I feel too deeply the importance of a tutor’s duties and my own unfitness, ever to accept such a post, whoever offered it, and even the claims of friendship would be only an additional motive for my refusal.  Few, I think, will be tempted to make me such an offer when they have read this book, and I beg any one who would do so to spare his pains.  I have had enough experience of the task to convince myself of my own unfitness, and my circumstances would make it impossible, even if my talents were such as to fit me for it.  I have thought it my duty to make this public declaration to those who apparently refuse to do me the honour of believing in the sincerity of my determination.  If I am unable to undertake the more useful task, I will at least venture to attempt the easier one; I will follow the example of my predecessors and take up, not the task, but my pen; and instead of doing the right thing I will try to say it.

I know that in such an undertaking the author, who ranges at will among theoretical systems, utters many fine precepts impossible to practise, and even when he says what is practicable it remains undone for want of details and examples as to its application.

I have therefore decided to take an imaginary pupil, to assume on my own part the age, health, knowledge, and talents required for the work of his education, to guide him from birth to manhood, when he needs no guide but himself.  This method seems to me useful for an author who fears lest he may stray from the practical to the visionary; for as soon as he departs from common practice he has only to try his method on his pupil; he will soon know, or the reader will know for him, whether he is following the development of the child and the natural growth of the human heart.

This is what I have tried to do.  Lest my book should be unduly bulky, I have been content to state those principles the truth of which is self-evident.  But as to the rules which call for proof, I have applied them to Emile or to others, and I have shown, in very great detail, how my theories may be put into practice.  Such at least is my plan; the reader must decide whether I have succeeded.  At first I have said little about Emile, for my earliest maxims of education, though very different from those generally accepted, are so plain that it is hard for a man of sense to refuse to accept them, but as I advance, my scholar, educated after another fashion than yours, is no longer an ordinary child, he needs a special system.  Then he appears upon the scene more frequently, and towards the end I never lose sight of him for a moment, until, whatever he may say, he needs me no longer.

I pass over the qualities required in a good tutor; I take them for granted, and assume that I am endowed with them.  As you read this book you will see how generous I have been to myself.

I will only remark that, contrary to the received opinion, a child’s tutor should be young, as young indeed as a man may well be who is also wise.  Were it possible, he should become a child himself, that he may be the companion of his pupil and win his confidence by sharing his games.  Childhood and age have too little in common for the formation of a really firm affection.  Children sometimes flatter old men; they never love them.