A reform of domestic life must result in a reform of education. Rousseau's ideal of education, capable of adaptations and modifications according to circumstances, is presented in his _Emile_. How shall a child be formed in accordance, not with the vicious code of an artificial society, but in harmony with nature? Rousseau traces the course of Emile's development from birth to adult years. Unconstrained by swaddling-bands, suckled by his mother, the child enjoys the freedom of nature, and at five years old passes into the care of his father or his tutor. During the earlier years his education is to be negative: let him be preserved from all that is false or artificial, and enter upon the heritage of childhood, the gladness of animal life, vigorous delights in sunshine and open air; at twelve he will hardly have opened a book, but he will have been in vital relation with real things, he will unconsciously have laid the foundations of wisdom. When the time for study comes, that study should be simple and sound--no Babel of words, but a wholesome knowledge of things; he may have learnt little, but he will know that little aright; a sunrise will be his first lesson in cosmography; he may watch the workman in his workshop; he may practise the carpenter's trade; he may read _Robinson Crusoe_, and learn the lesson of self-help. Let him ask at every moment, "What is the good of this?" Unpuzzled by questions of morals, metaphysics, history, he will have grown up laborious, temperate, patient, firm, courageous. At fifteen the passions are awake; let them be gently and wisely guided. Let pity, gratitude, benevolence be formed within the boy's heart, so that the self-regarding passions may fall into a subordinate place. To read Plutarch is to commune with noble spirits; to read Thucydides is almost to come into immediate contact with facts. The fables of La Fontaine will serve as a criticism of the errors of the passions. And now Emile, at eighteen, may learn the sublime mysteries of that faith which is professed by Rousseau's Savoyard vicar. A Will moves the universe and animates nature; that Will, acting through general laws, is guided by supreme intelligence; if the order of Providence be disturbed, it is only through the abuse of man's free-will; the soul is immaterial and survives the body; conscience is the voice of God within the soul; "dare to confess God before the philosophers, dare to preach humanity before the intolerant;" God demands no other worship than that of the heart. With such a preparation as this, Emile may at length proceed to aesthetic culture, and find his chief delight in those writers whose genius has the closest kinship to nature. Finally, in Sophie, formed to be the amiable companion and helpmate of man, Emile should find a resting-place for his heart. Alas, if she should ever betray his confidence!