The antiquarian controversy about the intention of Jean-Jacques Rousseau conceals a political controversy about the nature of democracy. The contemporary critics of Rousseau's praise of ignorance were quite understandably under the impression that he had denied all value to science or philosophy and that he had suggested the abolition of all learning. In accordance with the general character of the Discours Rousseau maintains the thesis that the scientific or philosophic truth (the truth about the whole) is simply inaccessible rather than that it is inaccessible to the people. According to Rousseau, civil society is essentially a particular, or more precisely a closed, society. To say that science and society are incompatible is one thing; to say that science and virtue are incompatible is another thing. The second thesis could be reduced to the first, if virtue were essentially political or social.