The Limits of Reform in the Enlightenment: Attitudes Toward the Education of the Lower Classes in Eighteenth-Century France

by Harvey Chisick

Overview

Examining the attitudes toward the education of the lower classes in eighteenth- century France, Harvey Chisick uncovers severe limitations to enlightened social thought.

Originally published in 1981.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691614977
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #837
Pages:	342
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.70(d)

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The Limits of Reform in the Enlightenment

Attitudes Toward the Education of the Lower Classes in Eighteenth-Century France

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By Harvey Chisick

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1981 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05305-9

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CHAPTER 1

The Elements of the Problem

Whose attitudes? The Enlightened Community

The term "Enlightenment" is generally taken to designate an intellectual movement which spread widely throughout Europe during the eighteenth century. To speak of "Enlightenment ideas" does not, however, suppose that these ideas had a disembodied and independent existence. Rather, it is simply a shorthand way of saying, "ideas that were commonly held by the men and women who shared in this movement," or, as an influential school of French historians represented by Daniel Roche and André Burguière have termed it, by members of the communauté des lumières, or enlightened community. What is under study here is a set of attitudes as they emerge from the essays, books and articles of some sixty writers who can be identified by name (see Figure 1), and well over eighty, if anonymous authors, journal articles and individual contributions to collective publications are taken into account. These men, I will argue, belong to, and are representative of, a larger community. If many of them are obscure and some unknown, even to students of the Enlightenment, this is due not to a taste for obscurity on the part of the writer, but to demands imposed by the subject. The philosophes, that small yet diverse and highly influential group of thinkers about whom so much has been written, seldom concerned themselves with popular education, so that while they are not entirely neglected, they do not occupy a central place in what follows.

Twelve writers are of particular importance because of the extent or nature of their contributions to the debates on the lower classes and popular education. Of these, we shall first consider a number of men who did much to create a new image of the people.

Abbé Coyer's essay on the people unquestionably marks a turning point in the attitudes of the upper classes toward their social inferiors. François Gabriel Coyer (1707-1782) was one of thirteen children of a cloth merchant in the Franche-Comté. On completing his studies he became a Jesuit and for a time taught humanities and philosophy in one of the Jesuit collèges, but he left the order in 1736. He subsequently became the tutor of the future Duke de Bouillon, and apparently succeeded in winning his student's respect and affection, for the Duke became and remained his patron for life. Coyer also received pensions from the houses of Condé and Soubise, and enjoyed several ecclesiastical benefices, so that by the time of his death he had the considerable annual income of thirteen thousand livres. Like most leading men of letters of the eighteenth century, Coyer was able to supplement the income he derived from his pen with the fruits of patronage. As an author, the Abbé is best known today for a work entitled La Noblesse commerçante, in which he set forth the advantages that would accrue to France if the nobility could be dissuaded from its prejudices against commerce. He also wrote a series of brilliant satires which were collected and published under the title Bagatelles morales. This work proved popular and went through four editions by 1769. Neither Coyer's essay on the people nor his plan of education, however, were reprinted before his death.

Antoine Léonard Thomas was born in Clermont-Ferrand in 1732 and was intended by his mother for the bar. A brilliant student, he completed his secondary studies with distinction, then dutifully began to work toward a law degree. But his natural inclination for letters proved too strong for him, and he abandoned the lucrative profession of law for the uncertainties of literature. Unable to support himself by his pen, Thomas accepted a chair at the Collège de Beauvais in Paris and there combined teaching and writing until, having achieved fame by winning a series of contests proposed by the Acadé Française, he was offered the position of private secretary to the Duke de Praslin. His patron secured for him a sizeable annuity, and in 1765 he was named historiographer of the King's buildings, a post that brought with it a further pension. Two years later Thomas was elected to the Académie Française and eventually became the director of that body. Though neither Coyer nor Thomas are today regarded as major figures in the intellectual history of the eighteenth century, Fréron included them, together with d'Alembert, Diderot, Marmontel and Saint Lambert, as prominent spokesmen of the philosophe school.

The third writer who sought to change existing views of the lower classes was the Abbé Pierre Jaubert. Born in Bordeaux in 1715, Jaubert studied theology and was ordained a priest. He served as a curate for several years, but relinquished his benefice in order to devote himself to literature and writing. Jaubert achieved membership in the Academy of Bordeaux, and in addition to producing works of a purely scholarly nature also wrote on social and economic matters. Having edited a multivolume dictionary of arts and crafts and having translated the Imitation of Christ, he cannot be said to have been a man of excessively narrow interests.

The careers of Baudeau and Berenger recall that of Jaubert. Nicolas Baudeau (1730-1792) was the son of a peasant of the Touraine. He took orders, becoming a canon and prior of St. Lo in Normandy, and taught theology. But he soon came to devote most of his energies to writing plans of reform, and, after having been converted to physiocracy, to popularizing the ideas of that school. L. P. Berenger (1749-1822) entered the Oratory and taught rhetoric in the Oratorian collège of Orleans, but later left the order to combine the position of tutor in a noble household with that of royal censor.

