ABSTRACT
In broader terms, Rousseau saw the ideal education as taking place in an Ideal State, in which inclination and duty, self–realization and good citizenship would never be in conflict. Perhaps in a way Rousseau equated the "natural" with the "ideal", and considered that a reconstituted society would provide an ideal environment for "natural" man to grow and develop. Certainly there are elements of idealism in Rousseau's thought; there is also a considerable amount of progressiveness in teaching, and most commentators who have anxious to classify as something have satisfied to regard as the apostle of Naturalism. In infancy Emile's life is characterizes by the development of habit and the training of emotions; in boyhood discovered the need to train senses; in early adolescence life is marks by utility and intellectual training; the final stage of adolescence, "the crown and coping-stone of education", is the stage of morality, and of moral, religious, aesthetic and social emotion.
