Chapter 14 New Emile

Emile lived to die at the age of eight years, four months and twelve days, and I do not doubt that there was any great error in my method of education; slight negligence was perhaps inevitable, but on the whole my experiments It is based on very sound principles.Even if his death were due to some small oversight, that is what experimental work should be; the scientific spirit fears not mistakes, but fears not trying to correct them.If I have a "New Emil II" in the future, I believe it will be completely successful, because I already have experience and know what to avoid and what to pay more attention to.Well, I am not saddened by the unfortunate death of my Emile; on the contrary, I am more happy to wait for my future success.In this work of raising children we need not be emotional.

It is a pity that I am very busy and cannot write down my experience completely; I can only write down a little in a rough way, and I will make a detailed report later when I have time.However, I am sure that this little record is enough to prevent the world from ever mentioning Rousseau's work again. Emile weighed six and a half pounds when she was born, not too big, not too small, just right.As soon as he was born, he cried.I immediately taught him a lesson: friend!shut your mouth!Life is struggle, war; to cry is to show weakness, of course you know that; so, this first time is, I command you, the last time!He yelled a few more times, and stopped crying.From now until his death, he never cried aloud; my brave Emile! (Please forgive my sentimentality!)

After three days, I rescued him from his mother's arms, and I took all responsibility for his upbringing.No matter how educated and capable a mother is, she is unreliable. Even a mother—a woman who graduated from a university education department is like an illiterate fool—has a mother's evil nature; the degeneration of human beings should be attributed to mothers all over the world.Whenever I see a young woman holding a fat child, I think of the Virgin and Child.Even if the young woman had been a socialist, the child would at best be a Christian socialist, perhaps a Tolstoy with a long beard and no resistance.I can't teach Emile to beg for life beside her mother's milk, to be kissed and played with by women like a little fat pug.I want him to be a warrior, with steel-hard gills and a heart, forever hurting the stinky mouth of the person who kisses him.

I weaned him off.The blood turned from breast milk makes people soft like tofu and makes men richer than women.Since Emile was a man, he had to be manly.Milk can't be eaten either, in order to avoid "milk education".The best thing to replace milk is of course bread, so Emile started to eat bread on the fourth day after he was born; he will surely understand what the bread problem is and why he should fight for bread in the future.I know that bread is not as nutritious as breast milk and cow's milk, but I don't feel sorry for Emil's cry of hunger all the time; hunger is the driving force of revolution, and he must know how to be hungry before he knows what resistance is.Whenever he was hungry, I would explain to him the methods and strategies of resistance in detail; I held the bread in my hand, and he had to listen quietly to what I said; before giving him the bread, lest he faint.Whenever he saw bread, his eyes shone so brightly that I could not but be satisfied that he really understood the value of bread.When he had just learned a few simple words, he could already yell "I want bread!" The yelling was so passionate and fierce, it was almost the same as the slogan of the revolutionary leader.

Because he is often hungry and flustered, it is inevitable that he will steal something to eat, and I do not prohibit him.Instead, I punish him if he steals illegally, or if he steals something and admits it easily.I'll beat him up if he admits his fault easily.I want to cultivate his cunning.Every warrior must be like a fox.Revolutionaries who fight for justice have to be cunning, doing the greatest work by the meanest means.It's a pity that Emile sometimes gets this wrong, and only plays tricks on me for his own food.However, this is really because he is too young to fully understand what I am talking about.If he lived to be fifteen years old--no need to say any more--I think he must be able to be greater, and he will never be cunning just for his own benefit.Behavior should be divided into good and evil according to the cause to be accomplished. Corrupt moral concepts make people waste. The better the behavior, the less promising.My Emile's actions already have the basic training of the culture of tomorrow, but unfortunately he died so early that his actions could not fully prove his purpose, the great purpose.

