



Produced by Al Haines










Heath's Pedagogical Library--4




EMILE:

OR, CONCERNING EDUCATION


BY

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU


EXTRACTS

_CONTAINING THE PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS OF PEDAGOGY FOUND IN THE FIRST THREE
BOOKS; WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY_


JULES STEEG, DEPUTE, PARIS, FRANCE



TRANSLATED BY

ELEANOR WORTHINGTON

FORMERLY OF THE COOK COUNTY (ILL.) NORMAL SCHOOL




D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS

BOSTON -- NEW YORK -- CHICAGO




Entered, according to Act of Congress, In the year 1888, by

GINN, HEATH, & CO.,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.



Printed in U. S. A.




TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

M. Jules Steeg has rendered a real service to French and American
teachers by his judicious selections from Rousseau's Emile.  For the
three-volume novel of a hundred years ago, with its long disquisitions
and digressions, so dear to the heart of our patient ancestors, is now
distasteful to all but lovers of the curious in books.

"Emile" is like an antique mirror of brass; it reflects the features of
educational humanity no less faithfully than one of more modern
construction.  In these few pages will be found the germ of all that is
useful in present systems of education, as well as most of the
ever-recurring mistakes of well-meaning zealots.

The eighteenth century translations of this wonderful book have for
many readers the disadvantage of an English style long disused.  It is
hoped that this attempt at a new translation may, with all its defects,
have the one merit of being in the dialect of the nineteenth century,
and may thus reach a wider circle of readers.




INTRODUCTION.

Jean Jacques Rousseau's book on education has had a powerful influence
throughout Europe, and even in the New World.  It was in its day a kind
of gospel.  It had its share in bringing about the Revolution which
renovated the entire aspect of our country.  Many of the reforms so
lauded by it have since then been carried into effect, and at this day
seem every-day affairs.  In the eighteenth century they were unheard-of
daring; they were mere dreams.

Long before that time the immortal satirist Rabelais, and, after him,
Michael Montaigne, had already divined the truth, had pointed out
serious defects in education, and the way to reform.  No one followed
out their suggestions, or even gave them a hearing.  Routine went on
its way.  Exercises of memory,--the science that consists of mere
words,--pedantry, barren and vain-glorious,--held fast their "bad
eminence."  The child was treated as a machine, or as a man in
miniature, no account being taken of his nature or of his real needs;
without any greater solicitude about reasonable method--the hygiene of
mind--than about the hygiene of the body.

Rousseau, who had educated himself, and very badly at that, was
impressed with the dangers of the education of his day.  A mother
having asked his advice, he took up the pen to write it; and, little by
little, his counsels grew into a book, a large work, a pedagogic
romance.

This romance, when it appeared in 1762, created a great noise and a
great scandal.  The Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont, saw in
it a dangerous, mischievous work, and gave himself the trouble of
writing a long encyclical letter in order to point out the book to the
reprobation of the faithful.  This document of twenty-seven chapters is
a formal refutation of the theories advanced in "Emile."

The archbishop declares that the plan of education proposed by the
author, "far from being in accordance with Christianity, is not fitted
to form citizens, or even men."  He accuses Rousseau of irreligion and
of bad faith; he denounces him to the temporal power as animated "by a
spirit of insubordination and of revolt."  He sums up by solemnly
condemning the book "as containing an abominable doctrine, calculated
to overthrow natural law, and to destroy the foundations of the
Christian religion; establishing maxims contrary to Gospel morality;
having a tendency to disturb the peace of empires