While the Author of nature gives children this active principle, he takes care that it shall do little harm; for he leaves them little power to indulge it. But no sooner do they look upon those about them as instruments which it is their business to set in motion, than they make use of them in following their own inclinations and in making up for their own want of strength. In this way they become disagreeable, tyrannical, imperious, perverse, unruly; a development not arising from a natural spirit of domination, but creating such a spirit. For no very long experience is requisite in teaching how pleasant it is to act through others, and to need only move one's tongue to set the world in motion.
As we grow up, we gain strength, we become less uneasy and restless, we shut ourselves more within ourselves. The soul and the body put themselves in equilibrium, as it were, and nature requires no more motion than is necessary for out preservation.
But the wish to command outlives the necessity from which, it sprang; power to control others awakens and gratifies self-love, and habit makes it strong. Thus need gives place to whim; thus do prejudices and opinions first root themselves within us.
The principle once understood, we see clearly the point at which we leave the path of nature. Let us discover what we ought to do, to keep within it.
Far from having too much strength, children have not even enough for all that nature demands of them. We ought, then, to leave them the free use of all natural strength which they cannot misuse. First maxim.
We must aid them, supplying whatever they lack in intelligence, in strength, in all that belongs to physical necessity. Second maxim.
In helping them, we must confine ourselves to what is really of use to them, yielding nothing to their whims or unreasonable wishes. For their own caprice will not trouble them unless we ourselves create it; it is not a natural thing. Third maxim.
We must study carefully their language and their signs, so that, at an age when they cannot dissemble, we may judge which of their desires spring from nature itself, and which of them from opinion. Fourth maxim.
The meaning of these rules is, to allow children more personal freedom and less authority; to let them do more for themselves, and exact less from others. Thus accustomed betimes to desire only what they can obtain or do for themselves, they will feel less keenly the want of whatever is not within their own power.