Chapter 12

I have thought that the most essential part in the education of children, and which is seldom regarded in the best families, is to make them sensible of their inability, weakness, and dependence, and, as my husband called it, the heavy yoke of that necessity which nature has imposed upon our species; and that, not only in order to show them how much is done to alleviate the burden of that yoke, but especially to instruct them betimes in what rank Providence has placed them, that they may not presume too far above themselves, or be ignorant of the reciprocal duties of humanity.

[Footnote 46: From the "New Héloïse." The passage here given is from a letter supposed to have been written by a person who was visiting Héloïse. One of the earliest English versions of the "New Héloïse" appeared in 1784.]

Young people who from their cradle have been brought up in ease and effeminacy, who have been caressed by every one, indulged in all their caprices, and have been used to obtain easily everything they desired, enter upon the world with many impertinent prejudices; of which they are generally cured by frequent mortifications, affronts, and chagrin. Now, I would willingly spare my children this kind of education by giving them, at first, a just notion of things. I had indeed once resolved to indulge my eldest son in everything he wanted, from a persuasion that the first impulses of nature must be good and salutary; but I was not long in discovering that children, conceiving from such treatment that they have a right to be obeyed, depart from a state of nature almost as soon as born--contracting our vices from our example, and theirs by our indiscretion. I saw that if I indulged him in all his humors they would only increase by such indulgence; that it was necessary to stop at some point, and that contradiction would be but the more mortifying as he should be less accustomed to it; but, that it might be less painful to him, I began to use it upon him by degrees, and in order to prevent his tears and lamentations I made every denial irrevocable.

It is true, I contradict him as little as possible, and never without due consideration. Whatever is given or permitted him is done unconditionally and at the first instance; and in this we are indulgent enough; but he never gets anything by importunity, neither his tears nor entreaties being of any effect. Of this he is now so well convinced that he makes no use of them; he goes his way on the first word, and frets himself no more at seeing a box of sweetmeats taken away from him than at seeing a bird fly away which he would be glad to catch, there appearing to him the same impossibility of having the one as the other; and, so far from beating the chairs and tables, he dares not lift his hand against those who oppose him. In everything that displeases him he feels the weight of necessity, the effect of his own weakness.

The great cause of the ill humor of children is the care which is taken either to quiet or to aggravate them. They will sometimes cry for an hour for no other reason in the world than because they perceive we would not have them. So long as we take notice of their crying, so long have they a reason for continuing to cry; but they will soon give over of themselves when they see no notice is taken of them; for, old or young, nobody loves to throw away his trouble. This is exactly the case with my eldest boy, who was once the most peevish little bawler, stunning the whole house with his cries; whereas now you can hardly hear there is a child in the house. He cries, indeed, when he is in pain; but then it is the voice of nature, which should never be restrained; and he is again hushed as soon as ever the pain is over. For this reason I pay great attention to his tears, as I am certain he never sheds them for nothing; and hence I have gained the advantage of being certain when he is in pain and when not; when he is well and when sick; an advantage which is lost with those who cry out of mere humor and only in order to be appeased. I must confess, however, that this management is not to be expected from nurses and governesses; for as nothing is more tiresome than to hear a child cry, and as these good women think of nothing but the time present, they do not foresee that by quieting it to-day it will cry the more to-morrow. But, what is still worse, this indulgence produces an obstinacy which is of more consequence as the child grows up. The very cause that makes it a squaller at three years of age will make it stubborn and refractory at twelve, quarrelsome at twenty, imperious and insolent at thirty, and insupportable all its life.

In every indulgence granted to children they can easily see our desire to please them, and therefore they should be taught to suppose we have reason for refusing or complying with their requests. This is another advantage gained by making use of authority, rather than persuasion, on every necessary occasion. For, as it is impossible they can be always blind to our motives, it is natural for them to imagine that we have some reason for contradicting them, of which, they are ignorant. On the contrary, when we have once submitted to their judgment, they will pretend to judge of everything, and thus become cunning, deceitful, fruitful in shifts and chicanery, endeavoring to silence those who are weak enough to argue with them; for when one is obliged to give them an account of things above their comprehension, they attribute the most prudent conduct to caprice, because they are incapable of understanding it. In a word, the only way to render children docile and capable of reasoning is not to reason with them at all, but to convince them that it is above their childish capacities; for they will always suppose the argument in their favor unless you can give them good cause to think otherwise. They know very well that we are unwilling to displease them, when they are certain of our affection; and children are seldom mistaken in this particular: therefore, if I deny anything to my children, I never reason with them, I never tell them why I do so and so; but I endeavor, as much as possible, that they should find it out, and that even after the affair is over. By these means they are accustomed to think that I never deny them anything without a sufficient reason, tho they can not always see it.

