rty, there is the complex fancy in which a
juggler is made to combine instruction as to the properties of the
magnet with certain severe moral truths.[284] The tutor interests
Emilius in astronomy and geography by a wonderful stratagem indeed.
The poor youth loses his way in a wood, is overpowered by hunger and
weariness, and then is led on by his cunning tutor to a series of
inferences from the position of the sun and so forth, which convince
him that his home is just over the hedge, where it is duly found to
be.[285] Here, again, is the way in which the instructor proposes to
stir activity of limb in the young Emilius. "In walking with him of an
afternoon, I used sometimes to put in my pocket two cakes of a sort he
particularly liked; we each of us ate one. One day he perceived that I
had three cakes; he could easily have eaten six; he promptly
despatches his own, to ask me for the third. Nay, I said to him, I
could well eat it myself, or we would divide it, but I would rather
see it made the prize of a running match between the two little boys
there." The little boys run their race, and the winner devours the
cake. This and subsequent repetitions of the performance at first
only amused Emilius, but he presently began to reflect, and perceiving
that he also had two legs, he began privately to try how fast he could
run. When he thought he was strong enough, he importuned his tutor for
the third cake, and on being refused, insisted on being allowed to
compete for it. The habit of taking exercise was not the only
advantage gained. The tutor resorted to a variety of further
stratagems in order to induce the boy to find out and practise visual
compass, and so forth.[286] If we consider, as we have said, first the
readiness of children to suspect a stratagem wherever instruction is
concerned, and next their resentment on discovering artifice of that
kind, all this seems as little likely to be successful as it is
assuredly contrary to Rousseau's general doctrine of leaving
circumstances to lead.

In truth Rousseau's appreciation of the real nature of spontaneousness
in the processes of education was essentially inadequate, and that it
was so, arose from a no less inadequate conception of the right
influence upon the growing character, of the great principle of
authority. His dread lest the child should ever be conscious of the
pressure of a will external to its own, constituted a fundamental
weakness of his system. The chil