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The Idea of Social Progress through Education in the French Enlightenment Period: Helvetiusand CondorcetAuthor(s): Stanley E. BallingerSource: History of Education Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1/4, Tenth Anniversary Issue (1959), pp.88-99Published by: History of Education Society

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THE IDEA OF SOCIAL PROGRESS THROUGHEDUCATIONIN

THE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENTPERIOD:HELVETIUS AND CONDORCET

Stanley E. Ballinger

One of the basic components of modern Western civilizationhas been its faith in social progress. In the United States, espe-cially, faith in the possibility or inevitability of social progress has

generally been an implicit assumption in our attitudes towards

social problems and in the measures taken or proposed for theirsolution. John Bagnell Bury, in The Idea of Progress, has providedwhat has become a classic analysis of the origins and evolution ofthe idea of progress in the Western world. Although Bury's analy-sis may be cogent and competent, it contains virtually nothing onwhat might be called "educational meliorism"-the idea of social

progress through education. To Americans in general, and toAmerican educators in particular, educational meliorism is of

special interest. Not only has American civilization, from the

early nineteenthcentury onward,

been"progress-oriented,"

but,with the possible exception of lawmaking, education has been seen

by Americans as the major agency through which a people mightprogressively improve its own state of affairs. In the nineteenth

century Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mannprovided highly influ-ential statements espousing social progress through the establish-ment of a universal public school system open freely to all. Build-

ing partly on the Jefferson-Mann tradition, John Dewey providedthe twentieth century with a philosophically more adequate and

socially more relevant concept of educational meliorism. The

concept,in one form or

another, hasthus been a

partof the basic

underpinning of ideas upon which American culture has evolved,dented but not destroyed bytwo worldwars, the Depression (1930's),and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

While some of the details of early nineteenth century educa-tional meliorism were indigenous to the American scene, reflectingthe unique flavor which American civilization had already ac-

quired, much of the thought on social progress through education ofthe Jeffersonians was rooted in the European Enlightenment, es-

peciallythat of eighteenth-century France. This article will attempt

to identify some important aspects of the roots of American edu-cational meliorism as they arose in the French Enlightenment.The focus will be on two individuals, Helv4tius and Condorcet, both

88

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SOCIAL PROGRESS THROUGH EDUCATION 89

of whom expressed themselves on the subject in a substantial way.These two individuals

mayalso be taken as

roughly representativeof two successive stages of French thought on social progressthrough education: Helvetius, of the pre-democratic, pre-Revolu-tionary phase; Condorcet, of the democratic, Revolutionary phase.

If we accept the conclusion of Bury that a general conceptionof social progress was not fully articulated until its formulation byDescartes in the seventeenth century,' we find that the idea of social

progress through education followed the appearance of the generalidea of progress shortly after, in the middle of the eighteenth cen-

tury.2 This is not especially to be wondered at, since the close

connection between education and a certain kind of social changehad been dramatically illustrated in the educational work of theJesuits. Once the conception of social progress had appeared, itdid not take much of an inferential step to envision the potentialrole of the school as an agency of progress. It would appear that

both the general and the educational forms of meliorism receivedtheir first substantial formulation in France, the latter a conjointproduct of French liberals in the eighteenth century. Recognizingthat a certain claim might be made for the Abbe de Saint Pierre,3it does no great injustice to the facts to regard Helvetius (probably

together with Diderot4) as the first full-blown educational melior-ist. Although Helvetius did not publish his work on education duringhis lifetime (1715-1771),5 much of his general viewpoint is con-

tained in De L'Esprit,6 and through his many contacts with other

French intellectuals, his ideas became widely known before hisdeath.

'John Bagnell Bury, The Idea of Progress (London: Macmillan and

Co., Ltd., 1920), pp. 64-78.2

For reasons which cannot be developed here, Plato's Republicis

regarded as belonging to the literature of utopianism, rather than the liter-

ature of progress. Ibid., pp. 1-36.

3AbbW de Saint Pierre, "Un Projet pour Perfectionner L'Education,"Oeuvres Diverses, Vol. I (Paris: Briasson, 1730).

'We should perhaps consider Helvetius and Diderot as more or less

joint innovators, so difficult is it to disentangle the ideas of one from the

other. Their differences appear to have been largely differences of empha-sis. See Mordecai Grossman, The Philosophy of Helvetius (New York:

Teachers College, Columbia University, 1936), Ch. XI.

