Chapter 24 Emile (Volume Four) Section Four

People must be used to study society, and people must be studied through society; those who attempt to study politics and morality separately end up being unable to understand either of these two things.If we focus first on primitive relations, we shall discover how man is affected by them, and what desires arise from them; Relationships are becoming more complex and closer.Man is independent and free not because of the strength of his arms but because of the temperance of his mind.No matter what kind of person, as long as he has few desires, he can rely less on others. Some people often confuse our delusions with our body's needs, and regard our body's needs as the basis of human society. Therefore, cause and effect are reversed. The more they explain all their theories, the more confused they become.

In a state of nature there is an indestructible and true equality, for men alone cannot be so different as to make one depend upon another.The equality of rights that exists in human society is false, because the means used to maintain this equality destroy it, and the power of the public helps the strong to oppress the weak, thus breaking the natural balance of life. balance between them.From this first contradiction arose the contradiction between appearance and reality which we see in social classes.The majority is always at the expense of the few, the public interest is always at the expense of the individual; justice and subordination, which are pleasant words, are often instruments of violence and weapons of lawlessness.It can be seen from this that the upper class who keep saying that they serve others are actually benefiting themselves at the expense of others; therefore, we must judge whether our respect for them is appropriate according to justice and axioms.In order to know what each of us thinks about his own lot, it is necessary to know whether the position he has acquired is not the most favorable to the happiness of the person who occupies it.This is the question we are going to study now. However, in order to study this question well, we must start with understanding people's hearts.

If it is only a matter of telling young people about man in his mask, we need not tell them, because they see it so often; If we want to seduce young people with luster, then when we describe people to them, we must describe people as they really are. The reason for doing this is not to make young people hate them, but to make young people feel that those People are so pitiful that they don't want to imitate them.It seems to me that this is in keeping with the most sincere feelings a man has for mankind. According to this view, the method we adopt in educating young people at this time must be completely opposite to the method we adopted in the past, and we must use more of other people's experience and less of his own experience.If people deceived him, he hated them; if they respected him, he pitied them when he saw them deceive one another. "The spectacle of the world," said Pythagoras, "is like that of the Olympic Games: there are some who set up shop for profit; ; while others are just there to watch the game, but people who go to the game are not bad people.” I

Let people choose society for a young man in this way, let him think that everyone he lives with is good, let him be taught to know the world carefully, to think that everything in the world is evil, let him know people All are good in nature, I hope he realizes this, I hope he judges his neighbors for himself, but also I hope he understands how society degrades and corrupts people, I hope he can see that people's prejudices are their vices May he respect the individual with all his heart and despise the multitude, may he know that all men wear nearly the same masks, but also that some faces are much more beautiful than the masks they wear.

It must be admitted that this method has its drawbacks, and that it is not easy to carry out; for if he becomes an observer prematurely, if you make him observe the actions of others too carefully, then it is possible Acquired in him the habit of gossiping, of sarcasm, of judging others arbitrarily: gleefully seeing everything as bad, even good things as bad for him.Just as you don't feel sorry for the poor when you see them, so he takes evil things as usual and is not afraid of bad people.Soon after, all kinds of evil deeds of human beings will not only fail to teach him, but will become his excuses; he will think in his heart: since everyone is like this, I shouldn't be different.

If you try to educate him with great principles, and try to understand at the same time as he understands the nature of the mind, the operation of those external causes which turn our inclinations into vices, if you take him away from things with the senses To move to things with the head, you have to adopt a metaphysical method that he can't understand at all, you have to encounter the trouble you have been very careful to avoid, and you have to tell him some persuasion. Dogma means substituting in his thinking the experience and prestige of the teacher for his own experience and intellectual development.

In order to unplug these two obstacles at the same time, so that he can understand other people's hearts without corrupting his own, I intend to show him people who are far away from us, and let him read them at other times or places. People, so that although he can see that occasion, he must never go to that occasion to carry out activities.Therefore, now is the time to talk about history. Through history, he does not need to learn any philosophy to understand people's hearts deeply; through history, he can act as an ordinary audience without any prejudice or emotion, and judge people They are not judged as accomplices or accusers.

