Neutralizing the Functions in Recognizing the Self: A Jungian Perspective on the "Yoga" of Emile in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile

 Neutralizing the Functions in Recognizing the Self: A Jungian Perspective on the "Yoga" of Emile in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile

Guillemette Johnston

DePaul University

In his book Psychological Types, depth psychologist Carl Jung attempts to identify the psychic functions and attitude types that result from mechanisms triggered by external circumstances and by dispositions within the individual.^[1]  While recognizing that grouping people into types is “superficial and general [in] nature” (6) and that the results of such an approach “will always be a product of the subjective psychological constellation of the investigator” (9), Jung strives to invent and define terms that will help identify concepts in such a way that the observer will not see too subjectively. The ultimate result of this process will be Jung’s famous quaternary system where two attitudes (introversion/extraversion) and four function types (thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting) measure the self-regulatory nature of the psyche.  But in order to reach this system of definitions, Jung endeavors to establish an archaeology of the functions and character types via a study of the evolution of western philosophical thought and political systems, concentrating on the oppositions that existed within these systems, especially as regards Christianity. As he puts it, “the works of the ancients are full of psychology, [but] only little of it can be described as objective psychology” (8).

A crucial component in Jung’s attempt to establish his theory is his contention that if we “go right back to primitive psychology, we find absolutely no trace of the concept of an individual.  Instead of individuality, we find only collective relationships or what Lévy-Bruhl calls participation mystique” (10).  The collective attitude hinders the recognition and evaluation of a psychology different from the subject’s, because the collectively oriented mind is quite incapable of thinking and feeling outside of its own projections.  In other words, what we understand by the word “individual” is a relatively recent development in the history of the human mind and of human culture.  Thus in discussing the 18^th century and the early Romantic period, Jung concentrates on the development of the superior and inferior functions, by which particular functions come to dominate the ego, casting their opposing functions into the “inferior” position of assimilation into the personal unconscious, so that for example a thinking introvert will have an unconscious, “shadow” side as a feeling extrovert. To explain these developments, Jung chooses to analyze Friedrich Schiller's Letters on the Education of Man and to make encompassing statements regarding Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile.  In other words, for Jung Schiller and Rousseau typify the Age of Reason and its immediate aftermath, demonstrating humanity’s loss of a sense of unity and “individuality” as a result of the development of an overpowering collective culture that arises at the expense of nature.  Jung thus identifies Schiller and Rousseau as exemplars of a philosophical argument that centers on the problematic of human origins and the loss of man’s initial integrity—perhaps that sense of “wholeness” identified by participation mystique.  Jung sees the problem of “the conflict between the individual and the social function” (81) as artificial insofar as it is considered as something new.  Writes Jung,

It was their imperfect knowledge of earlier conditions of human psychology that led both [Schiller and Rousseau] into false judgments about the values of the past.  The result of this false judgment is the belief in the illusory picture of an earlier, more perfect type of man, who somehow fell from his estate.  Retrospective orientation is itself a relic of pagan thinking, for it is a well-known characteristic of the archaic and barbarian mentality that it imagined a paradisal Golden Age as the forerunner of the present evil time. (83) 

Speaking specifically about Rousseau’s longing for a lost unity, Jung remarks that “Rousseau is deceived,” for “he believes this state of affairs [i.e., the development of a function-driven ego that suppresses its inferior functions] is a recent development.”  According to Jung, it “was always so” (82), and this state existed the more so the further we descend to the beginnings.  Thus according to Jung, Rousseau’s state of unity is basically a state of participation mystique, and “[the] suppression of individuality . . . is a relic of that archaic time when there was no individuality whatever. . . .  [I]t is not by any means recent suppression we are dealing with, but merely a new sense and awareness of the overwhelming power of the collective” (82).  Put another way, Rousseau’s interpretation of man’s original state and his idealistic vision of it seem to Jung a fiction resulting from Rousseau’s failure to realize that it is not the human predicament that has changed, but rather the individual’s ability to identify and differentiate circumstances via a reconfiguration of the mind as the foundation and expression of the rationalizing ego, now individually oriented. 

I argue that Jung paradoxically misreads Rousseau and falls into the trap he himself tries to avoid, that is the trap of subjective perception.  Rousseau’s exploration of mankind’s earlier state is not based on a blind, historicized understanding of human psychology, but in fact presupposes a state of consciousness that is not limited to the collective.  Rather, it links into an entirely different approach to human being, one Jung himself recognized as alien to but potentially descriptive of the system of typology and processes of individuation that he isolated in his own analytical practices, and one that in fact potentially transcends that typological system.^[2]  This perspective we can most accurately address in terms of the spiritual science of yoga.  Because of Rousseau’s instinctive recognition of and integration with the balanced quality of nature (a state known as sattva guna in yogic philosophy), the metaphoric man of nature Rousseau describes does not feel divided, since his ego is not overdeveloped at the expense of his inner self, which in Jungian terms would be the self of combined, multiple conscious and non-conscious polarities.  When Rousseau criticizes the natural man’s interference with nature, it is not humanness that he deplores but the shifting of a state of balance from amour de soi or self-love to one where amour-propre (pride or ego) prevails.  Rousseau’s description of the ideal man and society aims not at offering a genealogy of human development, but at integrating all modes of perception in the individual, so as to maintain or even maximize consciousness or transparency. 

