Emile, or On Education

but I believe I have seen well the subject upon which one must operate. Begin, then, by studying your pupils better; for most assuredly, you do not know them at all. Now, if you read this book with this view, I do not believe it to be without utility for you.

Regarding what one will call the systematic part, which is nothing else here but the course of nature, that is what will most confuse the reader; it is also there that one will undoubtedly attack me, and perhaps one will not be wrong. One will think one is reading the reveries of a visionary regarding education rather than a treatise on it. What can be done? It is not on the ideas of others that I write, it is on my own. I do not see like other men; it has been a long time since I was reproached for this. But does it depend on me to give myself other eyes, and to affect myself with other ideas? No. It depends on me not to abound in my own sense,