be in the habit of thinking a man's duties the same as a child's.
Seeing me assist the poor, he questions me about it and, if occasion
serve, I answer, "My boy, it is because, since poor people are willing
there should be rich people, the rich have promised to take care of
those who have no money or cannot earn a living by their labor."

"And have you promised it too?" inquires he.

"Of course; the money that comes into my hands is mine to use only upon
this condition, which its owner has to carry out."

After this conversation, and we have seen how a child may be prepared
to understand it, other children besides Emile would be tempted to
imitate me by acting like a rich man. In this case I would at least
see that it should not be done ostentatiously. I would rather have him
rob me of my right, and conceal the fact of his generosity. It would
be a stratagem natural at his age, and the only one I would pardon in
him.

The only moral lesson suited to childhood and the most important at any
age is, never to injure any one. Even the principle of doing good, if
not subordinated to this, is dangerous, false, and contradictory. For
who does not do good? Everybody does, even a wicked man who makes one
happy at the expense of making a hundred miserable: and thence arise
all our calamities. The most exalted virtues are negative: they are
hardest to attain, too, because they are unostentatious, and rise above
even that gratification dear to the heart of man,--sending another
person away pleased with us. If there be a man who never injures one
of his fellow-creatures, what good must he achieve for them! What
fearlessness, what vigor of mind he requires for it! Not by reasoning
about this principle, but by attempting to carry it into practice, do
we find out how great it is, how hard to fulfil.

The foregoing conveys some faint idea of the precautions I would have
you employ in giving children the instructions we sometimes cannot
withhold without risk of their injuring themselves or others, and
especially of contracting bad habits of which it will by and by be
difficult to break them. But we may rest assured that in children
rightly educated the necessity will seldom arise; for it is impossible
that they should become intractable, vicious, deceitful, greedy, unless
the vices which make them so are sowed in their hearts. For this
reason what has been said on this point applies rather to exceptional
than to ordinary