To clarify this statement we will draw a parallel between Rousseau’s idea of consciousness and the yogic system of consciousness, according to which three different constituents in balance contribute to consciousness: the mind, the ego, and the intelligence or power of discrimination.  Rousseau’s work tries in metaphoric or symbolic terms to reconstitute for the reader Rousseau’s own mystical experience of man’s inner consciousness and sense of unity.^[3]  In fact it is quite probable that Rousseau himself underwent a process paralleling Jung’s process of individuation, or midlife confrontation with the dominance of the ego and rebalancing of the functions,^[4] complete with the development of a mandala pattern like the one Jung borrowed from Tibetan Buddhism to describe the totality of the self that comes to the fore after the rebalanced ego recognizes its relation to the Self,^[5] and that Rousseau even experienced states like those described in the chakra system of Kundalini yoga,^[6] which Jung uses to describe individuation, and which he even suggests leads beyond the states of consciousness commonly experienced in western society.^[7]  It is thus ironic that Jung, who himself was considered mostly as an introverted intuitive, presents an egocentric, extraverted argument about Rousseau’s perception of the man of nature.  Using Jung’s system of character types and functions, I would like to show how Rousseau’s Emile attempts to teach a child to be harmoniously integrated in a way that attempts to avoid the pitfalls of ego development that lead to excessive function dominance and difficulties with individuation.^[8] 

Rousseau’s teaching rests on a method that tries to prevent man’s true nature from being altered solely to the benefit of the ego, or amour-propre in Rousseau’s terminology.  Rousseau understands that to survive, humans need to interact with their environment.  But to not be destructive, this interaction has to rely on the fundamental principle of love of the self, or amour de soi.  When Rousseau talks about leaving nature alone and removing the work of man, we must understand that what he considers fatal progress, we would call the emergence of the supremacy of the ego.  The heightening of ego consciousness implies an increase in self-consciousness.  This increase in self-consciousness, which Rousseau would identify as pride, shame or amour propre, causes the foundation of knowledge to shift from the inner core of the individual to the outer core.  It thus has an inhibitory effect upon the expressions of sensing and feeling within the individual, which according to Rousseau in the pure state of nature exist as complementary functions that enhance the welfare and harmony of the individual and offer the most direct means of self-knowledge. 

To understand this distinction better, we can use bioenergeticist Alexander Lowen’s discussion of the differences between understanding and knowing.^[9]  Lowen bases his perspective on Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.^[10]  According to Lowen, Jaynes sees understanding as part of the “function of the right hemisphere, which is concerned with wholes . . . in contrast to knowledge, which could be a function of the analytic power of the left hemisphere. . . .  [U]nderstanding is related to the feeling process of the body, [and] knowledge is related to the thinking process of the mind. . . .  [U]nderstanding is a sensing from below, from the body, whereas knowing is seeing from above, from the mind or head” (Lowen 246). Lowen thus concludes, “knowing is a function of the ego, which, as it develops, will eventually take an objective and superior position with regard to the body.”  He adds:

[I]t would be nice if our knowledge grew as our understanding deepened, but unfortunately this rarely happens.  Very often, what we think we know contradicts our understanding, and in the conflict between the two we tend to rely heavily upon knowledge and deny our understanding. (Lowen 247)

What Lowen defines as the understanding of the body is very similar to what Rousseau identifies as our relationship to our ecological core, a relationship that is key to the Jungian individuated state.  As we know, Rousseau claims that “To exist, for us, is to sense: our sensibility is incontestably anterior to our intelligence, and we had sentiments before ideas” (Emile 290).^[11]  While Rousseau emphasizes the necessity of avoiding giving our sensibility a position subordinate to our mind, he nevertheless recognizes the need of preserving that aptitude as the major means of relating to the self and to the other: “if . . . man is by nature sociable, or at least made to become so, he can only be so by means of . . . innate sentiments relative to his species. . . .  It is from the moral system formed by this double relation to oneself and to one’s fellows that the impulse of conscience is born” (290).^[12]  Note that Rousseau does not use the word “conscience” in isolation, but precedes it with the word “impulse,” which he defines within the context of innate sentiments that move outward.  This description paradoxically eliminates the opposition between understanding and knowledge, since it conveys at once the notion of knowledge of the self within the other as well as the concept of understanding in that presupposes a response.  As Lowen puts it, “understanding is an emphatic process that depends on the harmonic response of one body to the other” (Lowen 248).