On the same principle it is that I never suffer my children to join in the conversation of grown people, or foolishly imagine themselves on an equality with them, because they are permitted to prattle. I would have them give a short and modest answer when they are spoken to, but never to speak of their own head, or ask impertinent questions of persons so much older than themselves, to whom they ought to show more respect....

What can a child think of himself when he sees a circle of sensible people listening to, admiring, and waiting impatiently for his wit, and breaking out in raptures at every impertinent expression? Such false applause is enough to turn the head of a grown person; judge, then, what effect it must have upon that of a child. It is with the prattle of children as with the prediction in the almanac. It would be strange if, amidst such a number of idle words, chance did not now and then jumble some of them into sense. Imagine the effect which such flattering exclamations must have on a simple mother, already too much flattered by her own heart. Think not, however, that I am proof against this error because I expose it. No, I see the fault, and yet am guilty of it. But, if I sometimes admire the repartees of my son, I do it at least in secret. He will not learn to become a vain prater by hearing me applaud him, nor will flatterers have the pleasure, in making me repeat them, of laughing at my weakness.

MADAME DE STAËL

Born in Paris, 1763, died there in 1817; daughter of Necker, the Minister of Finance, and Susanne Courchod, the sweetheart of Gibbon; married to the Baron of Staël-Holstein, the Swedish ambassador to France, in 1786; lived in Germany in 1803-04; traveled in Italy in 1805; published "Corinne" in 1807; returned to Germany in 1808; and finished "De l'Allemagne," the first edition of which was destroyed, probably at the instigation of Napoleon, who became her bitter enemy; exiled from France by Napoleon in 1812-14.

OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE[47]

General Bonaparte made himself as conspicuous by his character and his intellect as by his victories; and the imagination of the French began to be touched by him [1797]. His proclamations to the Cisalpine and Ligurian republics were talked of.... A tone of moderation and of dignity pervaded his style, which contrasted with the revolutionary harshness of the civil rulers of France. The warrior spoke in those days like a lawgiver, while the lawgivers exprest themselves with soldier-like violence. General Bonaparte had not executed in his army the decrees against the émigrés. It was said that he loved his wife, whose character is full of sweetness; it was asserted that he felt the beauties of Ossian; it was a pleasure to attribute to him all the generous qualities that form a noble background for extraordinary abilities....

[Footnote 47: From "Considerations on the French Revolution." This work was not published until 1818, three years after the exile of Napoleon to St. Helena. An English translation appeared in 1819.]

Such at least was my own mood when I saw him for the first time in Paris. I could find no words with which to reply to him when he came to me to tell me that he had tried to visit my father at Coppet, and that he was sorry to have passed through Switzerland without seeing him. But when I had somewhat recovered from the agitation of admiration, it was followed by a feeling of very marked fear. Bonaparte then had no power: he was thought even to be more or less in danger from the vague suspiciousness of the Directory; so that the fear he inspired was caused only by the singular effect of his personality upon almost every one who had intercourse with him. I had seen men worthy of high respect; I had also seen ferocious men: there was nothing in the impression Bonaparte produced upon me which could remind me of men of either type. I soon perceived, on the different occasions when I met him during his stay in Paris, that his character could not be defined by the words we are accustomed to make use of: he was neither kindly nor violent, neither gentle nor cruel, after the fashion of other men. Such a being, so unlike others, could neither excite nor feel sympathy: he was more or less than man. His bearing, his mind, his language have the marks of a foreigner's nature--an advantage the more in subjugating Frenchmen....

Far from being reassured by seeing Bonaparte often, he always intimidated me more and more. I felt vaguely that no emotional feeling could influence him. He regards a human creature as a fact or a thing, but not as an existence like his own. He feels no more hate than love. For him there is no one but himself: all other creatures are mere ciphers. The force of his will consists in the imperturbable calculations of his egotism: he is an able chess-player whose opponent is all humankind, whom he intends to checkmate. His success is due as much to the qualities he lacks as to the talents he possesses. Neither pity, nor sympathy, nor religion, nor attachment to any idea whatsoever would have power to turn him from his path. He has the same devotion to his own interests that a good man has to virtue: if the object were noble, his persistency would be admirable.

