François Poulain de la Barre and the invention of modern equality 9780674011854

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Preface (page vii)
Notes on Spelling (page xi)
Introduction: Origins of the Enlightenment (page 1)
1. The Making of a Philosopher (page 24)
2. The Feminist Impulse (page 52)
3. Cartesian Equality (page 87)
4. The Power of Education (page 124)
5. Reason and Authority (page 159)
6. Anthropology and History (page 187)
7. The Road to Geneva (page 212)
8. Rational Christianity (page 245)
Conclusion: Inventing the Enlightenment (page 272)
Acknowledgments (page 301)
Notes (page 305)
Index (page 355)

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Francois Poulain de la Barre and the Invention of Modern Equality

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Francois Poulain de la Barre and the Invention of Modern Equality

SIEP STUURMAN

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England 2004

Copyright © 2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Harvard University Press gratefully acknowledges a grant in support of the publication of this book by the Trust Fund of Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stuurman, Siep. Francois Poulain de la Barre and the invention of modern equality / Siep Stuurman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-01185-6

1. Equality. 2. Feminist theory. 3. Poulain de la Barre, Francois, 1647-1723.

4.Enlightenment. I. Title. HM821.S78 2003

305—de22 2003056797

Contents

Preface Vil Notes on Spelling x1 Introduction: Origins of the Enlightenment |

1. “The Making of a Philosopher 24

2. “The Feminist Impulse 52

3. Cartesian Equality 87

4. ‘The Power of Education 124

5. Reason and Authority 159 6. Anthropology and History 187

7. ‘The Road to Geneva 212 8. Rational Christianity 245

Conclusion: Inventing the Enlightenment 272

Notes 305 Index 355

Acknowledgments 301

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Preface

“How can I help you?” The old priest regards me with a friendly but faintly curious gaze. I am standing in front of the vicarage of La Flamengrie, the small village in northern France where Francois Poulain de la Barre spent five years as a village priest, after he published the feminist books for which he is known today, and before he converted to Calvinism and fled to Geneva. ‘Today La Flamengrie is a very average village on Route Nationale 2 to Belgium. It is raining. The place looks somber and desolate.

So this is where poor Poulain ended up, I cannot help thinking; this is where the radical Cartesian and egalitarian feminist had to adapt to the routines of village life, far from Paris, sadly musing on the unfulfilled dreams of an intellectual career. ‘This is where he was an involun-

tary participant in the final drama of French religious politics under Louis XIV: the increasing harassment of the Protestants, culminating in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Poulain the Parisian feminist author had pleaded for tolerance; Poulain the village priest found himself a member of an organization practicing persecution on a huge scale.

‘To my amazement the old priest knows whom I am talking about. “Ah yes,” he says, “the one who was here in the seventeenth century; that man who wrote about the education of girls.” But to my question about surviving documents he replies with a bitter laugh: “Here, there vil

Vill Preface is nothing left. This is a land of war: here, everything has been devastated, burnt, sacked, and pillaged. Look at this house. It was built in the second year of the eighteenth century, but the front looks much newer; that’s because it was blown to pieces by cannon fire in the Great War.

No, here you will find nothing.” I must admit that he is right. La Flamengrie is in the present-day Département de I’Aisne. From where we are standing, it is thirty miles to Saint Quentin, where the Spaniards

smashed the French army in 1557, and forty miles to the Somme, where a million men fell in 1916. This has indeed been a land of war from the Middle Ages into the twentieth century. Unfortunately for me, this is also the place where Poulain may have left his unfinished work. When he returned to Paris and from there emigrated to Geneva, in 1688, he was a defected Catholic priest. As a fugitive he had to travel light, and he must have left behind most of his belongings. In the archives of the Genevan Republic, where Poulain ended his days, only a few personal documents remain. Nor are

there any in Paris or in the departmental archives of the Aisne. La Flamengrie was my last hope. As a result, we know almost nothing about Poulain’s personal life.

We do not even know what he looked like. ‘Thanks to the studies of Marie-Louise Stock and Madeleine Alcover we know the external facts of his life and career.! I have been able to add some data and some context to their account, but this does not alter the fact that most of what we know about Poulain’s motives and ideas has to be inferred from his published writings: the three Cartesian-feminist treatises he published

in Paris in 1673-1675, the little book on the French language published in Geneva in 1691, and finally a voluminous work on biblical criticism that came out in Geneva in 1720, three years before he died. It is entirely as a result of those writings that Poulain is still known and studied today. Currently, his Cartesian egalitarian social philosophy is generally considered a landmark in the history of feminism. In this book I will show that it is also a landmark in another history: the making, or the “invention” as I like to call it, of the Enlightenment. In

Poulain, feminism and the new philosophy of modernity are for the first time brought together in a systematic argument, and the result is the first recognizably Enlightenment social philosophy. ‘This becomes clear when we look beyond feminism and Cartesianism, the two most conspicuous contexts of Poulain’s thought, to other contexts: authority

Preface 1x and natural law, theories of education, anthropology, and history, and finally religion and theology. As Poulain himself observed: “The question of the equality of the sexes is vast, important, and curious, and serves to decide several other curious questions, notably in Morality, Jurisprudence, Theology, and Politics, which one cannot discuss freely in a book.” The importance of Poulain’s thought as a window on the intellectual world of the early Enlightenment has not been sufficiently recognized. The combination of Cartesianism and feminism in his work reveals a radically egalitarian potential of Cartesian thought that is underestimated or simply ignored in most studies of Descartes’s philosophy. By situating Poulain in his intellectual context, I will show that he was not the isolated “forerunner” of later ages he is often taken for. Poulain was a product of his time, and must be studied as such. If his ideas seem at first sight marginal, it is because they explore the limits of the thinkable in late seventeenth-century Europe. It is my contention that the connections between feminism, Cartesianism, and the emergence of the intellectual matrix of the early Enlightenment, exemplified by Poulain’s thought, as well as by his remarkable personal trajectory, deserve more attention than they have thus far received. That is one reason I have written this book. Another one is my personal fascination with Poulain. When I first came across his writings, I was astonished to find such radically egali-