This opposition between understanding and knowing, amour de soi and amour propre, self and ego, has at its core the same preoccupations as those that underlie Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras.^[13]  In sutras 1.2 and 1.3, for instance, one confronts the necessity of making sure that the workings of the mind do not interfere with the balance of the self, or in other words with one’s true nature.  Here are two translations of the sutras.

1.2:      Yoga is the control of thought-waves in the mind. (Prabhavananda and Isherwood 15)

Yoga is the cessation of the turnings of thought. (Stoler-Miller 29)

1.3:      Then man abides in his real nature. (Prabhavananda and Isherwood 22)

When thought ceases, the spirit stands in its true nature.  (Stoler-Miller 29)

By referring to thoughts and thought-waves, the sutras are addressing the workings of the mind.  In the yogic tradition, one speaks of the thought process as a composite of mind. The mind, or manas, is the recording faculty; buddhi or intelligence is the discriminative faculty, and ahamkar, the ego sense, is the claimant to all impressions, which it stores as individual knowledge.  A key point is that knowledge or perception is considered a thought-wave.  The mind that appears intelligent and conscious is not, for it only has a borrowed intelligence, conversely to the spirit, purusa, the essence, atman, the self.   Thus sutras 2.6 and 4.4 define egoism as follows:

2.6:      To identify consciousness with that which merely reflects consciousness—this is egoism.  (Prabhavananda and Isherwood 112)

Egoism is ascribing a unified self to the organs and powers of perception, such as the eye and the power to see.  (Stoler-Miller 46)

4.4:      The ego-sense alone can create mind.  (Prabhavananda and Isherwood 206)

Individual thoughts are constructed from a measure of egoism.  (Stoler-Miller 76)

Thus the whole science of yoga consists of not letting the spirit be disturbed by perception.  At the core of mankind’s imbalance is the misuse of faculties.  If yoga offers a discipline designed to disintoxicate the senses and reinstate the individual’s primary inner experience, Rousseau aims at achieving the same end, but he tackles the problem from the opposite direction, offering a method of education that tries from the start to prevent the alteration of the sense of inner balance—almost as if he shared Jung’s insight in relation to Kundalini that people are individuated, but just are not aware of it.^[14]  Indeed, as we shall see, Emile’s education requires hands-on experience and strives to eliminate reported knowledge.  The Master’s lessons rest on introverted principles that teach the individual to adapt in accordance with his intuitive knowledge, even though the mode of acquisition is based on stagings of situations that require the interaction of the individual with the outside world.  While Rousseau’s educational principles aim at achieving introverted ends, their application relies on an extraverted method.

I introduce the terms “extraverted” and “introverted” intentionally here, since Jung’s uses these terms to describe the faculties as they relate to the individual’s surroundings as well as to the functioning of these faculties in the acquisition or perception of knowledge, which depends deeply on the individual’s initial make up.  As mentioned above, for Jung, two attitude types (introversion/extraversion) and four function types (thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting) serve to measure the self-regulatory nature of the psyche.^[15]  However, if Jung uses these terms to define and understand character types by showing how the functions of sensing, feeling, thinking and intuiting develop disproportionately and according to type, Rousseau’s Emile presents a prototype of balance, representing an attempt to bring the child to adulthood in a state where functions paradoxically no longer exist in oppositions, but are neutralized means of experiencing.  In other words, Rousseau tries to make Emile an individuated being.  Even though Jung’s mapping of extraverted and introverted types as well as of functions did not exist for Rousseau as a reference tool, Rousseau intuitively worked from principles similar to those highlighted by Jung, since his method aims at adapting the individual to his surroundings without compromising the integrity of his natural make up.  The difference lies in Rousseau’s idealistic attempt to form a child with no discordance between aptitudes, since these are grounded on a universal core—the self.  Rousseau’s teachings aim at reconciling the movements of adaptation of the individual via the control of his inner and outer surroundings. 

Looking at Jung’s two basic modes of adaptation and growth in the individual, then, we can identify two poles as means for gaining knowledge: the self as the source of the archetypal knowledge that wells from the collective unconscious and mainly serves in the workings of the behavior of an introvert, and the ego as the source of objective knowledge that appears in the psychic behavior of the extravert.  In other words we can speak of intuitive knowledge versus acquisitive and reflected or reported knowledge. 