It is striking that four of the five men who sought to change the prevailing attitudes of mistrust and hostility toward the lower classes began their careers in the church, then took up secular letters, while the fifth taught in a collège noted for its Jansenism. Worth noting, too, is the fact that none of the five was noble, and none came from a wealthy family.

The two most thorough and comprehensive treatments of popular education during our period, the Essais de Laopédie of Goyon d'Arzac and the Vues patriotiques sur l'éducation du peuple of Philipon de la Madelaine were produced by men who were neither clerics nor teachers, but members of the legal profession. Goyon was born in 1740 in the town of Mezin in the present day Lot-et-Garonne. He died in 1800 in Berlin, but was not an émigré, for he had left France just before the outbreak of the Revolution. Goyon's social standing was partly determined by the fact that he was both a parlementaire and a nobleman (viscount), while his place in the enlightened community is adequately indicated by his participation in numerous essay contests and his membership in the Academies of Mountauban, Châlons-sur-Marne and Berlin.

Like Goyon, Philipon came from the Midi. He was born in Lyon in 1734, and as a younger son was intended for the church. Having studied theology under the Jesuits, Philipon decided to abandon Augustine for Grotius and entered the law school of Besangon, where he completed his studies. Soon after, he contracted an advantageous marriage, and became an avocat du roi in the Chambre de Comptes of Dole. He served in this capacity until 1786 when he became the steward of the Count d'Artois. Parallel to a successful career in law, Philipon was able to indulge his taste for literature. During the 1760s he wrote manuals on epistolary style and translation from Latin, but by the 1780s he was drawn into many of the debates concerning legal, educational and other sorts of reform. Under the Convention, La Madelaine worked out a copyright system for which he received two thousand francs. In 1795, during the Thermidorian reaction, he was made librarian to the minister of the interior. A versatile man, Philipon adapted both to the Empire and the Restoration. When he died in 1816 he held the title of honorary steward of the Count d'Artois, and enjoyed a pension from his former employer.

Clerics were responsible for two other substantial contributions to the debate on popular education. During the first half of the century, the Abbé Terrisse, dean of the cathedral chapter of Rouen and a member of the academy of that town, read a memoir on the utility of educating the peasantry in a public session of the academy. In 1780 an associate of the academy of Lyon sent that body a memoir on the education of children relative to their social standing. This was the Benedictine, François Philippe Gourdin, who had entered the cloister because he was unable to pursue a career in literature outside it for lack of resources and patronage. If he cannot be said to have become another Mabillon, he by no means shamed an order renowned for its scholarship. Gourdin taught for a time in one of the collèges maintained by the congregation, served as librarian, and published a half dozen books on history and literature. He was also, like Terrisse, a member of the Academy of Rouen as well as an associate of three foreign academies. During the Revolution this erudite monk spent his time peaceably collecting antiquities of Normandy and organizing the municipal library of Rouen.

Of lesser but still considerable importance is Bertrand Verlac, a friend of the mathematician Monge and a lawyer who made teaching his career. A large section of a plan of education he wrote "for all classes of citizens" was devoted to the people.

The views of two other men also deserve special attention, for in addition to writing on popular education, they founded and directed schools for children of the lower classes. Jacques Sellier was the guiding spirit behind the école des arts of Amiens, an engineer and a member of the academies of Amiens and a number of other towns. The Count de Thélis, a wealthy, liberal noble of the Forez, created and supervised the écoles nationales militaires. He devoted his professional life to the army, in which he was a captain, and was a socially conscious, reforming seigneur.

Taken as a group, the sixty writers who appear in Figure 1 show no more socioprofessional consistency than the twelve men just discussed. They belong to the legal and medical professions, the army, administration, church, and were both professional teachers and men of letters. A large proportion were what the English at the time would have described as gentlemen, which is to say that they cultivated polite company, the arts and sciences and their hounds, and were obliged to follow no special calling in order to live.

Together the learned professions of law, medicine and theology account for more than half the writers consulted. But not all those who had a qualification or degree in a field chose to practice in it. Whereas fifteen men had law degrees, only eight derived their livelihoods from the tortuous and convoluted legal system of the old regime. At the head of those actively engaged in legal practice were three magnates of the robe: La Chalotais, the procureur général of the Parlement of Rennes and correspondent of Voltaire; Guyton de Morveau, avocat général of the sovereign court of Dijon, and distinguished chemist and savant; and Rolland d'Erceville, a Président of the Parlement of Paris and organizer of the Collège Louis-le-Grand, who has been called the true minister of public education of the years following the expulsion of the Jesuits from France. Both Goyon and Philipon made professional use of their legal training, and so too did Granet, an official of the sénéchaussée of Toulon, E. Béguillet and Fourcroy de Guillerville. By contrast, Turgot, G. Grivel, Louis Sebastien Mercier, Lefebvre de Beauvray, Le Mercier de la Rivière, Thiebault and Bertrand Verlac, though they had law degrees, did not practice or did not devote the greater part of their time to their practices.