tarian ideas expressed in the seventeenth century. Poulain, I then thought, was an outstanding, isolated case: important to us but marginal to his age. By now I have come to understand that the role of socalled minor thinkers in the history of European thought is perhaps not minor at all. Feminist voices, as well as those of other “subaltern” speakers, are now being recovered on a large scale. We should, I think,

look for connections between the egalitarian arguments advanced in different social, political, and intellectual contexts. ‘The questioning of the hierarchy of gender cannot be isolated from other concerns. It is frequently connected to a critique of other forms of inequality and dependency. It is no accident that Poulain’s egalitarian argument, though centered on gender, also touches on “class” and “race.” ‘The interrelation of those concerns is no twentieth-century invention—it is right there, in the early-modern sources. And it is there that we must study it to gauge its historical meaning and its significance for today’s world.

x Preface Ultimately, the inclusion of the “subaltern” voices must lead, Iam convinced, to a review of the traditional canon of intellectual history.’ Currently Poulain’s feminist writings are fairly well known to feminists and students of women’s history. However, in the feminist historiography Poulain’s place in the story of the origins of the Enlightenment has not been investigated in depth.* Reprints and translations of several of his writings are now available in French, English, Italian, German, Catalan, and Spanish. Before the 1960s, however, very little was known, and, perhaps significantly, Marie-Louise Stock’s (1961) and Bernard Magné’s (1964) dissertations were never published.*

Outside the field of women’s history Poulain is still almost completely unknown. It has struck me during the years I have been working on this book that most of my male colleagues had never heard of him.

And those who happened to know Poulain’s name had not read his work. Among other things, this book seeks to convince them that they should.

‘To the village priest of La Flamengrie my interest in Poulain appeared somewhat outlandish. First he wanted to know whether I was a Belgian (a polite French way of saying that one’s French is tolerable but

not quite the real thing). When I told him that I came from the Netherlands he asked me to explain why a Dutchman, of all people, should be interested in Poulain or, for that matter, in what the French had written about the education of women in the seventeenth century. Was there perhaps some special Dutch craving for knowledge about this particular aspect of French history? I answered that I was writing my book in English and intended to publish it in America. This left him open-mouthed: “Méme en Amérique il y a donc des gens qui s’intéressent a ce Poulain?” He had just told me that he was over eighty, so I replied that the interests of historians had changed considerably over the past half-century. ‘That answer seemed to satisfy him. His expression changed from puzzlement to reflection; yes, he seemed to think, things change a lot during a lifetime, so why not the writing of history? We shook hands and parted company in good spirits. I left my card, just in case he might hit upon some documents. ‘Thus far, he has not.

Notes on Spelling

Poulain is frequently spelled Poullain. Both spellings are correct. Poulain himself uses both. I have opted for the simplest. French spellings and accents (or their lack) are as they appear in the original texts, reflecting the usages of different authors. Seventeenthcentury authors (or their printers) do not always place accents where they are used today.

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Francois Poulain de la Barre and the Invention of Modern Equality

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Introduction: Origins of the Enlightenment Popular views hold that Turks, barbarians, and savages are less adept at [learning] than Europeans. Nevertheless, should five or six of them turn up with this ability, or with a doctorate, which is not impossible, this opinion would definitely be corrected, and we would concede that these peoples are human beings like us, with the same abilities, and that, if educated, they could equal us in any respect. —~ Francois Poulain de la Barre, 1673

PAUL HAZARD’S THESIS, formulated more than sixty years

ago, that the Enlightenment originated in a “crisis of the European mind” in the late seventeenth century has been largely confirmed by the historiography of the past decades. Precise periodizations vary, but most historians now agree that the essential components of Enlightenment thought were introduced between 1650 and 1700.! Besides the outstanding protagonists of this intellectual revolution, such as Des-

cartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Fontenelle, Toland, and Bayle, to name only a few of the most prominent, numerous minor authors have by now found a secure place in the historiography of the origins of the Enlightenment. Yet the picture is by no means complete.

One of the most remarkable absences from the historiography of the early Enlightenment is the former Sorbonne student of theology Francois Poulain de la Barre, who formulated a Cartesian, feminist, and radically egalitarian social philosophy in the early 1670s. Poulain’s work fits so well into the “crisis of the European mind” that he could almost have been invented by Hazard. Beginning with De P’égalité des deux sexes, in 1673, Poulain published three treatises on the equality of women and men that are, in all probability, the most radically egalitarian texts published in Europe before the French Revolution. According to Poulain, virtually all the differences between the sexes, just like all other forms of human dependency, are caused by “chance, power, and 1

2 Introduction custom” and have no foundation in nature. Starting from Descartes’s philosophy, he reworks earlier feminist arguments into a general critique of “prejudice” and “custom,” presenting an environmentalist social psychology and pedagogy. ‘Taken together, Poulain’s writings from the 1670s contain what may arguably be called the first formulation of

an Enlightenment social philosophy. Not only their content, but also their language and rhetoric are suffused with the esprit de critique that Hazard considered the hallmark of Enlightenment thought. However, by putting an uncompromising feminism at the heart of his philosophical project, Poulain also disrupts Hazard’s classical narra-

tive, for the female voice and the issue of gender are entirely absent from Hazard’s Enlightenment. Poulain’s Enlightenment, by contrast, is constituted by the dialectic of feminism and Cartesianism, fueled by a deep-seated aversion to oppression and intolerance, which ultimately derived from his youthful experience as a theology student at the Sorbonne. Beyond that, Poulain’s social philosophy is the result of a creative combination of existing discourses. Apart from Cartesianism and feminism, he draws on modern natural law, cultural relativism, the new natural science, early anthropology, the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, and, last but not least, biblical criticism. Virtually no single part of his philosophy is entirely original, but the combination of those parts into a coherent and forceful theoretical argument certainly is. Equality, grounded on the autonomy of reason and the similarity of all human bodies as “Cartesian machines,” is the key concept underpinning the entire theoretical edifice. Poulain is the first thinker in modern Europe to build his entire social philosophy on a universalist concept of equality.