In order to know people, one must know them from their behavior.In society, what we hear is their words, they say one thing, but hide their actions; and in history, their actions are about to be exposed, and we have to act according to what they did. judge them.What they say, on the contrary, can help us evaluate them, because by comparing their words and deeds, we can see at the same time who they are and what they pretend to be.The more they pretend, the more we can understand them. Unfortunately, this approach has its dangers and several drawbacks.It is difficult to judge others impartially from one point of view.One of the greatest ills of history is that it often describes human beings from their bad side and seldom from their good side; live a prosperous and prosperous life in peace and stability, it has no record except that the people of one country meddle in the affairs of the people of the neighboring country, or allow the people of the neighboring country to meddle in their affairs, because they cannot satisfy their own demands. It does not begin to describe their activities when things are going on, it does not describe them until they are already in decline.All our histories are written from the time when they should have come to an end.We have enough of the history of nations that perish; what we want is the history of nations that flourished, so happy and good that history has nothing to say about them.In fact, even today we find that governments that run the country well are not talked about.All we know is the bad, and the good is hardly ever mentioned.Only the bad guys are famous, and the good guys are either forgotten or laughed at.It can be seen that history, like philosophy, is constantly slandering human beings.

Moreover, the events that are recorded in history are not described exactly as they happened; The tint of their prejudices.Which historian can accurately put the reader in the place where the event happened, and let him see the real process of that event?Ignorance and partiality made the whole thing into a faux pas.Even without distorting a historical fact, how different the result would be if the circumstances relating to that fact were exaggerated or minimized!Seeing the same thing from different points of view does not look the same as before. In fact, except for the eyes of the beholder, nothing has changed.Even if what you told me is a true fact, but you didn't make me see it as it is, can this be called respecting the fact?How many times have battles been decided by a tree more or less, by a rock to the left or a rock to the right, by a cloud of dust blown up by a gust of wind, but No one has yet seen the reason for this!Does this prevent the historian from telling you the cause of the victory or defeat as precisely as an eyewitness?Besides, what do those facts mean to me when I don't know their truth?One thing, since I don't know the real reason, where can I learn from it?The historian can tell me a reason, but he has invented it; and as for the commentary, though it is ostentatiously told, it is in itself a method of conjecture, which can only choose one of several lies at the same time. The true truth resembles the lie most closely.

Have you ever read a book about Cleopatra or Gassandra or any of those characters?The person who makes the book chooses a well-known thing, adapts it according to his own point of view, and fabricates some plots, as well as non-existing characters and imaginary images to embellish them, and tells one story after another, so that his things are in the world. Readers do seem to be enjoying it.In my opinion, such legends are not very different from the history you read. If there is any difference, the novelist blindly describes his own imagination, while the historian blindly follows other people's imagination; Let me add, if you will, that the novelist, for better or worse, has a moral purpose, which the historian does not care about.

