l’esprit humain (1750), with its historical evolutionism. Another wealthy pa-
tron, Helvetius, began to host the group in 1751, and came out with the radical
anti-religious naturalism of De l’Esprit in 1758. The group was a center of
creative energy that suffused those who came in contact with it.
Rousseau became the most famous of the Encyclopedia network by breaking
with it—which is to say, by finding a new axis of opposition. His wide-ranging
creativity corresponded to the range of his material bases of support. He sought
traditional sources of personal patronage in the homes of the nobility, as well
as literary reputation in the salons, the newly established prize competitions
of the academies, while also joining in the new publishing ventures. The young
Rousseau reminds one of Leibniz; an ambitious young man from the provinces
(in fact a former servant and music master who had risen by love affairs with
his mistresses), he showed up in Paris proposing a new musical notation. This
line of innovation met no response, but he cast about in all directions until
something did. In 1745 (now at the age of 33) he met the Encyclopedia group;
in 1750 he won a prize by his critique of human progress, in 1755 another
with his discourse on the origins of inequality and had an opera performed
before Louis XV. Rousseau now quarreled with the reigning star, in 1758, and
the rivalry energized a peak creative burst. On the heels of Voltaire’s philo-
sophical novels, including his masterpiece, Candide (1759), Rousseau topped
everything in 1761–62 with his three most famous works, the Social Contract
and his own ventures in the genre of the novel, La Nouvelle Héloise and Émile.
Rousseau managed to be a political radical at a time when the institutions
of the old regime were fading, but he did it with a slant that made him
distinctive from his comrades. His earliest fame came from his Discours sur
les sciences et les arts, which declared that human inventions do not contribute
to human happiness—this at a time when the Encyclopedia was booming with
its promise to take an overview of all the arts and inventions that had contrib-
uted to progress. Rousseau extended the Deist themes of a natural religion
transcending the arbitrary conventions of human histories; but he took it into
a distinctively anti-modern space, extolling the state of nature against the
chains of civilization. At the same time, the implied political radicalism in his
critique made him famous with the coming generation of revolutionaries. In
breaking with science, Rousseau also broke with Deism and with scientific
atheism of the kind propagated by Helvetius and d’Holbach. In the mid-1760s,
just as Voltaire and Diderot were becoming more openly critical of religion,
Rousseau took the opposite side of the field, putting forward a sentimental
basis for religion.
The Encyclopedists, more radically than their predecessor Voltaire, had
formulated the modern alliance of science with the politics of progress and
justice, together with a critique of dogmatic religion. They crystallized what
608 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Western Paths