It was agreed that he should go to Paris to make his fortune by a new method of musical notation which he had invented, and after a short stay at Lyons, he found himself for the second time in the famous city which in the eighteenth century had become for the moment the centre of the universe.[106] It was not yet, however, destined to be a centre for him.

His plan of musical notation was examined by a learned committee of the Academy, no member of whom was instructed in the musical art.

Rousseau, dumb, inarticulate, and unready as usual, was amazed at the ease with which his critics by the free use of sounding phrases demolished arguments and objections which he perceived that they did not at all understand.

His experience on this occasion suggested to him the most just reflection, how even without breadth of intelligence, the profound knowledge of any one thing is preferable in forming a judgment about it, to all possible enlightenment conferred by the cultivation of the sciences, without study of the special matter in question.

It astonished him that all these learned men, who knew so many things, could yet be so ignorant that a man should only pretend to be a judge in his own craft.[107] His musical path to glory and riches thus blocked up, he surrendered himself not to despair but to complete idleness and peace of mind.