Fortune was extraordinarily favorable to this man, unwittingly the chief herald of the future. It gave him warm friends, who found true delight in exalting him, though a Jew, in public opinion. It secured for him a not brilliant, yet fairly independent situation as book-keeper in the house where he had hitherto held the toilsome position of resident tutor. It bestowed on him a trusty, tender, and simple life companion, who surrounded him with tokens of devoted love. Fortune soon procured a great triumph for him. The Berlin Academy had offered a prize for an essay upon the subject, "Are philosophical (metaphysical) truths susceptible of mathematical demonstration?" Modestly Mendelssohn set to work to solve this problem. He did not belong to the guild of the learned, had not learnt his alphabet until grown up, at an age when conventionally educated youths have their heads crammed with Latin. When he became aware that his friend, the young, highly-promising scholar Thomas Abt, was also a competitor, he almost lost courage, and desired to withdraw. Still his work gained the prize (June, 1763), not alone over Abt, but even over Kant, whose essay received only honorable mention. Mendelssohn obtained the prize of fifty ducats and the medal. The Jew, the tradesman, had defeated his rivals of the learned guild. Kant's disquisition went deeper into the question, but that of Mendelssohn had the advantage of clearness and comprehensibility. "He had torn the thorns from the roses of philosophy." Compelled to acquire each item of his knowledge by great labor, and having only with difficulty become conversant with the barbarous dialect of the schools, he did not content himself with dry formulæ, but exerted himself to render intelligible, both for himself and others, metaphysical conceptions and truths. This circumstance gained him the victory over his much profounder opponent. His essay, which together with that of Kant was translated into French and Latin at the expense of the Academy, earned for him assured renown in the learned world, which was enhanced by the fact that the prize-winner was a Jew.