To highlight the modes of adaptation and knowledge acquisition as well as the means of personal growth that each encompasses, here is a more in-depth explanation of the characteristics Jung isolates for each type.  Note that Jung presents global descriptions of how each type finds its own form of knowledge via its mode of interaction, and ties different types of knowledge and learning to them.  So in a section trying to identify the extraverted type, Jung writes: “ The extravert . . . has a positive relation to the object.  He affirms its importance to such an extent that his subjective attitude is constantly related to and oriented by the object” (Psychological Types 330).  He continues,

[The extravert] never expects to find any absolute factors in his own inner life, since the only ones he knows are outside himself. . . .  [H]is inner life is subordinated to external necessity. . . .  His whole consciousness looks outward, because the essential and decisive determination always comes from the outside. . . .   The actions of the extravert are recognizably related to external conditions.  In so far as they are not merely reactive to environmental stimuli, they have a character that is always adapted to the actual circumstances, and they find sufficient play within the limits of the objective situation. (334)

 Conversely to the extravert’s attitude, writes Jung, “The introvert’s attitude is an abstracting one; at bottom, he is always intent on withdrawing libido from the object, as though he had to prevent the object from gaining power over him” (330). Jung later points out how the introvert is oriented by subjective factors:

Although the introverted consciousness is naturally aware of external conditions, it selects the subjective determinants as the decisive ones.  It is therefore oriented by the factor in perception and cognition which responds to the sense stimulus in accordance with the individual’s subjective disposition. . . .  Quite apart from the variable acuteness of the sense organs and the personal equation, there often exists a radical difference, both in kind and in degree, in the psychic assimilation of the perceptual image.  Whereas the extravert continuously appeals to what comes to him from the object, the introvert relies principally on what the sense impression constellates in the subject. (373-374)

Importantly, in this passage Jung points out the necessity of not relying exclusively on outward or objective knowledge, as extraverted people tend to do, since “perception and cognition are not purely objective, but are also subjectively conditioned. The world exists not merely in itself, but as it appears to [us]” (374).  To exclude the importance of the subjective factor and give primacy to objective cognition is according to Jung a great mistake, since the subjective factor plays an essential part in humanity’s experience of knowledge acquisition and understanding.  Thus Jung describes “[the] subjective factor [as] that psychological action or reaction which merges with the effect produced by the object and so gives rise to a new psychic datum”: 

In so far as the subjective factor has, from earliest times and among all peoples, remained in large measure constant, elementary perceptions and cognitions being almost universally the same, it is a reality as firmly established as the external object. . . .  [T]he subjective factor is as ineluctable a datum as the extent of the sea and the radius of the earth. . . .  It is another universal law, and whoever bases himself on it has a foundation as secure, as permanent, and as valid as the man who relies on the object. (375)

  By describing the subjective factor as a universal law that pertains to the fundamental core of the interacting subject, Jung means to acknowledge the “fundamental subject” present before the development of the ego.  Says Jung, “The introverted attitude is normally oriented by the psychic structure, which is . . . inborn in the subject.  This must not be assumed, however, to be simply identical with the subject’s ego. . . .  [I]t is rather the psychic structure of the subject prior to any ego-development.  The really fundamental subject, the self, is far more comprehensive than the ego, since the former includes the unconscious whereas the latter is essentially the focal point of consciousness” (376).  Jung’s highlighting of the importance of the subjective factor is crucial; as he states,

The individual self is a . . . representative of something present in all living creatures, an exponent of the specific mode of psychological behavior, which varies from species to species and is inborn in each of its members.  The inborn mode of acting has long been known as instinct, and for the inborn of psychic apprehension I have proposed the term archetype. . . .  What I understand by it is identical with the “primordial image.” (376-377) 

On a track parallel to Jung’s subjective factor and to Rousseau’s amour de soi or self love, we find in the Yoga Sutra an intuitive knowledge that serves as a comprehensive source of inner reference and stability.  The following sutras illustrate this point: “The profound clarity of intuitive cognition brings inner tranquility” (1.47: Stoler-Miller 42); “When each sense organ severs contact with its objects, withdrawal of the senses corresponds to the intrinsic form of thought” (2.54: Stoler-Miller 59).  What these sutras allude to is the introverted core of the individual, untouched by any outward knowledge that could somehow contribute to misperception.  This thinking process evolves from a meditative state that does not interfere with outer perception.  We are touching the heart here regarding the opposition between acquired knowledge and knowledge that is intrinsic to the make-up of the individual, or introverted knowledge, also known as knowledge that derives from introverted consciousness.  Sutras 4.4 to 4.6 give food for thought regarding this difference, as do sutras 4.19 and 4.24.  If sutra 4.6 does not exclude the concept of thinking, it nonetheless clarifies for us where its source should lie: “A thought born of meditation leaves no trace of subliminal intention” (Stoler-Miller 76).  However, by suggesting the context and consequences of the thinking process, sutras 4.4, 4.5, and 4.19 tell us what to expect when thoughts are generated from an external point of view: “Individual thoughts are constructed from a measure of egoism” (4.4: Stoler-Miller 76); “A single thought produces the diverse activities of many thoughts” (4.5: Stoler-Miller 76); “Since thought is an object of perception, it cannot illuminate itself” (4.19: Stoler-Miller 79).  These distinctions bring us back to Rousseau’s strategy for educating the child, which aims at making sure that the child does not use any of his faculties prematurely.  Thus, for Rousseau, teaching Emile how to think properly depends on exercising discriminative judgment to foster the harmonious development of the child’s faculties, or in other words avoiding the overdevelopment of one faculty at the expense of others.  In order to achieve this aim, Rousseau will focus not on withdrawal of the senses, but rather on not overstimulating them prematurely, so as to prevent them from becoming overactive by making sure that no unnecessary traumatic memories develop.  Hence, each circumstance or staging that the Master develops for Emile has to correspond to a definite need, as well as to a specific intention in guiding the formation of the child, so that no interference disturbs his center.

