Two hundred years before Jean Piaget did a twenty year longitudinal study of his children, Rousseau did this longitudinal study of an imaginary child. This novel is a story of how Rousseau would have raised such a child placed in his charge. As full-time governor of Emile, Rousseau begins his study, not with the intent of discovering how the boy would grow into manhood, but with the conscious intent of shaping and controlling Emile's maturation.