Introduction

'Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.' Emile is a treatise on education in the form of a novel: a tutor brings up a boy named Emile from birth, following the natural stages of growth, teaching not from books but letting the child learn from things and experience, until he becomes a free, independent and good man. The 'Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar' in the book, with its 'natural religion', led the Parlement of Paris to order it burned and drove Rousseau into exile. The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, his last work, consists of ten 'walks' in which, lonely and feeling persecuted in old age, he recalls his past and describes the pure feeling of existence he knew drifting in a boat on the Island of Saint-Pierre. This volume contains selections from Emile and the Reveries complete.