Local academies in France 132
Circumstances of the composition of the first Discourse 133
How far the paradox was original 135
His visions for thirteen years 136
Summary of the first Discourse 138-145
Obligations to Montaigne 145
And to the Greeks 145
Semi-Socratic manner 147
Objections to the Discourse 148
Ways of stating its positive side 149
Dangers of exaggerating this positive side 151
Its excess 152
Second Discourse 154
Ideas of the time upon the state of nature 155
Their influence upon Rousseau 156
Morelly, as his predecessor 156
Summary of the second Discourse 159-170
Criticism of its method 171
Objection from its want of evidence 172
Other objections to its account of primitive nature 173
Takes uniformity of process for granted 176
In what the importance of the second Discourse consisted 177
Its protest against the mockery of civilisation 179
The equality of man, how true, and how false 180
This doctrine in France, and in America 182
Rousseau’s Discourses, a reaction against the historic
    method 183
Mably, and socialism 184

CHAPTER VI.

Paris.

Influence of Geneva upon Rousseau 187
Two sides of his temperament 191
Uncongenial characteristics of Parisian society 191
His associates 195
Circumstances of a sudden moral reform 196
Arising from his violent repugnance for the manners of
    the time 202
His assumption of a seeming cynicism 207
Protests against atheism 209
The Village Soothsayer at Fontainebleau 212
Two anedotes of his moral singularity 214
Revisits Geneva 216
End of Madame de Warens 217
Rousseau’s re-conversion to Protestantism 220
The religious opinions then current in Geneva 223