Today, however, Poulain is rarely mentioned outside the historiography of early-modern feminism. Histories of the Enlightenment at best mention him in passing, if at all. Even more striking is that he is also

virtually absent from the historiography of Cartesianism, despite the fact he was the first thinker to turn Descartes’s thought into a social philosophy. ‘This absence may be due to the fact that at present we have no satisfactory history of French Cartesianism in the decades following the death of Descartes. ‘These omissions are all the more questionable because the pivotal role of Cartesianism in the early Enlightenment has

long been recognized, and has indeed been underlined by recent stud-

Introduction 3 ies, notably by Jonathan Israel’s brilliant study of the Radical Enlightenment. Israel mentions Poulain in a footnote on the emancipation of

women, but he gives no attention to his social philosophy.” Neither does he notice Poulain’s advocacy of unlimited toleration and his critique of the moral prescriptions of the Bible, which is extremely close

to the position of Spinoza, the central figure of Israel’s story. Like Spinoza, Poulain embarked on an intellectual journey into the uncharted lands of critical philosophy.

A Radical and Feminist Enlightenment This book seeks to restore Poulain’s thought to its rightful place in the Radical Enlightenment, which in Poulain’s case, as distinct from Spinoza’s, is also a Feminist Enlightenment. The following pages present a contextual reading of Poulain’s writings, situating him in the in-

tellectual history of the seventeenth century, showing how he fashioned his social philosophy out of the intellectual materials available to

a former theology student in the early decades of the reign of Louis XIV. However, this study is not just about filling in a white spot on the map of the Enlightenment. Beyond the intrinsic interest of his ideas and his fascinating intellectual trajectory, I aim to show that the inclusion of Poulain makes a difference to the larger story of the Enlightenment. In this broader connection, I present three arguments: the first concerns the relationship between feminism and the Enlightenment, the second is about the significance of the Radical Enlightenment, and

the third concerns the question of “rational religion,” or “rational Christianity.”

In the first argument, I maintain that we must rethink the relationship between feminism and the Enlightenment. The presence of feminist voices within the Enlightenment is by now fairly well documented, but much of the dialectic of feminist and antifeminist arguments in the Enlightenment remains to be explored. ‘Io Poulain feminism is absolutely crucial: it is precisely the need to refute male supremacy that induces him to give Cartesianism a social turn. The feminist impulse is

also at the root of his radically universalist concept of equality. My study of Poulain strongly suggests that we should ask not only what the Enlightenment contributed to feminism, but also what feminism contributed to the Enlightenment. As I address and critique the con-

4 Introduction tentions of feminist philosophers that “the” Enlightenment, or Carteslanism, is intrinsically masculinist and impervious to the female voice, I will argue that the historical record does not bear out such contentions.

In the second argument, I maintain that the case of Poulain fits into the view, at present well established in the historiography, that right from the beginning there were powerful radical currents in Enlightenment thought. The term “Radical Enlightenment” was coined by Margaret Jacob in the early 1980s, and has recently been taken up by Jonathan Israel.’ ‘The radical currents do not constitute a single, coherent philosophy, but rather a vast array of arguments and ideas which have in common that they consciously transcend the boundaries of elite culture and politics as well as established religion. Beyond that, the radical thinkers pursue widely different intellectual agendas. In Poulain’s case, a thorough and inclusive egalitarianism is the core idea. Apart from the critique of masculine supremacy, it contains a critique of aristocratic rank, a decidedly hard-nosed view of the origins of property and power, and an emphatic affirmation of the equality between Europeans and “other” nations and “races.” In Poulain’s thought the Cartesian tenet of clear and distinct language becomes subversive for the elementary reason that the legiti-

macy of the traditional hierarchies of the social order could not be validated in clear and distinct terms. ‘The analysis of Poulain’s egalitarianism I present in this book is also intended to contribute to a rethink-

ing of the history of the concept of equality. The history of equality provides a promising avenue for further exploration of the meaning and significance of the Radical Enlightenment, as well as a useful corrective to the historiography of political thought, which has traditionally been organized predominantly around the concept of liberty.* In the third argument, I show that Poulain’s trajectory confirms the overriding significance of religion for all Enlightenment thinkers, radicals and nonradicals alike. Poulain began his life as a French Catholic and ended his days as a Genevan Calvinist, but his true religion was a rational Christianity of his own making. Poulain’s religious development shows that a radical critique of established religion does not necessarily lead to atheism, and that some variety of rational Christianity

or deism is probably the most common form of Enlightenment religion. [Thirty years ago Peter Gay depicted the Enlightenment as a

Introduction 5 “modern paganism,” directed against the Christian inheritance.’ ‘Ioday, however, the Enlightenment is no longer seen as predominantly anti-Christian.° The men and women who speak for the Enlightenment do not, as a rule, reject Christian values, but almost all of them are critics of the established churches. Most of them believe in God, and many in Christ, but these venerable figures are disconnected from the authoritative traditions that had hitherto determined their meaning. Io put it succinctly: ecclesiastical religion is transformed into philosophical religion.

The case of Poulain demonstrates that his egalitarianism is closely tied to his interpretation of the evangelical ideas of charity and justice. God is for him the creator of the universe and the transcendental foundation of truth and justice. It would be a serious misreading to represent Poulain’s rational Christianity as a halfway house to atheism or materialism. His critique of the scriptural arguments for masculine supremacy brings him extremely close to Spinoza’s biblical criticism, but he never became a Spinozist. A careful examination of Poulain’s religion and theology demonstrates that the notion of a divine order is in itself politically indeterminate: it can be put to radical and egalitarian as well as to conservative and hierarchical uses.

