This is the meeting-point of Rousseau’s educational with his political theory. His view as a whole can be studied only by taking together the Social Contract and the Emile as explained by the Letters on the Mount and other works. The fundamental dogma of the natural goodness of man finds no place directly in the Social Contract ; but it lurks behind the whole of his political theory, and is indeed, throughout, his master-conception. His educational, his religious, his political and his ethical ideas are all inspired by a single consistent attitude. Here we have been attending only to his political theory; in the volume which is to follow, containing the Letters on the Mount and other works, some attempt will be made to draw the various threads together and estimate his work as a whole. The political works, however, can be read separately, and the Social Contract