If on one hand Rousseau’s method relies at first on an accurate education of the senses, on the other hand it tries to diminish unrelated or unnecessary conceptualization within the process of interpretation or absorption of knowledge.  It does this by putting an emphasis on what could be construed as a pre-conventional and/or un-conventional language.  No outward experience can be allowed without a cautious screening of the environment and an initial attention to any primordial need.  In this respect we can see that Rousseau is attempting to make sure that complex faculties and abilities such as language use, memory, imagination and reason interfere only within the ultimate processes of development.  Again, we can draw a parallel between Rousseau’s aims and the intent of the sutras, i.e. making sure that the self is not affected by any movements of the thought receptacle of the mind that are fueled by any turning of thoughts.  Tackling the problem from a reverse angle, Rousseau tries to make sure that in recording knowledge, any faculty involved be used discriminatively. 

Before giving further examples of Rousseau’s strategy, we would like to quote sutras 1.5 to 1.11 (excluding sutra 1.10, which deals with sleep), since these sutras touch directly on the forces that contribute to the turnings of thought.  We provide two translations of these sutras to give a broader sense of their import.  Here is Stoler-Miller’s translation:

1.5:      The turnings of thought, whether corrupted or immune to the forces of corruption, are of five kinds.

1.6:      They are valid judgment, error, conceptualization, sleep, and memory.

1.7:      The valid means of judgment are direct perception, inference, and verbal testimony.

1.8:      Error is false knowledge with no objective basis.

1.9:      Conceptualization comes from words devoid of substance. . . .

1.11:    Memory is the recollection of objects one has experienced.  (Stoler-Miller 31)

Concentrating on the thought-waves that keep the individual in a state of identification, Prabhavananda and Isherwood translate the passage as follows:

1.5:      There are five kinds of thought-waves—some painful, others not painful.

1.6:      These five kinds of thought-waves are: right knowledge, wrong knowledge, verbal delusion, sleep and memory.

1.7:      The right kinds of knowledge are: direct perception, inference and scriptural testimony.

1.8:      Wrong knowledge is knowledge which is false and not based upon the true nature of its object.

1.9:      Verbal delusion arises when words do not correspond to reality. . . .

1.11:    Memory is when perceived objects are not forgotten, but come back to consciousness.  (Prabhavananda and Isherwood 22-27).

Asking how wrong knowledge can prevail, one might want to focus in the first instance on sutra 1.9, “Conceptualization comes from words devoid of substance” or “Verbal delusion arises when words do not correspond to reality.”  Early on, Rousseau identifies language as a source of delusion when it is removed from the natural context of expressing basic longings of the body or the soul.  Rousseau advocates an education that begins before the acquisition of any conventional language or extraverted tool for knowledge acquisition: “Why . . . should a child’s education not begin before he speaks and understands” (Emile 63)?  “All our languages are works of art.  Whether there was a language natural and common to all men has long been a subject of research.  Doubtless there is such a language, and it is the one children speak before knowing how to speak” (65).^[16]  Linking language to inner and outer sensations, Rousseau advises making sure not to expose the child to the corruption of early sensations in order to keep the child in touch with both his inner reality and the reality of the object.  Says Rousseau,

At the beginning of life when memory and imagination are still inactive, the child is attentive only to what affects his senses at the moment.  Since his sensations are the first materials of his knowledge, to present them to him in an appropriate order is to prepare his memory to provide them one day to his understanding in the same order.  But inasmuch as he is attentive only to his sensations, it suffices at first to show him quite distinctly the connection of these same sensations with the objects which cause them (64).^[17]

We see here how intent Rousseau is on assuring that no misconception interfere in the early stage of the child’s exposure to the environment, so that the initial experience will be neither devoid of substance nor subject to false impressions.  Thus, when time comes for the child to actually learn a language, Rousseau specifies how one should address the child:

I would want the first articulations which he is made to hear to be rare, easy, distinct, often repeated, and that the words they express relate only to objects of the senses which can in the first place be shown to the child.  The unfortunate facility we have for dazzling people with words we do not understand begins earlier than is thought.  (70)^[18]

