ed for us is to be the most artfully and elaborately masked of
all men; unless he happens to be naturally without blood and without
physiognomy.

Rousseau, then, while he put away the old methods which imprisoned the
young spirit in injunctions and over-solicitous monitions, yet did
none the less in his own scheme imprison it in a kind of hothouse,
which with its regulated temperature and artificially contrived access
of light and air, was in many respects as little the method of nature,
that is to say it gave as little play for the spontaneous working and
growth of the forces of nature in the youth's breast, as that regimen
of the cloister which he so profoundly abhorred. Partly this was the
result of a ludicrously shallow psychology. He repeats again and again
that self-love is the one quality in the youthful embryo of character,
from which you have to work. From this, he says, springs the desire of
possessing pleasure and avoiding pain, the great fulcrum on which the
lever of experience rests. Not only so, but from this same
unslumbering quality of self-love you have to develop regard for
others. The child's first affection for his nurse is a result of the
fact that she serves his comfort, and so down to his passion in later
years for his mistress. Now this is not the place for a discussion as
to the ultimate atom of the complex moral sentiments of men and women,
nor for an examination of the question whether the faculty of
sympathy has or has not an origin independent of self-love. However
that may be, no one will deny that sympathy appears in good natures
extremely early, and is susceptible of rapid cultivation from the very
first. Here is the only adequate key to that education of the
affections, from their rudimentary expansion in the nursery, until
they include the complete range of all the objects proper to them.

One secret of Rousseau's omission of this, the most important of all
educating agencies, from the earlier stages of the formation of
character, was the fact which is patent enough in every page, that he
was not animated by that singular tenderness and almost mystic
affection for the young, which breathes through the writings of some
of his German followers, of Richter above all others, and which
reveals to those who are sensible of it, the hold that may so easily
be gained for all good purposes upon the eager sympathy of the
youthful spirit. The instructor of Emilius speaks the words of a wise
onloo