n; but how many parents, and even teachers, have never
read it!

This is because a large part of the book is no longer in accordance
with the actual condition of things; because its very plan, its
fundamental idea, are outside of the truth. We are obliged to exercise
judgment, to make selections. Some of it must be taken, some left
untouched. This is what we have done in the present edition.

We have not, indeed, the presumption to correct Rousseau, or to
substitute an expurgated "Emile" for the authentic "Emile." We have
simply wished to draw the attention of the teachers of childhood to
those pages of this book which have least grown old, which can still be
of service, can hasten the downfall of the old systems, can emphasize,
by their energy and beauty of language, methods already inaugurated and
reforms already undertaken. These methods and reforms cannot be too
often recommended and set in a clear light. We have desired to call to
the rescue this powerful and impassioned writer, who brings to bear
upon every subject he approaches the magical attractiveness of his
style.

There is absolutely nothing practicable in his system. It consists in
isolating a child from the rest of the world; in creating expressly for
him a tutor, who is a phoenix among his kind; in depriving him of
father, mother, brothers, and sisters, his companions in study; in
surrounding him with a perpetual charlatanism, under the pretext of
following nature; and in showing him only through the veil of a
factitious atmosphere the society in which he is to live. And,
nevertheless, at each step it is sound reason by which we are met; by
an astonishing paradox, this whimsicality is full of good sense; this
dream overflows with realities; this improbable and chimerical romance
contains the substance and the marrow of a rational and truly modern
treatise on pedagogy. Sometimes we must read between the lines, add
what experience has taught us since that day, transpose into an
atmosphere of open democracy these pages, written under the old order
of things, but even then quivering with the new world which they were
bringing to light, and for which they prepared the way.

Reading "Emile" in the light of modern prejudices, we can see in it
more than the author wittingly put into it; but not more than logic and
the instinct of genius set down there.

To unfold the powers of children in due proportion to their age; not to
transcend their ability;