of it with Rousseau's 
 writings, may suggest that Vauvenargues' painstaking analysis 
 of the real meaning of the phrase " state of nature," brought 
 him to a saner, more measured and genuine appreciation for 
 and admiration of it than Rousseau, with all his verbiage, ever 
 reached. In the mere business of indicating the actual consti- 
 tution of barbarism, a task he performs with admirable clear- 
 ness, Vauvenargues goes far to establish his own and to win 
 our liking for it : " Pure nature is not barbarous, but that which 
 departs from beautiful nature and reasonableness is barbarous. 
 The huts of the early men do not prove that they lacked taste, 
 only that they had not architectural rules. But when these 
 said rules having been made, men, instead of conforming to 
 them, desired to exaggerate noble form, to load buildings with 
 superfluous ornaments, and by the help of art to destroy sim- 
 plicity, then to my way of thinking, this was a real barbarous- 
 ness, a proof of bad taste.'' 
 
 This passage, which occurs in the Discours sur le Caractere 
 des differents sikles, shews that Vauvenargues drew a sharp 
 distinction between three different stages, the simplicity which 
 is " natural " and unavoidable is an undeveloped community ; 
 the systematised rules gradually evolved by experience; and 
 the final stage, the exaggeration of artistic efforts. We should 
 remember that this careful study of facts, of the gradual pro- 
 cess of development, had been made already by Vauvenargues, 
 when Rousseau, ignorant or negligent of it, imposed on the 
 credulous fancy of his contemporaries his vague glorification 
 of primitive at the expense of civilised man. An age like our 
 own, which manages to combine poverty of artistic design in 
 all directions with extravagant overloading of ornament in dress 
 
Vauvenargues 1 39 
 
 and general decoration, is perhaps the lineal descendant of 
 Rousseau; not of Vauvenargues certainly. 
 
 Towards the close of the Discours, Vauvenargues pursues 
 his inquiry into the condition of "natural man" still further. 
 "I do not desire," he writes, "in thus pointing out the defects 
 of an earlier age, to demonstrate the frailty of human nature : I 
 desire on the contrary, by excusing the earlier age's defects, to 
 shew that there are at all times in human nature a strength and 
 a grandeur which are quite independent of fashion and of the 
 aid of art." Then he goes on to argue that after all, all things 
 are comparative, hence we should think and speak and write 
 comparatively. And again, he would have us remember that we 
 are dealing with human beings, not with the idealised abstract 
 virtues of philosophers. That he desired to bring philosophy 
 " down from heaven, where she was losing her time " (in 
 Montaigne's phrase), that she might serve us in our daily life, 
 seems obvious from the following observation : " We ask these 
 philosophers what is the way to wisdom and they reply there 
 is nothing but folly : we would fain be taught the marks which 
 distinguish virtue from vice, and they tell us there is nothing 
 in man but depravity and weakness. Men need not lose their 
 heads over their gifts, but equally they should not ignore them ; 
 they ought to know their own weakness lest they presume too 
 far upon their courage, but they ought at the same time to feel 
 capable of valour, or else they would lapse into despair." 
 
 A moderate via media this, equally applicable one would 
 surmise to all grades of civilisation; a view of things which 
 relieves us from the melancholy engendered by the Port Royal 
 doctrine of the hapless case of man. That the i8th century 
 was not free from all danger of falling into "the falsehood 
 of extremes" we may gather not only from this warning of 
 Vauvenargues, but from the more famous philosopher Locke : 
 " This man presumes upon his parts, that they will not fail him 
 at time of need, and so thinks it superfluous labour to make 
 any provision beforehand.... On the other side, there are others 
 
1 40 Vauvenargues 
 
 that depress their own minds, despond at the first difficulty, 
 and conclude that the getting an insight in any of the sciences, 
 or making any progress in knowledge, farther than serves their 
 ordinary business, is above their capacities. These sit still, 
 because they think they have not legs to go ; as the others I 
 last mentioned do, because they think they have wings to fly, 
 and can soar on high when they please'." 
 
 Vauvenargues, though no classical scholar, took careful 
 account of the fact that besides the primitive state, the race 
 has, at different places and times, developed various kinds of 
 civilisation : there is an antiquity which is not simple and rude. 
 What of that ? In a striking passage he appraises our debt to 
 it, and at the same time indicates the limits of its usefulness to 
 later ages : " Heirs of all the centuries, we ought to be richer 
 in the things of the intellect, that much can hardly be denied 
 us justly: but we shall deceive ourselves if we confound this 
 borrowed wealth with the genius which produced it. How 
 much of this knowledge which we rate so highly is barren so 
 far as we are concerned. An alien, in our minds where it was 
 not born, — as a natural consequence it confuses more than it 
 illuminates our judgment." Vauvenargues was a student of 
 Montaigne, but he seems to have forgotten for the moment 
 that scathing passage in the essay On Pedantry, where, while 
 he condemns our borrowed opinions — cette suffisance relative et 
 mendik — Montaigne implies his settled belief that we could so 
 assimilate the wisdom of the Ancients as to make it our own. 
 
 In a letter to Mirabeau, Vauvenargues dwells with severity 
 on the tendency to plagiarism of the most fruitless kind dis- 
 played by men of letters below the first rank : " I begin to 
 realise that most of them only know what others thought, that 
 they do not feel, that they have no ' soul ' : they only reach 
 conclusions by reflecting the spirit of their age, or by loans 
 from authority, for they never pierce to the bottom of things." 
 
 ^ Conduct of the Understanding, §§ 38, 39. 
 
Vauvenargues 1 4 1 
 
 It was the distinction of the soldier-philosopher that he was 
 responsible in so marked a degree for the stuff and form of his 
 own thought. The general trend of his argument, if we sum 
 it up, is neither for nor against primitive man. He seems to 
 hint to us that in trying to compare the primitive and civilised 
 states we are bringing together matters too unlike in kind to 
 yield us anything fruitful beyond this one generalization that 
 " there are at all times in the minds of men strength and 
 greatness which are independent of fashion or of the help of 
 art^." That the one should be pronounced better or worse 
 than the other seems to him a meaningless proposition, since 
 it involves the comparison of total dissimilars. 
 
 But it is not here alone, or even mainly, that he strikes us 
 as being ^o infinitely superior to Rousseau. Perhaps the point 
 in the latter's practice — as distinguished from his theory, his 
 published theory — which repels many readers irrevocably, is 
 his want of feeling. He has plenty to say about emotion, 
 though at times he seems profoundly unaware of the withering 
 effect of sarcasm upon the ordinary child, as when he employs 
 his famous phrase sec sans colere with no inkling of its deadly 
 effect on youth. However that may be, he talks of feeling 
 almost ad nauseam ; but his natural affections evaporated 
 strangely in practice, — in his dealings, to take the most notable 
 instance, with the luckless Therese, and with his more unlucky, 
 because more innocently helpless, children. But Vauvenargues, 
 whose whole life might be described as one long disillusion- 
 ment, and who nevertheless left this world " blesse a mort 
 mais invaincu," knew the place and worth in mortal life of 
 sympathy. The occasion for urging upon us the real essence 
 of kindly feeling is offered to him when the polite i8th century 
 professes itself scandalized at the human sacrifices of earlier 
 days. There is a more shocking exercise of brutality than 
 that, he declares ; a condition too existing in the very midst of 
 this fastidious society, which, however, seems unaware of it. 
 1 Discours sur le Caracth-e des diffirents sikles, p. 162. 
 
142 Vauvenargues 
 
 He turns upon his co-temporaries with a pertinent, penetrating 
 question, Why be shocked at human sacrifices, and yet feel no 
 horror at the sight of " the living spectres huddled together in 
 our squares, and on our Church steps, whom hunger, misery 
 and disease are hurrying to the grave " ? With scathing direct- 
 ness he adds : " Men sunk in the superfluities of luxury watch 
 calmly while other men perish of a wretchedness which carries 
 them off in the prime of life " ; and he points his contrast with 
 yet a further query, " Which is the least ferocious, an impious 
 sacrifice ignorantly offered, or an act of inhumanity committed 
 deliberately and with full knowledge ' ? " 
 
 It is a matter for surprise that so reflective, so inquiring a 
 man as Vauvenargues should not have analysed a little more 
 closely his two chosen examples of brutality. When once 
 human sacrifices are well established, when once the occurrence 
 of starvation with all its consequences in the midst of luxury 
 has become common, diurnal even^ there is then a likeness 
 between the two sets of facts which goes far to destroy the 
 contrast which our philosopher is trying to establish : and that 
 likeness is to be found in the fact that custom has so inured 
 and blunted men's minds that they accept both without any 
 conscious process of thought at all : the adjective deliberate is 
 thus, in both cases, misapplied. Viewed in this light of settled 
 custom, both practices seem equally reprehensible or equally 
 pardonable. But, if we consider the beginnings of each, before 
 custom has entered into the problem, they do, or may, differ 
 widely. Human sacrifice, repulsive as it is no doubt to modern 
 thought, was born probably in a mistaken idea of religious 
 duty; it sprang therefore not from inhumanity but from an 
 error of judgment. Carelessness — as distinct from any and 
 every theory based on the economic prudence or necessity even 
 of leaving untouched the working of cause and effect — care- 
 lessness about the starving seems, on the other hand, to arise 
 at the outset from real callousness. In its origin it is, unless 
 ' Discours sur le Caractire des differents siicles, p. 158. 
 
Vauvenargues 1 4 3 
 
 it arrive so gradually as to be impalpable, a brutality very far 
 outstripping any ordinary cruelty which men commit : so that 
 in its early stages, and apart from economic prudence, this 
 practice seems far more reprehensible than even human sacrifice. 
 
 To Vauvenargues, however, the matter did not present 
 itself quite like this : but his comparison of the two kinds of 
 cruelty leads him on to a train of thought which has a close 
 connexion with modern educational theory. It is now pretty 
 generally held that the constituent parts of human nature 
 open to the educator's influence are reason, feeling and will. 
 Vauvenargues raises the important question of the bearing of 
 the first of these upon the second, of reason upon feeling. It 
 may be as well to quote his definition of reason and to give it 
 in the original so that nothing be lost or changed in transla- 
 tion : " la raison. Est-ce une lumiere que tous les hommes 
 apportent au monde en naissant? Cette lumiere ne s'augmente- 
 t-elle point par I'experience, par I'application ? n'est-elle pas 
 plus vive dans quelques esprits que dans les autres ? De plus, 
 le concours des reflexions, et I'experience d'un grand nombre 
 d'hommes, ne donnent-ils pas plus d'etendue et plus de vivacite 
 a cette lumiere ? " 
 
 Thus does the Portuguese question the American, who, 
 admitting that there is truth in the proposed position, goes on 
 to observe, " Mais nous appelons la nature le sentiment, et non 
 la raison." The Portuguese replies, " Est-ce que la raison n'est 
 pas naturelle ^ I'homme, comme le sentiment? N'est-il pas ne 
 pour reflechir, comme pour sentir? et sa nature n'est-elle pas 
 composee de ces deux qualites ? " The American assents with 
 this proviso: "je crois qu'il y a un certain degre, au-dela 
 duquel la raison s'egare lorsqu'elle veut penetrer'." 
 
 Two of Vauvenargues' Maxims adopt this same position : 
 
 (123) "La raison nous trompe plus souvent que la nature " 
 (i.e. le sentiment). 
 
 (124) "La raison ne connalt pas les interets du coeur.'' 
 ^ Dialogues vii. "Un Americaiij et un Portugais," Vol. Ii. p. 25. 
 
144 Vauvenargues 
 
 This last maxim goes very much further than Pascal's well- 
 known aphorism, " Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne 
 connait pas." 
 
 The relation between reason and feeling is one of the most 
 difificult questions raised by Vauvenargues : it is by no means 
 easy to disentangle his answer. "Why should I conceal my 
 thoughts?" he exclaims. "I know that we have knowledge 
 which the Ancients did not possess ; in some ways we are 
 better philosophers than they were : but, so far as feeling is 
 concerned, I confess I scarcely know a race of antiquity that 
 need yield the palm to us. It is just here, I think, that one 
 feels how difficult it is for men to educate themselves above 
 the instincts of nature. Nature made our souls as great as 
 they could ever become : and the loftiness they borrow from 
 intellectual reflection is generally falser in proportion to the 
 increase of mental effort. That which belongs to the soul 
 receives no access of perfection from intellectual light : and 
 just because taste belongs essentially to the soul, it is in vain 
 that we perfect more knowledge ; men may train our judgment, 
 they do not purify our taste^." 
 
 Vauvenargues returns incessantly to this theme of the inter- 
 relation of reason and feeling ; not always is his treatment con- 
 sistent. Those who know little or nothing else of his writings 
 may be acquainted with his famous maxim : "les grandes pen- 
 sees viennent du coeur." In his most definitely philosophical 
 treatise, The Introduction to the knowledge of the Human Mind, 
 he writes : " II faut done avoir de I'ame pour avoir du go(it : il 
 faut aussi avoir de la penetration, parce que c'est I'intelligence 
 qui remue le sentiment^." Here the closing words seem to 
 run clean contrary to the meaning of the maxim, Les grandes 
 pensks viennent du coeur. Yet, in this same twelfth chapter, 
 he reverts to the standpoint of the maxim, and of the passage 
 quoted before from the Discourse on the Character of different 
 
 ' Sur le Caractire des diffirents siicles. Vol. I. p. 158. 
 " Ch. xii. " on Taste." 
 
Vauvenargues 145 
 
 Eras, and writes : " It is quite true that skilful teachers can 
 reform our judgment, but they cannot change our taste, because 
 the soul possesses tendencies which are independent of 
 opinion." Writing to Mirabeau, Vauvenargues declares in an 
 unqualified fashion, "toute ma philosophie a sa source dans 
 mon cceur"; and again he speaks of it as "une philosophie 
 qui ne doit rien k la raison\" Five weeks or so later, in 
 response to a letter from Mirabeau, in which the latter had 
 conjured him to throw oif dejection, to give up living from 
 hand to mouth, and to heap up some intellectual treasure, he 
 writes with the pathetic solemnity of a man conscious, in spite 
 of his friend's optimism, of his own deadly illness : " Je con- 
 viens, mon cher Mirabeau, que je suis un homme faible, qui se 
 conduit par sentiment, qui lui soumet sa liberte, et qui ne veut 
 que par lui ; ma raison m'est inutile : elle est comme un miroir, 
 oil je vois mes faiblesses, mais qui ne les corrige points" In 
 this same letter he speaks of " reason, who is an alien on this 
 earth, lacking strength to fight feeling." 
 
 Once more, in his Reflections on Various Subjects, Vauve- 
 nargues treats of this matter : " They say that we ought not to 
 judge works of taste by thought, but rather by feeling. Why 
 not extend this rule to everything outside the province of the 
 intellect, to ambition, love, and all the other passions? I 
 practice what I preach : very rarely do I carry affairs of feeling 
 to the judgment-seat of reason; I know that coolness and 
 passion never weigh a thing in the same scales, that each 
 arraigns the other in a one-sided fashion." 
 
 Mr John Morley, in his Essay on Vauvenargues, deals with 
 this question thus: "Translated into the modern equivalent, 
 the heart, nature, instinct of Vauvenargues all mean character. 
 He insisted upon spontaneous impulse as a condition of all 
 greatest thought and action'." 
 
 Mr Morley explains this attitude as a revulsion from the 
 
 1 To Mirabeau, March i, 1739. ^ To Mirabeau, April 9, 1739. 
 
 3 Miscellanies, Vol. II. pp. 25 et seq. 
 
 H 10 
 
1 46 Vauvenargues 
 
 views of La Rochefoucauld and Pascal, " two sinister pictures 
 of humanity — the one of its moral meanness and littleness, the 
 other of its intellectual poverty and impotency." Mr Morley's 
 conclusion is that the truth — la vraie veriti — lies between the 
 combatants, with a slight bias in Vauvenargues' favour: "We 
 must read with appreciation not only Vauvenargues, who said 
 that great thoughts come from the heart, but La Rochefoucauld, 
 who called the intelligence the dupe of the heart, and Pascal 
 who saw only desperate creatures, miserably perishing before 
 one another's eyes in the grim dungeon of the universe. Yet it 
 is the observer in the spirit of Vauvenargues of whom we must 
 always say that he has chosen the better path." 
 
 Remembering that phrase, dest Pintelligence qui remue le 
 sentiment, the student may feel disinclined to admit that the 
 young philosopher intended to disjoin feeling and intellect 
 absolutely: what his inmost opinion was it is difficult if not 
 impossible to discover. It is probable that he resembles some 
 other great writers in this, that length of days might have 
 perfected his philosophy, notably in this part. 
 
 It should be pointed out that Mr Morley's dictum does not 
 really carry us far. For it need hardly be said that character, 
 in its original sense at any rate, meant something engraved, 
 furrowed in. A man's character is what he really is, what the 
 circumstances which surround him, and the use he has made 
 of these, have formed him to be. Character, in any adequate 
 sense of the word, is an amalgam of thought, feeling and will. 
 Moreover, character may unfortunately be good or bad, a fact 
 which makes nonsense of the dictum "great thoughts come 
 from the heart," if you are going to identify heart and character. 
 Is it possible that by heart Vauvenargues meant — heart; meant 
 just precisely what he said ? 
 
 It is not difficult to appreciate the extreme importance of 
 the problem in the work and planning of practical education. 
 Had Vauvenargues been writing a treatise on pedagogy, he, 
 philosopher that he_was, having raised the question, must have 
 faced it, must have attempted a definite solution. For it is a 
 
Vauvenargues 1 47 
 
 point of supreme moment whether thought determines feeling, 
 or feeling thought; or whether, as seems so probable, they are 
 in some fashion subtly interactive. It is important, because on 
 the decision of that question both the aim and the means to it 
 hang. Is the aim to train thought above all things, or is it to 
 cultivate feeling first of all, or should the educator take pains 
 to make moral training keep exact pace with intellectual.? 
 Upon the solution of these propositions the practical curricula 
 of schools, secondary and elementary, ought really to depend. 
 It is impossible to leave this matter without quoting one more 
 passage from the Discours sur ks Mceurs du Steele, one which 
 takes a practical view of the connexion between reason and the 
 heart, between rational principles and their possible outcome, 
 manners and actions. Let us remember, once more, in how 
 serious a mood the young French soldier is writing. The i8th 
 century, his century, was no doubt absorbed in ideas: but he 
 was something more than a philosopher absorbed in a problem. 
 Young, disappointed, with full knowledge of the near approach 
 of death, he passes before our eyes, a strangely inspiring figure. 
 With the composure of a trained thinker and the fine courage 
 of a soldier, he takes stock so calmly of that intensely interesting 
 world which he is called upon to quit, takes stock of it impar- 
 tially too, and gives us the result without practising any economy 
 of truth : 
 
 " The corruption of principles is the cause of the corruption 
 of manners. In order to judge this proposition of mine, it 
 suffices to know the maxims current at the moment in the 
 great world; and which, spreading thence to the mass of the 
 people, infect all ranks equally: maxims which suggesting to 
 us that everything is uncertain, leave us absolute masters of 
 our own actions: maxims which sweeping desert and virtue 
 away and admitting only phenomena in human affairs, put 
 good and evil on an equality: maxims which contemning glory 
 as the maddest of vanities, justify self interest, low views and 
 brutal idleness. Such corrupt principles involve of necessity 
 
148 Vauvenargues 
 
 the ruin of the greatest empire. Because, after all, what makes 
 a nation powerful if not the love of glory ? what makes it happy 
 and to be feared, if not virtue ? Intellect, self-interest, refine- 
 ment can never supply the place of those noble motives. 
 What people were ever more refined and ingenious than the 
 Greeks after they were reduced to slavery, and what more 
 wretched ? What people more logical, and, in a certain sense, 
 more enlightened than the Romans ? and, in the decadence of 
 the Empire, what nation more degraded? It is not by self- 
 interest, by undisciplined thought, or by logical method that 
 States flourish and hold together, but by these qualities which 
 we despise nowadays." 
 
 In the fashion of his age, Vauvenargues wrote treatises, 
 penned reflections and aphorisms, and depicted "characters"; 
 typical men as one might say. He also wrote dialogues and 
 composed conversations of the illustrious dead. Among these 
 latter is one between Demosthenes, "the most eloquent of 
 men," and Isocrates, the rhetorician of the fifth century B.C. 
 As a parallel to the passage on the ancient virtues, quoted 
 above, the following may be cited. Isocrates inquires whether 
 it is true or false that the orators of Demosthenes' era tried "to 
 persuade and to convince." Demosthenes answers: "No, they 
 thought less of doing that than of anything. To retain our 
 acumen unimpaired, they left everything unproved, they banished 
 all feeling lest they should injure reason: throughout their 
 writings they gave us subtlety for vehemence, art for feeling, 
 details rather than free outlines, where they should have 
 described they argued, they skimmed the surface with a jest 
 where they should have plumbed the depths, they glossed the 
 profoundest truths with affected verbiage: their false dehcacy 
 impelled them to reject all vigour of style, even where it was 
 most essential: they invariably left their hearers' minds in a 
 condition of absolute freedom, and hence in a state of profound 
 indifference. I appealed to them by every means in my power : 
 the chilly thinker kindles no flame, the doubter will never 
 
Vauvenargues 1 49 
 
 persuade: our Masters did not proceed thus. Do we flatter 
 ourselves that because we handle it more gingerly, we are 
 nearer to the truth than those great men were ? It is because 
 we no longer possess it as they did that we cannot preserve its 
 authority and power." 
 
 As English people debate concerning education, concerning 
 the relation of thought to feeling, concerning the relation 
 between principles and action, between enkindled feeling and 
 brilliant achievement): as they challenge the claims of this or 
 that branch of science or humane letters to enter into the 
 school curriculum; as they plan schemes of education for alien 
 races brought under their dominion, this pleading from the 
 " dead eighteenth century " may give them material for grave 
 reflection. Human life is one, indissoluble, continuous. What 
 strength does to-day's experience lend to this minatory theory 
 of the past ? Closely connected with the same subject is the 
 question of man's moral nature. What view did Vauvenargues 
 hold here ? 
 
 The Gentlemen of Port Royal were tied and bound by the 
 sad doctrine of original sin; they saw humanity labouring 
 under an inevitable taint. At the contrary pole of thought, 
 Rousseau and Pestalozzi will maintain presently the entire 
 purity of human nature at its birth. As we reflect upon the 
 opposition between these two extremes, there comes from the 
 grey mists of the past that grave, disquieting voice of warning, 
 "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately 
 wicked'." Recalling the wide experience, the tender solicitude, 
 the speculative depth of the writer of these words, the modern 
 thinker grows more apt to appreciate the subtlety of the 
 problem. The central organ of right and wrong conduct— 
 the heart, as Jeremiah called it — is so complex; now full of 
 zeal, now lukewarm; here instinct inspired with virtue, there 
 black with vile desire; and always, everywhere and in all things 
 tainted with self-deception. No, the problem of conduct is not 
 
 1 Jeremiah xvii. 9. Pravum est cor omnium et insa-utabile. (Vulgate.) 
 
1 50 Vauvenargues 
 
 simple. The duality of self is no new idea: it was painfully 
 present to S. PauP, whom we may regard not solely as touched 
 with a live coal from off the altar, not only as illumined by saintly 
 insight, but as trained in human schools of learning, exercised 
 in the vaster school of human life. And then, if it were only 
 with the duality of self that we had to cope, we might make a 
 better fight of it : but what of the multiplicity of selves, that 
 "hierarchy of me's," of which Professor James has written? 
 When we consider this aspect of the question, it becomes hard 
 to accept a facile phrase like Pestalozzi's — which is a kind of 
 quintessence of Rousseau's optimism — " Friend ! man is good, 
 he wills to do right.'' It should rather be written — " Friend, man 
 is nothing in its purity, he wills no one thing." Montaigne was 
 right; "we taste nothing purely." And so, like him, like 
 Vauvenargues, like Fenelon, we fall back on the via media: 
 "les hommes n'ont jamais echappe a la misere de leur con- 
 dition ; composes de mauvais et de bonnes qualit^s ; ils portent 
 toujours dans leur fonds les semences du bien et du mal^." 
 It is, when all is said and done, this composite nature which 
 the educator must understand, and then guide. 
 
 The foregoing considerations may appear, at any rate to 
 students with eyes fixed on the syllabus of an examination, 
 strangely remote from the matter in hand. And yet they 
 pertain to the philosophic basis of education, they affect its 
 aim in the first place, its practical means only when they have 
 helped to define the aim. But though his main interest is of 
 this wide, philosophical kind, Vauvenargues could give advice 
 on smaller, more everyday matters. Though he was never a 
 schoolmaster, he held views which bear on the daily routine of 
 school life. 
 
 First of all, one might note his praise of books, which links 
 him with Peter Paul Vergerius and John Milton. After the 
 sarcastic remark that " the majority of men honour letters as 
 
 ' Romans vii. 15 — 25. 
 
 " Discours sur les Mceurs du Siicle, Vol. I. p. 168. 
 
