Thomas Day

About

I took Rousseau’s Émile and tried to live it. I adopted two orphan girls intending to raise one as a rational companion through conditions that form persons rather than instilled rules. The project failed on its own terms. But the principle was correct: it is conditions that produce character, not innate quality. Sandford and Merton — the best-selling children’s book of the 1780s — made the argument accessibly. I died falling from a horse I had trained without fear, to demonstrate that animals respond to reason. The demonstration was conclusive.