When Emile was three years old, not only the children didn't like to play with him, but even the adults didn't love him.This is my favorite point.From the moment he learned to speak, I tried my best to teach him the most correct speech, never allowing him to know a word without fully understanding its meaning, never giving him any word that would arouse fancy.Therefore, as much as he knows, he knows as much as he knows, there is no discount, and there is no illusory place.For example, teach him to say "month", and I will tell him everything about the month in detail: the size of the month, the age of the month, how it was formed in the first place, and how it will break up in the future... These are all facts .Except for the contrary: the moon is the moon; "the moon" and "the moon Lord" are not allowed to enter Emile's ears.Everyone knows that the light of the moon comes from the sun, so the "moon" is blocked;I could not teach my Emile to call that dead moon "Lord."As for the big rabbit in the moon, Chang'e flying to the moon and other nonsense, I can't teach him a little bit.Legends and myths are the stuff of barbaric times; Emile was preparing to create the culture of tomorrow, and he had to speak human language.Yes, I also told him stories, but not like Chang'e Flying to the Moon.I told him about Qin Shihuang, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Alexander, Napoleon, etc., and tried my best to describe these so-called heroes as very ordinary people, and they don't have to be ordinary good people.At the age of three, Emile understood that Napoleon's success was only based on some chances.Not only did he understand history correctly because of this, but his knowledge of geography was also astonishing.When I told him about history, I would point him to maps of various countries at any time.We also sometimes talk about plants or insects, but never the confusing nonsense of frogs marrying and using lotus leaves as sedan chairs.When we talked about frogs, we immediately caught one, dissected it carefully, and let me explain the structure of the frog.In this way, not only did he understand the frog correctly, but also because he cut it open with a knife, he also lost those hypocritical love for things.People in the future are not allowed to be sad.Even with regard to everything about Emil himself, I also explained it to him truthfully.When he was five years old, he already had a lot of knowledge about sex.He knew that he was born of his mother, and did not fall from a tree.He knows what his genitals are for, just as he knows what his mouth is for.Five-year-old Emile, I dare say, really knows a lot more than ordinary children of eighteen or nineteen.

But just because he knew so much and knew it rightly, people didn't like him very much.Naturally, it wasn't his fault.Little children cannot play with him because he understands and they are confused.For example, a group of men, women and children were playing "name the fruit", and he would squat among them without waiting for an invitation. It was assigned as pomegranate - not moving at all, making everyone anxious. "A man cannot be a pomegranate, a pomegranate is a plant!" was his resistance.Of course, we had no choice but to teach him to invite him out.what!Triumph of reason, and misery of philosophers!Medieval fools used to burn philosophers to death, calling them magicians, philanderers, and so on.My Emile cannot escape this calamity!What those children said and played centered on "pretending", pretending that you are a girl, pretending that you are a bunny, but Emile didn't dare to pretend at all, for fear that I would punish him.I am not against art. If Emile could become a writer, I would never stop him.However, I can't let him become a writer who talks in his sleep and fantasizes all day long.Imagination is one of the elements of literature, which has been said in previous centuries.Human progress means increased knowledge of facts; and literature has never been able to help in this duty.Whether Emile will become a writer or not, I do not know, but if he can, he must no longer trust the imagination.In my educational program, I forbade his imagination from the very beginning.One is one, two is two, if Emil takes one as two, I would rather kill him!Yes, he has lost his children, and sometimes he is obviously lonely, but what does it matter, "friend" is a bourgeois term at all, so it is just right that Emile had no friends since he was a child.

The kids didn't want to play with him, and their parents hated him.This is of course, because if Emil's world comes, this group of trash who only teach children to "pretend" this and "pretend" that should all be extinct.They did not allow their children to play with Emil, because Emil was too rough.The first thing that makes them think he is unruly is that he never calls them uncle and aunt, but directly calls them "bald man's mother" or "Li Shun's father"; It is called "Li Er's wife", or "Li Er".Isn't this the most correct?But they don't like to hear it.They teach the children to call everyone "Grandpa" as if people don't have names.They only know how to teach their children to flatter and obey—to call someone uncle or uncle means to obey the words of uncle.Emile is a "person", he does not have to listen to other people's words.He is not a slave.No rules, deserve it!The second thing they didn't like and called him a wild boy was because of his straightforwardness.If Emile is humble and polite under my tutelage, doesn't that prove that my education is completely useless?His frankness is because he is full of heart.I dare say that his mind and preferences are in many ways superior to adults.He can't appreciate anything that is fake and deceitful.For example, when he sees jugglers and martial arts performers, he will immediately say that this is all fake.Even if the entertainers were holding real knives and guns, he could still know that they were just gesticulating and not actually killing or slashing.He never had a plaything from birth to death: fake dolls, fake knives, fake cars; I don’t give him fake things.If he wants to play, I will teach him to hit rocks with a hammer, or carry coal with a dustpan. In the game, he is always in contact with the real thing, and it is always useful in the game.Besides, he doesn't have much time to play, because I teach and train him all the time; I don't let him know that children should play, and I tell him that work and labor are the highest responsibility.Therefore, he had to offend people often.When he saw his neighbor Wang Da's wife wearing powder on her face, he would immediately tell her that it was white powder and her face was not white.Seeing Wang Er's daughter wearing paper flowers, he pointed out the same, your flowers don't smell good, they are made of paper, hum!He had the knowledge of grown-ups but not the politeness of grown-ups, so his words sounded like those of a deliberately obnoxious old man.This is of course inevitable, and it is what I hope for.I really love how he wrinkled his nose like a little adult, making adults stupefied.People called him "an old man out of the nest", how could I know that this is what I am proud of.