Vauvenargues 1 5 1 
 
 they do religion and virtue, that is to say as a thing they cannot 
 know, or practise, or love," he writes his eulogy on books: 
 " Nevertheless, no one is ignorant of the fact that good books 
 are the essence of the best minds, the epitome of all their 
 knowledge, and the harvest of their long vigils. Thus in a few 
 hours, one can garner the study of a lifetime. That is a great 
 help." The facts could hardly be put more succinctly. But 
 despite his appreciation of books, his clear vision is not 
 deceived as to the actual facts of the real world. The books 
 are there, wisdom is enshrined in them, — yet there remains 
 that astounding phenomenon, not less apparent and real to-day 
 than it was in the i8th century, the fact of the persistent, 
 incorrigible uncultivation of the majority of men. Vauvenargues 
 puts the words, embodying what one cannot but think was his 
 own judgment, into the mouth of Pascal, in the Dialogue with 
 Fenelon : " la plupart des hommes ne lisent que par vanite et 
 par curiosite, ils n'ont aucune affection pour les meilleures 
 choses, et ils s'ennuient bient6t des plus sages instructions." 
 Moreover a further difficulty, a really serious hindrance must 
 be noted, viz. that impenetrable ignorance of men which asks 
 for incessant repetitions of the utterly familiar : " Is it necessary 
 to keep on telling men what they know already?" Isocrates 
 asks. "Yes," Demosthenes replies, "extremely necessary, 
 there is nothing which they cannot learn to grip at last 
 more firmly ; there is nothing which an eloquent speaker can 
 freshen and revive more easily than that which they know 
 already." 
 
 Yet we must not picture Vauvenargues as a bibliophile in 
 spite of his praise of books. As we reckon things now, 
 Montaigne was a man of few books; Vauvenargues' used 
 library was infinitely more restricted. M. Gilbert writes (not 
 quite truly we may think if we remember the remarks on 
 Antiquity quoted from the Discours sur les Mmurs des differents 
 Slides) : " I'esprit humain ne date pour lui que de Montaigne." 
 Besides the famous Essays, so continuously, if less exclusively 
 
1 5 2 Vauvenargues 
 
 than M. Gilbert thinks, in his thoughts, Vauvenargues appears 
 to have read constantly only four authors, Racine, Bossuet, 
 Pascal and Fenelon. His own testimony concerning his 
 knowledge of English classics remains : " I have never known 
 an Englishman intimately : of their works I have only read 
 Mr Pope and Mr Locke, and Paradise Lost-, but I admire 
 their genius highly'." ' 
 
 The pohshed Pope and the judicious Locke were perhaps 
 of all English writers the two who would make the most 
 sympathetic appeal to Vauvenargues. Yet of the latter — 
 though on one occasion in writing to Voltaire he uses the 
 phrase " la profondeur methodique de M. Locke " — he says, 
 " Locke etait un grand philosophe mais abstrait et diffus, et 
 quelquefois obscur''." 
 
 The reason for his relatively restricted choice of authors is 
 obvious. Had an active life been a possibility for him, he 
 would have lived and died a soldier : condemned, so to speak, 
 to bodily inactivity, he would still use his mind, and that in the 
 most vigorous way, not merely to assimilate other men's thoughts 
 — a species of arm-chair energy — but to think for himself, to 
 observe, to compare, to contrast the phenomena of everyday 
 life, of the life of men and women, ordinary and extraordinary; 
 he would, in fact, work out a philosophy of his own. It was 
 without doubt with something of this sort in his mind that he 
 warns us against diffuseness, against the undue multiplication 
 of studies : " If we were wise, we should hmit ourselves to a 
 small tract of knowledge, for thus we should know it better. 
 We should try to become closely acquainted with this, and to 
 bring it into daily use : the longest and most laborious theory 
 only unfolds itself partially." It is interesting to remember 
 that, in The Conduct of the Understanding, Locke warned his 
 readers not "to canton out a little intellectual Goshen" for 
 themselves: possibly Vauvenargues had not read this, or 
 
 ' To Mirabeau, May 30, 1739. 
 * Rlflexions et Maximes, 338. 
 
Vauvenargues 153 
 
 reading it had disagreed. He has no desire to restrict the 
 mind within irrevocably rigid limits. In the Conseils ct, un 
 jeune homme there is a section entitled " when one should leave 
 one's sphere." Herein, he argues that the very fact of feeling 
 cramped, or too narrowly tied down, is a sign that a man is born 
 for better things, an indication that he should break his bonds 
 and soar : "A bold flight of imagination opens up radiantly 
 illumined ways. Anyone who knows the scope of the human 
 soul attempts means which seem impracticable to other men.'' 
 It is quite true that in ordinary times he would prefer the 
 system of study which our German friends call intensive ; yet 
 he would leave a way of escape that we may be able to bear it. 
 He is carrying on still the same train of ideas when he urges 
 upon us the all-importance of conveying to our pupils a know- 
 ledge of the actual world of affairs, the world of men and things, 
 of the real as opposed to the literary world. And this, which 
 is so necessary in the case of ordinary mortals, seems to him 
 more than ever essential when princes are the pupils, those 
 princes whose "common misfortune" it is "to know nothing 
 of their people... who see many subjects but no men\" He 
 pursues this line of argument in the imaginary dialogue between 
 Fenelon and Bossuet, where the latter praises the Abbd for his 
 method of educating the Duke of Burgundy. As with Montaigne 
 and Locke, so with Vauvenargues, the bookworm receives short 
 shrift : " Rarely is book-knowledge useful when it is not linked 
 with knowledge of the world of affairs. We must not separate 
 these two, the one teaches us to think, the other to act; the one 
 to converse, the other to write; the one to decide on our actions, 
 the other to make them easy.. Knowledge of the world teaches 
 us to think naturally, scientific habit teaches us to think pro- 
 foundly." Surely this is put with admirable acurnen and 
 persuasiveness. Neither Locke nor Montaigne, though they 
 postulate the principle with equal or even greater force, supports 
 
 1 Reflexions et Maximes, 693. 
 
154 Vauvenargues 
 
 it with reasons like these, so carefully thought out, and expressed 
 too with a brevity altogether commendable. 
 
 It should not be supposed however that Vauvenargues 
 discounts the value of formal education. In the treatise 
 de P Esprit Humain, he writes : " I know education cannot 
 take the place of genius : I do not overlook the fact that 
 Nature's gifts are wortli more than the gifts of art : nevertheless 
 if talents are to grow to perfection, art is essential : a fine natural 
 ability which has been, neglected will never bear ripe fruit. 
 Can one admire an almost barren genius ? Of what use to a 
 great proprietor are lands left to lie fallow? Does he gain 
 wealth from uncultivated fields?" 
 
 Vauvenargues' condemnation of the common methods of 
 bringing up children is interesting. He is writing about the 
 year 1746, rather more than 50 years after the appearance of 
 Locke's Thoughts Concerning Education. A comparison of the 
 following passage with § 37 of the Englishman's treatise will 
 suggest that the training given to children in England and in 
 France at the end of the 17 th and at the beginning of the 
 1 8th centuries was similar: "People teach children to tremble 
 and to obey : the avarice or the pride, or the timidity of parents 
 teaches children cheese-paring, or presumption or obsequious- 
 ness. Then again, we urge them to be imitators when they are 
 already sufficiently inclined that way ; nobody thinks of teaching 
 them to be original, bold, and independent." 
 
 When, one feels inclined to ask, when will ient, natural 
 inclination take its proper place among the matters to be 
 considered when educational schemes are in the making? 
 
 Not less important to those who care that modern 
 education should proceed upon the right lines is the fol- 
 lowing maxim : " If one could give children teachers of 
 judgment and rhetoric as one gives them language masters, 
 if one exercised their memories less and their intellectual 
 activity more; if instead of blunting their mental keenness, 
 one tried to enlarge the scope and raise the ideal of their 
 
Vauvenargues 1 5 5 
 
 minds, what might not one expect to achieve with fine natural 
 gifts ? But no one thinks that courage, love of truth, renown 
 are important virtues in youth ; on the contrary we only try to 
 bring them under the yoke, so that we may teach them that 
 dependence and compliance are the first laws of happiness." 
 
 After this, we do not need to be told that Vauvenargues was 
 a disciple of Montaigne, but it is Montaigne with a difference. 
 Through it whispers the first breath of that defiance of authority, 
 which, as the eighteenth century passed on its way, was to grow 
 stronger and stronger, till it swept all before it; all, that is, 
 save an isolated thinker here and there, one like the whimsical 
 Abbe Galiani for example, who in the teeth of Diderot, 
 Voltaire and Grimm and the rest will maintain still that 
 education's business is to teach a man to bear the yoke in 
 his youth, in adolescence, throughout the whole course of life. 
 
 Full of suggestion to the practical teacher comes one 
 sentence, which might in its chiselled accuracy, its swift 
 persuasion, have appeared as a maxim, though it does actually 
 occur in the midst of a disquisition, that which is called 
 de r Esprit Humain : " Les choses ne font d'impression sur 
 nous que selon la proportion qu'elles ont avec notre esprit; 
 tout ce qui est hors de notre sphfere nous echappe.'' The whole 
 doctrine of apperception is there, put with a brevity and clear- 
 ness of which Herbart was incapable. We may go on and find 
 that a practical method of teaching as useful as that of the 
 famous "Five Steps" is sketched in a single luminous sentence. 
 It is not offered as " method," the notion of such a thing was 
 not general property then, but the wise pedagogue may divert 
 Vauvenargues' remarks to his own uses and purposes. They 
 occur in Fenelon's eulogy on Pascal's brilliant treatment of a 
 subject : " Your supreme merit, in which you outstripped all 
 other men, lay in the art you displayed of putting each thing in 
 its own place, of never making a useless remark, of presenting 
 truth in the best possible light, of lending invincible force to 
 your arguments, of getting to the bottom of your subject with- 
 
156 Vauvenargues 
 
 out ever straying into tedium, in short of increasing the interest 
 and vigour of your discourse up to its very close'." In that 
 (now too often neglected) eighteenth century classic, A Serious 
 Call, Law writes : " There is no knowledge that deserves so 
 much the name of it but that which we call judgment.'' And 
 again, a little further on he writes : "And as the essence of 
 stupidity consists in the entire want of judgment, in an ignor- 
 ance of the value of things, so on the other hand the essence 
 of wisdom and knowledge must consist in the excellency of our 
 judgment, or in the knowledge of the worth and value of things." 
 It is just here surely that the French educators, and among 
 them most pre-eminently Vauvenargues and Fenelon, go 
 beyond the rest. It is not so much in practical methods 
 and detailed curricula that they excel, in the journeyman 
 matters of pedagogy ; but it is in the importance they attach 
 to the " excellency of judgment," to a fine capacity to appraise 
 things justly, rightly, that 
 
 "God has since found none such as these were 
 To do their work like them." 
 
 Finally, with pleasant wit, Vauvenargues reminds us, earnest 
 pedagogues as we are, not to set too much store by our own 
 arrangements ; not to pride ourselves too rashly on the security 
 of our plans ; not to repose too serenely on the infallibility of 
 our own wisdom : " They say that a woman should not pride 
 herself on her intelligence, nor a king on his eloquence, or 
 power of versifying, nor a soldier on refinement and courtesy 
 etc. : the short sighted multiply maxims and rules, because the 
 narrower is one's outlook the more inclined is one to prescribe 
 bounds for everyone else. Yet, Nature sets our peddling rules 
 at naught : she escapes from the narrow circle of our opinions : 
 and, in spite of all our fetters, she produces learned women and 
 royal poets.'' 
 
 ' Dialogues v. "Pascal et Fenelon," Vol. 11. p. 19. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU. 
 
 This man, who for good or for ill has impressed his 
 personality so deeply on a large section of the public, was born 
 at Geneva in 17 12, the son of a clock-maker, much given over 
 to mundane pleasures. His mother, the descendant of a long 
 line of "pasteurs," was a woman of intellect and personal 
 beauty. Had she lived, had she brought the child up, we 
 might have known a very different, a more "worth-having" 
 Rousseau : but she died very soon after his birth. What the 
 laxity of the parental guardianship was may be guessed from, the 
 fact that Jean Jacques' elder brother left the house one day 
 never to return, never to be heard of again. 
 
 The child's bias towards intellectual things, a bias which, 
 rightly handled, might have saved him, was so ill-directed that 
 it became an additional stumbling-block. His reading was 
 unsupervised, a real misfortune in the case of one whose tastes 
 led him to an over development of imagination, as M. Maury 
 has shown clearly^: "A six ans, il a deja la curiosite du livre 
 et prend 'conscience' de lui-meme. ...II s'eprend surtout de 
 Plutarque, romancier bien plus qu'historien, et contracte 
 I'habitude de se former une image ideale des hommes et des 
 choses avant que I'experience lui ait donne le sens du reel." 
 
 If it were legitimate to turn away for a moment from the 
 history of education and consider the point raised by this 
 
 ' Histoire de la Langue et de la Littirature Franfaise, Tome vr. p. 253. 
 
158 Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 judgment — a judgment so true of Rousseau, so explanatory of 
 the worse results which we see in his personal life, and in his 
 theory of human life — we should see that it includes two 
 matters of prime importance in education. 
 
 M. Maury's suggestion about Plutarch is perhaps too 
 absolute, but he is commenting on the kind of mistake which 
 is made constantly still in our schools, where it seems to be 
 taken for granted that the educator can afford to neglect the 
 proverbial truth that "one man's meat is another man's poison.'' 
 We scarcely realise what discrimination might and should be 
 exercised in adapting mental and moral pabulum to diiferent 
 natures. Alternatives in a school curriculum, in an examina- 
 tion syllabus (so often the real basis of the school time-table), 
 are matters too little considered. We need not forget the 
 truth Non omnia possumus omnes, because it seems sometimes 
 to be taken to mean. Most of us cannot do anything. Whereas, 
 we can all do something, if we can only hit upon the right 
 thing; it being one of education's tasks to find the right thing 
 for each individual. To take an example of the different 
 results of the same thing — ttie effect of Plutarch on Montaigne 
 and upon Rousseau, what a subject for a critical mind; and 
 what a suggestive study for those who wish to realise the truth 
 of Pater's phrase, "this for you and that for me." Secondly, 
 M. Maury urges implicitly the danger of an over-development 
 of childish imagination. While the developing mind should 
 never be starved and repressed by a system rigidly exclusive of 
 everything but proved fact, it should, at the same time, never 
 be fed with imaginative stories at the expense of judgment. 
 It is too easily forgotten that there is room for the exercise of 
 judgment even on the scale of the marvellous. It is perhaps 
 futile to ask which is worst, a judgment of men and things 
 unlighted by imagination; or an ideal of men and things, like 
 Rousseau's, uncorrected by experience. Perhaps it is not 
 futile to reflect that the majority of us tend towards one of 
 these extremes or the other: to insist that it is one of educa- 
 
Jean Jacques Rousseau 159 
 
 tion's functions to bring us back to, to retain us in, the via 
 media. 
 
 Some glimmering of his son's deplorable up-bringing seems 
 at last to have penetrated the father's pleasure-beclogged 
 consciousness, and the boy was sent for two years to a 
 "minister's" household. After this, he was articled as a clerk, 
 then he became an engraver, suffering all these changes before 
 he was 16. At that age, he too left his father's house, and 
 entered upon that career across the sea of this world, which 
 ended in the shipwreck of his ill-starred life. After so irregular 
 a youth, he perhaps is not blameworthy for what seems like 
 incredible levity, when he entered a convent of catechumens 
 and embraced the Roman Faith, because neophytes enjoyed 
 certain privileges. He even carried matters so far as to study 
 for the priesthood. His relations with Mme de Warens, his 
 erratic journeys, his arrival in Paris, his efforts as a play-wright 
 have no connexion with the history of education, beyond that 
 necessary bond existing between what a man is, and what he 
 thinks. 
 
 A remark of M. Maury concerning Rousseau's plays throws 
 light on his intellectual development Comparing him with 
 the father of French Comedy, the professor writes ' : "Moliere 
 frequentaient des hommes, at maniait des ames: Rousseau 
 remue seulement des idees. II ne montre done que des 
 qUalites de style." He was still in the old fatal rut of imagina- 
 tion, unguided, uncorrected by experience of the real. His 
 various Discours preceded his two most notorious books, Le 
 Contrat Social, and Jimile. One and all, in germ or in full 
 efflorescence, they set forth his two favourite theses, that 
 knowledge is a corruption of our pristine purity: that civilisa- 
 tion is a deviation from our natural right track. 
 
 Even if his premises and conclusions were as false and 
 illogical as his bitterest opponents believe them to have been, 
 yet his ideas rooted themselves deeply into men's minds : in 
 
 1 Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature Franfaise, Tome VI. p. 255. 
 
i6o Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 his vague generalities lay the seeds of the most frightful ex- 
 cesses which disfigured the French Revolution. 
 
 An appalling light is thrown on the fact of human influence, 
 when a man of ungoverned passion, corrupt life, and untrained, 
 unregulated judgment is shewn to have had the capacity so to 
 force ideas, apparently false but fatally productive, on the 
 minds of his fellow-men. This he effected by no personal 
 charm, for he wearied his literary confreres, by his uneven 
 moods; he was suspicious of his fellows in Mme Dupin's 
 Salon, and grew bitter under their fancied slights. When 
 Mme d'Epinay took pity on him and lent him a little hunting- 
 box on the edge of the Montmorency Forest, the witty woman 
 introduced him to it in the appropriate phrase, "mon ours, 
 voila votre asile." 
 
 Of his liaison with the unfortunate working woman Therese 
 Levasseur, only enough need be said to indicate the precise 
 extent and value of his vaunted love for children. The offspring 
 of this union he sent to the Home for Lost Children, describing 
 this process with cynical levity as yielding them up "to public 
 education," as becomes "a member of Plato's Republic." 
 There is a blunt Sussex proverb (often heard elsewhere), to the 
 effect that "Fair words butter no parsnips." Fine phrases, 
 vague high-flown generalities about children in general will 
 never whitewash his brutality to his own helpless children in 
 particular. 
 
 In 1757, after many rubs with Mme d'Epinay, surely an 
 easy-going mortal if one ever existed, he left her house, broke 
 off his friendship with her, with her whole circle, even with 
 Diderot. 
 
 imile, his chief contribution to the theory of education, 
 appeared in 1762. Some of his ideas were embedded in La 
 Nouvelle HHdise, but his chief theses are all to be found in 
 Emile, in those interminable five books; so full of repetition, 
 enough to weary the patience of even a patient reader. 
 
 His revolutionary doctrine, summed up in the words "do 
 
Jean Jacques Rousseau i6i 
 
 precisely the opposite to what is usually done, and you will 
 have hit upon the right plan" appeared in the year chosen by 
 the Government of France for the expulsion of the Jesuits 
 from the country. 
 
 The question which can hardly fail to occur to a student 
 of the history of education is, — Could Rousseau take their 
 place? In other words, was his theory an improvement on 
 theirs, his practice more successful ? At any rate the means by 
 which he proposed to achieve his end were subversive of 
 nearly all the main principles on which the Jesuits had built 
 their elaborate scheme of education. 
 
 Those familiar with his main contribution to Political 
 Science — le Contrat Social — will not be startled by the dog- 
 matism, the unorthodox vehemence of his opening words: 
 "Tout est bien, sortant des mains de I'Auteur des choses; 
 tout d^g^nfere entre les mains de I'homme." As M. Maury has 
 remarked, this postulate follows necessarily from the governing 
 principle of Amile — ^the perfection of the "state of nature." 
 
 However, close on the heels of this desolating prospect of 
 the inevitable degeneration of all things in human hands, came 
 the remedy, as Rousseau bethought himself of the gardening 
 analogy ; " On fagonne les plantes par la culture, et les 
 hommes par I'education." He elaborates this in another 
 passage : "Nous naissons faibles, nous avons besoin de forces; 
 nous naissons depourvus de tout, nous avons besoin d'assis- 
 tance; nous naissons stupides, nous avons besoin de jugement." 
 
 One feels that here is a "state of nature" leaving much to 
 be desired, and Rousseau further exalts civilisation, though 
 perhaps unintentionally^ in his closing sentence: "Tout ce que 
 nous n'avons pas a notre naissance, et dont nous avons besoin 
 etant grands, nous est donne par I'education." 
 
 His pages of denunciation of modern mothers for their 
 non-fulfilment of their primary duties to their children may be 
 noted with one comment. How additionally abominable his 
 conduct to his own children was if he really believed what he 
 
1 62 Jean- Jacques Rousseau 
 
 wrote — "Motherly love cannot be replaced"; and again, "No 
 mother, no child. Their duties are reciprocal; if they are badly 
 rendered on one side, they are neglected on the other.'' The 
 advice he tenders about physical care of the growing child is 
 interesting for its intrinsic value, and for its resemblance to 
 that of Locke. His description of the infant in the hands of 
 Nature is again a curious departure from his usual laudatory ' 
 remarks on things "natural." All possible maladies, pains and 
 penalties he crams into the early innocent years — "clearly the 
 whole of infancy is sickness and peril; half the children who 
 die perish before their eighth year." But from these disquieting 
 considerations, true or false, he draws his method, he will have 
 no coddling: "Experience proves that more delicately nur- 
 tured children die than others... harden their bodies to the 
 rigours of the seasons, climates, elements, to hunger, thirst 
 and fatigue : dip them in the Stygian flood." 
 
 It should be noted that he observes a point which Locke 
 never mentions, viz. that children's bodies are "flexible, accom- 
 modating," they can suffer with impunity changes impossible to 
 adults. When all is said and done, his position is one of 
 extreme dolour: "Le sort de I'homme est de souffrir dans 
 tous les temps," he cries, echoing sadly the Temanite's plaint, 
 "Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.". 
 
 To Rousseau the educational agents of the race are three, 
 nature, men, things, a division which must strike every one as 
 logically imperfect. He explains that by natures education he 
 means the inner growth of our faculties and organs; by human 
 education the use our fellow-creatures teach us to make of this 
 growth; by the education of things he signifies the harvest of our 
 own experience about those matterswhich concern us. Even with 
 the explanations, the divisions seem to overlap unsatisfactorily. 
 
 As he reflects on man's wretched lot, he gave vent to one 
 of the few true maxims which he ever uttered — "Our greatest 
 troubles spring from ourselves." From the context Rousseau 
 does not seem to give this an individuaUstic twist. It is a 
 
Jean Jacqiies Rousseau 163 
 
 point of view likely to commend itself less to youth than to 
 those who in later life look back on their own experience, and 
 remember the faults of temperament and judgment they have 
 known to be passed over uncorrected; ignorances and negli- 
 gences they can recall on all sides : but such a considera- 
 tion of the common plan and method of most human lives 
 may bring us to realise how many of our troubles had their 
 birth in causes removable by human efforts, by those of our- 
 selves, or of others for us. In this truth there is both en- 
 couragement and warning : if it be a true account, the educator 
 has a great chance indeed; and with it there is laid on him 
 a heavy responsibility. It is a fertile theme, not altogether, 
 one might have supposed, to the taste of the revolutionary 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 If we ask what is Rousseau's ideal of a well-educated man, 
 we are bound to admit that his answer is a vague generality, 
 needing analysis and explanation — never produced — before it 
 can be of any particular use to the educator : "That man of us 
 who knows best how to endure the good and bad fortune of 
 life is, to my way of thinking, the best educated." Well might 
 Sainte-Beuve call Galiani "a wiser eighteenth-century philo- 
 sopher than Jean-Jacques," for he was more suggestive in his 
 brief educational treatise contained in less than two pages. 
 Rousseau does not appear to doubt the truth of his thesis : 
 "In the natural order, men all being equal, their common 
 vocation is — being a man.... 'Let my pupil be destined for the 
 Army, the Church or the Bar, what does it matter? Before 
 the vocation (chosen) by his parents, nature calls him to human 
 life. To live is the trade I will teach him. I guarantee that 
 when he leaves my hands, he will be neither a magistrate, nor 
 a soldier, nor a priest, he will be first and foremost a man." 
 
