§ 29. Although the governor is to devote himself to a single child, Rousseau is careful to protest against over-direction. “You would stupify the child,” says he, “if you were constantly directing him, if you were always saying to him, ‘Come here! Go there! Stop! Do this! Don’t do that!’ If your head always directs his arms, his own head becomes useless to him.” (_Ém._, ij., 114). Here we have a warning which should not be neglected by those who maintain the _Lycées_ in France, and the ordinary private boarding-schools in England. In these schools a boy is hardly called upon to exercise his will all day long. He rises in the morning when he must; at meals he eats till he is obliged to stop; he is taken out for exercise like a horse; he has all his indoor work prescribed for him both as to time and quantity. In this kind of life he never has occasion to think or act for himself. He is therefore without self-reliance. So much care is taken to prevent his doing wrong, that he gets to think only of checks from without. He is therefore incapable of self-restraint. In the English public schools boys have much less supervision from their elders, and organise a great portion of their lives for themselves. This proves a better preparation for life after the school age; and most public schoolmasters would agree with Rousseau that “the lessons the boys get from each other in the playground are a hundred times more useful to them than the lessons given them in school: les leçons que les écoliers prennent entre eux dans la cour du collège leur sont cent fois plus utiles que tout ce qu’on leur dira jamais dans la classe.” (_Ém._ ij., 123.)
§ 30. On questions put by children, Rousseau says: “The art of questioning is not so easy as it may be thought; it is rather the art of the master than of the pupil. We must have learnt a good deal of a thing to be able to ask what we do not know. The learned know and inquire, says an Indian proverb, but the ignorant know not what to inquire about.” And from this he infers that children learn less from asking than from being asked questions. (_N. H._, 5th p. 490.)
§ 31. At twelve years old Émile is said to be fit for instruction. “Now is the time for labour, for instruction, for study; and observe that it is not I who arbitrarily make this choice; it is pointed out to us by Nature herself.”