Emile, Or Treatise on Education is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered it to be the "best and most important of all my writings." Due to a section of the book entitled "Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar," Emile was banned in Paris and Geneva and was publicly burned in 1762. During the French Revolution, Emile served as the inspiration for what became a new national system of education.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a French philosopher, novelist and essayist whose ideas in the areas of science, art, nature, morality, among many others, greatly influenced the late eighteenth century's Romantic Naturalism movement. His philosophies explored the virtue of human beings as being good by nature, the corruption of civil society, individual freedom, and in the case of his 1762 treatise on education, "Emile," allowing children to develop naturally and without the constraint of social conditions. Emile is an imaginary student put forth by Rousseau to illustrate his idea of "negative education," in other words, education in harmony with a child's natural capacity through a process of autonomous discovery. Rousseau removes the authoritative, domineering teacher figure, and instead wants mothers to encourage children's natural tendencies, without coddling or spoiling them. The work was controversial in its own time, but later inspired a new national system of education during the French Revolution, and to some has earned Rousseau the title of "father of modern education."

Our inner conflicts are caused by these contradictions. Drawn this way by nature and that way by man, compelled to yield to both forces, we make a compromise and reach neither goal. We go through life, struggling and hesitating, and die before we have found peace, useless alike to ourselves and to others.

Our inner conflicts are caused by these contradictions. Drawn this way by nature and that way by man, compelled to yield to both forces, we make a compromise and reach neither goal. We go through life, struggling and hesitating, and die before we have found peace, useless alike to ourselves and to others.

Our inner conflicts are caused by these contradictions. Drawn this way by nature and that way by man, compelled to yield to both forces, we make a compromise and reach neither goal. We go through life, struggling and hesitating, and die before we have found peace, useless alike to ourselves and to others.