 From these high sounding words to ^^mile, what a fall ! 
 There may be some common basal character under the 
 different lives men live in various callings ; a way of living in 
 general, if one might so express it, different from all ways of 
 
164 Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 living in particular. If so, it was surely worth while to analyse 
 it, to set forth clearly its nature and characteristics, to discover 
 the appropriate means for its production. This, Rousseau, 
 I think, never does. And the reader who struggles to the end 
 of this book, and there leaves the poor creature who has been 
 found in its pages, leaves him, at the end of his vaunted edu- 
 cation, unable even to lift a finger in the choice of his own 
 wife (less remarkable in France than in England), unable to 
 contemplate the control of his home unless his tutor remain to 
 play the part of God's Providence still (a sufficiently remarkable 
 state of affairs anywhere); the reader who leaves him so, will 
 surely admit, as Rousseau seems to expect, that Emile is 
 "neither a magistrate, nor a soldier, nor a priest"; but he will 
 add "nor is he a man either." An incidental point of interest 
 in this passage should be noted: "In the natural order, men 
 all being equal." Now, in the region of human life equality, 
 one would suppose, must mean equality of capacity, or equality 
 of opportunity, or both. We are not living in the eighteenth 
 century, nor in one imbued with its spirit. Since its passing, 
 the years have been filled with scientific research of ever- 
 increasing minuteness and accuracy ; and, as a natural conse- 
 quence, the methods of physical science, or some of them, and 
 those the most important, have been applied successfully to 
 branches of knowledge not usually included under the name 
 Science. So we, living in the twentieth century, have realised 
 that the human sciences must be something less airy than 
 irresponsible theory, that they too must produce their demon- 
 strable facts, and take account of real experience. And so 
 when a man says that all men are equal, we ask at once, — Does 
 experience support such a proposition? If we examine the 
 earliest written traditions of various races— and this is one of 
 our best methods of appreciating the character of the people 
 of past ages— we shall hardly say that Cain and Abel, Achilles 
 and Agamemnon, Rama and Lakshmana are represented to be 
 persons equal in ability, in capacity. If we watch our neigh- 
 
Jean Jacques Rousseau 165 
 
 hours, wherever we chance to find ourselves, we shall be more 
 or less impressed, according to the varying degrees of our inti- 
 macy with them, with their endless differences of ability. What 
 we read in history or fiction, based as it is more or less truly 
 on observed nature, that we see also in life about us every day. 
 To turn to the second point, are men equal in opportunities? 
 Neither in the past nor in the present. Hear the poet Gray, — 
 
 " Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast 
 The little Tyrant of his fields withstood, 
 Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, 
 Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. 
 
 Th' applause of list'ning senates to command, 
 
 The threats of pain and ruin to despise, 
 To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land 
 
 And read their history in a nation's eyes. 
 Their lot forbad." 
 
 And amongst ourselves to-day there are endless inequalities 
 of opportunity, as a very little investigation will abundantly shew. 
 
 Does Rousseau mean that they ought to be treated equally? 
 If so, by whom ? — the Government, or their fellow-men ? It 
 is common experience that every law, even a just one, bears 
 hardly on some one. So we fall back on an anterior question — • 
 What is the ground of this ought, and again, what is the 
 possibility of its realisation? Perhaps the two questions may 
 be combined in one, Can the impossible be right ? Is there 
 any "ought" in a matter which is not, and so far as we can 
 discover, never has been actually, possible ? For no one can 
 lay his finger on a time — in the best ruled states at their 
 happiest moments, in an era of savagery, or elsewhere — when 
 men and women were equal in capacity or opportunity. Per- 
 haps if Rousseau had analysed facts, instead of leaping over all 
 untoward considerations to a gilded conclusion, he might have 
 felt that the hitherto unsolved problem of equating possible 
 opportunity to actual though varying capacity was worth a 
 thought. To make the most and best of each individual may 
 
1 66 Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 be a task very inferior to making them all equal, not quite so 
 impossible, perhaps, but still difficult enough to deserve a 
 man's best efforts. When we realise the meaning of the 
 phrase "to make the most and best of each individual," then 
 Rousseau's dismal remark — "These two -viorAs, fatherland a.nA 
 citizen, should be effaced from modern languages" — seems 
 more disastrous than ever. 
 
 Undaunted by his successful conclusion that it is impossible 
 to find a tutor because "there are professions so noble that one 
 cannot engage in them for money without at once proving one's 
 unworthiness of them, such is the soldier's or the teacher's," 
 Rousseau selects as the pupil a youthful orphan of sound 
 physical condition; and on this combination of impossibility 
 and improbability proceeds to build his system of education. 
 
 Naturally, the paragon of pupils is to be brought up by 
 the paragon of tutors in the country. Rousseau's hot de- 
 nunciation of town life is very gratifying to the country lover. 
 He says, quite truly (statistics justify him), that after a few 
 generations, the race perishes or degenerates in a town : yet, 
 like the rest of us, he can devise no practical method of 
 abolishing towns. 
 
 In the first book of Entile, he wanders over a considerable 
 area of details, but the most valuable part of it lies in the 
 main principle expressed in the latter part ; viz. the principle 
 of the all-importance of the "senses" in childhood. To us, 
 now, that seems a platitude, perhaps a wearisome one. 
 Even in Rousseau's time it was not new, Mulcaster, Comenius 
 and Locke were among those who had insisted on the point. 
 But he popularized what others had thought of: though he 
 may not have been so original in his ideas as he has been 
 thought sometimes, he had the ear of the reading public; 
 and it was not a small thing that the principle should be urged 
 by a man of such influence. He enunciates his view clearly : 
 " The education of man begins at his birth : before he can 
 speak, before he can listen, he is teaching himself. Experience 
 
Jean Jacques Rousseau 167 
 
 anticipates teaching ; when he first recognises his own nurse, 
 he has already acquired much." And again, "in infancy... the 
 child attends only to things which affect its senses." From 
 this he deduces the rule that children should " handle every- 
 thing." This may sound rather terrifying advice to anxious 
 parents, but there is a safe aspect of it if it be turned into the 
 plan of teaching young children about those things of which 
 we can bring before their senses some material presentation, 
 because it lies with us in a large measure to settle what shall 
 and what shall not be presented to them. 
 
 Rousseau asserts that of all the senses that of smell de- 
 velops latest. It seems, sometimes, as if psychologists were 
 satisfied too easily with individual experience. It has been 
 denied that Shelley's lines — 
 
 " Odours when sweet violets sicken 
 Live within the sense they quicken " 
 
 — represent the fact to most people ; few, if any, it is said, can 
 recall the smell, when the flower has gone \ Would the majority 
 of people agree that they cannot recall a smell ? A comparison 
 of smells in retrospect helps the problem : if we try to recall 
 the odour of violets and that of a pungent plant like fennel, 
 are our sensations identical ? However this is a small point. 
 Rousseau closes the first book with four maxims : 
 (i) "We must help them by supplying what they lack, 
 whether of intelligence or strength, in everything which is a 
 physical need. 
 
 (2) " In the help one affords them one must limit one's 
 self strictly to the really useful, without yielding to fancy or 
 unreasonable desire. Fancy ^ will not trouble them unless we 
 rouse it: it is not natural. 
 
 1 Ward, "Psychology," Ency. Brit. vol. XX. p. 57. 
 
 ' We have to turn to Bk. II. for Rousseau's definition oi fancy — "the 
 word by which I mean all those desires which are not real needs, and which 
 we cannot satisfy without other people's help." The closing words are not 
 a little surprising. 
 
1 68 Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 (3) " We ought to study carefully their earliest words and 
 gestures, because, at an age when they cannot feign, one can 
 distinguish in their wishes that which is natural from that 
 which is artificial (de ropinion). 
 
 (4) " The spirit of these maxims is to grant children more 
 real liberty, and less supervision, to leave them to do more 
 for themselves while expecting less from others. If they 
 accustom themselves early to curb their wishes and activities, 
 they will not be anxious when deprived of things they cannot 
 have." 
 
 The second book attempts to reduce to practice the prin- 
 ciple of the importance of the senses. The question we should 
 "naturally" ask, to use Rousseau's favourite word, is "To what 
 use will Rousseau put these all-important senses ? " 
 
 The unfortunate fact escapes that he allows himself not 
 only the "preferences" which Voltaire permitted, but the "ex- 
 clusions" which his co-temporary condemned. The following 
 words contain a striking instance: "He" (i.e. 6mile "the 
 pupil of nature ") " takes his lessons from Nature, not from 
 men." Why not from men ? are they to be excluded en bloc 
 from Nature's province ? This kind of limitation of educational 
 theory is less excusable in Rousseau than in some others : he 
 attached so much value to "nature" that he might at least 
 have analysed the meaning of the word. 
 
 To the principle of the importance of the senses in child- 
 hood, he adds what he calls an irrefutable maxim, — "the 
 instincts of nature are always right, there is no original per- 
 versity in the human heart, not a single vice there whose 
 entrance and whose manner of entrance we cannot trace," and 
 on these two he bases his practice. Over and over again in 
 these early pages of Book 11. he urges us to leave Nature to be 
 our guide ; perpetually, in one form of words or another, he 
 argues that she is always a safe tutor, invariably trustworthy. 
 And again later on, he reiterates it vehemently; "No one will 
 
Jean Jacques Rousseau 169 
 
 ever persuade me that our primary desires are so ill-regulated 
 that we cannot satisfy them except at our own peril." He 
 goes surely to the extremes! point of the doctrine of the innate 
 virtue of the natural child when he assures us that "when 
 children's wills are not spoilt by our mistakes, they have no 
 useless desires." Of course, here we are in the region of those 
 problems over which men dispute in all generations : the com- 
 plexity, the mingled good and bad in human nature seeming as 
 palpable to some of us as the unstained purity of primitive 
 nature seemed to him. It is not without significance, however, 
 in this division of opinion, that Rousseau is compelled to 
 darken the rosy picture of innate virtue by two admissions, the 
 first being of an extremely damaging nature, viz. "the only 
 passion natural to man is selfishness.'' One is tempted to ask if 
 man could need any other, seeing that all the rest spring easily 
 from that in a rank abundant crop, but Rousseau never seems to 
 realise the implication of this limitation of his doctrine. The 
 second admission is trifling in comparison ; every one who has 
 observed children will be inclined to endorse it : "a child can 
 be mischievous without being bad, since bad action depends on 
 bad intention, and that he will never have." In translation, 
 the passage loses something : in the original it runs, "II pourrait 
 faire beaucoup de mal sans mal faire." 
 
 It would perhaps be impossible to speak more positively on 
 this point of natural virtue than Rousseau does, e.g. "Mis- 
 chievous fancy in children is never Nature's work, but always 
 the result of bad discipline.'' 
 
 When we reduce these airy theories (spun irresponsibly 
 round imaginary orphans placed in special circumstances in- 
 geniously contrived) and try to make them fit our ov^n worka- 
 day experience of real children in existing classes at school and 
 in nurseries at home, can we, for a moment, admit, as z.fact of 
 experience (to borrow Pestalozzi's admirable phrase), that child- 
 ren are never bad save through faults of upbringing ? Have 
 we not all known children whose wills seem intractable whoever 
 
1 70 Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 deals with them? Do we not know virtuous homes which 
 cannot restrain a black sheep ; has a saint never sprung from 
 the most adverse moral conditions ? While, to some of us, he 
 may seem to overrate children's natural tendency to goodness, 
 he surely underrates their intellectual state: "Of all human 
 faculties, the reason, which is so to speak an amalgam of all 
 the rest" (sic), "develops latest and with most difficulty.... The 
 climax of a good education is making a man reasonable ; and 
 they aspire to guide a child by reason. It is putting the cart 
 before the horse." Perhaps Rousseau had forgotten this, or 
 perhaps he saw some way, hidden from most of us, of recon- 
 ciling a universal negative with a particular affirmative, when 
 he wrote five and twenty pages further on : "I am however far 
 from thinking that children possess no kind of reasoning 
 faculty : on the contrary, I notice that they reason accurately 
 about things they know, or which are connected with their 
 immediate ' sense ' interests." He soon becomes aware of some 
 disparity of thought, and he appends a footnote, almost pathetic 
 in its helplessness, to the effect that all discrepancies of state- 
 ment must be put down to the account of poverty of language; 
 and he adds, even more feebly, " Elsewhere I said that children 
 are incapable of reasoning, and now I represent them as reason- 
 ing accurately enough, I do not think my ideas are contradictory, 
 but I cannot maintain that I never contradict myself verbally." 
 The critic must remember that Rousseau's education was 
 fortuitous, and that Nature had not endowed him with that gift, 
 so conspicuously bestowed on Vauvenargues, of analysing words 
 and phrases, of following trains of thought to remote conse- 
 quences. Probably he meant little more than most teachers of 
 experience now would allow, viz. that children reason well 
 enough about such parts of the concrete side of life as interest 
 them, far less well in the region of moral and metaphysical 
 thought. It is rather a humble truth perhaps, but it was 
 neglected in Rousseau's time, and he might have done a useful 
 work had he soberly and insistently urged the necessity of 
 
Jean Jacques Rousseau 171 
 
 awakening and training interest in tangible present things first, 
 so that the second task of training reason to grasp the abstract 
 side of life might follow soon and in due course. But he had 
 a great gift for missing opportunities. 
 
 Would it be extravagant to describe his next postulate as a 
 futile paradox — "Shall I dare to suggest the greatest, the 
 most important, the most useful rule of all education? it is 
 this, do not save time but lose it.'' To some it may savour of 
 profanity to put by this the saying of Another, " Work while it 
 is called to-day, the night cometh when no man can work." In 
 the sphere of aphorisms proof hardly obtains : but if one were 
 to contemplate two worlds, regulated respectively on these 
 maxims, it would not be hard, were choice permitted, to choose 
 one's dwelling-place. 
 
 The last principle, which may be called the motive power 
 of such method as is proposed in Bk. 11., is expressed tersely, 
 " Early education ought to be purely negative " : he elaborates 
 this as follows : " zealous tutors, be simple, discreet, reserved ; 
 never hasten to act except to restrain the action of others. . . upon 
 this earth, whereon Nature provided the first Paradise man ever 
 knew, fear to play the tempter's part, by giving innocence a 
 knowledge of good and evil." From this purely negative 
 method he deduces this corollary — bring Emile, or indeed 
 anyone else, up in this fashion and then — "depourvu de toute 
 morahte dans ses actions, il ne peut rien faire qui soit morale- 
 ment mal, et qui merite ni chatiment ni reprimande." Happy 
 ;^mile ! Thrice blessed world ! 
 
 The four principles then, on which the method of Book 11. 
 is to rest, are briefly — the instincts of nature are invariably 
 right ; children have not the faculty of reason ; do not save 
 time but lose it ; early education should be purely negative. 
 
 With the object, here as everywhere, of training children to 
 trace the connexion of cause and effect, Rousseau declines to save 
 them from pain consequent naturally on a given action : " If he 
 falls, if he hits his head, if he makes his nose bleed, if he cuts his 
 
172 Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 finger, instead of hurrying to him in a frightened manner, I 
 should stay quiet, at least for a short time. The harm is done, 
 it is a necessity which he must endure, any haste I can shew 
 can but frighten him more and increase his pain. At least let 
 me spare him that final suffering." The argument is clear, we 
 cannot, (as a rule) we ought not, Rousseau pleads, to remove 
 the necessary efTect, but we can spare him unnecessary 
 additions to the natural effect from the cause which he himself 
 set in motion. 
 
 This principle is not one on which followers of Rousseau 
 have dwelt most emphatically, he himself seems scarcely to 
 realise that he had touched on a matter of the first magnitude. 
 Yet, in a world peopled so largely by the irresponsible, it is 
 difficult to exaggerate the importance of instilUng into every 
 individual, by some means or other, this realisation of the 
 working of cause and effect. To teach people, in such a way 
 that they learned it, that caeteris paribus, the same cause is 
 followed by the same effect, might prevent the ruin or misery of 
 many, who behave, at any rate, as if they suppose that the 
 words caeteris paribus have no important meaning, or that, 
 even if they have, it does not much matter what it is, and 
 that human beings may legitimately " hope " that a disastrous 
 cause may somehow produce a better effect "this time.'' 
 Reduced to words, the position is an absurdity, but the 
 analysis of many actions would shew this kind of attitude 
 to have existed. 
 
 Unfortunately Rousseau gave a one-sided aspect to the case 
 by seeming to assume that the natural effects of the majority of 
 causes are painful, a position which clashes somehow with the 
 vaunted charms of primitive nature. He goes on to argue that 
 we must all suffer, which seems true : and then he appears to 
 pass by insensible degrees to the depressing view that we must 
 all suffer always, which to any Frenchman might appear un peu 
 trop : but then Rousseau was born in Geneva though France 
 adopts him. He has, at least, a cold theory of pleasure and 
 
Jean Jacques Rousseau 173 
 
 pain; it is all a matter of mere opinion'. "The material 
 world has its limits; the imaginary world is infinite; if we 
 cannot expand the one, let us contract the other; because 
 from the difference between them spring all the sorrows which 
 make us unhappy. Leave out health, strength, one's own good 
 opinion of one's self " (a large and important omission all this), 
 " all the rest is mere opinion ; leave out bodily pain and the 
 gnawing of conscience " (again a tremendous omission), "all our 
 remaining troubles are imaginary. The notion is common 
 enough, I admit : but the practical application of it is not 
 common, and we are dealing with practice and nothing else now." 
 
 He develops his theory of pain and pleasure into another 
 which we may call that of the equilibrium of power and desire. 
 The nearer man remains to the primitive state of Nature, the 
 less difference is there, so Rousseau argues, between his desires 
 and his capacities for gratifying them. The " civilised " 
 analogue of this may be found in Jeremy Bentham's remark, 
 " The beggar sunning himself on the highway enjoys the 
 security which kings are fighting for.'' 
 
 His second argument is this — "Before prejudices and 
 human institutions had changed our natural inclinations, the 
 happiness of children, like that of grown men, consisted in the 
 exercise of their freedom." His pictures of primitive man and 
 the natural infant are more amiable than convincing. 
 
 To establish an equilibrium of power and desire, there 
 seems to be a choice between two courses : either increase the 
 power to the point capable of satisfying the desire : or curb the 
 
 ' Montaigne quotes Epictetus in a similar vein : " Men (saith an ancient 
 Greek sentence) are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not 
 by things themselves... if evils have no entrance into us, but by our judg- 
 ment it seemeth that it lieth in our power either to contemne or turne them 
 to our good" (Essais I. xl.). 
 
 Hamlet's reflection, sometimes traced to this Essay of Montaigne, is 
 perhaps more familiar still: 
 
 " There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking 
 Makes it so." — ii. ii. 256. 
 
1 74 Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 desire till the natural power is sufficient to gratify it. As we 
 might expect, Rousseau lays stress on the first of these. Yet he 
 has an inkling of the importance and value of the second : " Do 
 you know the surest way to secure your child's unhappiness ? 
 Accustom him to get all he desires; because those desires will 
 grow by that ease of achievement ; sooner or later impotence 
 will compel you to refuse him something, and this unexpected 
 refusal will give him more pain even than going without that 
 which he desired." 
 
 That the question of increasing the power, or curbing the 
 desire rested really on the " value " of the desire, did not, 
 apparently, occur to him. Again, he does not analyse the 
 matter right to the end. 
 
 As Emile grows older, and gets somewhat beyond the stage 
 of toppling over on to his nose and making it bleed, he is to 
 learn still by experience: " He breaks the furniture he uses,'' 
 — we need feel no great surprise at this since he is, by 
 hypothesis, dkpourvu de toute moralite — " do not be in a hurry 
 to give him any more : let him feel the discomfort of being 
 without. He breaks the windows in his room, let the wind 
 blow in on him, night and day without troubling about colds. 
 He had better have a cold in his head than be stupid. Do not 
 ever complain of the trouble which he gives you, but take pains 
 that he feels it first. In the end, mend the windows without 
 any talking about them. He breaks them again ; then change 
 your plan : say to him drily but without temper, ' the windows 
 are mine, they were put there at my expense, I desire to safe- 
 guard them.' Then shut him up in the dark in a place without 
 windows. So novel a proceeding will make him cry, scream : 
 no one will attend to him. Soon he wearies and changes his 
 tone : he weeps, he wails ; a servant appears, the rebel begs for 
 pardon. Without casting about for a reason for his refusal, the 
 servant replies, 'I too have windows to preserve,' and dis- 
 appears. At last, when the child has been there for several 
 hours, long enough to get tired and to reflect, something will 
 
Jean Jacques Rousseau i 75 
 
 counsel him to suggest a compromise to you— you shall let him 
 out and he will not break the windows again. That will satisfy 
 him. He asks you to come to see him, you come ; he makes 
 his proposal and you accept it at once, saying to him : ' It is a 
 very good idea, we shall both be the gainers.' '' 
 
 1 have quoted this passage at length as an admirable 
 example of Rousseau's method with naughty children ; sec sans 
 colere is his alarming phrase; yet most children understand 
 righteous wrath far better than this dry sarcasm. A little 
 further on in this Bk. 11., Rousseau describes his really ingenious 
 struggles with and final conquest of a " sole heir of his family." 
 Again, to adult readers, these proceedings are funny; but I 
 doubt if they would appeal in a fruitful, wholesome way to the 
 average child. As one reads Rousseau's pages, one is struck 
 by the fact that though the special purpose is to exhibit the 
 charms of the " pupil of nature " brought up without rules and 
 prohibitions, yet the plan is really (though not verbally) replete 
 with rules and prohibitions. As a matter of practice, his method 
 with the " sole heir " instituted a most rigorous sort of disci- 
 pline : and it did this in a way which normal childhood feels 
 most keenly and resentfully — in a way therefore which is highly 
 dangerous in the hands of the careless and unwary — by a 
 subtle sort of ridicule. And all the time, while he is advising 
 education to crush the child beneath the weight of necessity, 
 Rousseau is holding the doctrine that for human beings, liberty 
 rather than authority is the possession of supreme value, 
 especially liberty from the arbitrarily imposed will of others : 
 " it is in human nature to endure necessity with prudence, 
 to endure necessity with patience, but not the capricious will of 
 a fellow-man'." Here as elsewhere he brushes aside the 
 possibility that a fellow-man's will might be directed wisely and 
 exerted desirably. It is just in this region of punishment that 
 Rousseau's belief in a child's inability to reason shews its full 
 
 1 Cf. "le premier de tous les biens n'est pas I'autorite mais la liberte." 
 (Bk. II.) 
 
1 76 Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 disastrousness. If a teacher is to be debarred from attempting 
 to teach the children committed to his care the superior reason- 
 ableness of one course of action over another, perhaps the method 
 of sec sans colire is not more futile than any other remaining way. 
 
 His theory as to giving to and withholding from children is 
 harsh, and much less reasonable than Locke's, whose plan was 
 certainly severe. " Your child must have nothing because he 
 asks for it," says Rousseau, " only because he absolutely needs 
 it : he is to do nothing for the sake of obedience, but simply 
 from necessity : thus the words obey, commaTid will be banished 
 from his dictionary, much more those of duty and obligation : 
 but those of farce, necessity, impotence, constraint ought to fill a 
 big place in it." 
 
 It is difficult to write with patience of an educational 
 scheme which seems so essentially subversive of what a great 
 many people venture to consider the basal principles of society. 
 Perhaps it is wisest to suggest merely the illogical impossibility 
 of a system which institutes rights everywhere and responsibili- 
 ties nowhere, which invites us to deal with a world in which 
 nothing is complementary to anything else. 
 
 If Rousseau were to argue that he is writing for children 
 not yet 1 2, and that plenty of time remains, it may be asked, 
 Why should any plant grow whose seed was not sown where the 
 soil was receptive ? To quote Plato once again, " The begin- 
 ning is the chiefest part, especially in a young and tender 
 thing." And we may add to that reminder the warning of 
 Frederic Myers: 
 
 ' ' Let no man think that sudden in a minute, 
 All is accomplish 'd and the work is done; — 
 Though with thine earliest dawn thou should'st begin it 
 Scarce were it ended in thy setting sun." 
 
 It is interesting to observe that this doctrine of rights every- 
 where and responsibilities nowhere, lands Rousseau in difficulties 
 even with a child of 12 : for after all he has to handle this indi- 
 vidual "depourvu de toute moralite dans ses actions," has to deal 
 
Jean Jacques Rousseau 177 
 
 daily with this ]&mile who has no faculty of reason, has to bear 
 with him, even as teachers with less remarkable views are forced 
 to bear with less impossible pupils. 
 
 When we reflect upon real children in a real school, can we 
 accept the following summary of Rousseau's method as a 
 practical solution ? " Never command him to do or not to do 
 anything, whatever in the world it may be, absolutely nothing. 
 Do not let him ever imagine that you suppose you have any 
 authority over him. Let him merely know that he is weak and 
 you are strong; that owing to his nature and yours, he is 
 entirely at your mercy ; let him know it, learn it, feel it : let 
 him from the earliest times feel on his proud head the harsh 
 yoke which nature imposes on man, the heavy yoke of necessity 
 under which every finite creature must bend ; let him see this 
 necessity existent in things, never in human caprice, let the 
 bridle which curbs him be force not authority." 
 
 We may recall the passionate love of children which inspired 
 Saint Cyran ; the steady affection, the grave desire for their 
 welfare displayed by Mme de Maintenon ; the ascetic solici- 
 tude of Jacqueline Pascal, and compare with them this strange 
 substitution of blind force for human wisdom, affection and 
 care, of unreasoning fear for filial understanding. Surely 
 Rousseau is speaking rather as a rebel who has made ship- 
 wreck of his career than as an observer of children who desires 
 their welfare. No doubt, wisdom, affection and care were 
 strikingly absent from Rousseau's home, but the vagaries of the 
 Rousseau family were hardly a pattern for the world; nor is 
 much attention paid generally to a philosopher who bases his 
 theory on the occurrences of his personal life and takes no 
 pains to compare these with and correct them by what he can 
 learn of the common experience of the race. Further, in an 
 age like ours, so prone to consider facts, so apt to persuade 
 itself that it never receives theory which does not stand palpably 
 square and slab on observed facts, we may without impropriety 
 ask — Is Rousseau's theory in any important sense a true render- 
 H. 12 
 
178 Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 ing of the facts ? Does Nature, actually, meet us always and 
 everywhere with these 
 
 "adamantine chains and penal fire"? 
 
