Censures et réfutations de l’Émile

The censors and critics who denounced the dangers engendered by ­Rousseau’s Émile resorted to two different techniques. One of them ­consisted in either cutting or slightly modifying some passages; the other in either forbidding one to read the text or writing a refutation of it. If the arguments used to denounce a work have never prevented anyone from reading it, the fact of altering the text can be much more pernicious, since if no one notices the modifications, the thought of the author may well be replaced by that of his censor or critic.