The History of Education / Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

II. THE UNSATISFIED DEMAND FOR REFORM IN FRANCE

THE SETTING OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE. Eighteenth-century France, on the contrary, developed no benevolent despot to mitigate abuses, reform the laws, abolish privileges, temper the rule of the Church, [9] (R. 247), curb the monastic orders, develop the natural resources, begin the establishment of schools, and alleviate the hard lot of the serf and the peasant. There, instead, absolute monarchy in Europe reached its most complete triumph during the long reigns of Louis XIV (1643-1715) and Louis XV (1715-74), and the splendor of the court life of France captivated all Europe and served to hide the misery which made the splendor possible. There the power of the nobles had been completely broken, and the power of the parliaments completely destroyed. "I am the State," exclaimed Louis XIV, and the almost unlimited despotism of the King and his ministers and favorites fully supported the statement. Local liberties had been suppressed, and the lot of the common people—ignorant, hard-working, downtrodden, but intensely patriotic—was wretched in the extreme. Approximately 140,000 nobles [10] and 130,000 monks, nuns, and clergy owned two fifths of the landed property of France, and controlled the destinies of a nation of approximately 25,000,000 people. Agriculture was the great industry of the time, but this was so taxed by the agents of King and Church that over one half of the net profits from farming were taken for taxation.

CHURCH AND STATE WERE IN CLOSE WORKING ALLIANCE. The higher offices of the Church were commonly held by appointed noblemen, who drew large incomes [11] led worldly lives, and neglected their priestly functions much as the Italian appointees in German lands had done before the Reformation. Between the nobles and upper clergy on the one hand and the peasant-born lower clergy and the masses of the people on the other a great gulf existed. The real brains of France were to be found among a small bourgeois class of bankers, merchants, shopkeepers, minor officials, lawyers, and skilled artisans, who lived in the cities and who, ambitious and discontented, did much to stimulate the increasing unrest and demand for reform which in time pervaded the whole nation. A king, constantly in need of increasing sums of money; an idle, selfish, corrupt, and discredited nobility and upper clergy, incapable of aiding the king, many of whom, too, had been influenced by the new philosophic and scientific thinking and were willing to help destroy their own orders; an aggressive, discontented, and patriotic bourgeoisie, full of new political and social ideas, and patriotically anxious to reform France; and a vast unorganized peasantry and city rabble, suffering much and resisting little, but capable of a terrible fury and senseless destruction, once they were aroused and their suppressed rage let loose;—these were the main elements in the setting of eighteenth-century France.

THE FRENCH REFORM PHILOSOPHERS. During the middle decades of the eighteenth century a small but very influential group of reform philosophers in France attacked with their pens the ancient abuses in Church and State, and did much to pave the way for genuine political and religious reform. In a series of widely read articles and books, characterized for the most part by clear reasoning and telling arguments, these political philosophers attacked the power of the absolute monarchy on the one hand, and the existing privileges of the nobles and clergy on the other, as both unjust and inimical to the welfare of society (R. 248). The leaders in the reform movement were Montesquieu (1689-1755), Turgot (1727-81), Voltaire (1694-1778), Diderot (1713-84), and Rousseau (1712- 78).

[Illustration: FIG. 147. MONTESQUIEU(1689-1755)]

Montesquieu. In 1748 appeared Montesquieu's famous book, the Spirit of Laws. In this he pointed out the many excellent features of the constitutional government which the English had developed, and compared English conditions with the many abuses to which the French people were subject. He argued that laws should be expressive of the wishes and needs of the people governed, and that the education of a people "ought to be relative to the principles of good government." Montesquieu also stands, with Turgot as the founder of the sciences of comparative politics [12] and the philosophy of history—new studies which helped to shape the political thinking of eighteenth-century France.

