Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712-1778). L.A.S., Monquin par Bourgoin February 9, 1770, [to M. Maydieu, tutor to the son of the Duc de Villequier]; 4pages in-4 (slight cracks). Superb letter on education, in which Rousseau reiterates the ideas of Emile. The letter bears these four lines in epigraph: "Poor blind men that we are! Heaven! unmask the impostors, And force their barbarous hearts To open to the gaze of men". Rousseau believes that his correspondent's letter "is not from a young man in need of advice, it is from a wise man very capable of giving it". He says he is "so far removed from the ideas on which you are consulting me" (i.e., education), but will try to respond. "Once you've strayed from the straight and narrow path of nature, nothing is more difficult than getting back on it. Your child has taken a turn which is all the more difficult to correct, since everything around him must prevent you from taking the necessary steps to correct it. This is usually the first wrinkle that children of quality contract, and it's the last one they can be made to lose, because it requires the help of reason, which comes to them later than to all other children. So don't be too frightened that the effect of your care doesn't at first match the heat of your zeal; you must expect little success until you have the catch that can bring it about; but that's no reason to relax in the meantime. Here you are in a boat that a very fast current is dragging backwards, and it takes a lot of hard work not to go backwards. [...] There are only three instruments for acting on human souls: reason, sentiment and necessity. You have uselessly employed the first, it is not likely that the second will have more effect; the third remains, and my opinion is that for some time you should stick to it; all the more so as the first and most important philosophy of man of every state and age is to learn to bend under the hard yoke of necessity [...]. It is clear that opinion, that monster which devours the human race, has already stuffed its prejudices into the head of the little fellow. He looks on you as a man in his employ, a sort of servant, made to obey him, to indulge his whims, and in his little judgment it seems very strange to him that it should be you who claim to enslave him to yours, for that is how he sees everything you prescribe for him. All his conduct with you is but a consequence of this maxim, which is not unjust, but which he misapplies, that it is he who pays who commands. It doesn't matter whether he's right or wrong; he's the one who pays. As you go along, try to erase this opinion with more correct ones, to correct his mistakes with more sensible judgments. Try to make him understand that there are things more valuable than birth and wealth, and to make him understand this you must not tell him, you must make him feel it. Force his vain little soul to respect justice and courage, to get down on its knees before virtue, and don't go looking for books for him to do so; men in books will never be anything but otherworldly to him; I know of only one model that can be real to him, and that model is you. Sir, the position you hold is, in my eyes, the noblest and greatest on earth. Let the vile people think what they will of it, for me I see you in the place of God; you make a man. If you see yourself in the same light as I do, this idea must raise you up within yourself, it can make you great indeed, and that's what's needed; for if you were only great in appearance and only played at virtue, the little man would infallibly penetrate you and all would be lost. But if this sublime image of the great and the beautiful strikes him once in you, if your disinterestedness teaches him that wealth can't do everything, if he sees in you how much greater it is to command oneself than valets, if you force him in a word to respect you, from that moment on you will have subjugated him, And I can tell you that whatever pretence he makes, he will no longer find it equal whether you agree with him or not, especially if by forcing him to honor you in the depths of his little heart, you show him at the same time to have little regard for what he thinks himself, and no longer want to tire of making him agree with you about his wrongs. [...] The only thing you must avoid is combining this composure with the harshness that would make you hateable. [...] As far as punishments are concerned, I agree with you that you should never hit him unless he has started it himself. His punishments