Rousseau’s Emile , is the greatest of all works on education. This volume contains the most important of his political works. The Social Contract , by far the most significant, represents the maturity of his thought, while other works only illustrate his development. Born in 1712, he issued no work of importance till 1750; but he tells us, in the Confessions , that in 1743, when he was attached to the Embassy at Venice, he had already conceived the idea of a great work on “Political Institutions,” “which was to put the seal on his reputation.” He seems, however, to have made little progress with this work, until in 1749 he happened to light on the announcement of a prize offered by the Academy of Dijon for an answer to the question, “Has the progress of the arts and sciences tended to the purification or to the corruption of morality?” His old ideas came thronging back, and sick at heart of the life he had been leading among the Paris lumières