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, I sank under one of the trees of the
avenue, and passed half an hour there in such a condition of excitement,
that when I arose I saw that the front of my waistcoat w