and not to fear; and make Citizens of them, not Slaves. Being themselves fathers of happy children, Nature must have taught them much more than they could learn from me, a useless bachelor: but as they are Frenchmen, they ought to be no less on their guard against the methods which exalt the soul too high, than against those which degrade it.

They will therefore banish emulation from their schools. Emulation, we are told, is a stimulant; for this reason precisely it ought to be reprobated. Men without art and without artifice, leave strong spiceries to those whose taste is weakened; present not to the children of your Country any aliments but such as are gentle and simple like themselves and like you. The fever must not be thrown into their blood, in order to make it circulate: permit it to flow in it's natural course; Nature has made sufficient provision to this effect at an age of such restlessness and activity. The disquietude

of adolescence, the passions of youth, the anxieties of manhood, will one day excite an inflammation but too violent to admit of being cooled by all your efforts.

Emulation is a stimulant of a singular species. We do not serve ourselves of it; but it moves and directs us at pleasure. While we propose to subdue a rival, emulation makes a conquest of us. Like the Man who bridled and mounted the horse at his own request, to avenge him of the stag, once in the saddle on our mind, it forces us to go where we have no occasion, and to run after every one who goes faster than ourselves. It fills the whole career of life with solicitude, uneasiness and vain

desires,

desires, and when old-age has slackened all our movements, it continues to stimulate us by unprofitable regret.

Post equitem sedet atra cura.

Gloomy care mounts behind the horseman.

Had I any occasion in infancy to surpass my companions in drinking, in eating, in walking, in order to find pleasure in these? Wherefore should it be necessary for me to learn to outstrip them in my studies, in order to acquire a relish for learning? Have I not acquired the faculty of speaking and of reasoning without emulation? Are not the functions of the soul as natural and as agreeable as those of the body? If they sadden our children, it is the fault of our mode of education, and not that of science. It is not from want of appetite on their part. Behold what imitators they are of every thing which they see done, and of every thing which they hear said? Do you wish then to attract children to your exercises? Act as Nature does in recommending hers; draw them with cords of love, and they will run without a spur.

Emulation is the cause of most of the ills of human life. It is the root of ambition; for emu lation produces the desire of being the first; and the desire of being the first is the essence of ambition, which ramifies itself, conformably to po-. sitions, from which issue almost all the miseries of society.

Positive ambition generates the love of applause, of personal and exclusive prerogatives for a man's self or for his corps, of immense property in dignities, in lands

lands and in employments; in a word it produces avarice, that calm ambition of gold, in which all the ambitious finish their course. But avarice alone drags in it's train an infinite number of evils, by depriving multitudes of other citizens of the means of subsistence, and produces, by a necessary re-action, robberies, prostitutions, quackery, superstition.

Negative ambition generates in it's turn jealousy, evil-speaking, calumnies, quarrels, litigation, duels, intolerance. Of all these particular ambitions a national ambition is composed, which manifests itself in a People by the love of conquest, and in their Prince by the love of despotism: from national ambition flow imposts, slavery, tyrannies and war, a sufficient scourge of itself for the human race.

I was long under the conviction that ambition must be natural to man; but now I consider it as a simple result from our education. We are involved so early in the prejudices of so many whose interest is concerned to communicate them to us, that it becomes extremely difficult to distinguish through the rest of life, what is natural to us and whot artificial. In order to form a judgment of the institutions of our societies, we must withdraw to a distance from them; but to form a judgment of the sentiments of our own heart, we must retire into it. As to myself, who have been long driven back into myself by the public manners, and who withdraw myself more and more from the world by my habits, it seems to me that man has no natural selfimpulse either to raise himself above his fellows, or to sink below them, but to live with them as their

equal.

equal. This sentiment is common to all animals, the individuals and species of which have not reduced each other to subjection; for a more powerful reason it ought to be universal among men, who stand in need of mutual assistance. The love of ambition, therefore is more natural to the human heart than the love of servitude. The love of equality is the medium point between these two extremes, like virtue from which it does not differ: it is the universal justice: it is between two contraries, like the harmony which governs the world. It is that which Confucius calls "the golden mean, which he considers as the cause of all that is good, · and which he denominates by way of excellence, "the virtue of the heart." He makes the principle of it to consist in piety, that is in the love of all men in general. He frequently recommends in his writings, "not to make another suffer what you "yourself would be loth to suffer." On this natural basis it is that he has reared the immoveable fabric of China, the most ancient Empire in the universe. In China children and young people are not stimulated to surpass each other. They comprehend not, says the philosopher La Barbinais, either our theses or our college disputations. They simply undergo an examination on the subject of morals, before Commissioners appointed by the Court. These Commissioners select such of them as discover the greatest capacity without the least regard to their condition, to raise them, through successive degrees to the rank of Mandarin, from which a man may rise to the office of Prime Minister of State.

The

The emulation with which we inspire our children, if I may venture to speak out, is a fortified ambition; for the ambitious man wishes at most to get up to the first place; but the emulous wishes besides to raise himself at the expence of a rival. It is not sufficient for him to get to the summit of the mountain; he must have the farther satisfaction of beholding all his competitors tumbling down. Emulation is a cruel deity, who, unsatisfied with a temple and incense, must have victims likewise.

It is remarkable that the emulation infused into infant minds produces a more pernicious effect in us Frenchmen, and renders us more vain than any other Nation of Europe. Many reasons for this are to be found in our manners; but without going farther than our education, I discover a particular cause of the vain-glorious ambition of our children, in that of our professors. In Switzerland, in Holland, in England, in Germany, in Italy, in Russia, and I believe in all the Universities of Europe, professorships lead to Magistracies, to the rank of Aulic-counsellor, or to other employments which connect them with the administration of the State: this was the case formerly among ourselves, before every thing came to be bought and sold. Those Professors in other Countries therefore direct the attention of their pupils, in part, toward the object which they themselves have in view, that is toward public affairs. But our French regents, obliged to circumscribe all their ambition within the precincts of a College, can gratify it only by communicating it. to the youth committed to their charge, without foreseeing the consequences to the community.

They