5De L'Homme, de ses Facultes Intellectuelles, et de son Education

(London: Socidtd Typographique, 1773), was published posthumously for fear

of French censorship, which had already resulted in the banning of his De-L'Esprit.

6Claude A. Helvdtius, De L'Esprit, 2 vols. (Paris: Durand, 1758).









90 HISTORY OF EDUCATION JOURNAL

In the brilliant eruption of thought which characterized eight-eenth century France, there emerged two very important concep-tions for the development of the idea of progress, in France andelsewhere. One stemmed from sensationalistic psychology, an

adaptation of the ideas of John Locke, which directed attention tothe possibilities of control of the environment in progressiveterms.' The other was an attempt to carry over the idea of a few

simple, interconnected mechanical laws which "controlled" the

physical world, as set forth by Newton, into the realm of societyand human behavior." The extension of the Newtonian conceptionof the physical universe to the dynamics of social change was usedin connection with a

varietyof social

theories,but

importantfor us

here is its connection with the idea of progress as a manifestationof cosmic order analogous to the Newtonian laws of physicalattraction.

It is probable that all theories of progress have been rootedeither in the faith that the environment can be controlled in theinterests of humanity, or in the conviction that the universe, as awhole or in its human dimensions, is ordered on a progressivebasis, in accordance with laws as immutable as those of the physi-cal world. It was Helvetius who was the strongest and most typical

exponentof the

first of these.Helv"tius' views on the power of conscious control of thesocial environment, which he identified with education, were ex-

treme: "L'education peut tout."9 The corruption and inefficiencyof the administrations of Louis XV and Louis XVI had stirred manyFrench intellectuals to propose fundamental social reforms. The

age-old argument of conservatives in defense of the status quo,from the Greeks onward, has been the unchangeability of humannature. Things are the way they are because of the immutable na-ture of man. It is not surprising, then, that eventually individuals

interested in reconstructing society should take the view that thenature of man is not inalterably fixed.

7See Charles Frankel, The Faith of Reason: The Idea of Progress in

the French Enlightenment (New York: King's Crown Press, Columbia Uni-

versity, 1948), pp. 57 ff. This otherwise excellent book does not do justiceto the idea of educational meliorism in the Enlightenment.

"The eighteenth-century idea of a natural law that operated in the

social realm no doubt stemmed in part from the Christian conception of

natural law, but the two are by no means identical. The Christian law was

a normative law, whereas the natural law in re society in eighteenth-centuryFrance came closer to being explanatory or descriptive law.

9De L'Homme, II, Sect. X, Ch. 1.









SOCIAL PROGRESS THROUGHEDUCATION 91

The sensationalism of Locke in the seventeenth century pro-vided the psychological basis for viewing human nature as change-able, at least in certain key respects. Locke himself did not carryhis influence in this direction as far as others did. Locke held thatthe mind was a tabula rasa at birth, and that no innate ideas ex-isted in the human mind. Nevertheless, Locke accepted the notionthat men are unequal in the qualities of mind by which ideas are

related, evaluated, etc. In retaining the concept of "natural"human inequality, Locke maintained the psychological basis of aclass society which he, in common with virtually all other English-men of the time, was anxious to preserve. With the partial successof the middle class revolution of

1688, Englishintellectuals seem

to have felt no urgent need for social reconstruction.Locke's emphasis upon the environmental origin of ideas

through sensations, however, could be taken to mean that the dif-ferences in men stemmed from differences in their environment.If this were true, human nature, at least as exhibited in conduct,could be changed by changing the environment. It was in this formthat Lockean sensationalism was taken up in eighteenth-centuryFrance, although with varying degrees of emphasis upon the deter-ministic powers of the environment.

As dissatisfaction towards political and social conditionsgrew in France following the demise of the glorious Louis XIV, theconvenience of Locke's psychology of sensationalism became moreand more evident to French thinkers, who watched with dismay the

crumbling of French polity. It was Helvetius, of all the French

philosophes, who applied Lockean sensationalism in its most ex-treme form. m

Taking the general idea of mind as a tabula rasa from Locke,

Helvetius went further and declared that the qualities of the mind,the mental faculties as well as the idea-content, came via the

senses from environmental presentations. In his emphasis uponenvironment, Helvetius distinguished between the physical environ-ment and the human and social environment. He disagreed with

Diderot, for instance, that the climate influenced the nature of

men.11 Men are different, said Helvetius, because of the differingconditions of their human environment, especially as they are

growing up. If you wish to improve society, change the education

(human environment) of men accordingly.2

WmGrossman,op. cit., is focally concerned with showing the implica-tions of Helv6tius' extreme form of sensationalistic psychology.