Every time that I heard him talk I was struck by his superiority; it was of a kind, however, that had no relation to that of men instructed and cultivated by study, or by society, such as England and France possess examples of. But his conversation indicated that quick perception of circumstances the hunter has in pursuing his prey. Sometimes he related the political and military events of his life in a very interesting manner; he had even, in narratives that admitted gaiety, a touch of Italian imagination. Nothing, however, could conquer my invincible alienation from what I perceived in him. I saw in his soul a cold and cutting sword, which froze while wounding; I saw in his mind a profound irony, from which nothing fine or noble could escape not even his own glory: for he despised the nation whose suffrages he desired; and no spark of enthusiasm mingled with his craving to astonish the human race....

His face, thin and pale at that time, was very agreeable: since then he has gained flesh--which does not become him; for one needs to believe such a man to be tormented by his own character, at all to tolerate the sufferings this character causes others. As his stature is short, and yet his waist very long, he appeared to much greater advantage on horseback than on foot; in all ways it is war, and war only, he is fitted for. His manner in society is constrained without being timid; it is disdainful when he is on his guard, and vulgar when he is at ease; his air of disdain suits him best, and so he is not sparing in the use of it. He took pleasure already in the part of embarrassing people by saying disagreeable things: an art which he has since made a system of, as of all other methods of subjugating men by degrading them.

VISCOUNT DE CHATEAUBRIAND

Born in France in 1768, died in 1848; entered the French army in 1786; traveled in America in 1791-92; emigrated to England, where in 1797 he published his "Essai Historique, Politique et Moral"; returned to France in 1800; converted to the Catholic faith through the death of his mother; published in 1802 "The Genius of Christianity"; made secretary of legation in Rome by Napoleon in 1803, and later minister to the republic of Valais, but resigned in 1804 after the execution of the Duke of Enghien; supported the Bourbons in 1814; made a peer of France in 1815; ambassador to England in 1822; Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1823; published his "Memoirs" in 1849-50.

IN AN AMERICAN FOREST[48]

When, in my journeys among the Indian tribes of Canada, I left European dwellings, and found myself, for the first time, alone in the midst of an ocean of forests, having, so to speak, all nature prostrate at my feet, a strange change took place within me. In the kind of delirium which seized me, I followed no road; I went from tree to tree, now to the right, now to the left, saying to myself, "Here there are no more roads to follow, no more towns, no more narrow houses, no more presidents, republics, or kings--above all, no more laws, and no more men." Men! Yes, some good savages, who cared nothing for me, nor I for them; who, like me, wandered freely wherever their fancy led them, eating when they felt inclined, sleeping when and where they pleased. And, in order to see if I were really established in my original rights, I gave myself up to a thousand acts of eccentricity, which enraged the tall Dutchman who was my guide, and who, in his heart, thought I was mad.

[Footnote 48: From the "Essay on Revolutions." While in America, Chateaubriand visited Canada, traveling inland through the United States from Niagara to Florida. He arrived home in Paris at the time of the execution of Louis XVI. His "Essay on Revolutions" was published five years later.]

Escaped from the tyrannous yoke of society, I understood then the charms of that independence of nature which far surpasses all the pleasures of which civilized man can form any idea. I understood why not one savage has become a European, and why many Europeans have become savages; why the sublime "Discourse on the Inequality of Rank" is so little understood by the most part of our philosophers. It is incredible how small and diminished the nations and their most boasted institutions appeared in my eyes; it seemed to me as if I saw the kingdoms of the earth through an inverted spy-glass, or rather that, being myself grown and elevated, I looked down on the rest of my degenerate race with the eye of a giant.

You who wish to write about men, go into the deserts, become for a moment the child of nature, and then--and then only--take up the pen.

Among the innumerable enjoyments of this journey one especially made a vivid impression on my mind.

I was going then to see the famous cataract of Niagara, and I had taken my way through the Indian tribes who inhabit the deserts to the west of the American plantations. My guides were--the sun, a pocket-compass, and the Dutchman of whom I have spoken: the latter understood perfectly five dialects of the Huron language. Our train consisted of two horses, which we let loose in the forests at night, after fastening a bell to their necks. I was at first a little afraid of losing them, but my guide reassured me by pointing out that, by a wonderful instinct, these good animals never wandered out of sight of our fire.

