On the road to Vincennes on an October evening
in 1749--M. Masson has fixed the date for us--he read in a news-sheet
the question of the Dijon Academy: 'Si le retablissement des arts et des
sciences a contribue a epurer les moeurs?' The scales dropped from his
eyes and the weight was removed from his tongue. There is no mystery
about this 'revelation.' For the first time the question had been put
in terms which struck him squarely in the heart. Jean-Jacques made his
reply with the stammering honesty of a man of genius wandering in age of
talent.
The First Discourse seems to many rhetorical and extravagant. In after
days it appeared so to Rousseau himself, and he claimed no more for it
than that he had tried to tell the truth. Before he learned that he had
won the Dijon prize and that his work had taken Paris by storm, he was
surely a prey to terrors lest his Vincennes vision of the non-existence
of progress should have been mere madness. The success reassured him.
'Cette faveur du public, nullement brigue, et pour un auteur inconnu, me
donna la premiere assurance veritable de mon talent.
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