 Are not human faculties and qualities admirably adapted to 
 learn through cultivation and training the best way of counter- 
 acting uncurbed Nature ? Shall we not prefer Wordsworth to 
 Rousseau, and remember and hope everything from 
 
 ' ' the discerning intellect of man 
 When wedded to this goodly universe"? 
 
 It is fair to point out that one ray of light pierces this 
 moral gloom : " My object is not to enter into all possible 
 details, only to give general principles, and to give instances 
 in cases of dilificulty. I think it impossible, in the midst of a 
 society like ours, to bring up a child to the age of 12 years, 
 without giving him any idea of the relations existing between 
 man and man, of the morality underlying human action. It 
 is enough to take pains to give him these notions as late as 
 may be, and if, when they are inevitable, one limits them to the 
 utility of the present moment : simply because he must not 
 think he is master of everything, nor injure others unscrupu- 
 lously or ignorantly.'' 
 
 Let no one imagine that the conflict here lies between 
 religion and non-religion; a perusal of the early chapters of 
 J. S. Mill's Autobiography would correct any such notion. 
 
 This desire to avoid planting notions of morality is part of 
 a larger plan ; in the region of ideas generally, Emile is to be 
 kept in an ignorance as dark as circumstances will allow. Yet, 
 there is one idea so precious, so formative, that it takes pre- 
 cedence of the much vaunted principle of Hberty, this is the 
 notion of property. Precisely why this one idea is so precious, 
 Rousseau hardly explains, any more than he gives a convincing 
 reason why this child " depourvu de toute moraUte dans ses 
 actions" is to be taught one single moral lesson — Injure no 
 
Jean Jacques Rousseau 179 
 
 one. The explanation may be that these are fundamental 
 principles of Rousseau's general theory, principles which 
 exercised little enough power on his personal life, but which 
 somehow dominated his fancy ; he chooses arbitrarily therefore 
 to impose them upon childhood. Emile is to grasp the idea 
 of property in the old "sensible" method; not by discussions 
 does he imbibe it, but by planting broad beans, and by 
 the subsequent tragic events connected with Robert and the 
 melons. 
 
 When we turn to the question of actual instruction, we 
 find Rousseau barring out the study of languages at this early 
 stage; reading is the scourge of childhood, the senses are 
 everything; "Emile n'apprendra jamais rien par coeur." 
 
 His onslaught upon the imagination is contained in a 
 damaging analysis of one of La Fontaine's fables. Rousseau 
 is counted among the great educators : but whatever his 
 gifts were or were not he had no capacity for understanding 
 children's joys. Ordinary children will not renounce the realm 
 of imagination because its ideas are sometimes beyond them, 
 or because its pictures may be conveyed in unfamiliar and 
 even hard words. 
 
 We could hardly exchange imagination for what Rousseau 
 calls the sixth sense, common-sense ; not so named, he gravely 
 tells us, because it is common to all men, but because it springs 
 from a right use of the other five. 
 
 Rousseau has brought Emile to the confines of boyish 
 reason : it remains to draw his portrait. He describes this child 
 as doing everything so whole-heartedly, "with a lively joyous 
 eye, a contented and peaceful demeanour, with a frank and 
 laughing face ; doing, while he plays, the most serious things, 
 or profoundly busied over the most trifling amusements." 
 
 An agreeable picture no doubt, but can we be sure that the 
 conclusion must follow from the premises ? 
 
 From the point of view of the person who expects a 
 pedagogue to produce neat recipes on practical method. 
 
i8o Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 Book III. will be judged the most valuable, the author thought 
 so himself. But it is very unequal ; the reader will find him- 
 self wondering here at Rousseau's knowledge of children, there, 
 at his equally palpable ignorance of them. The first point of 
 interest is his return to his theory that human weakness springs 
 from the inequality of power and desire. 
 
 He argues that the average child between 12 and 15 is not 
 subject t6 this ineffectiveness, because, for these three short 
 years, but only then, his strength outruns his desires. This 
 being so, education must make the most of them. He fore- 
 stalls the obvious argument that facts do not support his 
 theory — " on niera qu'il ait la force que je lui attribue." The 
 proud retort springs ,to his lips, "on ne songera pas que je 
 parle de mon dleve, non de ces poupees ambulantes qui 
 voyagent d'une chambre a I'autre, qui labourent dans une 
 caisse, et portent des fardeaux de carton.'' 
 
 How then, he asks, shall we make the most of these years ? 
 The individual's capacity for knowledge is limited: "not only 
 can a man not know everything, he cannot even know in its 
 entirety all that other men know." So a choice is imperative : 
 Rousseau suggests two principles : (i) teach him not merely 
 what is, but what is useful : (2) do not attempt to teach him 
 anything beyond a child's natural power, e.g. do not teach him 
 anything demanding an " exercise of judgment " or knowledge 
 of the interrelations of men^. When he suggests that a child's 
 skill in geometry may be taken as a general measure of his 
 intelligence, he is falling into the common error that any one 
 subject can be made an effective test for everybody. He 
 returns to his thesis that the child is curious concerning the 
 things about him. Therefore, he says, teach him about natural 
 objects, teach him physiography, but always by means of the 
 phenomena themselves, not by books, globes or maps : never 
 
 ^ Pestalozzi analysed this difficulty when he advised us to require judg- 
 ment from children when and only when the child is capable of it, and the 
 circumstances of the case need it, 
 
Jean Jacques Rousseau i8i 
 
 substitute a symbol for a thing, if you can shew the thing 
 itself. Bring the child face to face with the phenomena, and 
 when he is absorbed in the puzzle of it, ask him some short 
 sharp question which will help him to solve it. A wise hint 
 this on the difficult matter of questioning. Of course, even 
 here Rousseau's theory is immature. Presently, Pestalozzi 
 will go a step further when he insists on the importance of 
 using the child's whole environment, not only the physical, 
 but the intellectual and moral too, as the stuff of his early 
 education. Later still, Herbart will suggest the practicability 
 of controlling this all-important environment, of arranging it 
 beforehand, and then using it in a formative manner. 
 
 Among his suggestions on practical method Rousseau put 
 forward one which is really the modern German plan of home- 
 geography : "his two first lessons in Geography will be the 
 town in which he lives, and his father's country house ; then 
 the intervening country, then the neighbouring rivers, and 
 lastly the sun, its rising and setting." The inclusion of the 
 sun in home-geography is perhaps novel. The child is to 
 draw his own diagrams ; but the tutor, says Rousseau, should 
 not point out his mistakes, let the child discover them. 
 Such a plan may work well enough in the construction of a 
 diagram or in the case of a model. But in learning a language 
 it will not do ; an average child will cheerfully mistranslate the 
 same word in various ways in the same exercise. Again, how 
 many of us would have known of no errors in our sums, save 
 for the caustic intervention of those better versed in " that base 
 cunning men call mathematics." 
 
 He turns from these journeyman methods to the things 
 which are more excellent: of these children over 12 must 
 begin to take cognisance, but precisely how we are not told. 
 He dwells on one matter whose importance may have been 
 brought home to him by his own lax up-bringing; children, 
 at this important age, are to be trained to give continued 
 attention to the matter in hand. When we consider the 
 
1 82 Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 amount of energy which is dissipated on nothing in particular, 
 surely because young people are not trained in concentration, 
 then whatever else we think of Rousseau, we must be grateful 
 for his insistence on this. And, to turn to another useful point 
 which he makes, we shall all agree that the experience of the 
 years which separate him from us, shews us the wisdom of his 
 advice that children should make, so far as possible, their own 
 apparatus — "plus nos outils sont ingenieux, plus nos organes 
 deviennent grossiers et maladroits.'' 
 
 Apart from the intrinsic educational value which he at- 
 tributes to mechanical arts and crafts, Rousseau urges that 
 it is wise — in the face of possible changes of fortune — to bring 
 up a child not for one single station in life, but as a handy and 
 versatile human being. It is very easy to talk vaguely about 
 such an ideal as this, and if Rousseau does fail to point out the 
 best means, at any rate his aim is sound here ; he would make 
 his pupil know what he does know, this child shall not " pay 
 himself with words," but shall cultivate manual skill, develop 
 every one of his natural capacities, learn to think out causes, 
 understand reasons, and if possible penetrate to the bottom 
 of things. "The man and the citizen, whoever he may be, 
 has only one precious thing to offer the community — himself." 
 Surely that is a sentence worth the consideration of teachers, 
 statesmen, o{ all who really care for the welfare of their own 
 country, for the well-being of mankind : each child in our 
 schools has its own self and nothing else to give to the 
 community. 
 
 Turning to a totally different subject, Rousseau warns us 
 suddenly to institute no competition, no rivalries between 
 children, because to do so cultivates two serious faults, vanity 
 and jealousy. The only endurable comparison is between the 
 self of to-day with its feats, and the self of yesterday, and the 
 self of a possible to-morrow — " je I'excite ainsi sans le rendre 
 jaloux de personne." There is no incongruity in Rousseau's 
 sudden change from the details of manual instruction to the 
 
Jean Jacques Rousseau 183 
 
 problems of ethics, since he specially stipulates that though 
 Emile works like an artisan he shall think like a philosopher. 
 At the end of Book in. Rousseau makes the following claims 
 on behalf of this child of so many efforts : " Forced to learn 
 for and by himself, he uses his own reason, not that of anybody 
 else.... Emile has little knowledge, but what he has is his own, 
 he knows nothing by halves.... Among the few things he knows 
 is this, that there is much of which he is ignorant but which he 
 can know some day.... On this method one does not travel far, 
 but one never takes a useless step, one never has to retrace 
 a step.... Emile has no knowledge save of purely physical 
 things,... he knows the essential relations between men and 
 things, but nothing of the moral relations between man and 
 
 man In a word, Emile has all the virtues that he needs for 
 
 himself. In order that he may have social virtues, he merely 
 needs to know the circumstances which call them into play ; 
 he merely needs information which his mind is all ready to 
 receive.'' The obvious criticism is that Emile has not been 
 brought up in the natural circumstances of civilised life. If he 
 had been, the affections, the moral sentiments, the tendency to 
 religious speculation could not have all remained dormant till 
 he was 15, especially under such perpetual sharpening of the 
 senses, such incessant and insistent calls upon his intelligence. 
 The task of the fourth Book is to shew how the social virtues 
 can be called into play, how the information which Emile's 
 mind is ready to receive can be presented. 
 
 Although the boy is screened carefully from all the most 
 painful conditions of human life, yet now he is to be brought 
 into contact with his fellow-creatures, in order that the natural 
 emotions of love, kindliness, sympathy and compassion may 
 be aroused in him, and, above all, that he may be inspired 
 with the sentiment of justice. Through this new-born love for 
 his fellow-creatures he rises gradually to comprehension of the 
 Deity: and here he is helped by the well-known Savoyard 
 Vicar's Confession of Faith. Now at last he is permitted to 
 
184 Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 abandon the exclusive cult of utility : he may substitute for it 
 the things of reason and feeling, which in his case prove to 
 be a study of the poets, of Greek, Latin and Italian. The 
 average reader must surely admire Emile's unusual linguistic 
 facility. 
 
 Rousseau brings him thus to the threshold of marriage ; he 
 selects a wife for his docile pupil, a girl whom he has educated 
 for that purpose, whose preparation exhibits Rousseau's ideal 
 of a woman's education. 
 
 At the beginning of this chapter it was noted that the 
 expulsion of the Jesuits by the French Government coincided 
 with the appearance of Rousseau's revolutionary doctrine. 
 Whatever else may be thought of the Society of Jesus, it Can 
 scarcely be said that they were careless of education. Anyone 
 acquainted with their orderly, well-schemed plan of education, 
 who reflects on the patience, accuracy and minute care they 
 expended in carrying out that system, who remembers their 
 use of emulation, who has felt the definite directness of their 
 methods, will admit that the change from them to Rousseau 
 was uncomfortably abrupt 
 
 ^ It is very difficult to extract from the mass of details which 
 encumber the pages of Emile any leading principles ; roughly 
 speaking, principles are to be found in the first two books. 
 Moreover Rousseau had an unfortunate tendency towards 
 exaggeration, the enunciation of his principles seems too 
 absolute. But if one attempted some summary of the world's 
 debt to this erratic writer, surely the largest items in it would 
 be his view of the importance of right training of the senses, 
 and of the realisation of cause and effect. We are so used 
 now to the doctrine of the importance of the senses, that we 
 might easily fail to give him his due here. And though he 
 lays no sufficient stress on the matter, yet his plea that children 
 should be trained to realise the action of cause and effect is 
 one of urgent importance to-day, specially if such training were 
 coupled with sound teaching on that other point which he 
 
Jean Jacques^ Rousseau 185 
 
 raises, viz. that our worst troubles have their source in ourselves. 
 And, once more, all that he says concerning strenuousness, 
 concerning the growth of responsibility, the determination to 
 be sufficient to a high degree for one's own needs, of the value 
 of versatility, of the risk of loss of handiness through increased 
 use of tools and machinery, these, matters of detail perhaps 
 rather than of fundamental principle, are all of prime importance 
 to the teacher, to the taught. 
 
 The root fault of the book lies in its straining after indi-J 
 vidualism. The isolation of !^mile is his literal undoing, for 
 he is no longer a creature "of like passions with ourselves." 
 And so the principles which rule and the details which make 
 up his daily life do not really move us. The failure of Emile 
 is not so much in its theory as in the so-called facts on which 
 the theory is built : Emile is not a human boy, hence the 
 history of his education lacks human interest. Rousseau 
 sealed the child's fate once for all when he expunged from 
 his vocabulary the words fatherland, citizen, duty and obliga- 
 tion. Man is nothing in isolation, as a unit in a whole he may 
 be much. Galiani knew that. But then he was a unit mostly 
 in a dull whole, and Rousseau was — one hardly knows what. 
 At any rate he seemed to have but little notion of cooperation 
 with others, little knowledge of the meaning of the word 
 discipline. Individualism run riot like Rousseau's, seems 
 incapable of even considering what Dr-Inge has called "the 
 conviction that since there are in the nature of things no self- 
 existing units with these rights and privileges, selfishness is 
 a ruinous mistake, a blunder which leads to shipwreck in all 
 parts of Nature alike.'' This idea torn from its context may 
 seem startling ; the whole theory is worked out in chapters iv., 
 V. and VI. of his Personal Idealism and Mysticism., 
 
 Professor Maury observes^ : " It is possible to apply to 
 education as a whole the main inspiration of Jimile; the 
 ruling idea that made it worth while that such a book should 
 
 ^ Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature Franfaise, vol. VI. p. 284. 
 
1 86 Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 
 be written, viz. in the curriculum not to anticipate the natural 
 course of the faculties, and of the tastes arising out of them ; 
 to strengthen the powers of reflection rather than to cram the 
 memory ; to give the intellect spontaneous and independent 
 energy ; to inspire love not fear of personal investigation ; to 
 teach if it be possible by all the senses at once, and not merely 
 by some abstract handling of the power of judgment, to ac- 
 quaint the child with things and make him handle them, to 
 keep one's self from indulging in precocious philosophy. In 
 all that Amile is the most French, the most suggestive of 
 Rousseau's works." 
 
 The memory harks back and recalls the educational 
 chapters of Gargantua and Pantagruel. There is no claim 
 made by Professor Maury for Rousseau which might not be 
 made for Rabelais, and for the latter how many more too. 
 He, like Moliere, dealt with human beings, who can deny 
 that? He would have given the puppet Emile the shortest 
 of justifiable shrifts. And then behind everything else in 
 Rabelais' scheme there was the religious, the moral sense, 
 there was neither surely in the man who could propose to 
 educate a child to the age of 12 "ddpourvu de toute moralitd 
 dans ses actions." Lastly there was the inextinguishable 
 humour, playing like sunshine all over Rabelais' gigantic 
 schemes, so different from the sec sans colere of Rousseau. 
 
 What is there of prime value in Rousseau's scheme which 
 is his own ? There are matters of detail no doubt, as when he 
 insists on the " flexibility " of a child's body, but in the funda- 
 mental positions others have forestalled him; Rabelais and 
 Comenius most certainly on the question of the importance 
 of the senses, Locke concerning the wisdom of training children 
 to trace the working of cause and effect. 
 
 Note. It should perhaps be said that recently a book called Jean 
 Jacques Rousseau was published by Mrs Macdonald. Among other posi- 
 tions taken up there is an attempted reftitation of Rousseau's statement in 
 the Confessions about his children. Mrs Macdonald tries to prove that he 
 
Jean Jacques Rousseau 187 
 
 had no children, so could not have handed them over to a public institution. 
 A review of her book in the Athenaeum of Oct. 20, 1906, closes vfith these 
 words: "evidence confirmatory of his statements was however discovered 
 some time ago in the Archives des Enfants Trouvh." There was some 
 subsequent correspondence in the Athenaeum in defence of the doubt raised 
 by Mrs Macdonald. It is difficult to give up the following passage from 
 the Confessions without some very strong evidence (Partie 11''"% Liv. viii.) : 
 "en livrant mes enfants a I'education publique, faute de pouvoir les elever 
 moi-mSme ; en les destinant a devenir ouvriers et paysans, plutot qu'aven- 
 turiers et coureurs de fortunes, je crus faire un acte de citoyen et de pere, 
 
 et je me regardai comme un membre de la republique de Platon Mon 
 
 troisieme enfant fut done mis aux enfants trouv^s ainsi que les premiers, et 
 il fut de meme des deux suivants, car j'en ai eu cinq en tout. Cet arrange- 
 ment me parut si bon, si sense, si legitime, que si je ne m'en vantai pas 
 ouvertement, ce fut uniquement par egard pour la m^re." He expresses a 
 doubt whether these children would have been better off had he handed 
 them over to Mme d'Epinay or Mme de Luxembourg. The fact that he 
 did not propose to bear the burden himself seems to put upon this narrative 
 the stamp of truth. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 J. J. ROUSSEAU ON WOMEN'S EDUCATION. 
 
 In France, three notable writers had preceded Rousseau 
 in the field of women's education, Jacqueline Pascal, Mme 
 de Maintenon and the Abb^ de Fenelon. 
 
 Of the system of the first, all critics nowadays would say 
 that it was inadequate both as a system of instruction and as 
 a method of developing character: it has already been pointed 
 out how far inferior it was to the curriculum and training 
 estabUshed in the Port Royal schools for boys. 
 
 Mme de Maintenon again, even her great admirers must 
 admit, narrowed her intellectual curriculum unduly. Yet 
 being a woman of unusual ability, placed, in circumstances 
 singularly fitted to give insight into human character and 
 motives, she learned at Saint-Cyr, quickly and correctly, much 
 about women and not a little about girls : consequently, though 
 she cut down the plan of instruction to the minimum, she left 
 much sound counsel concerning the upbringing, other than 
 intellectual, of girls of the aristocratic class; an upbringing 
 which, like that devised by Locke for gentlemen, could be 
 adapted in its main important points to the upbringing of 
 girls of every class. 
 
 With the Abbe de Fenelon the horizon widens, though 
 not perhaps much in theory, yet conspicuously in practice. 
 Careful as he was to avoid, nay more to condemn, preciosity, 
 his view of a woman's functions, as the real "head of her 
 house," obliged him logically to permit a fairly wide curri- 
 
J. J. Rousseau on Women's Education 189 
 
 culum, which beginning with so pedestrian a subject as 
 domestic economy, mounted, by necessary steps, to a study 
 of history, law and ethics. 
 
 The question now is — What of Rousseau ? What has he to 
 add to or take away from this slowly developing ideal? Before 
 that question is answered, we must remember that the 17th 
 century had asked more for women than they had obtained, 
 and this had been done by writers, who unlike the three 
 mentioned already, were working mainly in the sphere of 
 political science, thinkers whose views should have interested 
 Rousseau, whose work proceeded on similar lines. 
 
 There was, for instance, Mademoiselle de Gournay, Mon- 
 taigne's adopted daughter, who had written the two treatises 
 entitled : 
 
 (i) L Egalit'e des homines et desfemm.es, 
 
 (ii) Le Grief des Dames. 
 
 In both of these, she lamented the common habit of main- 
 taining the proposition that women lack "the dignity, the 
 ability, the temperament which are essential if they are to be 
 educated wholly like men": and she declared with sarcastic 
 energy that "the only happiness, the sole and sovereign 
 virtues," left for women are "to be ignorant, to be foolish 
 and to serve." It was, as the title of her first book suggests, 
 equality of opportunity for which she pleaded; she had no 
 desire to claim any special or exclusive privilege for her own 
 sex, but she would allow none to men, as men. 
 
 About the same time, the same position was defended with 
 singular force by an able champion, the learned Dutch lady, 
 Anne Marie Schurman, who corresponded with Mademoiselle 
 de Gournay. The claim of this lady to learning could hardly 
 be gainsaid, since she could write in Hebrew, Greek, Latin 
 and French. 
 
 She maintained, what indeed few competent persons dispute 
 now, that intellect is not dependent on sex. She further 
 
I go J. J. Rousseau on Women s Education 
 
 maintained that a woman can make the same intellectual 
 efforts that a man can. So far as purely academic effort is 
 concerned, it is improbable that anyone now will seriously 
 dispute this; though, the point of contention having shifted 
 somewhat in the last quarter of a century, all are by no 
 means agreed that it is desirable that any and every woman 
 should make the same intellectual efforts as any and every 
 man. The very expression of the problem in words indicates 
 the foolishness of attempting a generalisation on the point. 
 Mademoiselle Schurman further maintained that no divine law 
 prohibits a woman from using and cultivating her intellect. 
 However alien to the practice of the age her views may have 
 been. Mademoiselle Schurman was no headlong reformer 
 trying to inaugurate "wild-cat schemes": she had evidently 
 looked at the world as it was, and had perceived the truth of 
 the old adage — non omnia possumus omnes, for she postulates 
 three essential conditions for every woman desiring learning, 
 she must be a woman of ability, of some means, of plenty of 
 leisure. 
 
 Later on in the same century, about 1763, a theologian, 
 Poullain da la Barre, took up and supported the thesis of 
 the equality of the sexes. The inequality usually observed in 
 their education he attributed to two causes ; first, the prejudice 
 of the vulgar who are incessantly making mistakes, and 
 secondly, the desire of the learned to keep their secrets to 
 themselves, in fact to remain a close society. 
 
 He then argues that of all human joys, knowledge is the 
 highest and purest. Who need be surprised then if women 
 covet it? 
 
 He attributes the common faults of women, the old weary 
 list which has been published so often till surely everyone 
 should be sated, their chatter, their unreliableness, their 
 meanness, their cunning and all the rest, to the current faulty 
 conventual methods of training them. 
 
 But he is somewhat original in challenging the popular 
 
J- J. Rousseau on Wometis Education 191 
 
 notion that one cannot be educated without a knowledge of the 
 classics, — "notre langue nous fournissant, en prose et en vers, 
 tout ce que I'on peut souhaiter de plus beau pour la perfection 
 de I'esprit^." 
 
 After suggesting the establishment of a training-college for 
 women teachers, after planning a curriculum, and drawing up a 
 list of volumes for a library, after urging that no science is 
 beyond a woman's grasp, and after proceeding to the extreme 
 step of throwing open all professions to them, not excepting 
 the Church, the Army and the Law, he turned round, six years 
 later, and with an amazing levity produced another treatise, in 
 which, to his own entire satisfaction apparently, he refuted his 
 former treatise. In this, he appeals to Scripture, to common- 
 sense, to custom; he does not disdain to use the familiar 
 weapon of ridicule wherewith to defeat his own thesis. What 
 he really believed it is perhaps now as impossible as it is 
 unimportant to discover. 
 
 Rousseau does not appear to have made use of the efforts 
 of his predecessor : in the brief preface to Book v. of Emile 
 Locke is the only educational writer he mentions. When he 
 turns to his subject, Sophie ou lafemme, as he calls it, the only 
 difference he can discern between man and woman is that of 
 sex, but it does not carry him far — "la difficult^ de les com- 
 parer vient de celle de determiner dans la constitution de I'un 
 et de I'autre ce qui est du sexe, et ce qui n'en est pas." His 
 conclusion is not illuminating : " En ce qu'ils ont de commun 
 ils sont egaux : en ce qu'ils ont de different ils ne sont pas 
 comparables.'' In spite of this feeble position, he contrives, 
 after an immense amount of verbiage, to reach this general 
 proposition, that man must do the general work of the world 
 (whatever that loose phrase may signify), and that woman must 
 be the mother and supply the domestic element. 
 
