In the Troisième Dialogue Rousseau suggests that all his writings pursued a single theme—to the effect, as he puts it, that “Nature made mankind happy and good but…. society depraves and renders it miserable.” Emile, in particular, he adds, “is nothing but a treatise on the original goodness of mankind.” He no doubt conceived Emile in that vein, since the opening line of its first book heralds precisely the claim that in the Dialogues he would declare to be his works' chief contention: “Everything is good when it springs from the hands of our Creator; everything degenerates when shaped by the hands of man.” Yet if on his own testimony we accept that this was the guiding thread of his philosophy as a whole, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the text which most fully elaborates Rousseau's central principle, and which on account of the attention he there devotes to it lies at the nexus of his whole career, is the Discours sur l'inégalité.