Emile

Answers

• Q20HABIT

  Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?

  No. habits take away liberty. The only habit a child should form is to have no habits, so that he keeps control of his liberty and strength.

  Food and sleep, too, exactly measured, become necessary at regular intervals, and soon desire is no longer the effect of need, but of habit, or rather habit adds a fresh need to those of nature. You must be on your guard against this. The only habit the child should be allowed to contract is that of having no habits; let him be carried on either arm, let him be accustomed to offer either hand, to use one or other indifferently; let him not want to eat, sleep, or do anything at fixed hours, nor be unable to be left alone by day or night. Prepare the way for his control of his liberty and the use of his strength by leaving his body its natural habit, by making him capable of lasting self-control, of doing all that he wills when his will is formed.

  Book I · Downloaded Gutenberg #5427 (Foxley translation); confirmed passage in Book I.

• Q22HABIT

  Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?

  Weakens. A child should not want to eat, sleep or do anything at fixed hours, so he keeps control of his own liberty.

  Food and sleep, too, exactly measured, become necessary at regular intervals, and soon desire is no longer the effect of need, but of habit, or rather habit adds a fresh need to those of nature. You must be on your guard against this. The only habit the child should be allowed to contract is that of having no habits; let him be carried on either arm, let him be accustomed to offer either hand, to use one or other indifferently; let him not want to eat, sleep, or do anything at fixed hours, nor be unable to be left alone by day or night. Prepare the way for his control of his liberty and the use of his strength by leaving his body its natural habit, by making him capable of lasting self-control, of doing all that he wills when his will is formed.

  Book I · Downloaded Gutenberg #5427; confirmed passage in Book I.

• Q24DEPENDENCE

  Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?

  Yes. instruments weaken the faculties they replace. The more ingenious our apparatus, the coarser our senses; instruments like the theodolite let us neglect judging angles and distances ourselves.

  Summary disputed by reviewer: Rousseau adds that making the instruments oneself, with the skill they replace, is gain not loss.

  Too much apparatus, designed to guide us in our experiments and to supplement the exactness of our senses, makes us neglect to use those senses. The theodolite makes it unnecessary to estimate the size of angles; the eye which used to judge distances with much precision, trusts to the chain for its measurements; the steel yard dispenses with the need of judging weight by the hand as I used to do. The more ingenious our apparatus, the coarser and more unskilful are our senses. We surround ourselves with tools and fail to use those with which nature has provided every one of us. But when we devote to the making of these instruments the skill which did instead of them, when for their construction we use the intelligence which enabled us to dispense with them, this is gain not loss, we add art to nature, we gain ingenuity without loss of skill.

  Book III · Downloaded Gutenberg #5427; confirmed passage in Book III.