or within reach of dangerous weapons. What is there to be said for
all the paraphernalia with which the child is surrounded to shield
him on every side so that he grows up at the mercy of pain, with
neither courage nor experience, so that he thinks he is killed by
a pin-prick and faints at the sight of blood?

With our foolish and pedantic methods we are always preventing children
from learning what they could learn much better by themselves, while
we neglect what we alone can teach them. Can anything be sillier
than the pains taken to teach them to walk, as if there were any
one who was unable to walk when he grows up through his nurse's
neglect? How many we see walking badly all their life because they
were ill taught?

Emile shall have no head-pads, no go-carts, no leading-strings;
or at least as soon as he can put one foot before another he shall
only be supported along pavements, and he shall be taken quickly
across them. [Footnote: There is nothing so absurd and hesitating
as the gait of those who have been kept too long in leading-strings
when they were little. This is one of the observations which are
considered trivial because they are true.] Instead of keeping him
mewed up in a stuffy room, take him out into a meadow every day;
let him run about, let him struggle and fall again and again, the
oftener the better; he will learn all the sooner to pick himself
up. The delights of liberty will make up for many bruises. My
pupil will hurt himself oftener than yours, but he will always be
merry; your pupils may receive fewer injuries, but they are always
thwarted, constrained, and sad. I doubt whether they are any better
off.