Poulain’s Intellectual ‘Irajectory ‘To frame the following discussion, let me give a brief review of Poulain’s life and intellectual career. Born in Paris in 1647 and destined by

his parents for a church career, he obtained his bachelor’s degree in theology in 1666. By then, however, he was deeply dissatisfied with scholastic philosophy and became a convinced Cartesian instead. In 1672 he published a short tract on translation from Latin into French. Over the next three years he must have written at a frenzied pace. His three Cartesian-feminist treatises came from the press in an impressive staccato. The title of the first, published in 1673, gives an indication of the scope of his intellectual ambitions: Discours physique et moral de Pégahité des deux sexes, ot Von voit Pimportance de se défaire des préjugez (A

Physical and Moral Discourse on the Equality of the ‘Iwo Sexes in Which One Sees the Importance of Overcoming Prejudices). It contains a systematic critique of the popular justifications as well as the scientific apologies of male supremacy. The next year came De l'éducation

6 Introduction des dames pour la condutte de Pesprit dans les sciences et dans les moeurs (On

the Education of Women for the Direction of the Mind in the Sciences and Society), which discusses the philosophy of education as well as numerous other subjects, presents an environmentalist psychology, and

advocates a strictly gender-neutral curriculum for women and men. The Education consists of five conversations between two men and two women. [he main speaker is Stasimaque (“He Who Resolves Strife”), who is identified in the first conversation as the author of Egalité des deux sexes. Stasimaque is thus Poulain’s mouthpiece. His main ally in the debate is a woman fittingly called Sophie (“Wisdom”). ‘Then there is Timandre (“The Honnéte Homme”), who represents the honest man

still under the sway of the old ideas. The fourth member of the company is Eulalie (“The Soft-Tongued”), who is eager to learn and always asks the right questions. ‘Timandre frequently voices objections but in the end comes round to the views of Stasimaque and Sophie. His role

is to show that men who live according to the new model of openminded politeness (the social code of honnéteté) are receptive to Poulain’s ideas. Finally, in 1675, came the ironically titled De [excellence des hommes contre Pégalité des sexes (On the Excellence of Men against the Equality of the Sexes), a mock refutation of himself followed by a

firm rebuttal of his own “refutation,” which contains, among other things, an elaborate critique of biblical arguments in favor of male supremacy.

Together these three solid volumes present Poulain’s social philosophy. His publisher, Jean Du Puis, belonged to one of the major Parisian dynasties of printers and booksellers.’ He published chiefly patrological and religious works as well as some travelogues and scientific treatises.* Poulain’s books were reissued several times. Madeleine Alcover has gathered the available data on the print run, concluding that total sales were far from negligible, although Poulain’s books were not resounding literary successes.? What is beyond doubt, however, is that Poulain was not successful enough as an author, or perhaps too obstinate, to obtain aristocratic or court protection. ‘Iwo of his books carry no dedication. In 1679, with his dreams of an intellectual career shattered, he took holy orders and became a village priest in northern France. Around the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes he got in trouble, probably about the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, and in 1688 he left his charge, went to Paris, where he converted to Calvinism, and subsequently fled to

Introduction 7 Geneva. Shortly after his arrival there he married into a patrician Genevan family. In 1691 he published a short tract on the defects of the French language spoken in Geneva. Poulain probably never became a

genuine Calvinist, and in 1696 he was briefly suspected of Socinian (Unitarian) opinions. After the turn of the century, when the religious climate in Geneva became more relaxed, he finally obtained a tenured position as a teacher at the Collége de Geneve. In 1720 Poulain published what was to be his last book, a voluminous treatise on theology and biblical criticism, the chief part of which expounds a detailed cri-

tique of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. He died three years later at the age of seventy-five. Such was the life of this much-tormented man. For now, two observations seem important. [he first concerns the enduring importance of religion in Poulain’s life. Religious questions were at the heart of all the critical, and sometimes dangerous, turning points of his life. His dissatisfaction with Scholasticism and his reluctance to embark on a church

career were the main causes of his “conversion” to Cartesianism and his change of identity, from theologian to philosophe. His feminist books contain a fair amount of critical theology, and, more than half a century later, biblical criticism provides the subject matter of his last book. ‘The

overriding importance of religion for Poulain fits into the story of his generation, the men and women who lived through the painful transition from the severe, God-fearing, and somber seventeenth century to the forward-looking, eudemonistic, and lay mentality of the eighteenth. As a schoolboy, Poulain was a contemporary of Spinoza and Pascal; in his old age, of Voltaire and Montesquieu. The second observation that seems of importance here is that the

most creative period in Poulain’s life occurred early. He was only twenty-six when he published his first book, and just over thirty when the dream of a Parisian intellectual career was over. Poulain’s work is thus not the result of a lifelong philosophical inquiry but the experimental project of a young man trying out new avenues of thought. This accounts for both its relentless radicalism and its sometimes lacunary and unfinished arguments.

