=Estimate of the _Emile_.=--Such was Rousseau’s notion of the natural individualistic education for a man and the passive and repressive training suitable for a woman, and of the happiness and prosperity that were bound to ensue. To make a fair estimate of the _Emile_ and its influence is not easy. It is necessary to put aside all of one’s prejudices against the weak and offensive personality of the author, and to forget the inconsistencies and contradictions of the work itself. The _Emile_ has always been accounted a work of great richness, power, and underlying wisdom, and each of its defects is more than balanced by a corresponding merit. Moreover, the most fundamental movements in modern educational progress--sociological, scientific, and psychological--may be said to have germinated through the _Emile_. [Sidenote: Revolt from social control,] [Sidenote: but extreme doctrine needed,] [Sidenote: and those who followed Rousseau stressed social activities.] =The Sociological Movements in Modern Education.=--The most marked feature of the Rousselian education and the one most subject to criticism has been its extreme revolt against civilization and all social control. A state of nature is held to be the ideal condition, and all social relations are regarded as degenerate. The child is to be brought up in isolation by the laws of brute necessity and to have no social education until he is fifteen, when an impossible set of expedients for bringing him into touch with his fellows is devised. One should remember, however, that the times and the cause had need of just so extreme a doctrine. Such radical individualism alone could enable him to break the bondage to the past. By means of paradoxes and exaggerations he was able to emphasize the crying need of a natural development of man, and to tear down the effete traditions in educational organization, content, and methods. And many of the social movements in modern educational organization and content were made possible and even suggested by him, after having thus cleared the ground. He held that all members of society should be trained industrially so as to contribute to their own support and should be taught to be sympathetic and benevolent toward their fellows. Thus through him education has been more closely related to human welfare. The industrial work of Pestalozzi and Fellenberg, the moral aim of education held by Herbart, the ‘social participation’ in the practice of Froebel, and the present-day emphasis upon vocational education, moral instruction, and training of defectives and of other extreme variations, alike find some of their roots in the _Emile_. In fact, the fallacy involved in Rousseau’s isolated education is too palpable to mislead anyone, and those who have best caught his spirit and endeavored to develop his practice have in all cases most insistently stressed social activities in the training of children and striven to