  Rousseau’s conversion to Catholicism had rendered him ineligible for his hereditary status as Citizen of Geneva. In 1754 he regained this citizenship by reconverting to Calvinism. In the following year he published his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, again in response to an essay competition from the Academy of Dijon. Though he did not win the Academy’s prize a second time, the Second Discourse is a far more accomplished work, and in it Rousseau begins to develop his theories of human social development and moral psychology. With the Second Discourse, the distance between Rousseau and the Encyclopédiste mainstream of the French Enlightenment thought became clear. This rift was cemented with his 1758 publication of the Letter to d’Alembert on the Theater, in which he denounced the idea that his native city would benefit from the construction of a theater. In Rousseau’s view theater, far from improving the population, tends to weaken their attachment to the life of the polis.