rest on no psychological reality. Nevertheless, his remarkable intuition prepared the way for the subsequent inquiry and experimentation that have achieved so much in the sphere of education. The reader will find that it is responsible for all that is most original and most productive in Émile: maternal feeding, bodily freedom of the baby, physical training of the child, development of the senses, exercise of the judgment through sensory experience and contact with things, the approach to abstract knowledge by way of observation and experience. All these points derive from the initial view that an educator must submit to the development imposed by Nature. But it should not be forgotten that Rousseau considers submission to the natural order not only as a necessity of method, but as implying the very end, the moral accomplishment, of education.
Rousseau undoubtedly owed much to the educational theories of his predecessors, especially Montaigne who, two centuries earlier, had demanded a less intellectual form of education. Montaigne had argued that physical training should accompany that of the mind, that the judgment should be formed through contact with living realities, views that in Montaigne’s case also were part and parcel of a philosophy of Nature. Rousseau was no less indebted to Locke, though he takes him to task several times in the course of his work. He was largely inspired by the treatise On the Education of Children which had been translated into French in 1695; but his debt was at once more general and more profound. Whenever Rousseau affirms the primary role of the senses in the formation of the mind and in the acquisition of knowledge, his doctrine can be traced back to the author of the Essay on Human Understanding, so that he owed an essential part of his teaching to Locke.
Moreover, education had preoccupied men’s thoughts since the beginning of the eighteenth century. There were numerous works on the subject, and it has long been recognized that there is scarcely a detail of Émile which has not some corresponding passage in the writings of his predecessors. None the less, Rousseau’s claim to originality remains unimpaired. His concern with childhood was something quite new, especially his assertion that childhood has a right to happiness, that it is an independent state and not simply an ante-room to maturity. No less original was that ardent passion with which the author presented his case. The publication of Émile caused a considerable sensation, and it is difficult to overestimate its influence right down to our own day. It became a best-seller overnight: throughout Europe many aristocratic mothers began suckling their own babies, while parents brought up their children on the principles of Émile and made Rousseau their educational adviser. Two translations appeared simultaneously in England as early as 1763, and Lady Kildare wished to entrust the Genevan philosopher with the training of her children. Some years later the book was drawn upon by the French Revolutionary legislature in framing its educational laws. Above all, it has been the inspirational source of