Turgot. Two years after the publication of Montesquieu's book, Turgot delivered (1750) a series of lectures at the Sorbonne, in Paris, in which he virtually created the science of history. Looking at human history comprehensively, seeing clearly that there had been a hitherto unrecognized regularity of march amid the confusion of the past, and that it was possible to grasp the history of the progress of man as a whole, he saw and stated the possibility of society to improve itself through intelligent government, and the need for wise laws and general education to enable it to do so. [13]

[Illustration: FIG. 148. TURGOT (1727-81)]

[Illustration: FIG. 149. VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)]

In 1774 Turgot was appointed Minister of Finance by the new King, Louis XVI, and during the two years before he was removed from office he attempted to carry out many needed political and social reforms. Duruy [14] has summarized his suggested reforms as follows:

1. Gradual introduction of a complete system of local self-government.

2. Imposition of a land tax on nobility and clergy.

3. Suppression of the greater part of the monasteries.

4. Amelioration of the condition of the minor clergy.

5. Equalization of the burdens of taxation.

6. Liberty of conscience, and the recall of the Protestants to France.

7. A uniform system of weights and measures.

8. Freedom for commerce and industry.

9. A single and uniform code of laws.

10. A vast plan for the organization of a system of public instruction throughout France.

This list is indicative of the reform philosophy in the light of which he worked. Arousing the natural hostility of the nobility and higher clergy, he was soon dismissed, and the reforms he had proposed were abandoned by the King.

Voltaire. The keenest and most unsparing critic of the old order was Voltaire. In clear and forceful French he exposed existing conditions in society and government, and particularly the control of affairs exercised by the most ancient and most powerful organization of his day—the Church. For this he was execrated and hated by the clergy, and in return he made it the chief task of his life to destroy the reign of the priest. Having lived for a time in England, he appreciated the vast difference between the English and French forms of government. With a keen and unsparing pen he exposed the scholasticism, despotism, dogmatism, superstition, hypocrisy, servility, and deep injustice of his age, and poured out the vials of his scorn upon the grubbing pedantry of the Academicians who doted upon the past because ignorant of the present. In particular he stood for the abolition of that relic of feudalism—serfdom—which still seriously oppressed the peasantry of France; for liberty in thought and action for the individual; for curbing the powers and privileges of both State and Church; for an equalization of the burdens of taxation between the different classes in French society; and for the organization of a system of public education throughout the nation. He died before the outbreak of the Revolution he had done so much to bring about, but by the time he died the "Ancient Régime" of privilege and corruption and oppression was already tottering to its fall. His conception of the relations that should exist between Church and State are well set forth in a short article from his pen on the subject (R. 248) reprinted from the Encyclopaedia of Diderot.

[Illustration: FIG. 150. DIDEROT (1713-84)]

Diderot. Another able thinker and writer was Diderot. Besides other works of importance, he gave twenty years of his life (1751-72) to the editing (with D'Alembert) of an Encyclopaedia of seventeen volumes of text and eleven of plates. Many of the articles were written by himself, and were expressive of his ideas as to reform. Many were frankly critical of existing privileges, abuses, and pretensions. Many interpreted to the French the science of Newton and the discoveries of the age, and awakened a new interest in scientific study. Because of its reform ideas the publication was suppressed, in 1759, after the publication of the seventh volume, and had to be carried on surreptitiously thereafter. Viscount Morley, writing recently on Diderot, summarizes the nature and influence of the Encyclopaedia in the following words:

The ecclesiastical party detested the Encyclopaedia, in which they saw a rising stronghold for their philosophical enemies. To any one who turns over the pages of these redoubtable volumes now, it seems surprising that their doctrine should have stirred such portentous alarm. There is no atheism, no overt attack on any of the cardinal mysteries of the faith, no direct denunciation even of the notorious abuses of the Church. Yet we feel that the atmosphere of the book may well have been displeasing to authorities who had not yet learnt to encounter the modern spirit on equal terms. The Encyclopaedia takes for granted the justice of religious toleration and speculative freedom. It asserts in distinct tones the democratic doctrine that it is the common people in a nation whose lot ought to be the chief concern of the nation's government. From beginning to end it is one unbroken process of exaltation of scientific knowledge on the one hand, and pacific industry on the other. All these things were odious to the old governing classes of France. [15]

Rousseau. The fifth reform writer mentioned as exercising a large influence was Rousseau. In 1749 the Academy at Dijon offered a prize for the best essay on the subject: Has the progress of the sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or to purify morals? Rousseau took the negative side and won the prize. His essay attracted widespread attention. In 1753 he competed for a second prize on The Origin of Inequality among Men, in which he took the same negative attitude. In 1762 appeared both his Social Contract and Émile. In the former he contended that early men had given to selected leaders the right to conduct their government for them, and that these had in time become autocratic and had virtually enslaved the people (R. 249 a). He held that men were not bound to submit to government against their wills, and to remedy existing abuses he advocated the overthrow of the usurping government and the establishment of a republic, with universal suffrage based on "liberty, fraternity, and equality." The ideal State lay in a society controlled by the people, where artificiality and aristocracy and the tyranny of society over man did not exist. Nor could Rousseau distinguish between political and ecclesiastical tyranny, holding that the former inevitably followed from the latter (R. 249 b).