"Ibid., p. 148.

"De L'Homme, I, pp. 3-4. See also Grossman, op. cit., pp. 115-158.










Attacking the arcadianism of Rousseau, " Helvetius held that

progress was a fact ofhistory-a steady process.

Although declineshowed here and there, as in France under the Bourbons, the con-tinuous movement upward was maintained elsewhere. Human

error, far from preventing progress, had an important role in

bringing it about. Rational man4 recognized error, and once made,it was not to be repeated. The number of errors possible to makeis a finite number; therefore, error and man's recognition of errormake progress more or less necessary.'5

The modernity of Helvetius is indicated in his interest inhuman happiness and welfare. Progress was to be viewed in these

terms,not in terms of some cosmic

processremote from the in-

terests of man.1 He denied current theories that human differ-ences were due to God, or to any other ultra-mundane cause. In

his strong social environmentalism, Helvetius foreshadows a prom-inent feature of recent educational meliorism in the United States.In some of its general outlines, Helvetius' view of human naturebears important resemblances to that of John Dewey. 17 Humanity,in its general predispositions, said Helvetius, does not change.'

By and large, impulses, passions, and tendencies are the same, in

potentiality, from one place and one era to another, and from one

individual to another. We cannot, therefore, account for humandifferences and inequality in terms of human nature viewed in this

way. From his basic principle, "En tous les temps les memescauses produiront toujours les memes effets, "'1 it followed thatsimilar environments would result in similar individuals, and as a

corollary, different environments account for human inequality andhuman differences. The science of man that Helvetius thoughtwould underlie the new education, and which he thought was just

1'With respect to civilization as a whole, the general run of philoso-

phes accepted it on a progressive basis. They were critical of certain fea-

tures of it exhibited in Bourbon, France, but it was not civilization they

objected to as such, but "perversions" of it, like monarchical tyranny.

Rousseau, on the other hand, in his moods of rusticism, at least, rejectedthe whole idea of civilization as responsible for the evil (artificial) in man.

S4Helvdtius seems to have assumed that rationality is in some sense

an innate quality of the human mind, in spite of his general position that the

qualities of the mind are derived from environmental influences.

"De L'Esprit, I, vi.

'bGrossman, op. cit., p.110.'7As expounded, for example, in Human Nature and Conduct.

1sDe L'Homme, I, pp. 123-33.

19lbid., II, p.405.










beginning to be worked out, would be concerned with knowledge ofthe effects of

particular changes.As these became

known,there

would be a firm basis for an education which would wipe out in-

equality (equality was one of the major values involved in Helvetius'

concept of progress) and make for the rapid acceleration of prog-ress (improvement in the social conditions of existence). The im-

portance of Helvetius lies in the fact that modern ideas of progressthrough education, for the most part, are grounded in a conception,similar to his, of human behavior strongly influenced by the socialenvironment and in the notion that the environment that influenceshuman behavior is susceptible to human control.

Following upon his doctrine of the potential equalityof

allmen, Helvetius logically favored universal education.20 The happi-ness of society, as well as that of the individual, demanded it.

Furthermore, education should be public, not private.21 Bitterlyanti-clerical, Helvetius could not entrust the all-important task ofeducation to what he felt was the superstition-ridden, power-seek-ing clergy. Organized society through the medium of the stateshould have undisputed control of education. Since Helvetius was

politically no democrat,22 and a cosmopolitan rather than a nation-

alist, his reasons for preferring public education are not quite the

same as those of later French thinkers, such as Condorcet. Hel-vetius gave the following reasons for preferring publicly controllededucation over private tutelage: (1) the greater social contact withothers provided the child with more examples to emulate; (2) amore systematic program was possible; (3) the average quality of

teaching would be higher; (4) greater firmness of discipline wouldbe present than in most homes; (5) there would be a much greater

20Letter to Lefdbvre-Laroch, quoted in Grossman, op. cit., p. 143.This position was in sharp contrast to many of his contemporaries' writingon education. La Chalotais, for instance, did not believe that even readingand writing should be taught the masses, whose reason, it was held, was in-sufficient to control their passions. See French Liberalism and Education

in the Eighteenth Century: The Writings of La Chalotais, Turgot, Diderot,and Condorcet, F. de la Fontainerie, ed. and trans. (New York: McGraw-Hill BookCo., 1932),p. 35, p. 59 f. See also Gabriel Compayrd, The History ofPedagogy (Boston: Heath &Co., 1888), p. 353.