Further, Rousseau adds,

Children whom one hurries to talk have time neither to learn to pronounce well nor to conceive well what they are made to say. . . .  The greatest harm from the hurry one is in to make children talk before the proper age is not that the first speeches one makes to them and the first words they say have no meaning for them, but that they have another meaning than ours without our being able to perceive it; so that, appearing to answer us quite exactly, they speak to us without understanding them. . . .  This lack of attention on our part to the true meaning which words have for children appears to me to be the cause of their first errors; and these errors, even after they are cured of them, have an influence on their turn of mind for the rest of their lives.  (73-74)^[19]

Rousseau concludes, “Restrict, therefore, the child’s vocabulary as much as possible.  It is a very great disadvantage for him to have more words than ideas, for him to know how to say more things than he can think” (74).^[20]  Rousseau’s strong insistence on using accurate language is essential, since it provides a means of teaching the child how to exercise restraint in unnecessary turnings of thoughts when reasoning or recollecting.

Rousseau’s cautionary instructions regarding the use of precocious and inaccurate language obviously mean to deal with what we identified earlier as the difference between learning and knowing (see comments on Lowen above regarding understanding and knowledge).  Rousseau does not want his pupil to see things first from above, from the head, but via direct sensual experience, or as Lowen puts it from “an emphatic process that depends on the harmonic response of [the] body” (Lowen 248).  This crucial concentration on how to handle language acquisition in the child is meant to inhibit the type of thought-waves that are identified in the Sutras as wrong types of knowledge, or knowledge that may lead to misconceptions based in conceptual or verbal delusion, errors regarding the nature of the object, and interventions of memory.  Speaking of the result he foresees in his method, Rousseau calls his pre-adolescent child well grounded.  His pupil “[n]ever says a useless word and does not exhaust himself with a chatter to which he knows nothing by heart, he knows much by experience.  If he reads less well in our books than does another child, he reads better in the book of nature.  His mind is not in his tongue but in his head.  He has less memory than judgment” (Emile 160).^[21]

Experience and an aptitude for reading directly from the book of nature result from Rousseau’s method, which from the beginning relies on both the inner experience—that is, the understanding of the child as it is limited to his subjective yet universal self, or what Jung calls the subjective factor—and an outer experience that is concentrated on the application of practical knowledge rather than on reported knowledge such as is found in books.  Indeed, judiciously aware of the importance of misperception, Rousseau chooses to emphasize teaching how to use one’s senses accurately not only to perceive and see well, but also to understand how deception can occur through a misunderstanding of how the senses operate.  Thus Rousseau reminds us that “The first faculties which are formed and perfected in us are the senses.  They are . . . the first faculties that ought to be cultivated; they are the ones which are completely ignored or the ones which are the most neglected. . . .  To exercise the senses is not only to make use of them, it is to learn to judge well with them.  It is to learn, so to speak, to sense; for we know how to touch, see, and hear only as we have learned” (132).^[22]

We do know that according to the Yoga Sutra, one must gain complete control of the senses in order to experience the clarity of intuitive cognition; 2. 54: “When each sense organ severs contact with its objects, withdrawal of the senses corresponds to the intrinsic form of thought”; 2:55: “From this comes complete control of the senses” (Stoler-Miller 59).  Conversely to yogic discipline, which advocates a series of practices that concentrate the mind, Rousseau advocates a method that aims to control the senses and concentrate the mind from an early age, before bad habits have the chance to settle.  When speaking of harmoniously forming the child, Rousseau tells us not only to have the child develop strength in exercising, but also to exercise his senses:

Have we not . . . eyes and ears; and are these organs superfluous to the use of the former?  Therefore, do not exercise only strength; exercise all the senses which direct it.  Get from each of them all they can do.  Then verify the impression of one by the other.  Measure, count, weigh, compare.  Use strength only after having estimated resistance.  Always arrange it so the estimate of the effect precedes the use of the means.  Interest the child in never making insufficient or superfluous efforts.  If you accustom him to foresee thus the effect of all his movements and to set his mistakes right by experience, is it not clear that the more he acts, the more judicious he will become?” (Emile 133)^[23]

But Rousseau does not only advocate educating the senses.  He also wants to make the child aware of the limitations of the senses, of their capacity for giving false perceptions (Emile 140).  Thus thanks to the child’s lucidity regarding the limitation of his senses, Rousseau can instruct him in physics (see Emile 176-177) and make him aware of the phenomenon of distortion in refraction.  In addition, thanks to the accuracy of his senses and to the Master’s practical teachings, the child will be able to use selected knowledge in astronomy to find his way when lost (Emile 180-182).

