ing is an abuse of power: it is a
baseness which will end in disaster. On the other hand, we cannot
leave it to circumstances to forbid what ought not to be done. Only,
the command should be intelligible, reasonable, and unyielding. This
is really what Rousseau means.

[7] This is not strictly true. The child early has the consciousness
of right and wrong; and if it be true that neither chastisement nor
reproof is to be abused, it is no less certain that conscience is early
awake within him, and that it ought not to be neglected in a work so
delicate as that of education: on condition, be it understood, that we
act with simplicity, without pedantry, and that we employ example more
than lectures. Rousseau says this admirably a few pages farther on.

[8] Nothing is more injudicious than such a question, especially when
the child is in fault. In that case, if he thinks you know what he has
done, he will see that you are laying a snare for him, and this opinion
cannot fail to set him against you. If he thinks you do not know he
will say to himself, "Why should I disclose my fault?" And thus the
first temptation to falsehood is the result of your imprudent
question.--[Note by J. J. ROUSSEAU.]

[9] He refers to Cato, surnamed of Utica, from the African city in
which he ended his own life. When a child, he was often invited by his
brother to the house of the all-powerful Sulla. The cruelties of the
tyrant roused the boy to indignation, and it was necessary to watch him
lest he should attempt to kill Sulla. It was in the latter's
antechamber that the scene described by Plutarch occurred.

[10] While writing this I have reflected a hundred times that in an
extended work it is impossible always to use the same words in the same
sense. No language is rich enough to furnish terms and expressions to
keep pace with the possible modifications of our ideas. The method
which defines all the terms, and substitutes the definition for the
term, is fine, but impracticable; for how shall we then avoid
travelling in a circle? If definitions could be given without using
words, they might be useful. Nevertheless, I am convinced that, poor
as our language is, we can make ourselves understood, not by always
attaching the same meaning to the same words, but by so using each word
that its meaning shall be sufficiently determined by the ideas nearly
related to it, and so that each sentence in which a word is used shall
serve to de