If The Social Contract (Everyman's Library No. 660) is politically the mostsignificant of Rousseau's writings, Émilethe most influential on European educational

theories, the Confessions, now issued in the new format in two volumes, with a new Introduction by Professor R. Niklaus, B.A., PH.D., L. ÉS L., of Exeter University, is the most personal and intimate of this challenging author's works.

Rousseau is a signal proof of the triumph of natural genius. His education was a poor one, and he received no teaching but that which the village school could supply. Into the Confessions he deposited the secrets of his inmost soul, and his book, eminently readable, vital and instinct with life as he had known it, is the most candid self-revelation in all literature. France has given proof of her analytical outlook in a number of ways-from Montaigne to Proust. Rousseau's contribution is to reveal the inmost contradictions of his human nature, by turns sentimental, sensual, sincere and deceptively insincere. Of Rousseau it has been said that 'he trained the French Revolution upon his own psychology. While this book remains the most revolutionary document in all self-biography, for the General reader it can still be one of those masterpieces which delight with the case with which it can be read-its.