EMILE

By Jean-Jacques Rousseau


Translated by Barbara Foxley




Author's Preface

This collection of scattered thoughts and observations has little
order or continuity; it was begun to give pleasure to a good mother
who thinks for herself. My first idea was to write a tract a few
pages long, but I was carried away by my subject, and before I knew
what I was doing my tract had become a kind of book, too large indeed
for the matter contained in it, but too small for the subject of
which it treats. For a long time I hesitated whether to publish
it or not, and I have often felt, when at work upon it, that it is
one thing to publish a few pamphlets and another to write a book.
After vain attempts to improve it, I have decided that it is my
duty to publish it as it stands. I consider that public attention
requires to be directed to this subject, and even if my own ideas
are mistaken, my time will not have been wasted if I stir up others
to form right ideas. A solitary who casts his writings before the
public without any one to advertise them, without any party ready
to defend them, one who does not even know what is thought and said
about those writings, is at least free from one anxiety--if he is
mistaken, no one will take his errors for gospel.