Four of the men in Figure 1 had medical degrees, but only two of them, Tissot and Ballexerd, wielded the bleeding bowl and the clyster. The Chevalier Jaucourt, who is best known today for his heroic role in the production of the Encyclopédie, studied medicine in his youth, and wrote a medical dictionary all five volumes of which were lost on the way to the printer, but he never actually practiced as a doctor. Similarly, the savant C.A.J.L. de Montlinot, though he had earned a degree in medicine, occupied himself in other ways. He had a degree in theology, wrote, served for a time as canon of a church in Lille, and was actively engaged in poor relief at Soissons.

If, as an eminent medievalist has observed, the monasteries were not always peopled with altogether willing acolytes during the Middle Ages, how much more must this have been the case in the eighteenth century. With fifteen men having taken orders of some sort, the clergy boasts as many representatives in Figure 1 as does the legal profession. But even fewer clerics than lawyers made the subject in which they had taken degrees their main field of endeavor. Only Terrisse, Gourdin and Joseph Romain Joly, a Capuchin monk, can be said to have been primarily concerned with either religious duties or ecclesiastical administration. The other twelve men who had clerical titles or degrees in theology left the orders they had entered, or pursued some occupation on which their clerical training had little bearing. We have seen that Montlinot took a degree in theology without devoting himself to a clerical vocation; that Jaubert was ordained a priest and served for a time in that capacity before retiring to devote himself to study and writing; and that Coyer, Baudeau and Berenger began their careers in the church, but opted for secular letters as soon as their fortunes permitted. Similarly, Thiebault became a Jesuit and taught in one of the collèges of the order until it was dissolved. But his clerical training and career seem to have marked him little enough, for he went on to write works that were approved by the philosophes and to become a confidant of Frederick II. He ended his career in the French bureaucracy. In some cases it was possible, by gaining a benefice without care of souls, to assure one's livelihood from the church without carrying out any priestly or ecclesiastical function. Thus the Abbé Pernetti of Lyon, after taking orders and serving as a tutor in an important household, was able to secure a benefice that allowed him to pursue his scholarly interests unhindered. Of the Abbé Delacroix of Lyon virtually nothing is known, and only his nebulous tide allows us to place him among the churchmen. In the case of J.H.S. Formey, however, we are better informed. The scion of a French Protestant family that fled the country for Prussia in 1685, Formey became a pastor and professor of eloquence. His great energy and ability also enabled him to attain a leading place in the Berlin academy and to become a privy counselor to Frederick II. If Formey's career was an unusually successful one, his experience in beginning it in the church and then moving into other fields of endeavor appears to have been common at the time.

Three other clerics devoted their principal energies to education, and though they did so within the framework of the church, they should, nevertheless, be regarded primarily as educators and only secondarily as churchmen. They are the Abbé Durosoy, a Jesuit who taught theology at the collège of Colmar; Dom Ferlus, a Benedictine who directed the celebrated collège of Sorèze; and the Father Navarre, a member of the Fathers of the Christian Doctrine. In addition to these three clerics, five other writers consulted here were primarily educators. F. D. Rivard and J. B. Crévier were both highly distinguished professors at the Collège de Beauvais in Paris, while François Mauduit taught at the Collège d'Harcourt, and Verlac held a teaching position at the naval school of Vannes. Sellier, as has been mentioned, taught and directed the école des arts of Amiens.

Education, like the church, seems to have been a calling that many followed from expediency rather than inclination. If eight of the men on whom this study is based were content to spend their lives instructing the young, twice as many taught temporarily or as an avocation. For J.M.B. Clement, who taught at the collège of Dijon before becoming a writer and literary critic; for J. A. Perreau, who tutored the children of a marquis after having failed in his literary debut; for J. F. Bastide, who became tutor to the children of a German Prince after a moderate success at the writer's craft; for Thomas, Baudeau, Berenger, Coyer, L. S. Mercier, Formey, Pernetti, Borelly, Rousseau and Diderot, teaching was a springboard to a literary career or a means of supplementing a slender income. For Thélis, on the other hand, and for J. J. Bachelier, a painter by profession who founded and directed the école de dessin of Paris, education was a serious avocation.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. vii
• Tables and Graphs, pg. ix
• Acknowledgments, pg. xi
• Note on Usage, pg. xiv
• Abbreviations, pg. xv
• Introduction, pg. 1
• Chapter Ι. The Elements of the Problem, pg. 18
• Chapter II. The Debate on Popular Education to 1769, pg. 76
• Chapter III. The Debate: 1770-1789, pg. 128
• Chapter IV. The Climate of Opinion in France: 1762-1789, pg. 183
• Chapter V. The Impasse: Images of the People and the Limits of Reform, pg. 245
• Conclusion, pg. 278
• Bibliography, pg. 291
• Index, pg. 313