Paul-Claude Moultou

This chapter looks at Jean-Jacques Rousseau's letter to Paul-Claude Moultou on August 1, 1763. Rousseau begins the letter by thanking Moultou for sending him a copy of Jacob Vernes's book, Letters on the Christianity of M. J.J. Rousseau . He claims that he is persuaded that Vernes forgives him least for having attacked Helvetius's book. Rousseau says that Vernes “makes it a great crime for me to have used what he calls the jargon of metaphysics, and he assumes that I needed this jargon to establish natural religion, instead of which I did not need it except to attack materialism.” He then talks about metaphysical principles, particularly the fundamental principle of the book On the Mind .