21De L'Homme, II, pp. 406-409.22Like most of the French liberals in the mid-eighteenth century,

Helvdtius objected to evil and corrupt monarchs, not to the institution of

monarchy. It is clear from the preface to De L'Homme (p. x) that he fav-ored the idea of an enlightened despotism under such a ruler as Frederickthe Great.










tendency for the child to identify public and private happiness.23With the exception of the last reason, which Helvelius did not sub-

ject to much analysis or elaboration, there is not much in Helve-tius' views to suggest the American democratic argument for publiceducation.

The somewhat mechanical theory of learning which lay behindHelvetius' notion of control of the social environment is significantin connection with some of the twentieth-century American theoriesof educational meliorism. In contrast to many modern theories of

learning, the purpose and interest of the individual were not ac-corded a fundamental place in learning by Helvetius. Learning took

place primarily by presentationsto the mind

throughthe senses in

a rather direct manner. Those who would teach, then, had merelyto control the presentations. Education then became primarily amatter of seemingly mechanical manipulation on the part of those

controlling education. This notion seems to have been rooted in a

conception of science (from Descartes) as a body of indubitable

principles rather than as a method of gaining warranted belief in-

volving self-corrective procedures.24 The trick, then, in education

(including, for the philosophes, "education" by the lawmaker) wasto find the indubitable principles of human behavior; then behavior

could be externally manipulated to produce the desired results.As

Frankel points out,25 this fitted the philosophes' political programwhich, in general, assumed the desirability of enlightened despot-ism. For them, including Helvetius, progress took place from the

top down. Although they seldom spoke in clear terms about it, the

philosophes' idea of progress involved the paternalism of an intel-

lectual elite who would guide the policies of an enlightened sover-

eign. There is more than a touch in this view of the Platonic re-

public: the philosopher-king of Plato was to be found in the enlight-ened despot with his council of intellectual elite. The fact that

Helvetius advocateduniversal education should be considered in thelight of the fact that this education was to be universal but not

democratic in the modern sense of the word. Progress would take

place through an education of all individuals whose purposes wereto be determined by the elite. That this idea did not die with the

eighteenth-century philosophes in France is to be seen in the highlycentralized system of education in twentieth-century France.

Although it cannot be treated here at length, it is relevant to

23De L'Homme, II, pp. 406-409.24 Frankel, op. cit., p. 60 f.25 Frankel, Ibid., p. 61.










raise the question of the relation of Rousseau to the educationalmeliorism of

Helvetius.28Rousseau has been a

perplexing prob-lem to students of the history of ideas because of his impulsiveromanticism, which resulted in emotive sponsorship of proposalswith little regard to consistency with other aspects of his thinkingand writing, and also because of a dilemma in his own thinkingwhich he never resolved very satisfactorily. This dilemma in-volved Rousseau's assumption of an innate character, which oughtto be free to develop, which clashed with his recognition that the

individual becomes what he is in and because of the society whichmust inevitably educate him.27 Rousseau's problem, which he

never stated very clearly to himself, seems to have been,Shall the

child be educated as "man" (as an individual) or shall he be edu-

cated as "citizen" (for effective social participation under prevail-ing institutions)? He could not, as Rousseau saw it, be educatedfor both in Bourbon France, for to educate for citizenship in

eighteenth-century French civilization would mean the negation ofeducation for natural individuality. One must choose between the

two in actual educational policy, said Rousseau. If posterity hastended to think that Rousseau chose the latter, Rousseau himself

was apparently never able to make a clear choice.28 He remained

on the horns of his dilemma. Education ought to be both for naturalindividuality and for citizenship, and these ends could only be ac-

complished in a society completely different from that in Europeat the time. Rousseau's arcadianism was perhaps as much arhetorical device for attacking the evils of his own day as it was an

expression of a fundamental yearning on his part for a simpler

(more natural) way of life. Rhetorical device or not, Rousseau's

most impressive and impassioned writing is in behalf of an educa-tion which, more negative than positive, would permit the "natural"

dispositions of man to emerge.

