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The portrait by La Tour shows me at forty, with a slight smile, dressed well, the face of a philosophe who has arrived. By this time I had won the Dijon Academy prize with my First Discourse, arguing that the arts and sciences had corrupted rather than improved mankind. The Parisian salons loved me for it, which rather proved my point.

I gave my five children to the foundling hospital. I have written about this; I have explained my reasons; none of the reasons are adequate. The man who wrote Émile — the treatise on natural education — abandoned every child he fathered. I am aware of the contradiction. Philosophy can describe the right action; it cannot always produce it in the philosopher.