Difficulty of treating the subject.

CHAP. IV.

OF THE DRYNESS OF THE SUBJECT, AND THE DIFFICULTY OF TREATING IT.

THE examination of the question I have proposed requires a refined and deep discussion. Every discussion of this sort is tiresome.

That a man who is a real friend to humanity, and already habituated to the fatigue of attention, should read this book without disgust, I should not be surprised, and his approbation would doubtless content me, if from the beginning, to render this work useful, I had not proposed to make it entertaining. Now what flowers can be thrown on a question so serious and important. I would instruct the man of common capacity, and in almost every nation men of this sort are incapable of attention: hence proceeds disgust and it is in France especially that this sort of men are the most

common.

I passed ten years at Paris; the spirit of bigotry and fanaticism was not then predominant there. If I may believe the public report, it is now the fashion with the higher classes to be more and more indifferent to works of reflection. Nothing affects them but a ridiculous description (8), which satisfies their malignity without disturbing their indolence. I renounce, therefore, the hope of pleasing them.

Whatever

Its nature and tendency.

Whatever pains I might take, I should never diffuse sufficient entertainment over a subject so dry and

serious.

1 have observed, however, that if we judge of the French nation by their works, either the people are less light and frivolous (9) than they are thought to be, or the spirit of the men of letters is very different from that of the nation. The ideas of the latter appear to me grand and elevated; let them, therefore, write on, and rest assured, notwithstanding national partialities, that they will every where find just judges of their merit. I have only one thing to advise them, and that is, sometimes to dare to despise the opinion of a single nation, and to remember, that a mind truly great will attach itself to such subjects only as are interesting to the whole race of mankind.

This of which I here treat is of that nature. I shall only repeat the principles advanced in the Treatise on the Understanding, to examine them more thoroughly, to present them in a new point of view, and to draw new consequences from them.

In geometry every problem not fully resolved, may become the object of a new demonstration. It is the same in morality and politics.

Let no one therefore decline the examination of a question so important, and whose solution moreover requires the exposition of truths hitherto but little known.

Is the difference in the minds of men the effect of their different organisations or education? That is the object of my inquiry.

SECTION

No two persons receive the same education.

SECTION I.

THE EDUCATION NECESSARILY DIFFERENT IN DIFFERENT MEN, IS PERHAPS THE CAUSE OF THAT INEQUALITY IN UNDERSTANDINGS HITHERTO ATTRIBUTED TO THE UNEQUAL PERFECTION OF THEIR ORGANS.

CHAP. I,

ΝΟ TWO PERSONS RECEIVE THE SAME EDUCATION.

I STILL learn; my instruction is not yet finished: when will it be? When I shall be no longer sensible; at my death. The course of my life is properly nothing more than a long course of education.

What is necessary in order that two individuals should receive precisely the same education? That they should be in precisely the same positions and the same circumstances. Now such an hypothesis is impossible it is therefore evident, that no two persons can receive the same instructions.

But why put off the term of our education to the ut

most

Commencement of education.

most period of life? Why not confine it to the time expressly set apart for instruction, that is, to the period of infancy and adolescence ?

I am content to confine it to that period; and I will prove in like manner, that it is impossible for two men to acquire precisely the same ideas.

CHAP. II.

OF THE MOMENT AT WHICH EDUCATION

BEGINS.

Ir is at the very instant a child receives motion and life that it receives its first instruction: it is sometimes even in the womb where it is conceived, that it learns to distinguish between sickness and health. The mother however delivered, the child struggles and cries; hunger gripes it, it feels a want, and that want opens its lips, makes it seize, and greedily suck the nourishing breast. When some months have passed, its sight is distinct, its organs are fortified, it becomes by degrees susceptible of all impressions; then the senses of seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, in a word, all the inlets to the mind are set open; then all the objects of nature rush thither in crowds,

and

Of the instruction of childhood.

and engrave an infinity of ideas in the memory*. In these first moments what can be true instructors of infancy? The various sensations it feels: these are so many instructions it receives.

If two children have the same preceptor, if they are taught to distinguish their letters, to read and repeat their catechism, &c. they are supposed to receive the same education. The philosopher judges otherwise : according to him, the true preceptors of a child are the objects that surround him; these are the instructors to whom he owes almost all his ideas.

CHAP. III.

OF THE INSTRUCTORS OF CHILDHOOD.

A SHORT history of the infancy of man will bring us acquainted with them. He no sooner sees the light than a thousand sounds strike his ears; he hears nothing but a confused noise; a thousand bodies offer themselves to his sight, but present nothing but objects imperfectly defined. It is by insensible degrees that an infant learns to hear and see, to perceive and rectify the errors of one sense by another.†

* See Mr. Buffon's eloquent and admirable discourses on man. The senses never deceive us; objects constantly make the