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

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

[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.