In disciplining the faculties, Rousseau aims at raising a being who is not only functional, but also harmonious.  This latter point explains why when it comes to teaching the child morals and respect, Rousseau’s method depends fundamentally on downplaying excessive negative egoism by emphasizing the innate experience of universal love (amour de soi) and the common fate of humanity via the stirring of pity or compassion.  Again, though, to escape the prison house of language and the misconceptions brought by misuse of our faculties, Rousseau chooses a practical method that involves conscious stagings while presenting teachings that trigger natural, compassionate feelings that stimulate introversion. 

As mentioned above, Rousseau’s teachings aim at keeping the pupil in harmony with his inner core while helping to develop his ego and its faculties.  From the onset of Emile, Rousseau gives priority to the instincts and to natural human dispositions.  The first as well as the most advanced mode of learning must be based on sensations and not on conscious ideas.  Above all, each lesson is meant to protect the pupil’s initial feelings, unadulterated by external abstract principles.  This approach aims directly at awakening the archetypes.  One of Jung’s many definitions of the archetype calls it “a symbolic formula which always begins to function when there are no conscious ideas present. . . .  The contents of the collective unconscious are represented in consciousness in the form of profound preferences and definite ways of looking at things” (Psychological Types 377).  The feeling that Rousseau stimulates in most of his teachings is compassion, which comes into play whenever one exposes the child to ideas that could be too complex to grasp.  Rousseau’s second Discourse gives a thorough definition of the role of pity in human nature: “pity is a natural feeling which, moderating in each individual the activity of love of oneself, contributes to the mutual preservation of the entire species.  It carries us without reflection to the aid of those whom we see suffer . . . no one is tempted to disobey its gentle voice.”^[24]  Rousseau’s educational principles therefore rely on introverted knowledge, in that they essentially concentrate on the power of identification of one’s own self with the other.  From Rousseau’s perspective, pity can be considered as a means of opening to an archetypal perspective on the human condition, since he knows that its influence will lead to understanding as opposed to simple knowledge.  Pity relies on sympathy, a harmonic response of one individual to another, and its essence is the interconnectedness of experience that leads to the transformation of the isolated ego into unity, the merging of internal and external in a way that does not erase the core.

Two examples come to mind; both present situations in which Rousseau decides to educate his child in a more complex fashion than at the initial stage of basic knowledge acquisition.  These are the incident at the fair (Emile 172-175), when Emile is taught both a physics lesson on magnetism and a lesson on not indulging in vanity or amour propre, and the incident in the garden, when Emile is initiated to the complex notion of private property.  In the incident at the fair, the master and Emile discover the laws of magnetic attraction after watching a magician move a wax duck floating in a tub of water.  Once he has figured out the law of attraction by means of a well-magnetized needle, the child returns to the fair and enjoys great success after informing the magician that he, a child, can perform this easy trick himself.  Invited by the magician to return and perform the trick in public, the child finds out that he no longer has the power of attracting the duck, since the magician is using a new trick.  By humiliating the child and putting him in an embarrassing situation similar to that of the Socratic magician, the Master means to teach the child via hurt feelings what true knowledge is, i.e. not knowledge acquired for the sake of display, but knowledge acquired for utilitarian purposes.  At the same time he has Emile recognize the need to respect the other, an emotional reaction linked to the sense of well being associated with amour de soi rather than amour propre, which relies essentially on extraverted feelings of satisfaction.  This apparently complex lesson is realized via a staging that a priori puts an emphasis on an extraverted method of teaching—manipulating objects, displaying one’s knowledge, etc.—but that ultimately relies on an inner knowledge based on the needs of the self.  It teaches the child how not to be overwhelmed by feelings of self-satisfaction in relation to the other, and through feelings of self love and recognition of a shared disposition, how to remain sympathetic to other people’s needs when those needs are linked to their livelihood.  Thus by understanding that knowledge should foster the well-being of the self and not glorify the ego, the child develops into a well-centered individual whose actions remain detached and whose mind remains unaffected by unnecessary “thought-waves.”

The incident of the garden similarly relies on activation of the archetype of the self as a universal subjective factor.  It is aimed at making the child aware of the part he plays as a social individual, as a unity belonging to the whole.  The incident in the garden obviously means to combine qualities unifying the individual and society to make Emile the true savage who knows how to live in the city.  As Rousseau states in book one of Emile, “Good social institutions are those that best know how to denature man, to take his absolute existence from him in order to give him a relative one and transport the I into the common unity, with the result that each individual believes himself no longer one but a part of the unity and no longer feels except within the whole” (Emile 40).^[25]  In this instance we see again a teaching based essentially on the recalling of amour de soi, an introverted principle, and by extension the archetypal manifestation of pity, one of the thought waves or perceptions that according to yogic teaching may help the adept to become detached from his emotions, since in the long run compassion can only bring understanding and less suffering (see sutra 1.5).

