Emilius Or a Treatise of Education Author:Jean-Jacques Rousseau General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1768 Original Publisher: Printed by A. Donaldson Subjects: Education Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Mi... more »llion-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: O R, A TREATISE O f EDUCATION/ BOOK IV. HOW fwift is our progrefs upon this earth ! The firft quarter of our life ffips away before we are fenfible of its ufe ; during the laft, we are little capable of enjoyment. Three fourths of the intermediate fpace are confumed in fieep, labour, pain, conllraint, and troubles of various kinds.. Life is fhort becaufe of the little time we have for enjoyment, rather than from the real brevity of its duration. To what purpofe were it to remove the hour of death farther from that of our birth, fmcc life will always be too fhoit when the intermediate time is ill employed. We are born, to ufe the expreffion, at twice ; firft to exift, and then to live ; once as to fpecies, and, again with regard to fex. Thofe who con- ikler women as imperfect men, are certainly mifta- ken, though exteriour refemblance favours the opinion. Till the age of puberty, there is little apparent difference betwe en the fexes in children; countenance, fhnpe, complexion, tone of voice, a)l are nearly alike) vk are children, fo . are boys; Vol. II. A the the fame denomination ferves for both. Thofe males in whom the progrefs of the fex is impeded, preferve this conformity all their lives ; they are always great children ; and women who never lofc it, feem, in many refpects, to be little more. But man in general was not born te remain always in a ftate of childhood. Nature . marks A time when he emerges from infancy ; and this critical moment, though fhort, is attended with a long train of confequences. As the roaring of the...« less