One evening, when, as we calculated that we were only about eight or nine leagues from the cataract, we were preparing to dismount before sunset, in order to build our hut and light our watch-fire after the Indian fashion, we perceived in the wood the fires of some savages who were encamped a little lower down on the shores of the same stream as we were. We went to them. The Dutchman having by my orders asked their permission for us to pass the night with them, which was granted immediately, we set to work with our hosts. After having cut down some branches, planted some stakes, torn off some bark to cover our palace, and performed some other public offices, each of us attended to his own affairs. I brought my saddle, which served me well for a pillow all through my travels; the guide rubbed down the horses; and as to his night accommodation, since he was not so particular as I am, he generally made use of the dry trunk of a tree. Work being done, we seated ourselves in a circle, with our legs crossed like tailors, around the immense fire, to roast our heads of maize, and to prepare supper. I had still a flask of brandy, which served to enliven our savages not a little. They found out that they had some bear hams, and we began a royal feast.

The family consisted of two women, with infants at their breasts, and three warriors; two of them might be from forty to forty-five years of age, altho they appeared much older, and the third was a young man.

The conversation soon became general; that is to say, on my side it consisted of broken words and many gestures--an expressive language, which these nations understand remarkably well, and that I had learned among them. The young man alone preserved an obstinate silence; he kept his eyes constantly fixt on me. In spite of the black, red, and blue stripes, cut ears, and the pearl hanging from his nose, with which he was disfigured, it was easy to see the nobility and sensibility which animated his countenance. How well I knew he was inclined not to love me! It seemed to me as if he were reading in his heart the history of all the wrongs which Europeans have inflicted on his native country. The two children, quite naked, were asleep at our feet before the fire; the women took them quietly into their arms and put them to bed among the skins, with a mother's tenderness so delightful to witness in these so-called savages: the conversation died away by degrees, and each fell asleep in the place where he was.

I alone could not close my eyes, hearing on all sides the deep breathing of my hosts. I raised my head, and, supporting myself on my elbow, watched by the red light of the expiring fire the Indians stretched around me and plunged in sleep. I confess that I could hardly refrain from tears. Brave youth, how your peaceful sleep affects me! You, who seemed so sensible of the woes of your native land, you were too great, too high-minded to mistrust the foreigner! Europeans, what a lesson for you! These same savages whom we have pursued with fire and sword, to whom our avarice would not leave a spadeful of earth to cover their corpses in all this world, formerly their vast patrimony--these same savages receiving their enemy into their hospitable hut, sharing with him their miserable meal, and, their couch undisturbed by remorse, sleeping close to him the calm sleep of the innocent. These virtues are as much above the virtues of conventional life as the soul of tho man in his natural state is above that of the man in society.

It was moonlight. Feverish with thinking, I got up and seated myself at a little distance on a root which ran along the edge of the streamlet: it was one of those American nights which the pencil of man can never represent, and the remembrance of which I have a hundred times recalled with delight.

The moon was at the highest point of the heavens; here and there at wide, clear intervals twinkled a thousand stars. Sometimes the moon rested on a group of clouds which looked like the summit of high mountains crowned with snow: little by little these clouds grew longer, and rolled out into transparent and waving zones of white satin, or transformed themselves into light flakes of froth, into innumerable wandering flocks in the blue plains of the firmament. Another time the arch of heaven seemed changed into a shore on which one could discover horizontal rows, parallel lines such as are made by the regular ebb and flow of the sea; a gust of wind tore this veil again, and everywhere appeared in the sky great banks of dazzlingly white down, so soft to the eye that one seemed to feel their softness and elasticity. The scene on the earth was not less delightful: the silvery and velvety light of the moon floated silently over the top of the forests, and at intervals went down among the trees, casting rays of light even through the deepest shadows. The narrow brook which flowed at my feet, burying itself from time to time among the thickets of oak-, willow-, and sugar-trees, and reappearing a little farther off in the glades, all sparkling with the constellations of the night, seemed like a ribbon of azure silk spotted with diamond stars and striped with black bands. On the other side of the river, in a wide, natural meadow, the moonlight rested quietly on the pastures, where it was spread out like a sheet. Some birch-trees scattered here and there over the savannas, sometimes blending, according to the caprice of the winds, with the background, seemed to surround themselves with a pale gauze--sometimes rising up again from their chalky foundations, hidden in the darkness, formed, as it were, islands of floating shadows on an immovable sea of light. Near all was silence and repose, except the falling of the leaves, the rough passing of a sudden wind, the rare and interrupted whooping of the gray owl; but in the distance at intervals one heard the solemn rolling of the cataract of Niagara, which in the calm of the night echoed from desert to desert and died away in solitary forests.