Here is how Rousseau uses pity.  In order to prepare the child to respect other people’s property, Rousseau places the child in a situation where he innocently learns to garden, and also learns literally to enjoy the fruit of his labor.  What the child does not know is that he is planting his crop where Robert the gardener had earlier planted a crop.  As a result, the child finds out not only that his labor has been destroyed, but that he himself has inadvertently destroyed Robert’s labor (Emile 98-99).  Having experienced first-hand the devastation of his work, and hearing that Robert has gone through the same process, the child will know what is meant by respecting the property or labor of others; he will have gained understanding.  However unrealistic it may seem to have such complete control over the child’s environment, via the example he proposes Rousseau means to make us understand that any knowledge removed from its source and its substance will only remain ungrounded abstraction: “Readers . . . I beg you to note how we stuff children’s heads with words which have no meaning within their reach and then believe we have instructed them very well” (Emile 98).^[26]

To instruct comes down for Rousseau to recognizing one’s inner knowledge as a measure of understanding in the process of survival and growth.  After basic faculties linked with the need for earlier interactions with the environment have been trained, inner faculties like love of the self and pity can remain unadulterated, or, using yogic language to describe this process, be immune to the forces of corruption.  Pity in fact in the context of the Sutras is regarded as a selfless emotion or a sentiment, since it is non-egoistic and linked to primal consciousness.   Commenting on sutra 1.5, which explains that some thought-waves can be the source of attachment or detachment, Prabhavananda and Isherwood write that pity is seen as neither painful nor corrupt, since it is a means of detachment: “A wave of pity . . . would be described as ‘not painful’ [or immune to corruption] because pity is an unselfish emotion which loosens the bonds of our own egotism . . . our pity will teach us understanding and, hence, freedom” (Prabhavananda and Isherwood 22).

Rousseau’s reliance on amour de soi and pity as decisive, determining principles contributing to the harmonious development of the individual brings us back to Jung’s perspectives on knowledge acquisition in connection with character types, and more specifically to his theories concerning perception and cognition in the individual.  These two processes, according to Jung, do not exclusively come into play at the level of ego consciousness, and in fact are influenced not only by objective factors, but also by individual psychic structure.  Thus if no doubt objective factors do contribute to the building of knowledge, in the process of knowledge acquisition one must not exclude the subjective factor, which plays an essential part in human experience.  As we have already noted, Jung describes the subjective factor as a universal:

By the subjective factor I understand that psychological action or reaction which merges with the effect produced by the object and gives rise to a new psychic datum.  [Consequently] in so far as the subjective factor has, from earliest times and among all peoples, remained in large measure constant, elementary perceptions and cognitions being almost universally the same, it is a reality as firmly established as the external object. . . .   [T]he subjective factor is . . . another universal law. (Psychological Types  375)  

By universal law, Jung means that which pertains to the fundamental core of the interacting subject or whatever constitutes the psychic structure of the individual before the ego is developed.  One can recognize here the sentiments of amour de soi and pity that Rousseau describes as “inborn modes of acting” or feeling, or as manifestations of instinct.  In Rousseau’s definition, pity is a “natural feeling” (Second Discourse 37).  The term “natural” used here before “feeling” adds a universal dimension, since it implies that pity is something innate and consequential to the welfare of the individual.  The natural feeling of pity can be construed in yogic language as a sentiment that comes from the heart and not from the head.  From a Jungian angle, for Rousseau it would be archetypal, an extended image of the instinct of amour de soi.  Pity would then be one of the essential factors that bring about understanding in the tangible and moral world of the individual.  The numinous language of pity combines both understanding and knowing, and can be seen as what the yogis recognize as the stabilizing language of intuitive cognition, since it is a source of inner reference and is one of the manifestations of the self.  It could be an expression of the subjective factor that links internal and external knowledge in the language of conscience and awareness.  By choosing a method that simultaneously emphasizes understanding and knowing, and by excluding all language of abstraction, and by also learning to rely first on understanding and then on knowing, Rousseau’s pupil learns to speak the language of unity.  Emile does not develop one function to the detriment of another, since paradoxically, by speaking the language of nature, the intuiting child who is trained to sense harmoniously can fuse the two functions of feeling and thinking into one bilateral mode of inner and outer perception.  Thus by an interesting paradox, Jung, in misreading Rousseau, nevertheless comes through an inverted process to a conclusion close to Rousseau’s vision of achieving balance by returning to (or remaining in) the yogic balance of the cosmic, compassionate self.

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---.  “Discourse on the Origins of Inequality.”  Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (Second Discourse), Polemics, and Political Economy.  Tr. Judith R. Bush, Roger D. Masters, Christopher Kelly, and Terence Marshall.  Ed. Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly. Collected Writings of Rousseau 3.  Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College/UP New England, 1992.  1-95. 

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