It may be said that the faithful record of history is not so interesting as the true customs and people, and that it does not matter much whether the historical events are faithfully described, so long as the hearts of men are well described; for, after all, What use is there for us that happened two thousand years ago?If the images are described as they are in nature, these men are right; but if most of them are described as they are in the historian's imagination, then you have again the trouble which you wish to avoid. , do you not give back to the historian the prestige you have deprived of from the teacher?If it is possible for my pupil to see imaginary figures, I would rather have them drawn by myself than by someone else, because then at least they may be better understood by him. For a young man, there is nothing worse than historians who add their own comments while narrating.fact!fact!Let the young man judge for himself; thus he may learn to understand human beings.If he is always guided by the author's judgment, he can see only through other eyes, and without these eyes he sees nothing. I don't advocate studying modern history, not only because it has no characteristics, not only because we are all the same, but also because none of our historians wants to portray some strong images without being in the limelight. , and as a result, those images are portrayed like nothing.The historians of antiquity were, in general, less drawn to character, less inspired and more common-sense in their judgments of historical fact; In the beginning, one should choose not the works of the most intelligent historians, but the works of the most unpretentious historians.I don't like to show a young man the works of Polybius or Sallust. Tacitus' books are suitable for old people, and young people cannot understand them.Before exploring the depths of a person's heart, one must first observe the original characteristics of the human heart from his behavior; before studying the principles, one must first clarify the facts.Dogmatic philosophy is only suitable for experienced people.Young people should not study general things in general, but should study individual and special cases. In my opinion, Thucydides is a true model among historians.He narrates history without comment, but he does not omit a single situation that would help us to judge history for ourselves.He presents all the facts he tells before the eyes of the readers, and he himself not only does not intervene between the facts and the readers, but also hides far away; in this way, we do not feel that we are reading history books at all, but rather It was like seeing those things with my own eyes.It's a pity that he only talks about war from beginning to end, and what we see in his books is almost the most uneducating thing in the world-war. The advantages and disadvantages of the two works, "The Retreat of Thousands of People" and "Caesar's Commentary", are similar.Faithful Herodotus is neither characterization nor dogmatic, but his writing is smooth and innocent, and the book is full of interesting and delightful episodes, were it not for those plots that tend to become as simple as children's stories If, therefore, he is more prone to spoilage than to cultivate the interests of young people, he may be the best historian.To read his books, one must have the ability to appreciate.I have not yet spoken of Livy, but it will be his turn later on; the man is a statesman as well as a rhetorician, so it is not appropriate to speak of his works to a youth of his age. Generally speaking, history has its shortcomings, and the reason is that it can only record famous and important events whose person, place and time can be determined, but the accumulation of those events cannot be analyzed in the same way. Described, so the total payment is absent.People often look for the cause of a revolution in a battle won or lost. In fact, before this war, that revolution is already inevitable.Wars only bring to the foreground those things which are caused by spiritual causes which the historian seldom sees. The spirit of philosophy has turned the minds of several historians of this century in this direction, but I doubt whether the truth can be revealed through their writings.They each held their own views, not only did not try to describe things as they really are, but instead wanted things to conform to their respective sets of views. In addition to the above, I would add that history describes actions and not persons, since it can only capture their appearance at a few selected moments, when they are fully clothed; What is shown is only a person who appears in front of the public after prior arrangement. It cannot follow him to his home, to his private room, to his relatives and friends to have a look. It depicts him, so it depicts his clothes rather than his person. In order to proceed to the study of a man's mind, I would rather look at his personal life, because then the man cannot escape if he wants to; historians follow him everywhere, lest he have a moment's respite Opportunity does not allow him to hide in any corner to escape the sharp eyes of the audience; just when he thinks he is hiding well, historians see him clearly."The biographer," says Montaigne, "has only to make his interest more in thought than in accident, in what is within him than in what is external. , then I like to read their biographies, which is why I choose to read Plutarch's works." It is true that the tendency of a group of people, or the tendency of a nation, is quite different from the character of an individual, and our understanding of the human heart will be incomplete if we do not study people in a crowd; but , and I am not necessarily wrong in my opinion, that in order to know mankind it is necessary to begin with the study of individuals, and that whoever has a complete knowledge of the tendencies of each individual will be able to foresee their combined influence in a people. Here we must also learn from the ancients, partly because of the reasons I have said before, and partly because in the modern popular style of writing, everything is omitted, although it is very ordinary, it is very real and typical. The plots