The History of Pedagogy

by Gabriel Compayré

3. His extreme estimate of the art of reading: “Let a teacher of reading be associated with a professor of drawing; there are so few men, even the most enlightened, who know how to read well, a gift always so agreeable, and often so necessary.”

4. A special regard for the study of art and for æsthetic education, which could not be a matter of indifference to the great art critic who wrote the Salons.

5. A reform in the system of ushers.[188] Diderot would have for supervising assistants in colleges, educated men, capable on occasion of supplying the places of the professors themselves. To attach them to their duties, he requires that some dignity be given to their modest and useful functions, and that the usher be a sort of supernumerary, or “professor in reversion,” who aspires to the chair of the professor, whose place he supplies from time to time, and which he may finally attain.

358. Helvetius (1715-1771).—In undertaking the study of the thoughts of Helvetius on education, and the rapid analysis of his Treatise on Man, we shall not take leave of Diderot, for the work of Helvetius has had the good or the bad fortune of being commented on and criticised by his illustrious contemporary. Thanks to the Systematic Refutation of the Book of Helvetius on Man, which forms a charming accompaniment of pungent or vigorous reflections to a dull and languid book, the reading of the monotonous treatise of Helvetius becomes easy and almost agreeable.

359. The Treatise on Man.—Under this title, a little long, De l’homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles et de son éducation, Helvetius has composed a large work which he had in contemplation for fifteen years, and which did not appear till after his death, in 1772. As a matter of fact, education does not directly occupy the author’s attention except in the first and the last chapters (sections I. and X.). With this exception, the whole book is devoted to long developments of the favorite maxims of his philosophy: as the intellectual equality of all men, and the reduction of all the passions to the pursuit of pleasure; or to platitudes, such as the influence of laws on the happiness of people, and the evils which result from ignorance.

360. Potency of Education.—When he does not fall into platitudes, Helvetius goes off into paradoxes that are presumptuous and systematic. His habitual characteristic is pedantry in what is false. According to him, for example, education is all-powerful; it is the sole cause of the difference between minds. The mind of the child is but an empty capacity, something indeterminate, without predisposition. The impressions of the senses are the only elements of the intelligence; so that the acquisitions of the five senses are the only thing that is of moment; “the senses are all that there is of man.” It is not possible to push sensationalism further than this.

The impressions of the senses are, then, the basis of human nature, and as these impressions vary with circumstances, Helvetius arrives at this conclusion, that chance is the great master in the formation of mind and character. Consequently, he undertakes to produce at will men of genius, or, at least, men of talent. For this purpose, it suffices to ascertain, by repeated observations, the means which chance employs for making great men. These means once discovered, it remains only to set them at work artificially and to combine them, in order to produce the same effects.

“Genius is a product of chance. Rousseau, like a countless number of illustrious men, may be regarded as one of the masterpieces of chance.”

361. Helvetius refuted by Diderot.—It is easy to reply to extravagant statements of this sort. Had Helvetius consulted teachers and parents, had he observed himself, had he simply reflected on his two daughters, so unequally endowed though identically educated, he would doubtless have felt constrained to acknowledge the limitations of education; he would have comprehended that it cannot give imagination to minds of sluggish temperament, nor enthusiasm and sensibility to inert souls, and that the most marvellously helpful circumstances will not make of a Helvetius a Montesquieu or a Voltaire.