Feminism and Cartesianism ‘To put it in a simple formula: Poulain’s feminism radicalizes his Cartesianism, and his Cartesianism enables him to turn feminism into a

8 Introduction systematic philosophy. It is thus out of the dialectic of feminism and Cartesianism that his novel and radical philosophy emerges. My use of the term “feminism,” a late nineteenth-century concept, in a discussion of early-modern history perhaps calls for some explanation. Drawing on Karen Offen’s and Nancy Cott’s working definitions of feminism, I distinguish three core components that together define a discourse as feminist: criticism of misogyny and male supremacy; the conviction that the condition of women is not an immutable fact of na-

ture and can be changed for the better; and a sense of gender group identity, the conscious will to give a public voice to women, or “to defend the female sex.”!° Using these criteria, we can characterize many early-modern writings as feminist in a nonanachronistic way, and without overstating the continuities with later feminisms. As I will show in more detail in Chapter 2, feminism was nothing new in Poulain’s time. The European current of literature, known as the Renaissance querelle des femmes, was solidly established in France. Well before Poulain, the distinction between physical sexual difference (“sex”) and the cultural, normative notions of masculinity and femininity (“gender”) was pio-

neered by feminist authors. Poulain, then, did not invent feminism. The decisive contribution that marked him off from previous feminist authors was to turn feminism into a systematic social philosophy. It is well known that Descartes never produced a social or political philosophy. By itself, Cartesianism was not sufficient to construct a social philosophy, but it contained several elements that were conducive to such a philosophy. One of these was its egalitarian epistemology and theory of the human person, in body and mind. As I will show in Chapter 3, Poulain could incorporate these egalitarian notions into his feminist philosophy without in any way “forcing” Descartes’s thought. In this connection, I will seek to refute two frequently voiced misconceptions concerning the role of sexual difference in Cartesianism. ‘The first of these is the contention that Descartes’s egalitarianism applies only to

the mind. I will demonstrate that the contrary is the case: both Descartes and Poulain theorize the body in a rigorously nongendered way. While acknowledging sexual difference in the organs of reproduction, they refuse to sexualize the entire body. It follows that Cartesianism does not fit into Thomas Laqueur’s by now almost orthodox theory of a transition from premodern gender difference to a modern materialistic, biological discourse of sexual difference.!!

Introduction 9 What is implicit in Descartes, and is spelled out by Poulain, is that there is neither a spiritual nor a material justification for gender difference. In this connection Poulain questions the use of the term “natural” by the philosophers of modern natural law. According to Poulain sexual difference is in no way whatsoever based on “nature”: gender is,

in the final analysis, based on nothing more than gender. Precisely therein lies the radicalness of Poulain’s feminism. ‘That such a major

Enlightenment current of thought as Cartesianism does not fit into Laqueur’s overall view of the historical development of sexual difference may lead us to question the validity of his view of “the” Enlightenment discourse of sex and gender. I will discuss Laqueur’s misreading of

Poulain in Chapter 3 and return to the larger issue in the final chapter of this book. The second misconception I want to address concerns the famous question of Cartesian dualism. A part of contemporary feminist criticism, notably in philosophy but in other disciplines as well, has fol-

lowed the lead of Genevieve Lloyd’s pioneering book The Man of Reason, in which she subjects the canon of Western philosophy to a feminist critique. Lloyd fully acknowledges Descartes’s epistemological egalitarianism but nonetheless maintains that there is an inherent masculinist bias in Cartesian philosophy: the incorporeal realm of pure

reason one has to enter in order to perceive the “innate” Cartesian ideas presupposes a transcendence of the body, and thereby excludes women. Ultimately, Lloyd argues, the cogito is a philosophical projection of the male subject.’ While agreeing with Lloyd that the dominant institutional and cultural encodings of philosophy in European history have been overwhelmingly masculinist, I cannot concur with her analysis of Cartesianism. Like many students of Cartesianism she overstates Descartes’s dualism as well as his rationalism. In the following chapters, however, I will show that Descartes certainly upholds dualism, but continually stresses the connections between body and mind, and actually comes close to a mechanistic, and tendentially materialist, explanation of their interaction. Poulain, for his part, puts even more emphasis on the body than does Descartes. He repeatedly affirms that the first condition of self-knowledge is a correct understanding of the functioning of the human body, and he encourages women to watch dissections. Far from abstracting from the body, both Descartes and Poulain actually insist on the vital importance of physiology for an ade-

10 Introduction quate grasp of the working of the mind-body interaction, and in partic-

ular for the understanding of the passions which are theorized as a product of that interaction. Lloyd’s misreading of Cartesian dualism easily leads to an overestimation of its rationalism and a neglect of its empirical and mechanistic

components. Here, my reading largely agrees with that of Stephen Gaukroger in his recent intellectual biography of Descartes." Interestingly, the logic of his feminist argument pushes Poulain still further in an empiricist direction. As I will show in Chapters 3 and 4, his epistemology and pedagogy are proto-Lockean rather than strictly Cartesian. My examination of Descartes’s dualism and of his and Poulain’s theorizing of knowledge, mind, and body leads me to the conclusion that the thesis of an zvtrinsic masculinist and elitist bias in Cartesianism cannot be substantiated. There are many factors that account for the exclusion of women from higher education and scientific institutions, but they are chiefly institutional, cultural, psychological, and political. It is also relevant that most of them predate the advent of Cartesianism, and that Renaissance feminist authors frequently employed the notion of a universal and noncorporeal faculty of reason in their critique of male presumption. To preclude any misunderstanding, I am not saying that there are no elements in Descartes’s philosophy that lend themselves to an elitist or masculinist reading. What I do maintain is that such a reading goes against powerful and vital components of his philosophy and, crucially, that it is not necessitated by a putative intrinsic logic of his thought.

Generally speaking, the search for an inner essence of Descartes’s thought has not been helpful for our understanding of Cartesianism as a historical phenomenon. It would in any case be difficult to define such a logic with any precision, for Cartesianism was not a closed system, even though Descartes certainly sought to make it so. The subsequent fate of Cartesianism bears this out, for virtually all of Descartes’s followers felt the need to modify and expand his philosophy. Descartes himself only barely succeeded in maintaining the ever-precarious balance between conflicting ideas in his philosophy that sought to conciliate spriritualism and mechanism, theology and philosophy, skepticism

and empiricism, egalitarianism and elitism. Most of his followers proved unable to walk the Cartesian tightrope, and each of them tilted the balance in one way or another. In Poulain’s writings we will see this process at work in more than one respect.

