Emile, or On Education

master; to propose, one must take another, in which philosophical height delights less. Despite so many writings, which, it is said, have only the public utility as their goal, the first of all utilities, which is the art of forming men, is still forgotten. My subject was entirely new after the book by Locke, and I greatly fear it is still so after mine.
A small vertical bracket in the right margin marks the beginning of the following paragraph.

Childhood is not known: on the false ideas one has of it, the further one goes, the more one loses one's way. The wisest focus on what is important for men to know, without considering what children are capable of learning. They always seek the man in the child, without thinking of what he is before being a man. This is the study to which I have applied myself the most, so that, even if my entire method were chimérique fanciful/imaginary and false, one could still profit from my observations. I may have seen very poorly what must be done;