ABSTRACT
In Émile, Rousseau devotes the whole of Book II, some 50,000 words, to this phase of education, which he emphasizes is the most important, because it is the basis on which all subsequent mental and emotional development is built. As he himself puts it, about half-way through Book Π, in one of the central parts of his teaching ‘The most dangerous period in human life lies between birth and the age of twelve’ - and it is entirely the mental and emotional life to which he is making reference at this stage and not at all to the purely physical life of the child.
