“I have more experience than you, dear Emile; I see more clearly the difficulties in the way of your scheme.  Yet it is a fine scheme and honourable; it would make you happy indeed.  Let us try to carry it out.  I have a suggestion to make; let us devote the two years from now till the time of your return to choosing a place in Europe where you could live happily with your family, secure from all the dangers I have just described.  If we succeed, you will have discovered that true happiness, so often sought for in vain; and you will not have to regret the time spent in its search.  If we fail, you will be cured of a mistaken idea; you will console yourself for an inevitable ill, and you will bow to the law of necessity.”

I do not know whether all my readers will see whither this suggested inquiry will lead us; but this I do know, if Emile returns from his travels, begun and continued with this end in view, without a full knowledge of questions of government, public morality, and political philosophy of every kind, we are greatly lacking, he in intelligence and I in judgment.

The science of politics is and probably always will be unknown.  Grotius, our leader in this branch of learning, is only a child, and what is worse an untruthful child.  When I hear Grotius praised to the skies and Hobbes overwhelmed with abuse, I perceive how little sensible men have read or understood these authors.  As a matter of fact, their principles are exactly alike, they only differ in their mode of expression.  Their methods are also different:  Hobbes relies on sophism; Grotius relies on the poets; they are agreed in everything else.  In modern times the only man who could have created this vast and useless science was the illustrious Montesquieu.  But he was not concerned with the principles of political law; he was content to deal with the positive laws of settled governments; and nothing could be more different than these two branches of study.

Yet he who would judge wisely in matters of actual government is forced to combine the two; he must know what ought to be in order to judge what is.  The chief difficulty in the way of throwing light upon this important matter is to induce an individual to discuss and to answer these two questions.  “How does it concern me; and what can I do?” Emile is in a position to answer both.

The next difficulty is due to the prejudices of childhood, the principles in which we were brought up; it is due above all to the partiality of authors, who are always talking about truth, though they care very little about it; it is only their own interests that they care for, and of these they say nothing.  Now the nation has neither professorships, nor pensions, nor membership of the academies to bestow.  How then shall its rights be established by men of that type?  The education I have given him has removed this difficulty also from Emile’s path.  He scarcely knows what is meant by government; his business is to find the best; he does not want to write books; if ever he did so, it would not be to pay court to those in authority, but to establish the rights of humanity.