 ' De Vigaliti des deux Sexes appeared in 1673 ; De V Excellence des 
 homines contre figaliti des Sexes appeared in 1679. 
 
192 J- J- Rousseau on Women s Education 
 
 But the conclusion which immediately concerns the his- 
 torian of education is this : " Des qu'une fois il est demontre 
 que I'homme et la femme ne sont ni ne doivent fetre constitues 
 de meme de caractere ni de temperament, il s'ensuit qu'ils 
 ne doivent pas avoir la meme education " ; and if Rousseau 
 had been content with that, many sober theorists could have 
 agreed with him. But he stumbled on that luckless notion, 
 which led him completely astray so far as women's education 
 is concerned, that " la femme est faite sp&ialement pour plaire 
 k I'homme." It all rests on that unfortunate choice of a verb ; 
 why to please, and to please only ? Why not to help, why not 
 to supply all that man does not, and cannot? Rousseau 
 could not grasp the idea that the relation between man and 
 woman is that of necessary complements, not of pleaser and 
 pleased. He could not realise that in every department of 
 life, not only in the home, but out of it, men and women 
 supplement each other, if they only will: speaking generally, 
 man regards a thing in one light, woman in another ; the truth 
 lies somewhere between them as a rule, and they pick it up 
 together. 
 
 But Rousseau has no doubt as to the truth of his positioh, 
 woman is born to please man, so his aim is to create Sophie so 
 that she shall fulfil that single function in its varying aspects : 
 " apres avoir tachd de former I'homme nature], pour ne pas 
 laisser imparfait notre ouvrage, voyons comment doit se 
 former aussi la femme qui convient a cet homme." 
 
 Probably no one will challenge his aim, to make a woman 
 really a woman, to make a man really a man : it is his inter- 
 pretation of the terms, and the means he selects which arouse 
 the strongest opposition. Having admitted that Nature has 
 given woman "so agreeable, so acute a mind," that it "has 
 wished them to think, judge, love and know, to cultivate their 
 minds as well as their bodies," he surely might have elaborated 
 some less indefinite formula than " women should learn many 
 things, but only those which it is suitable for them to know." 
 
J. J. Rousseau on Women s Education 193 
 
 As from all their functions he chose the fatal one "to 
 please man," for the beginning and end of their lives, so from 
 among their qualities and capacities he falls back on their 
 physical weakness as the one which shall settle their role in 
 life. At the lowest estimate, so he argues, women are de- 
 pendent on men for the satisfaction of their actual necessities. 
 His plea is might taking the place of right in its crudest form ; 
 men have the greater share of strength, therefore if they wish 
 they can starve women. He disregards the inherent improba- 
 bility of men ever wishing to do so, because this particular 
 thesis is so convenient, it works in so excellently with the 
 exalted chosen function- -" la femme est faite specialement 
 pour plaire a I'homme." 
 
 In a world where brute force is to reign triumphant, the 
 stupidest of us can see that a woman's first and perhaps last 
 line of defence would be the capacity to please. Where morality 
 and justice go for nothing, where there is no virtue but force, 
 it becomes roughly true that " il ne suffit pas qu'elles soient 
 estimables, il faut qu'elles soient estimdes : il ne leur suffit pas 
 d'etre belles, il faut qu'elles plaisent : il ne leur suffit pas 
 d'etre sages, il faut qu'elles soient reconnues pour telles." 
 
 Yet revelling in this most .crude and brutal form of male 
 omnipotence, Rousseau appears to forget conveniently that in 
 destroying women men destroy the race ; in rendering them 
 servile, they ruin all joy and spontaneity in life. Yet it is 
 upon this theory of making women pleasing, and only 
 pleasing, to men, that he builds his system of women's edu- 
 cation. 
 
 He passes over the problems of physical education lightly; 
 the girl is allowed physical exercises like a boy, but with a 
 difference : a boy's exercises are designed to produce strength, 
 a girl's charm. Even the modicum of strength which he 
 allots to a woman is not for her own benefit, but for that 
 of her snns. 
 
 When he turns to other matters he lays down the amazing 
 
 H. 13 
 
194 J- J- Rousseau on Women s Education 
 
 proposition that nearly every little girl hates learning to read 
 and write, but loves needlework. This he says is a path 
 smoothed by nature ; let Sophie " cut out," embroider, make 
 lace. One is not concerned to argue that it is not very 
 desirable that all girls should know how to " cut out " and 
 sew ; the point is that to some it will prove an attractive, to 
 others an unattractive task, a fact which escaped Rousseau's 
 notice, if indeed his cursory glance in the direction of women 
 and girls can be called " notice " at all. 
 
 He goes on to argue, with a breadth quite delightful in 
 him, that good sense — in spite of the wags — belongs to both 
 sexes ; hence he deprecates useless occupations, producing no 
 results. He will not have girls idle : idleness and intracta- 
 bility are the most dangerous faults in women. Hence, he says, 
 make them work, and always at useful occupations. The aim 
 which Galiani set before the whole youth of the human race, 
 that all should learn to bear injustice, and to endure ennui, 
 Rousseau keeps for women only. Education he designs to 
 teach them to endure boredom: but this boredom is not to 
 enter their work, and leave their pleasures untouched "as in 
 vulgar educational schemes,'' but it is to be with them always, 
 everywhere, till "habitual constraint" issues at last "in that 
 docility which they will need throughout life." Gentleness is 
 praised as a woman's first, supreme virtue, not for her husband's 
 sake but for her own, kicking against the pricks only deepens the 
 wound; and he rounds off his observations with the remark 
 that the cunning of women compensates them for their lack of 
 physical strength. A perusal of this strange fifth book arouses 
 in a reader's mind the question whether in the whole range of 
 literature there is a writer more brutally callous to women and 
 children than Rousseau. 
 
 Then apropos of nothing in particular, and in contravention 
 of everythmg he has written or is going to write, he elaborates 
 a sudden theory that man + woman becomes a moral being, 
 woman being the eye, man the arm, so "the woman learns 
 
J. J. Rousseau on Women's Education 195 
 
 from the man what to see, the man from the woman what 
 to do." 
 
 No one can be surprised by Rousseau's statement that 
 every woman is to take her religion on authority, and such 
 authority too. As it is not a matter of reason, — Rousseau 
 scornfully interpolates the remark "if one had to wait to 
 discuss such matters methodically, one would risk never 
 speaking to a woman about it" — as it is not a matter of 
 reason, it can be begun early. Unlike l&mile, — the type 
 of every boy, — "Every daughter should have her mother's 
 religion ; every wife her husband's. Should the religion 
 chance to be false, the docility which submits daughter and 
 wife to the natural order wipes out the fault in God's sight." 
 
 After Sophie has been subjected to the system invented by 
 Rousseau, she appears to possess the following merits. She is 
 well-born (this may be a matter merely of wise selection), she 
 has an amiable disposition ; she is not strictly beautiful, but 
 possesses charm. She likes and understands pretty clothes, 
 having acted as her mother's maid. She walks gracefully, she 
 has learnt singing from her father, dancing from her mother, 
 while the neighbouring organist has left his natural vocation to 
 teach her to play upon the harpsichord : she can moreover 
 do beautiful needlework, and understands the details of house- 
 keeping, two graces for which the reader feels profoundly 
 thankful. But she seems to spoil even these latter accomplish- 
 ments, so useful and desirable in themselves, by an unfortunate 
 tendency to finick : all the dinner might fall into the fire 
 rather than she should stain her cuff; and for similar reasons 
 she will not garden. This is passed over lightly as all her 
 mother's fault : from Sophie's infancy that good lady has 
 exaggerated somewhat the virtue of cleanliness. Yet it is 
 from this injudicious mother that Sophie is to take her religion, 
 her soul being apparently a matter of less moment than her cuff 
 or her fingers. 
 
 Naturally, this paragon of women was a glutton, a fault she 
 
 13—2 
 
196 J. J, Rousseau on Women's Education 
 
 has most fortunately overcome; but not till she had been 
 told with great frequency that sweets ruin the teeth, and 
 over-eating the figure, — motives charged with fine morality. 
 
 She is not, one is glad to learn, "absolutely placid": she is 
 not free from caprice. She can even sulk, but leave her alone, 
 says -Rousseau, she will come round. Sophie's religion is 
 described as reasonable and simple, with few dogmas and 
 fewer devotional practices ; yet — although it seems unlikely — 
 she devotes her whole life to serving God by doing good, 
 which apparently in Rousseau's eyes is not a devotional 
 practice. She loves virtue, though one does not see why : 
 she realises the respective rights and responsibiUties of the 
 two sexes (i.e. after the Gospel according to Jean Jacques) ; 
 she (like Rousseau) has little knowledge of the world, but she 
 is accommodating and gracious, and she appears to be able to 
 hold her tongue. After all this, one is hardly surprised to 
 learn that Sophie " a I'esprit agreable sans etre brillant, et solide 
 sans etre profonde." 
 
 Here then, set forth at length, is Rousseau's philosophy of 
 feminine education, and then its finest flower — Sophie. The 
 sta,tement of it suffices for its condemnation. If anything 
 further be needed to prove its gratuitous folly it may be found 
 in the remembrance that Madame d'Epinay was for many years 
 among Rousseau's familiar friends. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 MADAME D'lfePINAY'. 
 
 Madame d'Epinay was born on the nth of March, 1726 j 
 she died, fifty-seven years later, on the 15th of April, 1783. 
 
 Readers of those Memoires, which M. Bourgeois has 
 described as "la confession d'une socidt^ qui se laisserait 
 surprendre au milieu de ses entretiens les plus intimes," will 
 find it hard to realise that so much energy, activity, suffering 
 and wit could have been packed into so few short years. A 
 brilliant member of that brilliant circle which numbered among 
 the rest Diderot, Rousseau, Grimm and Galiani, she came, 
 through the timely counsel of Grimm, ancLafter divagations and 
 hesitations, to rely at last on her own finely poised judgment, 
 which itself issued from a penetration unusually keen, exercising 
 itself in an unceasing tireless analysis of men and things. 
 
 Introduced to Grimm by Rousseau when she was twenty- 
 five, she seems to have found in him at once a kindred spirit, 
 for by the end of the first evening of their acquaintance she has 
 already shewn him " quelques morceaux de ma composition qui 
 m'ont paru lui faire plaisir^" Six years later, in 1757, he has 
 become her chief adviser, and with a modesty which, in such a 
 
 1 Mhnoires de Madame d'Epinay, 2 vols., Biblioth^que-Charpentier. 
 Conversations d'Amilie, 2 vols., Paris (Humblot), 1781. Lettres de I'AbW 
 Galiani, 1 vols., Bibliotheque-Charpentier. 
 
 2 Memoires, Vol. I. p. 403. 
 
198 Madame cT Epinay 
 
 flattering position, is as rare as it is dignified, he implores her to 
 take her destiny into her own hands, to depend on her own 
 judgment preferably to that of any other person : " Oh ! que 
 vous etes heureusement ne'e ! Degrice, ne manquez pas votre 
 vocation: il ne tient qu'a vous d'dtre la plus heureuse et 
 la plus adorable creature qu'il y ait sur la terre, pourvu que 
 vous ne fassiez plus marcher I'opinion des autres avant la votre, 
 et que vous sachiez vous suffire a vous-meme\" Grimm's was 
 not a solitary estimate. Writing in her Journal on Sept. i, 
 1750, of M. de Gauffecourt — a friend introduced to her by 
 Rousseau — she observes : " He has often told me that I am 
 cleverer than people think, or than I think myself. He says I 
 only want more culture and the habit of talking to people who 
 would force me to think." 
 
 One might expect that so gifted a person would also prove 
 successful, yet throughout the course of her life, with its troubles 
 and triumphs, its philosophic interests and educational specula- 
 tions sustained continually in the midst of social distractions, 
 there was, owing to the withering effects upon her life and 
 conduct of her most unhappy union with M. d'6pinay, always 
 a shred of truth, so far as she was concerned, in that piteous 
 exhalation of disillusionment which escaped from her pen in a 
 letter she wrote to M. de Lisieux in 1750, "Le coeur se blase, 
 les ressorts se brisent, et Ton finit, je crois, par n'etre plus 
 sensible a rien^" This prophecy, uttered when she was no 
 more than 24, never came literally true ; but equally for her it 
 was never entirely falsified. 
 
 Here then, the theorist is asked to encounter one who was 
 before everything else practical and human; human in her 
 never broken combination of weakness and strength, in her 
 quick sympathies, in her puzzling complexity. She is not a 
 Schoolmistress-by-the-Gift-of-God, like Madame de Maintenon, 
 nor an Ascetic striving for the souls of little children Uke 
 
 ' Memoires, Vol. 11. p. 251. 
 ^ Ibid. Vol. I. p. 200. 
 
Madame d'^pinay 199 
 
 Jacqueline Pascal, nor an incomparable Conversationalist by 
 pen on all things in the universe of existence like Madame 
 de Sevigne, but a clever, alert woman of the average cultivated 
 world, with all that world's heritage of natural struggles^ 
 jealousies, combinations and intricacies. As from the philo- 
 sophic Vauvenargues in one direction, so in another from 
 Madame d'^pinay, the denizen of everyday polite life, the 
 retired and abstracted pedagogue may find food for his own 
 most wholesome and necessary consumption. Some slight 
 knowledge of her story is perhaps essential to the right appre- 
 ciation of her views on education. She lost her father, 
 M. d'Esclavelles, when she was ten years old : then, after a 
 brief interval, she and her mother went to live with her uncle by 
 marriage, M. de Bellegarde, the husband of her mother's sister. 
 That gentleman had three sons, M. La Live d'Epinay, M. La 
 Live de JuUy, and M. La Live de la Briche. The first and last 
 of these bore territorial surnames, taken from parts of their 
 father's estates. The second is believed to have taken his 
 name of de Jully from an uncle. M. d'jfepinay, the eldest, fell 
 in love, or supposed himself to do so, with his young cousin, 
 Emilie d'Esclavelles. When death ended his mother's opposi- 
 tion to his choice of a portionless bride, they were married. It 
 was perhaps the most disastrous union into which this girl 
 of 20 could have entered. M. d'Epinay's brutal coarseness 
 and incredible levity brought the whole of the two families, 
 in three years, to consent to Madame d'Epinay's desire for 
 a separation of property, though she was not able to obtain the 
 sole right, which she longed for, over her children. It is 
 perhaps just to record that, owing probably to her husband's 
 disturbance of their household peace, she herself became less 
 than a model of rectitude and discretion. The deplorable 
 influence of Mademoiselle d'Ette, whom M. Octave Grdard, 
 with simple directness, calls "une peste," entered Madame 
 d'Epinay's life in the second year after her marriage. 
 Mademoiselle d'Ette heralded that procession of learned men 
 
200 Madame d'Bpinay 
 
 and more or less cultured women who were all drawn by one 
 attraction or another to this young and fascinating woman left 
 in so equivocal a position. M. Dupin de Francueil appeared 
 first : Rousseau, destined to play an important if shifting role, 
 followed on Francueil'sintroduction. Mademoiselle deQuinault, 
 of sinister reputation, brought more risky elements into Maldame 
 d'Epinay's life when she included her in a dinner party at which 
 the Marquis de Saint Lambert and M. Duclos were guests. 
 The conversation at this festivity, transcribed at length in the 
 Mtmoires, dwelt upon the subject which Rousseau had, by his 
 Discours for the Academy of Dijon, just made of universal 
 interest, viz. the perfections of primitive nature. That Madame 
 d'Epinay deserved Grimm's eulogy on her powers of judgment 
 may be gathered from the brief commentary in her diary upon 
 this conversation, in the actual course of which she had played 
 the smallest possible part : "It was late, I was expected at home, 
 and I profited by a moment's silence to slip away, reflecting that 
 when one takes pains to destroy a useful prejudice, one ought to 
 substitute for it some principles which can not only take its 
 place, but which will also impose a surer check than any mere 
 shifting opinion can ; reflecting also that unless one were a 
 maniac one would not attempt to restore humanity to its 
 primitive stated" Like some of the rest of us, she found that 
 first thoughts are often the best, for though Rousseau succeeded 
 for a time in subverting her judgment partially— M. Gr^ard goes 
 so far as to write : " quand Rousseau lui-meme dtait Ik elle ne s'en 
 rapportait qu'a lui. Pendant quatre ou cinq ans il exer9a sur 
 son esprit une autorite souveraine " — yet at last she threw him 
 and his doctrines definitely overboard. It is strange that 
 Grimm should have been introduced into the circle of her 
 friends by Rousseau, for it was he who eventually destroyed 
 Jean Jacques' influence. That Galiani thought very little 
 of Rousseau may be gathered from a remark he made in a 
 
 ^ Mimoires, Vol. I. p. 227. 
 
Madame d'^pinay 201 
 
 letter to the Abbe Raynal, which is unfortunately a trifle too 
 direct for quotation here'. But some of his remarks on JEmik 
 can be quoted. Writing to Madame d'Epinay he says, " avez- 
 vous jamais eu le delire de croire a Rousseau et a son i.mile, et 
 de croire que I'e'ducation, les maximes, les discours puissant 
 rien a I'organisation des tetes? Si vous y croyez, prenez-moi 
 un loup, et faites-en un chien si vous pouvez''." This passage 
 is omitted in Treuttel's edition of the Letters. 
 
 It was in 1751 that Madame d'Epinay and Grimm met 
 first; immediately the profound worth of Diderot, whom, how- 
 ever, she did not actually see for another six years, was urged 
 upon her by him and Rousseau, who both, according to her 
 statement, ranked him in the same plane as Voltaire. The 
 numerous quarrels and jealousies to which the irregularity of 
 her menage exposed her need not be recounted here ; if anyone 
 thinks that all the details of them are essential to an under- 
 standing of her pedagogic theory they will find them set forth 
 at length in the Mkmoires. From an educational standpoint it 
 is necessary to remember only one more of her friends, the 
 Neapolitan priest Galiani, who left Paris in 1769 after a stay 
 there of some ten years. From that date, till the death of 
 Madame d'Epinay in 1783, they kept up an unbroken corre- 
 spondence. 
 
 No doubt the difficulties of the upbringing of first her 
 children and then her grandchildren, turned her- thoughts to 
 educational problems. Amidst all the vexations and dis- 
 tractions of her life, her real interests, her most abiding 
 affections were with her children and theirs. As M. Greard 
 has truly observed : " les questions d'education sont, entre 
 toutes, celles qui lui tiennent le plus au coeur, et c'est par 
 
 ses enfants qu'elle en a connu I'interet et le charme A 
 
 la premiere trahison de M. d'i^pinay, c'est la pensee de son fils 
 qui I'avait sauve d'un parti extreme : et lorsque Francueil la 
 
 1 Lettres de I'Abbe Galiani, Vol. i. p. 403. 
 ^ Ibid. p. 200. 
 
202 Madame cT^pinay 
 
 quitte die ne resiste au desir de se Jeter dans un couvent qu'en 
 songeant au sort de sa fiUe'." 
 
 The most definite of her writings on pedagogic subjects are 
 the Conversations d'^milie, written for her daughter's daughter, 
 Emilie de Belsunce, published in Paris in 1781. Nevertheless, 
 very much of her theory, and something of its occasions 
 and ways (when and how it came to her), may be found in 
 scattered and disjointed fragments throughout her Mimoires; 
 some part of it again may be gleaned from her correspondence 
 with the Abbe Galiani. Though she herself may not have 
 worked her views into a symmetrically coherent whole, 
 something like a definite system can be built up from 
 her writings by a sympathetic student. Les Conversations 
 d'imilie purport to be conversations between a mother 
 and daughter. In the preface to the second edition of her 
 book, Madame d'Epinay observes that it is the work of a 
 mother whose health was so deplorable that the only interest 
 and pleasure left to her in life was the education of her 
 daughter. 
 
 We are over-accustomed to think that our ow^n generation 
 discovered the science of pedagogy, or perhaps created it. It 
 is interesting to find Madame d'ilfepinay, in 1774, writing words 
 which could be paralleled easily in any modern meeting where 
 pedagogues gather together and include in their numbers 
 pessimistic critics : " In the science of education, as in any 
 other, general principles are of little use. Nobody disputes 
 them, but the continual repetition of such carries us on no 
 further, and we do not lose our way any the less in consequence 
 of their inherent vagueness, and their incapacity to indicate 
 a definite path. Indeed, it is not unusual to sec people who 
 incessantly proclaim the same maxims walking along dia- 
 metrically opposed roads I" 
 
 ^ V Education des Femmes par les Femmes, p. 255. 
 
 ^ Preface to the and (Paris) edition of Les Conversations d'&milie. 
 
Madame d'Mpinay 203 
 
 While she is willing to admit this, while she declares the 
 reason of it to lie in the endless variety of human temperaments, 
 she still maintains that honest records of parental experience 
 (a notion generally supposed to be Pestalozzi's special property) 
 must be of value: and she urges further that her own, 
 crystallised in these two volumes, have a special value because, 
 owing to her bad health, she has never been hindered by the 
 calls of society and pleasure, and so she has been able to bestow 
 on her daughter's education an uninterrupted attention which 
 few mothers can divert from the duties and calls of their 
 position. 
 
 This is very fortunate, but a more convincing proof of her 
 fitness to play the part of a teacher is found in an apparently 
 chance remark in this same preface : she is cataloguing the 
 child's charms, and she writes : " c'est I'enfant qui en a fourni 
 tous les materiaux; qui, sans le savoir, a appris h. la mere 
 le secret d'en tirer parti : qui lui a enseigne les routes les plus 
 sfires pour arriver a son coeur et a sa raison." It is this last 
 sentence which enshrines a view of teaching which, even now in 
 the opening years of the twentieth century, is too little diffused 
 among teachers. With our haphazard custom of entering a 
 great profession for any and every possible reason save the 
 only creditable one — that we can teach — with our absence of 
 methods, and worst of all with our neglectful unawareness that 
 we ought to have methods, what proportion of us have so much 
 as thought of "the surest ways of reaching a child's heart, 
 of stimulating its intelligence " ? Most of us are well intentioned, 
 many of us escape blank stupidity, and so it comes to pass that 
 with the average child we succeed fairly, and with the gifted our 
 success may appear even brilliant. But in the " cool hour " of 
 thought, the words will steal on the tired ear " Watchman, what 
 of the night}" — the night, that is, of human incapacity, of 
 stupidity, of dulness, of untowardness, or the night of that form 
 of intellect which may be good enough, but gives so much 
 trouble in a school, because it is not cast in the common 
 
204 Madame d'Mpinay 
 
 mould ? And then, pursuing that Hne of thought, we see that 
 a knowledge of methods would help us. here where we have 
 failed grievously ; and, moreover, would have carried us along 
 more easily, more surely, more completely where perhaps to 
 ourselves and to others we had seemed to succeed. It is just 
 at this moment that we appreciate Madame d'Epinay's con- 
 viction that there are better ways and worse ways, and that the 
 finding of the former depends on the gathering of much 
 experience, upon our elasticity in adapting principles to differ- 
 ing minds, and upon our accurate, careful observation of the 
 whole nature of many children. It should be added that 
 Madame d'Epinay's appeal is oftener to the reason than to the 
 heart, at any rate in theory. 
 
 One more point must be noticed in the catalogue of her 
 qualifications to be a teacher of teachers. She — probably 
 Galiani had taught her here— valued the educational weapon 
 analysis : together they analysed the meaning of words, the 
 value of material things, the characters and doings of their 
 friends. An instance of the first may be found in one of 
 Galiani's letters, dated Naples, 9 novembre 1772. Just before 
 this, he has, so we gather from Madame d'Epinay, written her 
 "une belle et sublime lettre" upon curiosity. But for all its 
 beauty and sublimity she is unconvinced: " Mon abb^, mon 
 chien est curieux, je vous assure, je I'ai bien dtudie, et ce n'est 
 pas d'aujourd'hui." This draws from him the following dis- 
 tinction between sagacity and curiosity: "nous ne nous entendons 
 pas dans la question sur la curiosite des animaux, faute de 
 mots dans la langue pour nous expliquer. On appelle curiositi 
 cette attention que nous pretons a une chose inconnu ou 
 obscure, pour ddcouvrir ce que c'est et savoir a quoi cela 
 est bon. II faudrait appeler cela sagacite. Les animaux I'ont 
 autant que nous, ou meme plus. J 'appelle curiositd ce plaisir 
 que I'homme a d'observer quelque chose, en meme temps qu'il 
 sait parfaitement que cela lui est indifferent et inutile. Le chat 
 cherche ses puces aussi bien que I'homme, mais il n'y a que 
 
Madame d'^pinay 205 
 
 M. de Reaumur qui en observe le battement du cceur. Cette 
 curiosity n'appartient qu'a I'homme. Ainsi les chiens n'iront 
 pas voir pendre un chien a la Greve, etc. Adieu." 
 
 This passage seemed worth quoting as an example of the 
 alertness, the unwearying interest and the wit displayed by 
 these two as they passed in constant review the scenes, events 
 and persons of the world around them. 
 
