[150] To Mdlle.  Le Vasseur, July 25, 1768. Corr., v. 116-119.

CHAPTER V.

THE DISCOURSES.

The busy establishment of local academies in the provincial centres of France only preceded the outbreak of the revolution by ten or a dozen years; but one or two of the provincial cities, such as Bordeaux, Rouen, Dijon, had possessed academies in imitation of the greater body of Paris for a much longer time.  Their activity covered a very varied ground, from the mere commonplaces of literature to the most practical details of material production.  If they now and then relapsed into inquiries about the laws of Crete, they more often discussed positive and scientific theses, and rather resembled our chambers of agriculture than bodies of more learned pretension.  The academy of Dijon was one of the earliest of these excellent institutions, and on the whole the list of its theses shows it to have been among the most sensible in respect of the subjects which it found worth thinking about.  Its members, however, could not entirely resist the intellectual atmosphere of the time.  In 1742 they invited discussion of the point, whether the natural law can conduct society to perfection without the aid of political laws.[151] In 1749 they proposed this question as a theme for their prize essay:  Has the restoration of the sciences contributed to purify or to corrupt manners? Rousseau was one of fourteen competitors, and in 1750 his discussion of the academic theme received the prize.[152] This was his first entry on the field of literature and speculation.  Three years afterwards the same academy propounded another question:  What is the origin of inequality among men, and is it authorised by the natural law? Rousseau again competed, and though his essay neither gained the prize, nor created as lively an agitation as its predecessor had done, yet we may justly regard the second as a more powerful supplement to the first.

It is always interesting to know the circumstances under which pieces that have moved a world were originally composed, and Rousseau’s account of the generation of his thoughts as to the influence of enlightenment on morality, is remarkable enough to be worth transcribing.  He was walking along the road from Paris to Vincennes one hot summer afternoon on a visit to Diderot, then in prison for his Letter on the Blind (1749), when he came across in a newspaper the announcement of the theme propounded by the Dijon academy.  “If ever anything resembled a sudden inspiration, it was the movement which began in me as I read this.  All at once I felt myself dazzled by a thousand sparkling lights; crowds of vivid ideas thronged into my mind with a force and confusion that threw me into unspeakable agitation; I felt my head whirling in a giddiness like that of intoxication.  A violent palpitation oppressed me; unable to walk for difficulty of breathing,