Book 3, Book 3 : Chapter 1, Book 3 Summary and Analysis

This book is shorter than the others. For that reason, it has only one chapter in the summary devoted to it. Here Rousseau begins to address adolescents, covering both puberty and adolescence.

Weakness and strength are meaningful, and they are the author's focus at this time. Rousseau elucidates to readers how the education is intended to permit the child to grow well into life with a clear perception of his own limitations. The author writes that because the child is not yet "effected" or "afflicted" by sexual feelings and desires, there is a level of development and reasoning which has reached a peak.

Rousseau follows the customary but distorted view that children are weak. This is obvious during their early years but is only true in their relation to adults and to other larger creatures...