Introduction 11 The Crisis of the European Mind In 1902 the French historian Henri Piéron portrayed Poulain as “an unknown forerunner of feminism and the Revolution,” in whose work the social influence of Cartesian ideas manifested itself for the first time. Io Piéron, a liberal historian educated under the ‘Third Republic, it was self-evident that Poulain’s egalitarian philosophy prefigured the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, which in its turn paved the way for the Revolution. Piéron reported that he had to cut open the copy of De Pégalité des deux sexes in the Bibliotheque Nationale, where it had lain unread for more than two centuries. ‘That little fact neatly underlined the message of his essay: Poulain was a forerunner of the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, and finally the feminist movement of the late nineteenth century. Poulain’s thought, Piéron concluded, simply presented us with “a logical stage in the march of thought.”" It is perhaps an irony of history that at the very time Piéron depicted

Poulain as a precursor of a later age, his colleague Ferdinand Bruneticre was laying the groundwork for a novel view of the origins of the Enlightenment in which Poulain’s work would have fitted rather better. According to Brunetiére, five main factors set in motion the process of intellectual innovation that would eventually result in the esprit encyclo-

pédique of the mid-eighteenth century: free thought (“libertinism”), Cartesianism and the polemics it generated, the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, the scientific revolution, and, in a later stage, the influence of English politics and philosophy. The formation of the Enlightenment, Brunetiére concluded, had to be placed in the period from 1680 to 1735.!° Gustave Lanson, who pursued this line of thought further during the next decade, identified the same intellectual factors but argued that the crucial element was a novel esprit philosophique that sprang from the “profound sources” of seventeenth-century thought. On closer inspection this esprit turns out to be a fluid mixture of Cartesianism, deism, libertinism, Epicureanism, and Spinozism. In Lanson’s view, the gestation and final triumph of the philosophical spirit represented a protracted intellectual transition that he dated from 1675 to 1748. Moreover, he contended that the emergence of the esprit philosopbique was not confined to a few outstanding minds but affected the entire intellectual and literary field."

The lines of inquiry pioneered by Bruneticre and Lanson were finally brought together in Paul Hazard’s magisterial La Crise de la con-

12 Introduction science européenne (1935). Hazard presents the decades from 1680 to

1715 as a relatively short, sudden, and cathartic transition from the theology-ridden, grim, and gloomy worldview of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries to the sanguine, empiricist, and lay mentality of the Enlightenment. In his view, the coming of the Enlightenment was a crisis in the classical sense of an ordeal followed by resolution. The crucial shift in thought and sensibility occurred right at the beginning of the period. All the major ideas usually associated with the Enlightenment had already found expression around 1680.’ Hazard sees French Classicism as a temporary equilibrium, a precarious interlude between the dangerous, disorderly world of the Renaissance and the Wars of Religion and the frenzied forward movement of the Enlightenment. It is surely striking how well the case of Poulain fits Hazard’s analysis. Io begin with, Hazard’s stress on the esprit de critique is especially relevant, for it focuses our attention not only on the shift in the content of ideas but above all on the “Enlightenment mentality.” We will see in Chapter | that when Poulain identifies himself as a philosophe, it is precisely this critical attitude that is at the heart of his self-perception. We will further see that most of the intellectual components that went into the making of Hazard’s crisis are taken up by Poulain in one way or another, notably Cartesianism, natural law, skepticism, Jansenist cultural relativism, travel literature, the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, biblical criticism, possibly some echoes of Spinozism, and finally the turn toward Protestantism. ‘The only intellectual current that is of major importance to Poulain but entirely lacking in Hazard’s analysis, is, of course, feminism. In the 1970s Ira Wade amended Hazard’s synthesis by focusing more sharply on the inner logic and the mutual interaction of the currents of

thought that produced the Enlightenment. Like Hazard, he depicts Classicism as an unstable equilibrium of opposing intellectual trends. More than Hazard, however, Wade underlines that the temporary hegemony of Classicism was due less to its intellectual resilience than to the politics of absolutism, notably the cultural politics of Louis XIV set against the background of the post-Fronde fatigue of French elite society. Elite consensus, however, was never total or absolute, so that the political control of intellectual life remained precarious and incomplete. Wade was himself a pioneering student of the clandestine litera-

Introduction 13 ture of the early eighteenth century.'* His approach thus obviously has a place for the unruly moles that were gnawing at the foundations of the ostensibly impregnable citadel of Classicism. Wade foregrounds several factors that are highly relevant to the situating of Poulain’s thought in the story. ‘Iwo of them concern Carte-

sianism. In the first place, he observes that although Descartes was never a /ibertin, his affirmation of the radical autonomy of thought was, in a way, a declaration of freethinking.’? This aspect of Cartesian-

ism made it attractive to anyone who had to say something that went against received opinion, whether it was in accordance with Descartes’s metaphysics and natural science or not. It explains, more than anything

else, why Cartesianism generated so much hostility. But it also accounts for its remarkable staying power. For, as Georges Minois perceptively remarks in his history of Ancien Régime censorship, you can censor specific, well-defined ideas, but you cannot censor a “mentality.”?°

Wade’s second crucial comment on Cartesianism concerns the creative effects of its failure as a system: “The break-up of its various parts,” he asserts, “enriched all the philosophies of the seventeenth century. Every philosopher of worth in the century . . . began by being in one way or another Cartesian, continued by taking something important from Descartes, and ended by declaring his philosophy impossible.” Cartesianism, then, almost never existed in an unadulterated state: most of the time it was mixed up or allied with other philosophical ideas, a state of affairs that was facilitated by the circumstance that Descartes left his “system” unfinished: there was no ethics, no politics, no “science of man.”*! Wade never considers feminism in his enumeration of novel currents of thought, but it seems clear that the synthesis of Cartesianism and feminism contrived by Poulain fits very well in his overall view of the role of Cartesianism in the making of the Enlightenment. Finally, Wade offers a perceptive comment on the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns. ‘The Quarrel made it clear, he argues, that within the intellectual elite there was no longer agreement on the fundamental issues of history, philosophy, and aesthetics: it signaled “the end of the classical compromise and the beginning of something else.” Destroying the ideal of an absolute, timeless consensus, the Quarrel ushered in the Enlightenment conviction “that change is a function of

14 Introduction knowledge because of the power of thought to modify life.”?? Wade confines his attention to the famous row in the Académie Frangaise in 1687, which was mainly about the literary canon. ‘Ioday, however, we know that the Quarrel started much earlier. All the main elements of the great controversy were already in place in the 1660s.27 Once we have realized this, Poulain’s thought fits into the story with an almost uncanny precision. In Chapter 4 I will show that “the power of thought to modify life” and a positive appreciation of “change” were at the center of Poulain’s view of education, and Chapter 6 will further discuss his relation to the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns. Poulain’s position demonstrates that the disruption of the classical compromise was already fully thinkable and clearly expressed in the early 1670s.