28Grossman, op. cit., pp. 145-158, contrasts the views of Helvdtiusand Rousseau rather effectively.

27William Boyd, The Educational Theory of Jean Jacques Rousseau

(London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911), Ch. VII, shows clearly thisdilemma of Rousseau. It is frequently overlooked that Rousseau gave some

recognition to the inevitably social character of education.28The last educational writing of Rousseau, Considerations on the

Governmentof Poland (1773) proposes a nationalistic system of educationin clear opposition to many of his ideas in Emile. It is clear in this work

that Rousseau felt that education for citizenship was an important aim. Seethe translation of this treatise in The Minor Educational Writings of Jean

Jacques Rousseau, ed. and trans. by William Boyd (London:Blackie and Son,Ltd., 1911), pp. 137-149.










Neither of Rousseau's views on education, that of the natural

man in Emile nor that of the citizen forPoland,

seemsreally

to

represent educational meliorism.29 Civilization, far from contain-

ing the dynamics of progress within it, represented a retrogressionfrom Rousseau's most clearly manifested ideal. Whereas, in theutter environmentalism of Helvetius, man is shaped from without,and the proper agency for the shaping is public education, for

Rousseau, man might be shaped by his environment (as he dis-

tressingly observed), but he ought not to be, at least not predomi-nantly. Social and educational conditions should be such that each

individual can develop his natural dispositions. At least in empha-

sis, Helv4tius and Rousseau supported differentterms of what

Rousseau, at least, felt to be an antinomy.If we take Helvetius as an example of a strain of liberal

French thought in the period before the French Revolution, the

Marquis de Condorcet represents well the point of view of theearlier philosophes, but developed in the light of the possibilitiesof a France freed from feudalism and the corrupt despotism of the

Bourbons. To the early eighteenth-century French liberals, the

possibility of getting rid of absolute monarchy was not only remote

but undesirable. Their views were consequently conditioned by

their monarchical frame of reference. As the Revolution ap-proached, however, French liberalism moved closer to an espousalof democratic constitutional government. Probably Condorcet was

as close as any Frenchman to the loftiest ideals which the Revolu-tion proclaimed, however it failed to maintain them.

Condorcet held a combination of the two basic approaches tothe idea of progress. In his famous Esquisse,30 written as he

calmly awaited his turn at the guillotine, we find his faith in prog-ress as cosmic necessity written in the most flamboyantly optimis-tic terms.31 In his earlier Sur L'Instruction Publique3 (1791-1792),

2 The implications of that side of Rousseau which emphasized the

"natural man" as against the citizen were to be revealed somewhat more

clearly in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Froebel, Tolstoy, andthose of the child-centered wing of Progressive Education saw the reform of

society in terms of letting the natural selves of children develop withoutunduehindrance or coercion from adults.

30Marquis de Condorcet, Esquisse d'un TableauHistorique des Pro-

gres de L'Esprit Humain, 3rd ed. (Paris: Agasse, 1797). First published in

1795, posthumously.31"[The result of my work] . . . is to show, from reasoning and from

facts, that no bounds have been fixed to the improvement of the humanfac-

ulties; that the perfectability of man is absolutely indefinite; that the prog-










we note his conviction that popular education is an important means

by which socialprogress

will be achieved. That the idea of a pro-gram of popular education certain to bring about progress was in

any way hypothetical, did not seem to occur to Condorcet. His

analysis of history in the Esquisse hadconvinced him that progresswas a cosmic fact, that it was contingent upon nothing.

Sur L'Instruction Publique was Condorcet's report to the

Legislative Assembly in April, 1792. It is worthy of note becauseit represents the educational meliorism of Helvetius and Diderot as

developed under the changed conditions of Revolutionary France.Constitutional democracy, not enlightened despotism, is the politi-cal ideal of Condorcet and the

groupof which he was the

spokes-man. Universal, public education, for Condorcet, had new and more

potent arguments in its favor than those given it by Helvetius. Ifthe new democratic society of France was to survive, it had to pro-vide for the enlightenment of its citizens. "Public education is a

duty of society to its citizens."33 Like the early philosophes,Condorcet was well aware that one of the bases of Bourbon tyrannyhad been the ignorance of the French people. He held that the pri-mary end of national instruction was to improve the individual's

efficiency in his vocation, to fit him for his social responsibilities

and to establish in fact the equality which was recognized by law.34The nationalism of Condorcet was not the narrow sort of La Cha-

lotais, or of Rousseau in proposals for Poland, or of Napoleon. Incontrast to the security-consciousness of a Robespierre in the