 At the same time, too much must not be expected of these 
 two volumes. The life of a child, as Madame d'Epinay writes 
 in a letter to her Leipsic publisher, is divided into three 
 stages: "The first finishes at the age of ten; the second 
 at fourteen or fifteen; the third should last till the child's 
 marriage.'' 
 
 Les Conversations d'Emilie relate to the first stage, and 
 to that only partially : " I did not intend to propose a new 
 plan of education, I had not the audacity to throw aside the 
 system which wise parents usually adopt for their daughters. 
 I only wished to write a ' supplementary treatise,' if I may use 
 that adjective, and demonstrate how wasted hours and leisure 
 moments could be employed by a vigilant mother to form her 
 child's mind, and to inspire her with virtuous and sound 
 principles. There is no plan or system in it." 
 
 To some extent this is a true description : moral and 
 intellectual training are blended. If anyone will ask to what 
 school of philosophy Madame d'Epinay belonged, the answer is 
 to that of 1 8th century France. What else could the friend of 
 Diderot and Grimm do? Thus when her infant of five 
 inquires — 
 
 "And men, why are they in the world?" the mother 
 replies, 
 
 "To live there in society." 
 
 " What do they do all the day ? " asks Erailie. 
 
 " They help each other in their needs, in their work, and 
 even in their pleasures," replies her mother. 
 
 " And if one does not help the others, what happens to 
 
2o6 Madame d'^pinay 
 
 him?" asks the precocious child as she winds her vsray into 
 the heart of the matter. Madame d'Epinay is equal to the 
 occasion — "The others do not help him; he does no good; 
 soon he is neither loved, nor esteemed, nor sought out ; soon 
 he will be without resources, and he will end by dying of 
 tedium, want and grief." 
 
 The reader may well ask what child of five could grasp this 
 answer. It is a point worth noting, because instances of this 
 kind recur, and yet Madame d'Epinay inveighs, in a later Con- 
 versation, against parrotted knowledge : " Un perroquet ! c'est 
 un oiseau...qui repbte las mots qu'il a entendus, mais qui ne 
 SEiit ce qu'U dit, parce qu'il ne peut pas comprendre les mots 
 qu'il prononce ; et quand de jeunes personnes repetent k tort et 
 a travers ce qu'elles entendent dire, ou ce qu'elles ont lu, 
 comme cela leur arrive souvent, elles sont comme des perro- 
 quets\" 
 
 That the mother's teaching is often over the child's head is 
 indeed the most obvious criticism which could be made. For 
 example, it is sufficiently surprising when, in the first Conversa- 
 tion, Madame d'Epinay exclaims : " Comment, vous avez cinq 
 ans, et vous n'avez pas encore reflechi a ce que vous etes? 
 Tachez de trouver cela toute seule." It is a large demand, but 
 still Berkeley doubted of the existence of matter apart from 
 mind, at the age of eight; and, here and there, in all times, 
 infants of tender years are found speculating on the problems of 
 life and mind. Were this passage solitary, it might pass : but 
 what mother, who was not writing a treatise on pedagogy, 
 would address a child of five as follows? — "Avant d'agir, 
 on reflechit ; apres avoir agi, on reflechit encore. Ces reflexions 
 forment des principes; et ces principes deviennent avec le 
 temps des regies sacrees et invariables de conduite et de sagesse, 
 qu'aucune passion, qu'aucun interet, qu'aucun pouvoir ne sauroit 
 arracher de notre cceur. Alors une action equivoque ou dou- 
 
 * Conversatiotis d'£milie, vi. 
 
Madame d'^pinay 207 
 
 teuse parait horrible; une action mauvaise impossible. Peu 
 a peu, le caractfere se forme, par I'exercice continuel de sa 
 force, il se fortifie de jour en jour'." 
 
 The case is hardly improved by the observations put into 
 the child's mouth. One feels no desire, except for what one 
 knows otherwise of Emilie, to make the acquaintance of a 
 child who can address her mother thus : " Quand nous faisons 
 notre promenade ensemble... nous parlons, nous causons, nous 
 disons des choses sensees — Et puis, vous me faites aper- 
 cevoir tant de choses auxquelles je ne faisois pas attention ; je 
 vois et j'entends cent fois plus a cote de vous. Cela amuse, 
 cela occupe — Vous souvenez-vous, Maman...rautre jour... 
 dans ce champ de luzerne...de cette perdrix qui rappelle 
 vers le soir ses petits qui ne reviennent plus ? Oh ! cela est 
 touchant. Cette pauvre mere! elle est si forte en peine^!" 
 Or again, " Ma chere Maman, vous avez raison. Cast singulier 
 comme vous dites toujours vrai ! Ce livre m'avait barbouille 
 la tete; je ne savois plus oh j'en etois, ni sur quel pied 
 danser^" 
 
 All this is, to our modern taste, indescribably impossible : 
 but when we add the child of the parental pedagogic treatise to 
 the child of the i8th century, the sum of their qualities is not 
 unlike those exhibited at times in the course of these Conversa- 
 tions. The circumstances are artificial, and the actors resemble 
 them. A more damaging defect in the judgment of some is the 
 almost total absence of religion, and the fact that the sense of 
 duty is nowhere apparent. Though the precepts are often 
 admirably moral, the driving power relied on is that of self- 
 interest. It should be observed, in strict accuracy, that Emilie 
 announces that " en attendant je vais apprendre mon evangile." 
 But treated as the mere stopping of gaps, the Gospel for the day 
 can hardly be regarded as a religious exercise. One or two 
 
 ^ Conversatiotis d'Amilie, v. 
 2 /bid. 3 /i,iii, VI. 
 
2o8 Madame cC^pinay 
 
 other vague references to I'evangile occur, rather fortuitously ; 
 while in the third Conversation " Nature " is credited with 
 producing " una mouche, un haneton, un chien, un arbre, tout 
 cela est son ouvrage." What is meant by Nature is not 
 explained. There is, moreover, in the fourth Conversation, 
 a curious passage on the subject of " pinitences.'' Emilia 
 has played in lesson time, and in an access of sorrow she 
 says : 
 
 "Ja ferai tout de suite la penitence que vous voudrez 
 m'imposer. 
 
 La Mere. " Et moi, je n'aima pas las penitences. 
 Emilie. " Ma bonna dit que c'est la cas. 
 La Mire. " Oui, pour las caracteres indociles, pour les ames 
 
 serviles. £tas-vous de ce nombra ? 
 i,milie. " Je voudrois bien n'en pas Stra. 
 La Mere. " Est-ce par una penitence que Ton repare le temps 
 
 perdu ? 
 imilie. "Non, Maman. 
 La Mire. " Mais puisque vous avaz employe a jouer le temps 
 
 destine a I'etuda na trouvaz-vous pas juste 
 
 d'employar a I'etude le temps ou vous jouez 
 
 ordinairement ? 
 imilie. "Tres juste.'' 
 
 Elsewhere, Madame d'Epinay impresses on ^^milia that 
 nothing can repair and restore lost time; so it would seam 
 that " pinitences " but share the common fate of all things in 
 that respect. In this same Conversation, 6milie reads the 
 edifying history of a naughty little girl, Mademoiselle d'Orville, 
 and observes : " Vous voyez, Maman, qua I'historian da Made- 
 moiselle d'Orville est pour les penitences"; but she only receives 
 the former answer, " et moi, je ne les aime pas.'' So large a 
 question cannot be discussed here : but it may be legitimate to 
 observe that the rational eighteenth century departed some- 
 what from its principles when it made "liking" the test of 
 worth. 
 
Madame d'^pinay 209 
 
 The society in which Madame d'^pinay moved had rejected 
 the stimulus to action which Wordsworth had apostrophized in 
 immortal words : 
 
 "Stern Daughter of the Voice of God! 
 O Duty ! if that name Thou love 
 Who art a light to guide, a rod 
 To checlc the erring and reprove; 
 Thou, virho art victory and law 
 When empty terrors overawe; 
 From vain temptations dost set free; 
 And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity ! 
 
 Stern Law-giver! yet Thou dost. wear 
 
 The Godhead's most benignant grace; 
 
 Nor know we anything so fair 
 
 As is the smile upon Thy face : 
 
 Flowers laugh before Thee on their beds 
 
 And fragrance in Thy footing treads; 
 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; 
 
 And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong." 
 
 But they found, as everyone does, as the framers of County 
 Council schemes of morality and "civics" may discover in 
 time, that the human will needs a motive force to stir and 
 drive it. This Madame d'Epinay provided in self-interest, 
 enlightened no doubt, but by a lively sense of personal help- 
 lessness : " Vous voyez done bien," she says in the first 
 Conversation to this child of five, " vous voyez done bien 
 que quand on est dans le cas d'avoir besoin de tout le monde, 
 il faut etre douce, polie, reconnaissante, corriger son humeur, 
 profiter des le§ons et des avis qu'on regoit, et sentir que quand 
 on vous corrige, c'est une preuve d'inter^t et d'amitie qu'on 
 vous donne, et un moyen qu'on vous procure pour vous faire 
 aimer." We are far away here from Jacqueline Pascal and 
 Fenelon, and at a considerable distance from Madame de 
 Maintenon. A further development of the Science of Conduct 
 occurs in the seventh Conversation. The scene opens with 
 
 H. 14 
 
2IO Madame cP^pinay 
 
 :6milie in disgrace and uncomfortable : to justify herself for 
 omission of duty she argues that she was not in the mood 
 for it. With apposite sense her mother demonstrates that the 
 argument is valueless : if " M. la Premier President " were to 
 announce that he was not in a mood for an audience and 
 it could wait for a week; if the cook were to say she was not 
 in a mood to prepare dinner, "que ce sera pour une autre 
 fois," everyone, including Emilie, could and would see the 
 folly of such proceedings. The general conclusion follows 
 with inevitable force : " Vous voyez que dans les fonctions les 
 plus importantes de la societe, comma dans les plus ordinaires 
 de la vie, personne n'est en droit de se consulter, s'il est 
 en train pour faire son devoir." !6miUe can suggest no remedy: 
 then her mother proposes the force of self-control gradually 
 engendering good habit. The old motive for good conduct 
 reappears — self-interest : others will not think well of us if our 
 conduct be reprehensible ; without the good opinion of others 
 life would be wretched. Quite obviously the last proposition 
 is true of the gregarious i8th century. The first rent in the 
 argument is visible in the statement about lying. It is described 
 as the vilest of acts ; but on the utilitarian basis, so fully laid 
 down here, the reason for the vileness of it does not appear, 
 since lying may be and sometimes is quite successful, and the 
 liar happy. Madame d'Epinay has anticipated the actual 
 formula of Bentham and James Mill with verbal precision : 
 " N'est-il pas vrai," she asks this child, " que I'objet de tous vos 
 desirs est de vous eviter de la peine, et vous procurer du 
 plaisir ? " Nothing could be clearer, it is the greatest happiness 
 theory in perfection. And then towards the end of the dis- 
 cussion something else intervenes. It is Emilie who announces 
 suddenly the existence of something — "Ik au coeur je ne sais 
 quoi qui me fait rire toute seule." And like the sagacious 
 infant she is she inquires the name of this strange "je ne sais 
 quoi." 
 
 "The joy of a good conscience," is the reply. 
 
Madame d'lipinay 
 
 21 I 
 
 Now of course the reader supposes that this new thing, 
 dropped from heaven apparently, will be resolved into ex- 
 perience. But no : " c'est un sentiment interieur qui nous 
 avertit, malgre nous, de notre conduite": '' cela crie au dedans 
 de nous, et nous met fort mal a notre aise, quand nous avons 
 fait une faute meme ignoree": "c'est un guide sur, qui ne 
 nous abandonne pas ; c'est une amie que nous avons toujours 
 avec nous, et qu'on ne sauroit trop menager : ...il faut la prier 
 de nous dire son avis sur nos actions." 
 
 All very excellent from the Intuitionist point of view, but 
 what is the Empiricist about with this unearthly omniscient 
 visitor ? Readers of the Methods of Ethics will remember that 
 Dr Sidgwick's conclusion tended to base the first principle of 
 Utilitarianism upon Intuitionism '. It is interesting to observe 
 that this woman, whom Grimm urged to rely on her own 
 judgment, arrived at a somewhat similar conclusion. It may be 
 observed in passing that a perusal of these Conversations makes 
 one realise the attraction she must have had for the brilliant 
 men in that philosophic circle. There was nothing small and 
 vexatious about her. Her curt dismissal of jealousy, when 
 Emilie asks what it is, "C'est avoir le peur de n'etre pas 
 prefere aux autres," which puts that unamiable vice in its 
 deserved colours; her rare common-sense which led her to 
 teach her child, in the eleventh Conversation, that however 
 much a human being may desire to be worthy of confidence, 
 none can demand it of his fellow-creatures, are examples of 
 those fine qualities of head and heart which combined to render 
 her so charming and so beloved. 
 
 Whatever we may think of her empirical philosophy, one 
 point must be admitted : Madame d'!l6pinay aims steadily at the 
 production of good conduct, good character. We may think 
 the means inefficient, unlikely to achieve the end, but we 
 cannot deny that the end is there. 
 
 ' Methods of Ethics, Preface to Sixth Edition. Cf. also Henry Sidgwick. 
 A Memoir, pp. 467 and 472. 
 
 14 — 2 
 
212 
 
 Madame d'^pinay 
 
 "What is happiness?" ^milie inquires, very early in the 
 proceedings. " It is your state of mind, my child, when you 
 are satisfied with yourself, when you have done what we 
 require." In a, later Conversation (vi.) this doctrine is 
 elaborated : 
 Amilie. "Mais le bonheur, c'est une chose Je voudrois 
 
 le savoir Mais non, ce n'est pas une science. 
 
 La Mire. " Je crois que c'est la premiere de toutes les 
 
 sciences, celle qu'il importe le plus aux hommes 
 
 de connaitre. 
 J^milie. " Est-il bien difficile a apprendre ? 
 La Mere. " Tres difficile et m8me impossible aux mechans ; 
 
 mais trfes aisee pour ceux qui se servent de leur 
 
 raison. 
 
 imilie. " Mais qu'est-ce qui fait que tous ces pauvres gens 
 sont contens ? 
 
 La Mere. " Voyez, dites-moi votre idee. 
 
 Amilie. "Mais, je crois que c'est parce qu'ils ont bien 
 travaille, et parce que Ton est content d'eux. 
 
 La Mire. " Vous avez raison. Eh bien, quel sera done le 
 premier element du bonheur dans tous les ages, 
 et dans toutes les conditions ? 
 
 Emilie. " Ce sera d'avoir rempli son devoir, et d'etre content 
 de soi, n'est-ce pas, Maman ? 
 
 La Mere. " Cela est certain. On peut jouir de tous les 
 avantages exterieurs, de grandes richesses, d'une 
 bonne sante, et cependant n'etre point heureux. 
 Mais sans biens, avec une sante faible, telle que 
 vous m'en voyez, on peut se trouver heureux: 
 car le vrai bonheur depend de nous-memes. 
 
 Emilie. " Oui, il n'y a qu'a d'etre bien sage. 
 
 La Mire. " Et il n'y a pas de bonheur sans sagesse, ou quand 
 on n'a pas rempli ses devoirs, parce qu'alors on 
 n'est content ni de soi ni des autres." 
 
Madame d'J&pinay 213 
 
 The critical and experienced reader may doubt the capacity 
 of so young a child to participate so intelligently in this analysis 
 of the essence of happiness ; may, while admitting that " le vrai 
 bonheur depend de nous-m^mes," doubt the ability of the Will 
 enlightened by Reason only to fulfil those duties, which sound so 
 easy in a text-book, and prove so hard in life : but no one can 
 overlook Madame d'Epinay's desire to inculcate a high morality 
 and to develope intelligence. 
 
 An element in eventual happiness is indicated in the 
 counsel to keep on at one's task, a virtue inculcated by 
 Galiani. Yet, Emilie's life is not to be one of tedium : she 
 is required to obey rules — which, when it is possible, have been 
 explained to her — cheerfully, immediately : she is expected to 
 work in the appointed hours ; but perpetually she is allowed 
 recreation, the most satisfactory part of it being those times 
 which she spends in chatting with her mother. Nevertheless, 
 she is taught, in this first Conversation, that her whole life 
 is planned to enable her, later on, to fill her place in the world. 
 Madame d'Epinay's remarks recall the Abbe Galiani's letter on 
 Education, which was written in 1770: "jusqu'a present," she 
 says to 6milie, "voila pourquoi vous etes au monde. C'est 
 pour boire, manger, dormir, rire, sauter, grandir, vous fortifier, 
 vous instruire : voila ce que vous avez a y faire ; et a mesure 
 que vous grandirez, vos occupations et vos obligations chan- 
 geront. Au lieu d'etre au monde pour sauter, danser, etre au 
 charge aux autres, vous y serez pour travailler, pour etre utile, 
 pour remplir d'autres devoirs et jouir d'autres amusements." 
 If Madame d'Epinay's means seem doubtful, and her motive 
 pedestrian, the goal set before ^^milie is unexceptionable. One 
 hardly knows why children, in this kind of literary performance, 
 are so incredibly fatuous at times, but so it is : and we find 
 Emilie observing — 
 
 " J'entends faire toujours bien. 
 La Mire. " Vous croyez done cela bien aise ? 
 Amilie. " Oui, Maman, il n'y a que vouloir. 
 
214 Madame d'^pinay 
 
 La Mire. " Et comment vous y prendrez vous ? 
 
 imilie. "En faisant toujours ce que ma bonne et vous me 
 
 direz, et ne faisant pas autre chose. 
 La Mire. " Commencez done par vous bien tenir." 
 
 A few more pages disclose the fact that Emilia's first efforts at 
 " being good always " do not issue in a well-written exercise, or 
 a "lady-like" posture suitably maintained. This deplorable 
 state of affairs is her mother's opportunity : she points out the 
 various shortcomings, and the child says — "II faut done que 
 j'attende que je sois grande pour etre raisonnable ? " — and 
 her mother then begins that series of warnings to be alert, 
 persevering, which run like a refrain through the book. "Plus 
 vous ferez d'efforts pour le devenir et plutot vous y par- 
 viendrez'." And again, a little further on, Emilie asks — 
 
 "Apres, Maman, qu'est-ce que je serai?" 
 La Mire. " Apres ? Peu k peu vous grandirez, votre esprit se 
 
 developera, vos connaissances augmenteront, et 
 
 vous deviendrez avec le temps une personne 
 
 raisonnable. 
 imilie. " Oui, parce que j'aurai travaille a corriger mes 
 
 defauts. 
 La Mire. " Et a acquerir une force sur vous-meme, qui est ce 
 
 qu'on appelle veriu, et sans laquelle on ne peut 
 
 se permettre ni bonheur, ni estime, ni succes; 
 
 mais vous ne serez pas parfaite. 
 Emilie. " Comment ! et quand done le serai-je ? 
 La Afire. " C'est un avantage qui n'est point donne a 
 
 I'homme," 
 is the grey conclusion of the matter to the mind of the tSth 
 century. This account of the perpetual struggling ascent of 
 man may be supplemented by an extract from one of Madame 
 d'^lfepinay's letters (dated le 12 Janvier 1773), and addressed to 
 the Abbd Galiani : " L'homme se modifie, sans doute ; mais il 
 
 ' Conversations d'Mmilie, II. 
 
Madame d'Mpinay 215 
 
 reste toujours ce que la nature I'a fait; et, dans le cours de 
 la vie d'un homme, si les circonstances le modifient k la vertu, 
 il sera alternativement vertueux et scelerat. Voila la clef de 
 toutes les inconsequences et de toutes les contradictions qu'on 
 remarque dans I'espece humaine, et dont aucun individu n'est 
 exempt : c'est que le naturel est dans une lutte perpetuelle avec 
 les modifications qu'il revolt des circonstances." Sagacious 
 beyond her years as Emilie was expected to be, she could 
 hardly have grasped this : yet it is well to correct Madame 
 d'Epinay's deliberate pedagogy with the remarks she made 
 when writing at her ease to Galiani about things in general. 
 Madame d'6pinay's ideal here is, we observe, "une personne 
 raisonnable." 
 
 Is it not a grievous fact that in 1907, more than a century 
 and a quarter after she published Les Conversations if Emilie, 
 M. Guyau should have felt constrained to write the following 
 words : '' Quel est I'ideal moral propose a la plupart des 
 enfants dans la famille ? Ne pas etre trop bruyant, ne pas se 
 mettre les doigts dans le nez ni dans la bouche, ne pas se 
 servir a table avec les mains, ne pas mettre, quand il pleut, les 
 pieds dans I'eau, etc. fetre raisonnable ! Pour bien des 
 parents I'enfant raisonnable est une petite marionnette qui ne 
 doit bouger que si on en tire les fils : il doit avoir des mains 
 pour ne toucher a rien, des yeux pour ne pas petiller de desir a 
 tout ce qu'il voit, des petits pieds pour ne pas trotter bruyam- 
 ment sur le plancher, une langue pour se taire\" Have we 
 really had so many years of wisdom offered to us, and have we, 
 the majority of us, really learned so little? 
 
 Along with this extremely sound teaching about the slowness 
 and difficulty of self-improvement, the repeated warning falls on 
 the child's ears, — youth is the time for these efforts : time lost 
 is never restored. Emilie has been told of a girl whose ways 
 were so untoward that at last her parents, in despair, had 
 consigned her to a convent, whereupon the child suggests : 
 
 1 Education et HMditi, Preface, p. vui. 
 
2i6 Madame d'£pinay 
 
 " Mais elle se corrigera peut-etre." Like a dead weight on 
 her childish optimism falls the reply : 
 
 "A un certain age, ma fiUe, on ne se corrige plus. Quand 
 on n'a pas fait ses efforts des I'enfance, cela devient presque 
 impossible ; et une mauvaise impression une fois donn^e, on se 
 corrigeroit ensuite, que les autres n'en sauroient rien\" 
 
 The same stern doctrine reappears in the fourth Conversa- 
 tion : " le temps perdu ne peut se reparer entierement " ; and 
 again in a contrast drawn between two cousins, one virtuous, 
 the other naughty to a degree something above the common : 
 "Pauline... a sur sa cousine la sup^riorite des talens et de la 
 science, parce qu'elle n'a pas comme elle perdu cinq anndes de 
 sa vie qu'on ne retrouve plus, et dont Mademoiselle d'Orville 
 n'a connu le prix que quand il n'en etoit plus temps.'' 
 
 It was said, further back, that chatting with her mother was 
 one of Emilie's most cherished forms of recreation. From the 
 stilted conversations, excellent in intention though they are, the 
 reader might doubt this. Yet, more than once the child repeats 
 it. Madame d'!lfepinay recorded these statements probably with 
 her mind far away from the stiff chilly dialogues she was penning 
 for our instruction. As she wrote of this pleasure which mother 
 and daughter (grandmother and grand-daughter in fact) found 
 in chatting, she was plunged back surely into one of those 
 causeries as they really happened, not as they seemed when 
 twisted into a pedagogic exhibition for the critical age in which 
 she lived. No reader of her Mkmoires and Lettres can doubt 
 her personal charm : everything, everyone testify to her love for 
 her children. Add to that her inimitable spontaneous wit, and 
 who will deny that Emilie de Belsunce did well to count 
 among her happiest hours of recreation those spent in her 
 grandmother's society ? The following passage has nothing to 
 do with education ; but it is chosen from her Letters — from one 
 to Galiani — as a convincing proof of her charm, of her in- 
 exhaustible pungent wit. It must be given in the original, for 
 ' Conversations d'Mmilie, I. 
 
Madame cT^pinay 217 
 
 who could translate without ruining it? — "Non, en verity 
 depuis guignon guignonant comme dit Madame Geoffrin des 
 gens malheureux, il n'y a eu rien de pareil a mon aventure de la 
 semaine derniere : cela est si desastreux, qu'il en faut mourir de 
 rire. Je re§ois, le matin, un avis, que par la faute de mon 
 notaire, par sa negligence enfin, je me trouve forcee a faire un 
 remboursement de dix mille livres, sur lequel je ne comptais 
 pas, et dont je n'ai pas le premier sou ; et cela sous huit jours. 
 Je fais mettre mes chevaux, et je pars pour Paris pour trouver 
 la chose impossible. Dix mille francs a present ! J'arrive : 
 tandis qu'on change de chevaux, je m'avise d'ouvrir une armoire 
 oii j'avois serre toutes mes provisions pendant qu'on travaille 
 a reparer la maison ; les souris s'y etoient refugiees aussi, et 
 s'etoient si bien accommodees desdites provisions, que de vingt 
 pots de confitures et de quatre pains de sucre il n'en reste pas 
 vestige, mais ce qui s'appelle rien. Je jure, cela soulage, et je 
 fais mettre des souricieres : c'est par oil j'aurois d(i commencer : 
 mais enfin, comme il y reste du linge et des livres, il faut bien 
 les garantir. Je remonte en carrosse, et me voilk a courir, 
 repetant, De I'argent ! de I'argent ! Ne voila-t-il pas un 
 cheval qui se deferre, et que me voila restde a perdre une 
 heure a la porte d'un marechal. J'ai beau grincer les dents, 
 tirer la langue a tous les passants, je n'en etois pas plus avancee. 
 Enfin, j'acheve mes courses sans trouver d'argent, mais bien en 
 ayant perdu, car (je crois vous avoir mande cela dej^) en 
 rentrant chez moi je m'apergois que j'ai perdu ma bourse avec 
 cinq louis dedans, et un anneau d'or. J'ai eu beau la chercher 
 partout ofi j'avois ete, elle est perdu sans ressource. Je reviens 
 a la Briche, excedee du froid, de fatigue et d'impatience, et en 
 y arrivant je casse ma montre. Oh ! ma foi, je fus me coucher 
 sans souper, car j'eus peur de m'etrangler en mangeant. Je vous 
 demande, I'abbe, s'il y a rien de fait comme cela." Who could 
 do otherwise than thank heaven for hours passed with the 
 writer of that? 
 