Because he places the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in the 1680s, Wade sees Fontenelle’s writings as the first coherent manifestation of the French “Enlightenment mentality.”*+ Broadening the historical horizon by some degrees, and including feminism in the picture, I will suggest a different perspective. In her beautiful book on the culture wars of the late seventeenth century, Joan DeJean has advocated the inclusion of literature and literary sensibility in the historiography of the origins of the Enlightenment.”> ‘The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns was not only about ideas but also about taste and sensibility: about what was considered acceptable in elite sociability, which topics and ideas were appreciated in polite conversation, and what people liked to read and discuss. In my discussion of the “cul-

ture war” about female autonomy in late seventeenth-century France (Chapter 2) I will show that considerations of literary style and of what was “befitting” or “amusing” played an important role in it. Much was at stake in such controversies, for the opening up of the Enlightenment to women, or to nonelite men, depended to a large extent on the cultural codes that gave voice to some and denied it to others. Seen against this background, Fontenelle represents one resolution of the crisis, and Poulain another. Fontenelle opts for intellectual innovation within the gamut of elite culture, while Poulain consciously transcends it. Fontenelle opens up philosophical (Cartesian) knowledge to women but acts at the same time as a guardian of the male domain in his capacity as secretary of the Académie des Sciences, while Poulain expressly denounces the exclusion of women from the learned academies. Finally, they adopt different literary strategies. Fontenelle,

Introduction 15 as Erica Harth has shown in her study of “Cartesian women,” employs an amusing, light style, and his woman philosopher is mainly a docile listener. By contrast, Poulain’s female characters in the Education des dames are speakers and active participants in the search for truth.”¢ ‘The

juxtaposition of Fontenelle and Poulain demonstrates that Hazard’s crisis was also a crossroads from which different roads to Enlightenment might be taken.

Radical Enlightenment Here the Radical Enlightenment enters the scene. Margaret Jacob coined this term to distinguish those varieties of Enlightenment thought that were radically critical of monarchical authority, social hierarchy, and established religion. Jacob’s Radical Enlightenment encompasses several currents of thought, notably deism, Socinianism, pantheism, materialism, republicanism, and, last but not least, freemasonry. Looking at the European scene, she points to the significance of the English Revolution of 1640, with its proliferation of religious sects and radical politics, especially the democratic creed of the Levellers, but also to the “less reputable” currents in philosophy, such as Hobbesianism and, above all, Spinozism. She also underlines the political and religious ambivalence of the new natural science, which could be used to demonstrate the naturalness of order and hierarchy (as in the Anglican appropriation of Newtonianism), but might also result in a theologically and politically subversive mechanistic materialism.’’ Cartesianism, Jacob argues, is situated at the crossroads of these dis-

parate trends. Descartes may have intended to bring about a philosophical synthesis that would weld the new natural science and the Christian religion into a seamless web, but the results were far otherwise. Descartes’s mechanism came dangerously close to materialism, and the radical individualist psychology of his method posed a potential threat to all forms of established authority.’* Recently Jonathan Israel has offered a dazzling panoptic view of the radical currents in the early Enlightenment that can be usefully seen as a sequel to Jacob’s work.”? Like Jacob, he places Spinozism and other varieties of pantheism and materialism at the center of the story. What is of particular interest is that Israel forcefully underlines the European dissemination and radical potential of Cartesianism.

16 Introduction Poulain’s egalitarianism is definitely part of the Radical Enlightenment, even though he was not a Spinozist or a political revolutionary. In Poulain’s thought the Cartesian critique of the authority of tradition acquires a political edge. His dismissal of rank and privilege, together with his emphatic affirmation of the learning capacities of ordinary women and men, including peasants and “savages,” implies a critique of the society of orders. His repeated exhortation to his readers “not to fear change” points to social change as a thinkable objective. Finally, there is his Cartesian-feminist reading of the Bible. Twenty years ago Richard Popkin observed that the application of the Cartesian standard of true philosophical knowledge to the study of the Bible was one of the major intellectual breakthroughs of the late seventeenth century. Popkin’s chief examples were Spinoza, Isaac La Peyrére, Richard Simon, Jean Le Clerc, and John ‘Toland, all of them contemporaries of Poulain.*° In Chapter 7 I will show that Poulain’s approach to the Bible is in several respects similar to that of the authors discussed by Popkin.

Like them, he belongs to the small group of seventeenth-century thinkers who unleashed the Cartesian esprit de critique on the sacred books of Christendom. Coming to the question of absolutism, the picture becomes murkier. Poulain’s views on politics, like those of most of his French contemporaries, are deeply ambivalent and not so easily assimilated to the kind of radicalism Jacob has foregrounded.*! Poulain belonged to the genera-

tion that came to maturity in the aftermath of the Fronde. Looking back on a century of civil wars, this was not a revolutionary generation, which is not to say that they were enthusiastic supporters of absolutism.

