[2] Reading these lines, we are reminded of the admirable works of Dickens, the celebrated English novelist, who so touchingly depicts the sufferings of children made unhappy by the inhumanity of teachers, or neglected as to their need of free air, of liberty, of affection: David Copperfield, Hard Times, Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Son, Oliver Twist, Little Dorrit, and the like.
[3] Here he means Xerxes, King of Persia, who had built an immense bridge of boats over the Hellespont to transport his army from Asia into Europe. A storm having destroyed this bridge, the all-powerful monarch, furious at the insubordination of the elements, ordered chains to be cast into the sea, and had the rebellious waves beaten with rods.
[4] The feeling of a republican, of the "citizen of Geneva," justly shocked by monarchial superstitions. Louis XIV. and Louis XV. had had, in fact, from the days of their first playthings, the degrading spectacle of a universal servility prostrated before their cradle. The sentiment here uttered was still uncommon and almost unknown when Rousseau wrote it. He did much toward creating it and making it popular.
[5] Civil bondage, as understood by Rousseau, consists in the laws and obligations of civilized life itself. He extols the state of nature as the ideal condition, the condition of perfect freedom, without seeing that, on the contrary, true liberty cannot exist without the protection of laws, while the state of nature is only the enslavement of the weak by the strong--the triumph of brute force.
[6] In this unconditional form the principle is inadmissible. Any one who has the rearing of children knows this. But the idea underlying the paradox ought to be recognized, for it is a just one. We ought not to command merely for the pleasure of commanding, but solely to interpret to the child the requirements of the case in hand. To command him for the sake of commanding 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.