Crude as were his theories, and impractical as were many of his ideas, to an age tired of absurdities and pretensions and injustice, and suffering deeply from the abuses of both Church and State, his attractively written book seemed almost inspired. The Social Contract virtually became the Bible of the French Revolutionists. In the Émile, a book which will be referred to more at length in chapter XXI, Rousseau held that we should revert, in education, to a state of nature to secure the needed educational reforms, and that education to prepare for life in the existing society was both wrong and useless.

A REVOLUTION IN FRENCH THINKING. These five men—Montesquieu, Turgot, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau—and many other less influential followers, portrayed the abuses of the time in Church and State and pointed out the lines of political and ecclesiastical reform. Those who read their writings understood better why the existing privileges of the nobility and clergy were no longer right, and the need for reform in matters of taxation and government. Their writings added to the spirit of unrest of the century, and were deeply influential, not only in France, but in the American Colonies as well. Though the attack was at first against the evils in Church and State, the new critical philosophy soon led to intellectual developments of importance in many other directions.

At the death of Louis XIV (1715) France was intellectually prostrate. Great as was his long reign from the point of view of the splendor of his court, and large as was the quantity of literature produced, his age was nevertheless an age of misery, religious intolerance, political oppression, and intellectual decline. It was a reign of centralized and highly personal government. Men no longer dared to think for themselves, or to discuss with any freedom questions either of politics or religion. "There was no popular liberty; there were no great men; there was no science; there was no literature; there were no arts. The largest intellects lost their energy; the national spirit died away." Between the death of Louis XIV and the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789) an intellectual revolution took place in France, and for this revolution English political progress and political and scientific thinking were largely responsible.

GREAT ENGLISH INFLUENCE ON FRANCE. In 1715 the English language was almost unspoken in France, English science and political progress were unknown there, and the English were looked down upon and hated. Half a century later English was spoken everywhere by the scholars of the time; the English were looked upon as the political and scientific leaders of Europe; and the scholars of France visited England to study English political, economic, and scientific progress. Locke, an uncompromising advocate of political and religious liberty; Hobbes, the speculative moral philosopher; and the great scientist Newton were the teachers of Voltaire. More than any other single man, Voltaire moulded and redirected eighteenth-century thought in France. [16] Numerous French writers of importance—Helvetius, Diderot, Morellet, Voltaire, Rousseau, to mention but a few—drew their inspiration from English writers. In the eighteenth century England became the school for political liberty for France. [17]

The effect of the work of Isaac Newton (p. 388), as popularized by the writings of Voltaire, was revolutionary on a people who had been so tyrannized over by the clergy as had the French during the reign of Louis XIV. An interest in scientific studies before unknown in France now flamed up, and a new generation of French scientists arose. Physics, chemistry, zoölogy, and anatomy received a great new impetus, while botany, geology, and mineralogy were raised to the rank of sciences. Popular scientific lectures became very common. The classics were almost abandoned for the new studies.

Economic questions now also began to be discussed, such as questions of money, food, finance, and government expenditure. In 1776 the Englishman, Adam Smith, laid the foundations of the new science of political economy by the publication of his Wealth of Nations, and this was at once translated into French and eagerly read. In 1781 a French banker by the name of Necker published his Compte Rendu, a statistical report on the finances of France. So feverishly eager were men to study problems of government that six thousand copies were sold the day it was published, and eighty thousand had to be printed before the demand for it was satisfied. A half-century earlier it would have been read scarcely at all.

In the meantime taxes piled up, reforms were refused, the power and arrogance of the clergy and nobility showed no signs of diminution, the nation was burdened with debt, commerce and agriculture declined, the lot of the common people became ever more hard to bear, and the masses grew increasingly resentful and rebellious. As national affairs continued to drift from bad to worse in France, a series of important happenings on the American continent helped to bring matters more rapidly to a crisis. Before describing these events, however, we wish to sketch briefly the rise of government by the people and the extension of liberalism in England—the first great democratic nation of the western world.