![]() ![]() Rearing him as an infant "according to the human constitution" and by "the force of things" alone, negative education inoculates Emile's soul against tyrannical pleasures and angry passions, and positively it conveys the salutary idea of necessity to his incipient understanding. Yet Rousseau's program of negative education, derived from observing its "rule," keeps Emile on nature's path. ![]() But those original faculties of strength and sense are not identical to nature's direction, and in fact their own capacities enable man to be diverted from his proper course of development. From infancy until adolescence, nature's direction points Emile toward natural happiness-the equilibrium between his original faculties or powers and his original desires. The hypothetical education of Emile depicts man's development according to that direction. At the beginning of the Emile, Rousseau defines human nature in teleological terms, referring to it as a natural "direction," "rule," and "path" of development over the course of the individual human life span. ![]()
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