{85} We are going to examine the main thesis of Rousseau’s _Contrat Social_. The reader who is surprised to find in our account little or nothing of the “return to nature,” “natural equality,” and the “natural rights of the individual,” may refer for these to Rousseau’s earlier essays on theses propounded by the Academy of Dijon. The first of the theses (1750) ran, “Whether the re-establishment of the sciences and the arts contributed to purify morals”; and Rousseau’s discourse, which won the prize, following the lead of the thesis, started from the later Renaissance, and dealt in general with the phenomena of decadence--a very real problem. The notable feature of this brief essay is its constant vacillation between the attack on science, art, and education as such, and the criticism, by no means an undiscerning criticism, of their abuses. Rousseau’s head is full, not of primitive man, but of Socrates and Cato, of Sparta and republican Rome. A writer who speaks of Newton and Verulam as preceptors of the human race can hardly be hostile to true intellectual achievement. [1] It is noteworthy that his zeal for educational reform is already apparent in this first published work. [1] The whole piece breathes a spirit of prize essay paradox, and though, if sympathetically read, it is seen to be most characteristic of the author, no serious conclusion should be drawn from it as to his hostility to civilisation. A comic instance of his vacillation is produced by the necessity he felt himself under, of excepting, from his general dispraise of modern letters, such Academies as that of Dijon, which was to judge his essay. For an excellent appreciation of these earlier works, and of Rousseau in general, see the essay on “Our Natural Rights,” in the _Lectures and Essays_ of the late Professor W. Wallace, Clarendon Press, 1898.