 Rousseau, as has been remarked, carried the theory of the 
 
2i8 Madame d'^pinay 
 
 entire helplessness of childhood to a pitch that may be called 
 brutal. Madame d'^pinay's note on this point is uncertain : it 
 seems as if experience of facts, and the optimistic i8th century 
 view of the perfection of man and the infallibility of reason, 
 struggled together, and the victory lay, in her pages, with 
 neither wholly. Thus in the first Conversation, the feebleness 
 doctrine is uppermost : 
 Emilie. " Mais est-ce qu'un enfant ne peut pas se defendre 
 
 comme un autre? 
 
 La Mire. " Son ignorance et son etourderie ne lui permettent 
 
 ni de prevoir, ni d'eviter le danger, et la faiblesse 
 
 I'empeche de s'en garantir. II a besoin d'avoir 
 
 sans cesse aupres de lui quelqu'un qui le garde, 
 
 qui le protege ; personne n'a m6me interet a se 
 
 donner ce soin qui est tres penible, parce que 
 
 I'enfant n'a rien en lui qui en dedommage ; et ce 
 
 n'est que par sa douceur, par sa docilite, par ses 
 
 egards pour ceux qui lui rendent des services, 
 
 qu'il peut se flatter de les voir continuer ; car s'il 
 
 a de I'humeur, s'il repond avec durete, si ce n'est 
 
 pas son coeur qui lui fait sentir I'obligation qu'il 
 
 a a tous ceux qui font quelque attention a lui, il 
 
 affaiblira bientot la compassion naturelle qu'il 
 
 inspire ; il sera abandonne de tout le monde, et 
 
 dans cette position il sera bien k plaindre." 
 
 With her usual sense in practice, when Emilie declines to 
 
 believe in her own dependence upon other people, Madame 
 
 d'6pinay directs her to undress, and then to try to dress herself 
 
 again without her nurse's help ; a proceeding which satisfies 
 
 the child completely as to her own helplessness. 
 
 If the passage quoted above be compared with the chapter 
 in Emile, it will be seen that though Madame d'Epinay is as 
 firmly convinced, as Rousseau could possibly be, of the inherent 
 feebleness of childhood, she does not make the same disastrous 
 use of her knowledge. She may have been fat from faultless ; 
 
Madame cC^pinay 219 
 
 but with all her mistakes she was intrinsically a woman of 
 sound sense and high intention, human and humane ; a warm- 
 hearted being whom the rationalism of the i8th century 
 was powerless to chill. Much and often as she spoke about 
 Reason, she knew it was not omnipotent. When, in the eighth 
 Conversation, she is explaining to 6milie that a neighbour's 
 child has died through concealing a fall, for which she might 
 have been scolded, and Emilie asks, with something exceeding 
 the frank cruelty of some children, "why, if she was so naughty, 
 is her mother so grieved?" the answer comes quickly, "C'est 
 que la nature est plus forte que la raison ; c'est que la 
 tendresse maternelle est le plus indomptable de tous les senti- 
 ments." 
 
 No doubt it needed a heavy calamity to bring out this 
 truth, in the i8th century, that there is a force more potent than 
 reason, so in the literature of the period the idea comes and 
 goes ; and its recurring absence tends to vitiate in some measure 
 the philosophy of that clear-thinking age. 
 
 It may be added that matriarchal though her theory of the 
 relations of masters and servants may appear to our emancipated 
 population, yet the French Revolution might have been shorn 
 of its horrors if more of the noblesse had shared it with her, and 
 had carried it, as she did, into benevolent practice ; if, as a class, 
 they had spoken of the poor in her words — "cette classe 
 d'hommes si utile et si respectable, a qui nous devons notre 
 subsistance, et toutes les productions de la terre^" 
 
 At the same time the theory of feebleness expounded in the 
 early Conversation is not easy to square with her subsequent 
 remarks. 6milie has climbed a ladder, quite gratuitously as 
 her mother thinks, and as she, having suffered "une ecorchure 
 au genou, une bosse au front et une mouche sur le bout du 
 nez," is inclined to think too. Still, the child inquires reasonably 
 enough, after the information she received in the first Conversa- 
 tion, why her nurse did not warn her not to climb ladders. 
 ' Conversations cf imilie, xi. 
 
2 20 Madame d'£pinay 
 
 Her mother's view now is that no one could have supposed 
 she would do such a thing; that "the lesson of experience 
 is vastly superior to the lessons of nurses " ; and lastly, " qu'il 
 est impossible de garder un enfant qui ne veut pas se garder 
 lui-meme." No wonder poor Emilie, dumbfounded by this 
 new development, remarks, sadly enough, "je sais a present 
 qu'il n'y a que moi qui puisse me garder,'' defending herself 
 against future surprises by the judicious interpolation of " k 
 present." This situation of extreme isolation in action is 
 completed by a recommendation to attain entire self-de- 
 pendence in judgment: "Chacun," Madame d'Epinay observes 
 in the fifth Conversation, "chacun doit etre le juge le plus 
 sdvere de ses propres actions. Si vous ne redoutez pas votre 
 blame plus que celui de tout le monde, j'aime mieux avoir 
 a m'affliger avec vous de vos fautes que de les ignorer." It 
 is difficult to ascertain 6milie's precise age when this desolating 
 ideal of loneliness is presented to her. There are nineteen 
 conversations; she is five when they begin, and ten when 
 they cease. The observations occur in the fifth ; but it is 
 not certain that the problem can be solved by pure mathe- 
 matics. 
 
 It is impossible, in a small space, to follow Madame 
 d'Epinay into every detail of Emilie's education ; enough has 
 perhaps been said to give a very fair notion of it on the moral 
 side. But before attention is turned to the intellectual aspect 
 of it, it should be observed that the method so greatly extolled 
 in Leonard and Gertrude, and reckoned to Pestalozzi for 
 originality, was adopted by this careful French educator. It 
 is surprising as one reads through these two volumes to see 
 the assiduity with which she uses the events of everyday life as 
 educational instruments : e.g. Emilie asks her to whom she 
 is writing a letter. In an instant, Madame d'Epinay seizes on 
 this in order to teach two lessons; first, that curiosity is a form 
 of bad manners, secondly, that letters are addressed not to the 
 world at large, but to an individual, and that when anyone but 
 
Madame d'J$pinay 
 
 221 
 
 the individual addressed reads one without leave, an act basely 
 dishonourable is committed^ 
 
 Again, the child uses exaggerated language to her doll.. 
 Gradually, her mother, recalling a conversation the two had 
 with a poor widow, shews Emilie the force inherent not in 
 extravagant language, but in words which really fit the subject^. 
 It is quite true that the effect of all this on the reader is 
 somewhat tiresome ; but one has to remember that the book, 
 long though it is, is a condensation of a system which was 
 spread over years ; a kind of Liebig's extract of Wisdom which 
 requires, and in life received, much dilution to make it 
 palatable. 
 
 We must remember too that it only deals with the first 
 stage of a child's education; consequently the student who 
 desires to know Madame d'Epinay's views on the intellectual 
 training of girls, or on education in general, must supplement 
 these volumes from her other writings. Thus her comparison 
 of public school and home education will be found in her 
 Memoires'^. 
 
 "Au college... on ne peut se conduire que par un certain 
 nombre de maximes gdndrales, quelquefois vraies, souvent 
 fausses, qu'on applique a tous les infants indifferemment, sans 
 avoir egard ni a leurs inclinations, ni a leur caractere, qu'il est 
 impossible de developper, ni de connoitre en particulier. Les 
 soins qu'on y a pour I'enfance ne sauroient done etre que des 
 soins generaux, dictes si vous voulez par I'honneur et la probite, 
 mais quelque grands qu'ils puissent Stre, toujours inferieurs 
 \ ceux qu'inspirent aux parents I'attachement et I'interet le 
 plus tendre, car il n'est pas possible qu'a la longue les soins 
 de detail ne fatiguent les etrangers; ils font pourtant le 
 bonheur d'une mere; plus ils sont multiplies, plus elle est 
 heureuse. 
 
 " L'inconvenient qui me frappe le plus dans I'dducation 
 
 ^ Conversations d'^milie, xi. ^ Ibid. 
 
 ' Vol. I. p. 202. 
 
2 22 Madame d'Jipinay 
 
 publique, et celui qui entraine le plus de suites f3,cheuses, est 
 I'impossibilite d'acquerir cette connaissance intime du caractfere 
 de chaque enfant, sans laquelle on ne sauroit se promettre 
 aucun succes de son education. II est impossible de secourir 
 celui dont on ne connoit pas les besoins. Ne seroit-6n pas 
 exposer a donner du pain h. celui qui a soif, et a presenter 
 de I'eau a celui qui a faim ? N'arrivera-t-il pas surtout neces- 
 sairement que parce qu'un seul aura soif, je donnerai k boire 
 h. cinquante qui n'en auront pas besoin? II faudra done 
 aupres de chaque enfant un homme exprfes, charge uniquement 
 de I'etude de son caractere et des moyens les plus propres a le 
 former. Quels homraes demanderoit une pareille etude ! et 
 s'ils etoient trouves, alors de I'dducation publique vous en 
 feriez une particuliere, avec la difference qui subsistera toujours 
 entre les soins inspires par les sentiments naturels, et ceux qui 
 sont dictes par le devoir d'un etat, qu'on a embrasse souvent 
 sans inclination. II resulte encore un inconvenient tout aussi 
 important de cette uniformite de conduite indispensable dans 
 une education publique, c'est qu'il est impossible d'avoir egard 
 de bonne heure a I'etat auquel I'enfant est appele. Celui qu'on 
 destine a la robe se trouve eleve comme un militaire, le 
 militaire comme I'ecclesiastique ; et, par cet arrangement aussi 
 bizarre, et aussi directement oppose k la droite raison, aucun 
 d'eux n'est prepare a son etat, et tous se trouvent dans le cas 
 d'en remplir les devoirs avant que de les connoltre." 
 
 Though the reader may not think the case quite so 
 desperate as it is represented to be in the closing lines, yet 
 he will probably admit the substantial truth of these remarks. 
 When speaking of strange tutors she says : " Pourquoi vous 
 reposer sur eux du soin de vos enfants, qui sont ce que vous 
 avez de plus cher, et du bonheur desquels dependront un jour 
 votre repos, votre consolation et toute la douceur de votre 
 vie?" we may wonder what Rousseau thought of it all. Locke, 
 the one Englishman to whose works he refers in Entile, would, 
 however, have been in hearty accordance. 
 
Madame d'^pinay 
 
 22' 
 
 Truly Madame d'Epinay's interest in all things educational 
 was sincere. Writing to the Abb^ Galiani on October 4, 1769, 
 she says : "Oh ! la sotte vie que la mienne ! Mon gendre est Ik 
 qui a mal aux dents. Oh! comme il soufifre! II fait un grimace 
 de possede. Sa femme a la colique, Ragot a des convulsions, 
 
 Rosette aboye a me fendre la tete Je crois que pour me 
 
 dedommager de mes desastres je vais me faire maitresse 
 d'ecole. ...II m'est arrive du fond des Pyrenees une mienne 
 petite-fille de deux ans, qui est une originale petite creature. 
 EUe est noire comme une taupe, elle est d'une gravite 
 espagnole, d'une sauvagerie vraiment huronne, avec cela les 
 plus beaux yeux du monde, et de certaines grices naturelles, 
 un melange de bonte, de serenite dans toute sa personne tres 
 marque et bien singulier pour son age. Je parie qu'elle aura du 
 caractere, oui, je le parie. Et pour qu'elle le conserve il me 
 prend en vie de m'emparer de cette petite creature.... Ce sont 
 de terribles chaines que je me donnerai...allons, voila qui est 
 dit, demain je I'enleve k sa mere, je m'en empare, et nous 
 verrons une fois un enfant qui n'est ni contraint ni gene. Ce 
 sera le premier exemple dans Paris. Imaginez que je suis la 
 seule dans Paris qui ne lui fais pas peur; elle me sourit, I'abbe, 
 voyez vous cela ! Et puis elle s'appelle Emilie. Le charmant 
 nom, et le moyen d'y r^sister ! " 
 
 This child, " noire comme une taupe " (a quality very 
 painful to her later on, as one of the Conversations shew), 
 is of course Emilie de Belsunce. The passage indicates 
 Madame d'Epinay's general educational aim, and her humanity, 
 her intense love for children. Accustomed to disillusionments, 
 harassed with anxieties, the frank confidence of this baby 
 restores her equanimity. The mention of her two dogs, Ragot 
 and Rosette, may excuse a passing reference to her love of 
 animals ; for she could attend to her fellow-creatures and to 
 animals without defrauding either. Indeed, their pets figure 
 often in the letters which passed between her and the little 
 Neapolitan abbd. The latter, writing to Pauline de Belsunce 
 
2 24 Madame cT^pinay 
 
 (Madame d'^pinay's daughter, 6milie's mother), on May n, 
 1776, records their double grief: "Je sens tout le chagrin et 
 I'amertume dans lesquels doit etre plongde maman " {i.e. 
 Madame d'^pinay) "par la mort de son chien" {i.e. Ragot). 
 "Jugez vous a present de la mienne, puisqu'on vient de me 
 tuer mon chat. Ah ! quelle perte que celle des chiens et des 
 chats ! Tous les Vrilli^res du monde ne sont rien en com- 
 paraison. En vdrite, je suis inconsolable depuis trois semaines. 
 II avoit ete mon maitre de langue chatoise, et quoique je ne 
 pusse pas la parler, parce que la prononciation en est plus 
 difficile que f anglais, je I'entendois passablement^" If any- 
 one will argue that these matters are irrelevant to pedagogy, 
 he has perhaps forgotten that the teacher's most essential 
 qualities are sympathy and quick humanity. The i8th century 
 in England invented the phrase " a man of feeling." Madame 
 d'Epinay, in spite of her warm affections, was not a woman 
 of feeling in this sense. In fact, her limitations in the region 
 of the higher imagination were sufficiently marked to be 
 obvious to herself In the thirteenth Conversation, she groups 
 together poets, musicians, sculptors, painters, as children of 
 the same mother — Imagination. (The reader of Galiani's 
 contribution to pedagogy will observe that he thought similarly.) 
 Then, when Emilie asks if she " dislikes fairyland," she replies, 
 "J'aime moins ce champ qu'un autre, parce que je crois qu'il 
 est fort aise de s'y egarer, et de s'y perdre; et si je ne m'oppose 
 pas meme aux folies, j'ai un droit de plus pour ne pas aimer 
 les extravagances. J'aime pour moi, qui ai la vue courte, 
 qu'un champ soit borne par un grand but d'utilite et de morale, 
 et que la fantaisie des hommes s'exerce dans I'imitation de la 
 nature qui lui offre des richesses inepuisables, au lieu de se 
 Jeter a perte de vue dans le chimdrique et le fantastique, dont 
 les tresors sont immenses aussi, mais fastidieux et insipides." 
 So it becomes plain that even this sage and experienced woman 
 cannot accept the goods the gods offer; but must institute 
 
 ' Lettres de I'Abbe Galiani, Vol. II. p. 224. 
 
Madame d'^pinay 225 
 
 those vain, because not mutually exclusive, alternatives, to 
 which the partial human mind turns with extraordinary per- 
 sistence and reiteration. Though we must go to her letters 
 for her most notable pronouncement on the sphere of women's 
 knowledge, advice as to method is given in the sixth Con- 
 versation. It is a condemnation of "parrotted knowledge," 
 of unlimited belief in the entire veracity of printed matter. 
 Emilie, thinking to give her mother pleasure, has committed 
 to memory certain facts about the "four elements." A very 
 little conversation, of the diluted Socratic sort, shows that she 
 has not understood that which she read, and also that the 
 information in the book was incomplete. She is at last forced 
 to say, in answer to a question, "that was not in the book 
 from which I learned." The conversation is long, but the gist 
 of Madame d'Epinay's advice is summed up in the following 
 paragraph : 
 
 "Voila pourquoi je dirige le choix de vos lectures, et ne 
 vous laisse pas lire dans tous les livres indistinctement; et voil^ 
 pourquoi je n'aime pas que vous causiez avec toutes sortes 
 de personnes. Et voila pourquoi, ma chere 6milie, je vous 
 recommande tant de ne jamais vous servir de termes et de 
 mots que vous ne comprenez pas, avant de m'en avoir demand^ 
 r explication, soit que vous les ayez lus, soit que vous les ayez 
 entendu dire." 
 
 Why, one wonders, should Pestalozzi have won so much 
 praise for his observations on this matter? Certainly not 
 because they were made for the first or even for the second 
 time. He had had predecessors, and though he ostentatiously 
 rejected the work of those who went before him, his critics and 
 admirers need not have copied him in that. 
 
 This chapter is already too long perhaps: but Madame 
 d'Epinay's life though not very long was eventful ; her circum- 
 stances, her personality, her theories are interwoven inextricably: 
 it is not easy to tell the story of it all, in a few words. Her 
 aim and her method have, I hope, been presented by this 
 
 H. IS 
 
2 26 Madame (T^pinay 
 
 time. Her views on the scope of women's knowledge are 
 contained in one of her letters. In the Conversations d'J^miHe 
 she refers to a woman's functions, and her account tallies with 
 that of the abbe de Fenelon : 
 
 i,milie. " Maman, est-ce que Papa ne tient pas aussi lieu 
 de pere k ses domestiques ? 
 
 La Mire. Certainement. Qu'est-ce que vous en feroit 
 douter ? 
 
 Amilie. C'est que c'est toujours vous qui ordonnez tout 
 dans la maison. 
 
 La Mire. C'est que lorsqu'une femme par sa prudence et 
 par sa vigilance a merite la con fiance de son mari, il lui 
 abandonne le soin et la conduite de sa maison, parce qu'il 
 a les devoirs de son etat a remplir, et que son temps appartient 
 plus aux affaires publiques qu'k ses propres affaires \" 
 
 The sympathetic as contrasted with the merely captious 
 reader may perceive that Madame d'Epinay still has this 
 division of labour in her thoughts when she writes to the abbe 
 Galiani concerning the limitations and the intellectual re- 
 quirements of woman. Those educators who insist that there 
 is no difference between the sexes, and consequently that there 
 should be none between schemes for their education, will, of 
 course, disagree with her whole theory here ; but they do not 
 yet occupy the whole field. The excuse for presenting this 
 long passage in the original is that Madame d'Epinay was 
 French of the French, and something which we cannot afford 
 to spare is lost in translation : — 
 
 "je suis tres ignorante, voila le fait. Toute mon education 
 s'est tournee vers les talents agreables, et j'en ai perdu I'usage. 
 " II ne me reste que quelques legeres connaissances de ces 
 arts et le sens commun ; chose rare de nos jours, j'en conviens, 
 mais cela ne vaut pourtant pas la peine d'en faire etalage. La 
 reputation d'une femme bel esprit ne me parait qu'un persiflage 
 invente par les hommes, pour se venger de ce qu'elles ont 
 
 ^ Conversations d' B.milie, vill. 
 
Madame d'Bpinay 227 
 
 communement plus d'agrements qu'eux dans I'esprit, d'autant 
 qu'on joint presque toujours k cette epithete I'idee d'une femme 
 savante ; et la femme la plus savante n'a et ne peut avoir que 
 des connaissances tres superficielles. II me prend envie de 
 disserter sur ceci pedantesquement. Voyons, nous rirons 
 apres, ne fut-ce que de ce que j'aurai dit. Oil en suis-je 
 restee ? . . . Ah ! aux connaissances superficielles. Je dis done 
 qu'une femme n'est point a portee, par la raison qu'elle est 
 femme, d'en acquerir d'assez etendues pour etre utile k ses 
 semblables, et il me semble qu'il n'y a que de celles-la qu'on 
 puisse raisonnablement tirer vanite. Pour pouvoir faire un 
 usage utile de ses connaissances, en quelque genre que ce soit, 
 il faut pouvoir joindre la pratique k la theorie, sans quoi on n'a 
 que des notions tres imparfaites. 
 
 " Que de choses dont il ne leur est pas permis d'approcher! 
 Tout ce qui tient a la science de I'administration, de la 
 politique, du commerce, leur est etranger et leur est interdif; 
 elles ne peuvent ni ne doivent s'en meler, et voila presque les 
 seules grandes causes par lesquelles les hommes instruits ou 
 savants peuvent vraiment etre utiles a leurs semblables, a 
 I'Etat, a leur patrie." (Madame d'^pinay's contention is com- 
 plex ; she argues first that the reason of woman's incapacity 
 is that she is a woman ; but secondly that being a woman she 
 is shut out from the careers in which alone men can serve their 
 fellows most. Whether she thought the second necessarily 
 consequent on the first, she does not say : and on that the 
 argument should turn.) " II leur reste done les belles-lettres, 
 la philosophie, et les arts. Dans les belles-lettres leurs occu- 
 pations, leurs devoirs, leur faiblesse leur interdisent encore 
 I'etude profonde et suivie des langues anciennes, comme le 
 grec et le latin." (Madame d'^^pinay is writing for the majority 
 of women ; probably her remark is as true of the majority of 
 men.) " C'est done la litterature frangaise, anglaise, italienne, 
 qui sera leur partage. 
 
 " Dans la philosophie, etant privees de la lecture des anciens, 
 ou ne les connaissant que par des traductions presque tou- 
 
 15—2 
 
2 28 Madame d'^pinay 
 
 jours faibles ou infideles, leurs lumieres seront courtes; et 
 lorsqu'elles voudront raisonner et speculer, elles seront arretees 
 a chaque pas par leur ignorance. Je ne parle ici ni de la 
 metaphysique, ni de la geometric. La science de la meta- 
 physique appartient a tout le monde, est applicable a tout, 
 et n'est presque utile a rien. J'en dirois presque autant de 
 la geometrie. Voyons done si elles s'empareront de I'empire 
 des arts, et jusqu'k quel point elles pourront s'y livrer. Les 
 arts mecaniques ne peuvent gtre de leur ressort. Dans les 
 arts agreables je les vois encore forcees de renoncer k la 
 sculpture, meme a la peinture. L'impossibilite de voyager et 
 de contempler les chefs-d'ceuvre des ecoles etrangeres, la 
 decence qui leur interdit I'etude de la nature, tout dans nos 
 mceurs s'oppose a leurs progrfes. Je crois qu'il est inutile de 
 parler d'architecture. Les voila done reduites k la musique, 
 a la danse et aux vers innocents : chetive ressource, et qui n'a 
 qu'un temps limite." 
 
 (Possibly were Madame d'Epinay writing now she would 
 qualify these remarks on women's artistic achievements. But 
 the world still waits for a woman painter, musician, poet or 
 sculptor of the first rank.) 
 
 " Concluons done de tout cela qu'une femme a grand tort, 
 et n'acquiert que de ridicule lorsqu'elle s'affiche pour savante 
 ou pour bel esprit, et qu'elle croit pouvoir en soutenir la 
 reputation; mais elle a grande raison neanmoins d'acquerir 
 le plus de connaissances qu'il lui est possible. Elle a grande 
 raison, les devoirs de mere, de fiUe, d'epouse une fois remphs, 
 de se livrer a I'etude et au travail, parce que c'est un moyen 
 sAr de se suffire a soi-mgme, d'etre libre et independante, de 
 se consoler des injustices du sort et des hommes, et qu'on 
 n'est jamais plus cherie, plus consideree d'eux que lorsqu'on 
 n'en a pas besoin. Quoi qu'il en soit, une femme qui, avec 
 de I'esprit, du caractere, n'aurait meme qu'une legere teinture 
 des choses qu'elle doit renoncer k approfondir, seroit encore 
 un objet tres rare, trbs aimable, tres consid6re, pourvu qu'elle 
 n'y pretendit pas." (The reader may well inquire if "know- 
 
Madame d" Epinay 229 
 
 ledge of the ancients" is so essential to philosophy.) "Bonjour, 
 mon abbe ; la suite a I'ordinaire prochain^." 
 