Terror, Condorcet warned against the state's using education

merely as an agency for self-perpetuation. A critical attitude

ought to exist towards the laws of the state. The dogmatism of the

ress of this perfectability, henceforth above the control of every power thatwould impede it, has no other limit than the duration of the globe uponwhichnature has placed us." Condorcet, Outlines of an Historical View of the

Progress of the Human Mind, translated from the French (Philadelphia:Lang and Ustick, 1796), p. 11. This work is a translation of the Esquisse.

32 Condorcet, Sur L'Instruction Publique inOeuvres de Condorcet, pp.169-573, O'Connor and Arago, eds. (Paris: Firmin Didot Frdres, 1847).Pages 449-573 of this have been translated with some excisions in FrenchLiberalism and Education in the Eighteenth Century, ed. and trans. by F. dela Fontainerie (New York: McGraw-Hill Book

Co., 1932), pp.323-378.

33Oeuvres de Condorcet, VII,p. 169. This idea is further developed in

pp. 169-174 of this volume.

34Ibid.,p. 449.










old regime was not to be replaced by the tyranny of the new.35Condorcet sought by making education subject only to the control ofthe popular assembly to free it from political manipulation.36 How-ever questionable the means advocated to ensure it, it is clear thatCondorcet envisioned an education in which the untrammeled truthshould prevail; no government body, he said, was to have the powerto prevent the teaching of new truths or truths contrary to its

special views or momentary interests.37For Condorcet, then, education was to play a principal role

in the progress of French society (which it was hoped would spreadfar abroad), progress which was unlimited as to social class, prog-ress in terms of the infinite

perfectabilityof man. Condorcet's

views represent a modification of those of Helvetius in respect tothe power of the environment (education) to eliminate differencesin men. Although Condorcet does not discuss the matter in psycho-logical terms, his provision for education above the common pro-gram for those who have the ability is evidence that he did not feelthat education could produce absolute equality.38

In common with most French liberals of the eighteenth cen-

tury, Condorcet viewed progress as taking place by means of (1) the

development of new knowledge, and (2) the spread of currently

known knowledge. Progress was progres deslumieres.39

Althoughthere were other ways of spreading enlightenment, preventing and

remedying ignorance, popular education was regarded as the best

agency for eliminating prejudice and adherence to blind tradition.It is perhaps important to note the theory of learning in Condorcet'sview. The philosophes' view of progress involved positing ignor-

ance, of a cognitive sort, as the basic social problem. If ignoranceof the true facts of the universe and society is the chief obstacle,what more logical procedure for eliminating this problem and

thereby achieving social progress than to set up a program of uni-

versal education to convey the truth to all the people? Whether ornot this view is valid, it had a powerful appeal for well over a cen-

tury, especially in the United States. It came under attack (from

35"Il ne s'agit pas de soumettre chaque g4n6rationaux opinionscomme a la volont6 de celle qui la precede, mais de les eclairer de plus en

plus, afin que chacune devienne de plus en plus digne de se gouverner parsa propre raison." Oeuvres de Condorcet, VII, p. 212.

'Ibid., VII, pp. 451-452.37Ibid., VII, p. 453.

38Ibid., VII, p. 451.

39Ibid., VII, pp. 451-452.









SOCIAL PROGRESS THROUGHEDUCATION 99

quarters other than religious) only with the rise of the behavioralsciences at the end of the nineteenth century.

The foregoing pages reveal the key role which the French

philosophes played in formulating conceptions of social progressthrough education. While the earliest formulation of educationalmeliorism in the United States-the Jeffersonian formulation40-was

not simply a copy of the French conception, it did draw heavily uponit. This aspect of the French Enlightenment was part of the Euro-

pean heritage which Americans in the early national period incor-

porated into American civilization, providing a conceptual base

eventually for the establishment of the uniquely American institu-tion-the

publicschool.

4"The ormulationof Jefferson himself seems to haveappeared irst

in writing in 1779, when he submitted a draft of "A Bill for the More Gen-eral Diffusion of Knowledge" to the Virginia Legislature. For the text of

this bill, see Roy J. Honeywell, The Educational Work of Thomas Jefferson,

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931), pp. 199-205.

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