=Naturalistic Basis of the _Emile_.=--In the _Emile_ Rousseau aims to replace the conventional and formal education of the day with a training that should be natural and spontaneous. Under the existing _régime_ it was customary for boys and girls to be dressed like men and women of fashion (Fig. 25), and for education to be largely one of deportment and the dancing master. On the intellectual side, education was largely traditional and consisted chiefly of a training in Latin grammar, words, and _memoriter_ work. Rousseau scathingly criticises these practices, and applies his naturalistic principles to an imaginary pupil named Emile “from the moment of his birth up to the time when, having become a mature man, he will no longer need any other guide than himself.” He begins the work with a restatement of his basal principle that “everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author of Nature; but everything degenerates in the hands of man.” After elaborating this, he shows that we are educated by “three kinds of teachers--nature, man, and things, and since the coöperation of the three educations is necessary for their perfection, it is to the one over which we have no control (i e., nature) that we must direct the other two.” Education must, therefore, conform to nature. [Sidenote: Emile’s impulses examined and trained at different periods:] =The Five Books of the _Emile_.=--Now the natural objects, through which Emile is to be educated, remain the same, but Emile himself changes from time to time. In so far, therefore, as he is to be the guide of how he is to be educated in a natural environment, his impulses must be examined at different times in his life. Hence the work is divided into five parts, four of which deal with Emile’s education in the stages of infancy, childhood, boyhood, and youth respectively, and the fifth with the training of the girl who is to become his wife. The characteristics of the different periods in the life of Emile are marked by the different kinds of things he desires. [Sidenote: In infancy, physical activities.]