Rousseau's Emile is a kind of half treatise, half novel that tells the life story of a fictional man named Emile. In it, Rousseau traces the course of Emile's development and the education he receives, an education designed to create in him all the virtues of Rousseau's idealized "natural man," uncorrupted by modern society. According to Rousseau, the natural goodness of a man can be nurtured and maintained only according to this highly prescriptive model of education, and Rousseau states that his aim in Emile is to outline that model-a model that differed sharply from all accepted forms of the time."