are such that the characters are dressed up both in their personal lives and in the social arena.All kinds of regulations require historians to be as serious when writing books as when doing things. Although some things can be done openly, historians are not allowed to say publicly; at the same time, because they can only describe characters as roles, those characters We recognize it only on the stage, and once in the book we no longer recognize it.Historians write biography after biography for kings in vain, and we can no longer find historians like Suedoni. Plutarch's excellence lies precisely in his daring to describe the details of the plot that we dare not describe.He described great men in small things with an inimitable grace, and he was so good at choosing his cases that often a word or a smile or a gesture would suffice to express the peculiar character of his hero.A joke of Hannibal's revived the morale of his defeated army, and made them run joyfully to the field of his conquest of Italy; The man who conquered the king; Caesar, passing through a remote village and talking to his friends, inadvertently exposed him, who once said he only wanted to be equal to Pompey, to be a villain with ulterior motives; Alexander said nothing , swallowed the medicine, and the moment was the most beautiful moment of his life; Aristeti wrote his name on a shell, thus showing that he deserved his nickname; In other people's homes, I took off my cloak and went to the kitchen to gather firewood for the owner.This is the real way of description, not to describe the appearance of the characters with thick strokes, not to describe the character of the characters with heroic behavior, but to reveal their natural temperament with small things.The public affairs are either too prosaic or too contrived, and yet the seriousness of the day hardly permits our writers to write about them alone. De Toulon is indisputably one of the great figures of the last century.Someone has made a biography very interesting with the little things he was known and loved, and yet his biographer was compelled to leave out some of the things that would make him better known and loved. Love the episode!Now I will mention only one of these things, which I believe to be true, and which, if I met Plutarch, I would never ignore it; , even if he knew it, he dared not write it. On a very hot summer day, the Count of Touron, in white trousers and a beanie, stood at the window of the drawing-room; A familiar cook's assistant.He walked lightly from behind and slapped the count hard on the ass.The person who was beaten turned around immediately.When the servant saw that it was his master, he trembled all over.He knelt down in a daze, and said: "My lord, I thought it was Jorge..." "Even if it was Jorge," cried Turon, rubbing his hips, "it shouldn't be so hard." Poor people , You dare not say things like this!Let you always be people without nature and without heart, let your ugly and solemn words harden your hard heart, let your solemn appearance make you despised by people.But you, dear young man, when you read this anecdote, and feel fondly the tenderness of the heart under the violent impulse, behold the great man when his parentage was involved. When it comes to peace and fame, it seems so insignificant.You know, this same Tulum has deliberately let his nephew take the lead at every turn, so that it will be known that the boy is the master of a royal mansion.Contrast these situations, and you will love nature and despise prejudice, and you will be able to know this person thoroughly. Few people can estimate what impact reading under such guidance will have on a young man's flawless mind.We have buried ourselves in books since childhood, and have developed the habit of learning without thinking. We are not deeply impressed by what we read. The desires and prejudices that are everywhere in history and human life have also disappeared in us. produced, so that everything they do seems natural to us, because we have divorced from nature and judge others by our own appearance.But imagine a youth brought up according to my ideas, imagine Emile, whom I have painstakingly maintained for eighteen years, with a sound judgment and a sound mind, imagine him at the moment when the curtain is drawn. At that time, seeing the scene of the stage in this world for the first time, or more precisely, imagining him standing behind the stage watching the actors make up, counting how many ropes and pulleys are blinding the audience's eyes with false scenes and scenes behind the stage, he How will it feel.He was taken aback at first, but then gave them a burst of humiliation and contempt: he was indignant at seeing the whole of mankind thus deluding itself, and degrading itself into childish things; Meng fights with each other, seeing that they don't want to be human, but must turn themselves into beasts, he feels very sad. Undoubtedly, as long as the student has a natural endowment, even if the teacher does not choose the books he reads so carefully, even if the teacher does not make him think about the things in the books after reading, what he has learned in this way will be fine. Into a practical philosophy, which is far more solid and useful than the empty theories with which you confuse the minds of the youth in your schools.When Sineas had heard of Pyrus's fanciful plans, he asked him what real benefit could be gained from conquering the world, since he would henceforth have to suffer much torment and pain to conquer the world.The question of Sineas seemed to us no more than a casual witticism, but Emile found in it a very wise insight, which he had had at first and would never cease to have. never extinguished from his mind, where no prejudice contradicting it prevented him from imprinting it on his own, and later, when he read the life of Pyrus, he It will be found that all the great plans of this madman are to lose himself at the hands of a woman; therefore, apart from admiration for this so-called heroic behavior, he will not think of the reason for such a great general. What would it be to establish a miracle if we don’t regard such a great politician’s maneuvering as a way to find the ominous