Far from taking care that Émile does not hurt himself, I shall be dissatisfied if he never does, and so grows up unacquainted with pain. To suffer is the first and most necessary thing for him to learn. Children are little and weak, apparently that they may learn these important lessons. If a child fall his whole length, he will not break his leg; if he strike himself with a stick, he will not break his arm; if he lay hold of an edged tool, he does not grasp it tightly, and will not cut himself very badly.
Our pedantic mania for instructing constantly leads us to teach children what they can learn far better for themselves, and to lose sight of what we alone can teach them. Is there anything more absurd than the pains we take in teaching them to walk? As if we had ever seen one, who, through his nurse's negligence, did not know how to walk when grown! On the contrary, how many people do we see moving awkwardly all their lives because they have been badly taught how to walk!
Émile shall have no head-protectors, nor carriages, nor go-carts, nor leading-strings. Or at least from the time when he begins to be able to put one foot before the other, he shall not be supported, except over paved places; and he shall be hurried over these. Instead of letting him suffocate in the exhausted air indoors, let him be taken every day, far out into the fields. There let him run about, play, fall down a hundred times a day; the oftener the better, as he will the sooner learn to get up again by himself. The boon of freedom is worth many scars. My pupil will have many bruises, but to make amends for that, he will be always light-hearted. Though your pupils are less often hurt, they are continually thwarted, fettered; they are always unhappy. I doubt whether the advantage be on their side.
The development of their physical strength makes complaint less necessary to children. When able to help themselves, they have less need of the help of others. Knowledge to direct their strength grows with that strength. At this second stage the life of the individual properly begins; he now becomes conscious of his own being. Memory extends this feeling of personal identity to every moment of his existence; he becomes really one, the same one, and consequently capable of happiness or of misery. We must therefore, from this moment, begin to regard him as a moral being.