Because the knowledge obtained is different, so the feelings are also different.Feelings are the sap of knowledge, as if.Since Emile's knowledge was so correct and solid, he would naturally not have superficial feelings.He loves everything that is useful, and what is useful is beautiful to him.Most people's concept of beauty is almost all copying what others say, so no one can tell what beauty is.As if beauty equals illusion.Emile is not the case. He can see the beauty of bicycles, and he never pretends to be crazy and says: "How beautiful the sunset is!" However, he often offends people because of this, because he refuses to follow what people say. : This rose is beautiful, or this lady looks like a peach blossom.He knows that peaches are delicious, regardless of whether the peach blossoms are beautiful or not; as for whether the noodles look like peach blossoms or dandelions, it doesn't matter much.

This is true for beauty, but he is also different in other emotions.He just can't laugh.I think the most useless thing about human beings is their hippie smile, and everyone prefers to tell jokes to children, so that they develop the bad habit of listening to jokes.Let's do the math, there are flattery smiles, sneer smiles, boring smiles, proud smiles, fake smiles, wild laughter, and perfunctory smiles; but, who can tell clearly what is a real smile?Maybe there is no such thing as a real laugh?So why do people still laugh?The literature and art of laughter, the stories of laughter, are just boring, just make the solemn things and the things that should be cried light and loose, so that they can be perfunctory.If human beings want to stop degenerating, they must first stop laughing.So I forbade Emile to laugh, and never told him any funny stories.Laughter is the cheapest anesthesia. People who can think seriously should always grit their teeth and should not open their mouths with laughter.Emile couldn't laugh, and it was very annoying to see others laugh.He neither cried nor laughed, he was really a man made of stone, a man of the future, a man who would never misuse his emotions, it didn't matter whether others loved him or not, Emil was Emil and that was all.

When he was six years old, I started to give him abstract nouns, such as justice, revolution, struggle and so on.These are naturally more difficult to understand, but education is a gradual acquisition. Once a child is used to what he hears, he will understand it in the future. I first blow these important and profound thoughts into his heart and occupy him. The heart will surely germinate slowly after a long time, just like burying the seeds in the soil, no matter how hard the shell of the seeds is, it will crack after a long time.After I explained a certain term to him, I tried to make him apply it in everyday speech; I was not afraid that he would use it wrong.Even if he called "eating" a "revolution," that's fine, because he can at least say those two words.Even if he illogically connects some abstract nouns with facts, that's fine, because his thinking is immature, but on the other hand, it is enough to show his brave spirit.For example, because he hates the second bald man next door, he yells "Down with the second bald man and save the world", okay.Even though the value of the second bald man is not so high, Emil has the courage to defeat him and the spirit to save the world.Truth be told, spirit trumps logic in revolutionary behavior and thought.I really like listening to Emil's words. He is only six or seven years old and he can say a large number of sweet words in four words, as concise and neat as a slogan. Ah, rivers of blood, drowning you..." With the correct knowledge he had acquired from words before, plus this correct consciousness cultivated since the age of six, I dare say this is a great success.This is a method of peeling off all the flesh of the child, sucking all the blood out, and giving him a fundamental transformation.He will not laugh or cry, but waits like a machine to do what he has to do.Only in this way, I think, can a future warrior be made.Such a warrior should have emptied joyful sacrifices from infancy, and uprooted humanity from its roots.Besides this, the idea of ​​improving mankind by education is a dream. When he was eight years old, I started teaching him political principles.He loves to listen, and he has memorized many political terms.Unfortunately, he fell ill soon after.But it never occurred to me that he would be ill.He also fell ill before, and I always gave him medicine while continuing to teach him work.A child cannot be spoiled, if he has a minor illness, he will be indulged and indulged immediately, and he will get used to the sweetness and pretend to be sick at every turn.I don't fall for this.He has to work when he is sick, so he naturally knows that it is no good to pretend to be having fun.This time his illness was indeed serious, so I stopped his work, but I still used history and revolutionary theories instead of stories to amuse him, and took a lot of medicine.Who knew he would die like this!Thinking about it now, I probably neglected his teeth.His teeth haven't been replaced yet, maybe there's something serious wrong with the molars, and I just give him medicine and forget to check his teeth carefully.Otherwise, I don't think he would have died anyway, so when he stopped breathing, I couldn't believe it could be real!My Emile! I have no time to tell all about him; and thinking of his death, I don't want to say any more!I don't doubt my educational principles and methods at all, but I can't completely control my feelings, my weakness!But Emile's child is too cute!This sadness is not just discouragement. After all, I have gained a lot of experience because of Emil, and I should happily continue my research and experiment; I am sure that I can complete my great plan in the second Emil. In July 1936, "Literature" Volume VII, No. 1