 But alas ! the next letter does not continue the subject. 
 Instead, it recounts her "disasters," — "L'abbe Terray m'a ruinee 
 par ses operations. Je n'ai ni credit, ni protections." That 
 was written in 1771. All kinds of matters, ill-health, business, 
 misfortunes conspired to hinder her. Years after, in 1776, she 
 writes, " je me remets, non a travailler, mais a penser ; et si ce 
 bon etat dure, je ne desespfere pas de pouvoir continuer mes 
 Dialogues sur riducation"^." Those therefore who criticise her 
 educational theory should remember that it was incomplete. 
 Seven more years passed by, and she was struck down by the 
 last of a long series of illnesses. Then, her faithful Galiani 
 wrote (20 fevrier 1783) to Madame du Boccage : "Madame 
 d'Epinay ne m'ecrit plus ; elle est malade, et c'est au milieu de 
 ses souffrances qu'elle travaille, et qu'elle regoit une palme 
 academiquel Je ne suis pas etonne du prix, mais de I'ouvrage, 
 que je connaissais, et qui, a mon avis, eut remporte le prix 
 dans toutes les academies du monde ; c'est une veritable pro- 
 duction de coeur." 
 
 Nearly sixteen weeks later, he wrote, also to Madame du 
 Boccage, these desolating words : " Madame d'Epinay n'est 
 plus ! j'ai done aussi cesse d'etre ! . . . qui mieux que vous 
 soulagerait ma douleur, si elle etait susceptible de soulagement ? 
 Mais il n'y en a plus pour moi ; j'ai vecu, j'ai donne de sages 
 conseils ; j'ai servi I'Etat de mon maitre, j'ai tenu lieu de pfere 
 a une famille nombreuse, j'ai ecrit pour le bonheur des mes 
 semblables; et dans cet age, oil I'amitie devient plus necessaire; 
 j'ai perdu tous mes amis ! j'ai tout perdu ! on ne survit point 
 i ses amis." 
 
 The abbe Galiani was not, it must be admitted, a model 
 priest: but, incontestably, he was — that perhaps still rarer being 
 — an incomparably understanding, wise and faithful friend. 
 
 ' Lettres de I'Abbe Galiani, Vol. I. pp. 20^ — 205. ^ Ibid. Vol. II. p. 238. 
 ' " Le prix d'utilite" awarded by the Academy for Les Conversatiims 
 d'£,milie. 
 
ADDENDUM. 
 
 THE ABBE GALIANI. 
 
 Writing upon the educational views of Rabelais, Sainte- 
 Beuve remarked : " A wiser eighteenth century philosopher 
 than Jean-Jacques — Galiani — lays down these as the two prime 
 essentials of education, to teach children to bear injustice, 
 to teach them to bear ennui." 
 
 To the general reader, nowadays, the name may mean 
 nothing, unless his " general reading " chance to have carried 
 him into that brilliant circle of i8th century French thinkers 
 and talkers of which Mme d'Epinay was not the least brilliant. 
 To frequenters of that society, she and the gay Neapolitan 
 Abbe have become inseparable in thought. The Abbe Ferdinand 
 Galiani was born at Chieti, on the eastern coast of Italy in 
 1728 : he died in 1787. In 1750 his most celebrated economic 
 treatise, Traitk sur la monnaie, appeared : nine years later the 
 king of Naples sent him as Secretary to the Neapolitan Embassy 
 in Paris. Galiani brought with him a reputation calculated to 
 win him an entrance into the society where Diderot, Turgot, 
 Voltaire, Grimm and Rousseau were conspicuous figures ; and 
 his natural gifts, his knowledge, his wit, his capacity for friend- 
 ship soon established his welcome. Though his Traite sur la 
 monnaie attracted considerable attention, he was remembered 
 longer perhaps, if he can really be said to have been remem- 
 bered at all, by his Dialogues on the Trade in Grain — Dialogues 
 sur le commerce des bids. No less searching a critic than Diderot 
 ranked these essays, on account of their dialectical polish and 
 literary charm, with Pascal's Lettres Provinciaks. 
 
The Abbd Galiani 231 
 
 Readers of Mr John Morley's studies of i8th century 
 Frenchmen and French life will remember that he referred to 
 Galiani as "the antiquary, the scholar, the politician, the in- 
 comparable mimic, the shrewdest, wittiest, and gayest of men 
 after Voltaire'." A suggestive description, by the side of which 
 Sainte-Beuve's estimate sounds strangely. 
 
 It was only by accident, if there be such happenings as 
 accidents, that Galiani wrote on pedagogy. Eleven of his 
 books were printed and published; twenty-five remained in 
 manuscript, no one of the thirty-six bears an educational title. 
 He who desires to know Galiani's views on education must 
 search his Letters, of which two volumes have been published ''- 
 The words, quoted by Sainte-Beuve, occur in one of the longer 
 of those many letters which he wrote to Madame d'Epinay. 
 He only served his royal master for a brief ten years in Paris ; 
 much against the grain, he obeyed the summons for his recall. 
 To Madame d'Epinay, whom he addresses so often as "ma 
 belle dame'*," of whom, at length, he writes to Madame du 
 Boccage — " Madame d'Epinay n'est plus ! J'ai done aussi 
 cesse d'etre," — to this incomparable friend he pours out his 
 misery, compounded of exile from Paris, and of separation 
 from her and Diderot. In a letter from Genoa, dated July 
 1769, he writes, "Je suis toujours inconsolable d'avoir quittd 
 Paris, et encore plus inconsolable de n'avoir re9u aucune nou- 
 velle ni de vous, ni du paresseux philo'sophe" {i.e. Diderot) 
 
 "II parait que tout me pousse a m'eloigner de tout ce que 
 
 j'aime dans le monde. L'heroi'sme sera done bien plus grand 
 et plus memorable, a vaincre les elements, la nature, les dieux 
 conspires et retourner a Paris : oui, Paris est ma patrie : on 
 aura beau m'en exiler, j'y retomberai." 
 
 1 Diderot by John Morley, Vol. n. p. 254. 
 
 '^ Lettres de I'Abbe Galiani a Madame d'Epinay etc., 1 vols., Paris, 
 1903, Biblioth^que-Charpentier. 
 
 ' On one occasion Galiani writes, ' ' ma belle dame (car, quoique vous 
 soyez tres faible et fort maigrie, vous etes toujours ma belle dame)." 
 
 Naples, 20 Janvier, 1776. 
 
232 The Abbd Galiani 
 
 Yet, as year follows year, the letters still come, all bearing 
 the date from Naples, where the King kept him serving the 
 State in one high administrative capacity or another. In 1770 
 the Abbe Coyer had published a pamphlet bearing the title 
 Plan d'education publique. Madame d'^^pinay demanded 
 Galiani's opinion of it, at the same time offering her own. 
 He dismissed it curtly, observing " His plan of education is 
 certainly less valuable than your criticism on it.'' He hasards 
 the opinion that she only spent time in criticising so worthless 
 a plan for the sake of inciting him (Galiani) to propound some 
 theory in its place. But he declares that he needs no stimulus ; 
 " Mon Traite d'dducation est tout fait." 
 
 To the reader's surprise, it is soon evident that the said 
 discourse only occupies a couple of pages ; was a shorter 
 pedagogic treatise ever penned? 
 
 As it runs directly counter to its far more widely known 
 contemporary Amile, and as it is buried away in these almost 
 forgotten Epistles, it may not be amiss to translate the educa- 
 tional part of this friendly communication to Madame d'Epinay : 
 " My treatise on Education is finished already ; 1 prove 
 that it is the same thing for man and for beast; it can be 
 reduced to two principles, to learn to put up with injustice, to 
 learn to endure ennui. What does one do when one breaks in 
 a horse ? Left to itself, the horse ambles, trots, gallops, walks, 
 but he does it when he wishes, as he pleases : we teach him to 
 move thus or thus, contrary to his own desire, against his own 
 instinct — there is the injustice : we make him keep on at it for 
 a couple of hours — there is the ennui. It is just the same 
 thing when we make a child learn Latin, or Greek, or French : 
 the intrinsic utility of it is not the main point ; the aim is that 
 he should habituate himself to obey another person's will (and 
 so bore himself) ; that he should be beaten by a creature born 
 his equal (and so learn endurance). When he has learned all 
 that, he can stand on his own feet, he is a social being, he can 
 go into society, he respects magistrates, ministers, rulers, without 
 
The Abbd Galiani 233 
 
 making any fuss about it. He fulfils the duties of his station 
 in life, he is in his office, or in the court of justice, or in the 
 guard-house, or in the waiting-room at Versailles ; yawns, waits 
 there, and earns his livelihood. If he cannot do any of these 
 things, he is a useless member of society. Consequently, edu- 
 cation is nothing whatever but the pruning of natural gifts until 
 they are fit for the fulfilment of social duties. The business of 
 education is to cut and trim the talents : if it does not do that, 
 you get the poet, the improvisatore, the gallant, the painter, the 
 wit, the eccentric ; who is amusing, no doubt, but who starves, 
 since he fits no niche in the social order. England, the least 
 educated nation in the world, is, as a natural consequence, the 
 greatest, the most puzzling, and will very soon be the most 
 misera.ble of them all. The rules of education then will be 
 very simple and very brief. A Republic needs less education 
 than a Monarchy : under Absolutism children should be kept 
 in a harem even more than slaves and women. Monastic des- 
 potism is a result of the cruel severities of the novitiate and 
 that is the method of modern artificial theocracy. Ancient 
 primitive theocracy was born in the terrors of the storm and 
 the earthquake, it made and found God everywhere. Modern 
 theocracy aims at purifying men by asceticism and fasting: 
 when once they are worked up to the pitch of suffering and 
 utter weariness, the Pope, the Abbe, the Confessor, the Super- 
 intendent of the novices is a tyrant, a god. He is everything, 
 he can do what he will with creatures so mastered. 
 
 "Public education leads to democracy, private to absolutism. 
 There are no Colleges at Constantinople, in Spain or Portugal. 
 The few there were in those countries were controlled by 
 Tesaits, with a cruelty which altered their character entirely. 
 
 '' As a matter of fact, the rule is of universal application : all 
 pleasant methods of teaching children necessary knowledge are 
 false and ridiculous ; it is not a question of learning geography 
 or geometry : it is a question of learning to work, of learning 
 the weariness of concentrating one's attention on the matter in 
 
234 The Abbd Galiani 
 
 hand, and so forth. A child may know all the chief towns in 
 the universe without being able to fix his attention on, or get 
 to the bottom of, his own balance sheet of income and out- 
 goings : and our fine geographer may be robbed right and left 
 by his valet, and go bankrupt with all his knowledge of the 
 capital cities. Draw out, develop these ideas, and then you 
 will have a book the precise opposite of £mile, and worth very 
 much more. But you have forbidden me ever to be the Mother 
 of a family, and here I have wasted an hour chattering about 
 education. Let us talk of something else^." 
 
 And this is the witty Abbe's treatise on pedagogy. 
 
 He was joking, he was laughing in his sleeve, he was ex- 
 aggerating, the earnest serious reader will say; forgetting, 
 perhaps, that many a true word is spoken in jest, careless too 
 of the late Bishop Creighton's dictum, "the two chief means of 
 teaching are exaggeration and paradox," — dubious wisdom in 
 the case of children no doubt, but sound enough for adults ; 
 and it was for adults that Galiani wrote. It is easy no doubt 
 to traverse his sweeping generalization, to resent his bizarre 
 views : but it is not so easy to get rid of his sound sense, his 
 accurate observation of men and things as they are. It may 
 be admitted at once that Galiani was no model ecclesiastic : 
 he was a man of the world, and very worldly on that estimate. 
 But he seemed to see that amiable visionaries, eccentrics, and 
 all that ilk do not, after all, achieve much : that the work of the 
 world must be done, and that we ordinary men and women 
 must be taught to do it. In some future Utopia ends may 
 be accomplished without means, and human beings may exist 
 without visible materials for their support ; but so ethereal a 
 condition would have seemed to Galiani remote enough to be 
 dismissed from the arena of practical politics. Trained in the 
 world of actual affairs, the friend of men and women of affairs, 
 he perceived that much of the work of the world is drudgery, 
 and that we mortals have to learn to get the better of our 
 1 Lettres de I'Abbe Galiani, Vol. I. pp. 1 18 et seq. 
 
The Abbd Galiani 235 
 
 natural indolence, love of pleasure, and shrinking from dulness. 
 He did not worry his head about primitive man, who might or 
 might not have been as irresponsibly charming as Rousseau 
 said; nor did he spend time on some airy future which was 
 even more remote from everyday boredom than his beloved, 
 long-desired Paris; but he looked out on a world which in its 
 essence was difficult, whose exigencies and requirements were 
 apt to be tiresome and even dangerous ; he saw in it men and 
 women who could, if they would, conquer by serving, who 
 could subdue the world, if they would subdue themselves first. 
 He dressed it all up in no attractive apparel of religious creed, 
 or mystic philosophy : he set it forth as a commonplace 
 necessity in a utilitarian world. Suppose that, on the lowest 
 estimate, we admit that Galiani's theory aims at fitting a human 
 being to fill his niche in the world, at just that and nothing 
 more, is it so little to accomplish? Surely his pupil would 
 succeed in "earning his livelihood," in selecting his own wife, 
 and in living with her without a tutor to tell him what to do 
 with her at every turn. 
 
 It is perfectly true that Galiani saw no visions and dreamed 
 no dreams. But in an age like ours, which is tending fast 
 towards the deification of material ease and pleasure at any 
 price, can we afford to depreciate that hardy ideal of everyday 
 duty enshrined in his description of education's real end : " it 
 is a question of learning to work, of learning the weariness of 
 concentrating one's attention on the matter in hand " ? 
 
 Everywhere, to-day, in the Kindergarten, in the School, in 
 the popular lecture, ease is the aim and pleasantness the path ; 
 everywhere the teacher is invited to exchange the rdle of 
 mountain-guide for that of garden-roller. Yet, are Galiani's 
 words less true to-day than they were on Aug. 4, 1770, "the 
 rule is of universal application, all pleasant methods of teaching 
 children necessary knowledge are false and ridiculous"? 
 
 The theory of the primrose path rests on the fiction, still 
 current, but which Galiani had cast away, viz. that instruction 
 
236 The Abbd Galiani 
 
 is education, that the teacher need but play jug to the child's 
 mug. Galiani knew better; "when we make a child learn Latin, 
 or Greek, or French, the intrinsic utility of it is not the main 
 point" : or again, "it is not a question of learning geography 
 or geometry." Like ^neas Sylvius, Galiani's eyes are fixed 
 on the training of human capacity, in which "subjects of 
 instruction" play the part of tools, at least to some extent. 
 He is recalling the Greek, the Renaissance Ideals : " Lay well 
 to heart," wrote ^neas Sylvius to the youthful king of 
 Bohemia, "our one sure possession is character." 
 
 You are not, so says the Abbe, teaching Latin and geometry 
 and all the rest of it just for its own sake : above and beyond 
 that knowledge (abundantly useful as that is in its own time 
 and place), above and beyond that knowledge gained, there are 
 self-discipline, self-conquest, patience, endurance, the hardest 
 lessons of all to be learned, as everyone knows who has tried. 
 
 Among those who labour for the world's amelioration, there 
 are those who think to achieve the improvement of the mass 
 by working at the mass, and those who prefer to deal with 
 individuals. The antithesis did not present itself to Galiani 
 thus sharply defined : but his method is individual : it is, in its 
 essence, a training of the will : and will is recognised as the 
 core of personality, of individuality. 
 
 But the individualising of effort does not end with a total 
 exactly equal to the sum of the scattered bits. Goodness and 
 badness are both infectious. If not, what do we mean by 
 lowering or raising the tone of a neighbourhood, of a school ? 
 Something more than raising each individual. There has been 
 a " profit " on the efforts, which, over and above the advantage 
 to the individuals, has gone into a common fund of improve- 
 ment. It is just the return we might legitimately expect 
 perhaps when handling human beings with their spiritual signi- 
 ficance, and not mere material things. 
 
 Whether Galiani would or would not have agreed to that, 
 there is, under his cynicism, under his most un-abbe-like 
 
The Abbs Galiani 237 
 
 strictures on ecclesiastical systems, a sober zeal in the interests 
 of character. Like Montaigne he would fain " produce a man"; 
 like him, he could say, "Or, nous qui cherchons icy, au 
 rebours, de former, non un grammairien ou Ipgicien, mais un 
 gentilhomme, laissons les abuser de leur loisir, nous avons 
 affaire ailleurs." 
 
 If some of us are unable to believe that Galiani meant 
 exactly what he said when he wrote that a child has " taken his 
 ply by the time he is two,'' we may agree with his contention 
 that mere book-knowledge is of less value than contact with 
 the realities of life. Writing to the Vicomtesse de Belsunce, 
 the daughter of " sa belle dame," he says that the world is our 
 school-room, and events our tutors : " Do you know the tutor 
 who educates us ? the age, the nation into the midst of which 
 each one of us is born. Thus a man who comes into the world 
 to-day at Constantinople will grow up a Turk : at Rome, a 
 Roman Catholic Christian : at Paris, a wit, an economic, 
 anglophile, rural person : in London, a confounded colonist, 
 and so on. The whole of our surroundings educates us, the 
 actual tutor is held infinitely cheap, is despised by sage 
 observers." 
 
 A man who can live like a man in the actual arena of real 
 men and things, that is his aim. With all his worldliness and 
 worse, was his ideal so poor? "To learn to put up with in- 
 justice, to learn to endure ennm" in a world like ours so full 
 of hardness, so shadowed by disillusionments, what are those 
 great lessons but instruments to mould characters, which shall 
 be fit in time to tread difficulty under foot, to forget injuries, 
 to bear disappointments, to win victories in, to raise the aims of 
 
 "a world which (by your leave) 
 Is Rome, or London, not Fool's Paradise " ? 
 
INDEX 
 
 ^neas Sylvius 5, 10, 19, 236 
 Alexander VI 7 
 Analysis, value of 23 
 Arsenius 61 
 Athalie 105 
 
 ^Benedict, S. 83 
 Boetie, Etienne de 23 
 Book-knowledge, Vauvenargues on 
 153 
 
 Calvin 56 
 
 -Cavilling 102 
 
 Character 40, 236 
 
 Colet, Dean 9, 10, 11, 19, 55 
 
 Creighton, Dr 7, 8, 34, 234 
 
 Dancaster 11 
 
 d'fipinay, Madame, animals, her 
 love of 223 
 
 conscience, on 2H 
 
 Conversations iT Kmilie, her 202 
 
 domestic life, her 199 
 
 education, her love for 201 
 
 education, public u. private 221 
 
 fairy-tales, on 224 
 
 happiness, on 2r2 
 
 maternal love, on 219 
 
 natural gifts, her 198 
 
 self-interest, on 209 
 
 social duty, on 205 
 
 use of daily events 220 
 
 wit, her 217 
 Dramatic representations 104 
 
 Education, cheap 41 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen 123 
 
 Erasmus 2, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, 30, 
 
 123 
 Esther 123 
 Eugenius IV 4 
 
 Feeling, Vauvenargues on 143 
 
 Feltre, Vittorino da 4, 5 
 
 Fenelon, I'Abbe He, duties of women, 
 on 126, 129 
 education, on private 128 
 faults of women, on 121, 123 
 following nature, on 167 
 idleness, on 116 
 influence of women, on 125 
 mistakes in girls' education, on 
 
 120 
 quotes S. Augustine irp 
 reason, on 119 
 retained the rod 115 
 training children, on 113 
 treatise on girls' education, his 
 III 
 
 "Five Steps," the, 155 
 
 Fortitude, Locke on 133 
 
 Galiani, I'Abbe, curiosity, on 204 
 education, on 232 
 educational aims, his 235, 237 
 " real teacher," on the 237 
 
 Gaston de Latour 38 
 
 Gonzaga, Gian Francesco 4, 10 
 
 Gournay, Mademoiselle de 189 
 
 Greeks, their educational task 2 
 
 Grocyn 11 
 
 Grostete 135 
 
Index 
 
 239 
 
 Guyot, on reading and writing 65 
 
 Hegius, Alexander 9 
 High schools (modern) 32 
 History, use of 39 
 Home Geography, Rousseau on 
 181 
 
 Idiosyncrasy 43 
 Inge, Dr 185 
 
 Jeremiah 149 
 Jerome, S. 74, 81 
 
 Lancelot, Claude 59, 60, 61, 62, 
 
 63, 64. 65 
 Law, William 156 
 Levasseur, TherJse 160 
 Linacre 11 
 
 Locke, John 18, 28, 133, 222 
 Lupset, Thomas 1 1 
 
 MacDonald, Mrs 183 
 Maintenon, Madame de, birth and 
 girlhood, her 93, 94 
 
 born teacher, a 98 
 
 characteristics of her method 99 
 
 curriculum, her 108 
 
 first school, her 96 
 
 reverence, on 106 
 Malet, Lucas 121 
 Malingering, Jacqueline Pascal on 88 
 Maury, M. le Professeur 157, 1=8, 
 
 159. 185 
 Medici, Cosimo dei 4 
 
 Giovanni dei 7 
 
 Lorenzo dei 4, 10 
 Mill, John Stuart 178 
 Milton 8 
 Montaigne, Michel de, bent, on 39 
 
 birth, his 20, 21 
 
 education, his 22 
 
 habit, on 49 
 
 history, his love of 25, 39 
 
 knowledge, on personal 36 
 
 library, his 24 
 
 lying, on 46 
 
 memory-work, on 35 
 
 pedants and peasants, comparison 
 of 31 
 
 Montaigne, Michel de 
 
 private judgment, on 42 
 
 punishment, on 45 
 
 servants, on 44 
 
 tower, his 23 
 
 women, on 43 
 Morato, Pellegrino 5 
 More, Thomas 9, lo, 11, 19 
 Morley, Mr John 145, 146, 231 
 
 Naples, Galiani at 231 
 Nationality, idea of in Europe 52 
 Nicholas V 4 
 Nicole, education of a prince 67 
 
 " Parrotted knowledge" 206, 225 
 Pascal, Blaise, on Montaigne 48 
 Pater, Walter, on Montaigne 38 
 Paul, S. 150 
 Penitences, Madame d'fipinay on 
 
 208 
 Petrarch 3 
 Port Royal, curriculum at 75 
 
 foundation of 58 
 PouUain de la Barre 190 
 Principles, Vauvenargues on the 
 
 value of 147 
 Punishment, Montaigne on 45 
 
 „ Jacqueline Pascal on 80 
 
 Pusey, Dr E. B. 116 
 
 "Quality, lady of" 122, 129 
 Quintilian 28 
 
 Rabelais, birth and education, his 
 II, 12 
 distinction of his views 15, 17 
 Gargantua, on education of 13, 
 14. '5. '6 
 Reality, Fenelon on 120 
 Reason, Vauvenargues on 143 
 ,, in children, Rousseau on 
 170 
 Renaissance, the French 10 
 meaning of i, 2, 4 
 object of education during 5, 6, 7 
 Rousseau, J. J., birth and upbring- 
 ing, his 157 
 brute force, on 193 
 cause and effect, on 172 
 
240 
 
 Index 
 
 Rousseau, J. J. 
 
 educational agents, on 162 
 equality, on 164 
 feminine docility, on 194 
 liberty, on 175 
 Nature, on 168 
 pains of childhood, on 162 
 physical education, on 193 
 pleasure and pain, on 173 
 reason in children, on 170 
 "rights," on 176 
 senses, on the 166, 180 
 tools, on 182 
 
 woman's vocation, on 192 
 writings, his chief 136, 137 
 
 Saci, M. de 71 
 Sainte-Beuve, on Galiani 230 
 
 on Lancelot 75 
 
 on Montaigne 27 
 
 on system of Port Royal 90 
 Saint-Cyr, aim of 97 
 
 foundation of 97 
 Saint-Cyran, abbe de, love of chil- 
 dren, his 59 
 
 teaching a vocation 61 
 Savonarola 7, 8 
 Schurman, Mademoiselle Anne 
 
 Marie 189 
 Sec sans colere 175 
 Sevign^ Madame de 104 
 Sidgwick, Dr Henry 2 1 1 
 Society of Jesus 56 
 
 " Stored minds" 33 
 Stories, F^nelon on value of 118 
 Sulpitius Severus 76 
 Symonds, J. A. 3, 5, 6, 7 
 
 Turgot 230 
 
 Universities, mediaeval 134 
 
 Vauvenargues 31 
 character, his 132 
 civilisation v. primitive state, on 
 
 138 
 delicacy, his 135 
 early life, his 133 
 essence of morality, on the 135 
 feeling and reason, on 143 
 human sacrifices, on 141 
 plagiarism, on 140 
 principles, on value of 148 
 
 Vegio, Mafifeo 5 
 
 Vergerius, Peter Paul 4, 9, 19, 
 
 150 
 Vernacular, use of 53 
 
 Ward, Dr James 167 
 Woman's functions, 
 d'fipinay on 226 
 Fenelon on 126, 129 
 Rousseau on 192 
 Wordsworth 178 
 
 Xenophon 138 
 
 Madame 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.