A precocious student, Durkheim entered the "École Normale Supérieure" (ENS) in 1879, at his third attempt. The entering class that year would be one of the most brilliant of the nineteenth century, as many of his classmates, such as Jean Jaurès and Henri Bergson, would go on to become major figures in France's intellectual history as well. At the ENS, Durkheim studied under the direction of Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, a classicist with a social-scientific outlook, and wrote his Latin dissertation on Montesquieu. At the same time, he read Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, whereby Durkheim became interested in a scientific approach to society very early on in his career. This meant the first of many conflicts with the French academic system, which had no social science curriculum at the time. Durkheim found humanistic studies uninteresting, turning his attention from psychology and philosophy to ethics and, eventually, sociology. He obtained his "agrégation" in philosophy in 1882, though finishing next to last in his graduating class owing to serious illness the year before.