brick and end his life and plan with a disgraceful end? Not all the conquerors were slain, not all the usurpers defeated in their ventures; and to a mind full of common sense, a few of them seem very Lucky; but whoever judges whether they are lucky or not by their state of mind, not just by appearances, will find that those people are miserable even if they succeed; he will find that their desires and sorrows multiplied with their fortune; he would find that, though they pressed on breathlessly and desperately, they could never reach their end; It is like the first time a traveler climbs the Alps. Every time he climbs a hill, he thinks that he has passed the whole mountain range when he passes this hill. Ahead. Augustus, after subduing his subjects and defeating his opponents, ruled for forty years an empire of unprecedented size; When he was in the army, he was not in a hurry to bang his head on the wall, or to yell so that his noise could be heard everywhere in the huge palace?So long as sorrows of all kinds go on around him, as long as his closest friends are plotting against his life, as long as he sees his kinsmen humiliated and dead, he cannot but weep Even if he vanquished all his enemies, what use would his vain deeds be to him?The poor man wants to rule the whole world, but he doesn't know how to take care of his home!What is the result of neglecting the household?He saw his nephew, his adopted son, his son-in-law die in the prime of his life; his grandson ended up eating the wadding of his own bed, in order to keep his poor life alive for a few more hours; His daughter and granddaughter had done many shameless things to him, and, afterward, one died of starvation on a desert island, and the other was slain by an archer in prison.As for himself, he was the last of his wretched family, driven by his wife to make a monster his heir.This person who ruled the world, no matter how glorious and rich he was, his fate ended up like this.Among those who envy glory and wealth, is there any one who would pay the same price for such things? I have given the example of human ambition, but all the impulses of human desires have the same supply for those who want to know themselves and make themselves wise through the study of history through the fate of the dead. Lessons.As far as the education of young people is concerned, in the near future it is more appropriate to read the biography of Antony's subduing his subjects and defeating Pepper than that of Augustus.Emile has seen many strange things in the books he read lately, which confuses him, but he knows that before the desire arises, he must first get rid of the illusion of desire; Desires sometimes make him stupid, so he does not adopt in advance a way of life in which desires (if they should occur to him) bewilder him.I know that these lessons are ill-suited to him, and may be found neither timely nor adequate when needed; Such lessons.When I began to study history, I had another purpose, and if this purpose was not fully achieved, it would undoubtedly be the teacher's fault. What must be known is that as long as selfishness develops, the relative "I" will continue to operate, and when young people see others, they will never fail to think of themselves and associate themselves with them. to compare.So, having seen the others, he wondered where he would stand among them.From the way you teach history to young people, I think you are making them, so to speak, want to be what they see in your books, to make them want to be Cicero at one moment, and at one moment to be a figure. Rajan, trying to be Alexander now and then; to depress them as soon as their heads are clear, to make each one regret that he is but such a man.I do not deny that this method also has certain advantages; but as far as Emile is concerned, if he also compares himself with others in this way, and prefers to be that kind of person rather than himself. Wanting to be a Socrates, wanting to be a Cato, I think my education of him too has been a complete failure.A man has only to start imagining himself as someone else, and before long he has completely forgotten his own. Philosophers are not the ones who know man best, for they observe man entirely through philosophical preconceptions, and I have never seen anyone who has as many preconceptions as philosophers.A savage judges us with much more justice than a philosopher judges us.On the one hand, the philosopher knows his own faults, but on the other hand he despises our faults, so he said to himself: "We are all bad people"; while the savage looks at us without emotion, so he said : "You guys are crazy." He made sense, because no one does bad things for the sake of doing bad things.My pupil was such a savage, with this difference: Emile loved to think, to compare ideas, to watch our mistakes carefully in case he committed them himself, and , he has a definite understanding of something, and he judges it. Because we have desires ourselves, we resent others for having desires; we hate bad people because we want to preserve our interests; if they do us no harm, we may instead sympathize with them instead of hating them.The pain bad guys inflict on us makes us forget the pain they inflict on themselves.We might more easily forgive their sins if we could know how their hearts will punish them for their sins.We feel their wrongs to us, we do not see the punishment they inflict on us; their benefits are outward, their pains are inner.A man suffers no less when he enjoys the fruits of his sinful deeds than when he fails to do so; the object is changed, but the restlessness is the same.In vain they boast of their luck, and hide their hearts, however much they hide, their conduct reveals it; but it is not necessary that we have the same heart in order to see theirs. Desires which we share with each other lead us astray, desires which conflict with our interests repel us; and because these desires create contradictions in us, we reproach others for doing certain things which, in fact, We also want to do the same.When we have to suffer other people to commit the same crimes that we might commit in his position, we inevitably have aversion on the one hand and delusions on the other.