Most of them regarded the enhanced power of the monarchy with mixed feelings. he Janus-faced nature of the new state power is exemplified by the circumstance that it fortified both public security and censorship. Most intellectuals welcomed the first but not the second. As Jean de La Bruyére, definitely not a radical firebrand, sourly noted in 1688, “les grands sujets sont défendus.”» The relation between Louis XIV’s absolutism and the making of the Enlightenment is a complicated question on which at present no clearcut consensus exists in the historiography. Some thirty years ago Theodore Rabb argued that the imposition of order after the century of the Religious Wars was a welcome change to most Europeans. In his view, it led to a recovery of nerve, creating the social and psychological cli-

Introduction 17 mate in which people dared to think new thoughts.** Rabb’s focus is European, and he does not specifically discuss the origins of the French Enlightenment. More recently, however, Daniel Gordon has sought to explain the French Enlightenment in very similar terms. Gordon focuses on ideas of sociability and equality from about 1670 onward. His title, Citizens without Sovereignty, neatly conveys his basic message: as French elite sociability began to transcend the rigid boundaries of the society of orders, competing notions of polite manners vied with one another, and a new mentality penetrated the salons and academies, making for a nonhierarchical model of reasonable conversation among equals. Politics, however, was peremptorily excluded from this free and equal exchange of ideas. Frenchmen could be citizens in social space, but they were subjects in political space, and the latter circumstance, of course, imposed certain limits on what could be said, and even more on what could be printed. Nonetheless, Gordon argues, it was in this muzZled public sphere that the French Enlightenment originated. In Gordon’s picture there is not much room for a Radical Enlightenment. In a way, Gordon’s view of the early part of Louis XIV’s reign comes close to the traditional picture of Classicism as an imposition of cultural and intellectual order. However, he departs from the static horizon of a harmonious and seamless “classical order,” seeking to show how egalitarian ideas germinated in the nonpolitical spheres of aristocratic and semiaristocratic sociability, slowly transforming a fixed so-

ciety of orders into a more fluid and intellectually open culture of “citizens.”34 I find Gordon’s view only partly convincing. He tends to underplay the element of outright repression in the cultural politics of

Louis XIV, as well as the numerous indications of the presence of oppositional ideas and activities. In particular, Cartesianism is almost entirely absent from his story. Yet the hazardous attempts of the first generation of French Cartesians to survive in the face of censorship and legal harassment surely demonstrate that intellectual radicalism was not dead in the post-Fronde decades. ‘The fortunes of Cartesianism also demonstrate the apprehension of the governing elites in church and state, who were very aware of the fragility of their intellectual authority and sometimes saw threats where none existed. By simply ignoring the conflictual relationship between Cartesianism, the church, and the state, Gordon paints a far too harmonious picture of the period 1660-1680.

18 Introduction The case of Poulain demonstrates that the vindication of equality al-

ways had political implications, however much an author bent over backward to disown any and all “subversive” interpretations of his words. According to Gordon, “the absolutist state was also hierarchical, but the boundary it emphasized was the single boundary between private and public, not the multiple boundaries that kept the orders apart.”>> In my opinion, this is a serious misreading of the political culture put in place by Louis XIV. Far from doing away with the multiple

corporations and distinctions of the society of orders, the Sun King gave them a pivotal role in the absolutist state, producing the peculiar tension between corporate privilege and centralization that was, according to Francois Furet, the hallmark of the Ancien Régime state.* The organization of the court, the hub of the new political culture, turned on little else than distinctions and degrees.*’ Likewise, absolutist fiscal and economic policies remained caught in the web of privilege, calling forth the critical views of Fénelon and Vauban at the turn of the century.** Given this state of affairs, any critique of the society of orders was a potential critique of the absolutist state.

It is useful, I think, to retain Rabb’s notion of a recovery of confidence after the Religious Wars and the Fronde. ‘The end of the long cycle of civil wars gave people the psychological space to think about politics instead of being swallowed by them. Likewise, Gordon’s thesis that ideas of equality were also linked to the evolution of the new forms of sociability is useful as far as it goes. But it is precisely Rabb’s thesis that demonstrates the limitations of Gordon’s view, for why should the newly liberated intellectual imagination remain within the perimeter of Louis XIV’s absolutism? And how could intellectual order be imposed

in theology, a domain in which the principal actors were continually fighting with one another, a situation that already existed well before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes? After 1685 the politics of religion became, of course, even more conflictual (a fact that Gordon conveniently sidesteps by not discussing the Revocation or Protestantism at all). All things considered, Gordon’s characterization of French thought in the late seventeenth century, which completely ignores the historiography of the Radical Enlightenment, is simply too limited to account for the variety of its politics. It remains true, however, that the political thought of this period was marked by a profound ambivalence. New ideas were in the air, but the

Introduction 19 memory of the Fronde weighed heavily on Poulain’s generation. In Chapter 5 we shall see that although Poulain’s egalitarian critique of ranks and orders is rather straightforward, he is unable to resolve the inner tensions in his conception of political obligation to the absolutist state. What people dare to think is always mediated by the prevalent forms of sociability and normality, by what they can freely talk about and what they can publish. Against this background, Poulain’s thought represents a liminal product of the restricted conversational spaces and boundaries of public discourse in the early part of Louis XIV’s reign.

A Feminist Enlightenment While the radicalness of Poulain’s feminism is truly exceptional, criticisms of masculine supremacy are found in numerous other Enlightenment authors. Admittedly, most of the eighteenth-century philosophes, with the notable exception of Condorcet, were not such ardent feminists as Poulain, but neither were they outspoken champions of masculine supremacy. Moreover, the Enlightenment should not be reduced

to a handful of “great philosophers.” As Karen Offen has recently shown, a whole array of feminist arguments, made by women and by men, can be unearthed if one takes the trouble to look beyond the canonical texts.2? What we find there, in the countless books, treatises, periodicals, and pamphlets that constitute the Enlightenment, is not a single monological discourse on gender but an ongoing debate among a multiplicity of voices. Male authority could no longer be taken for granted: it had to be argued for—or, of course, against. In the recent

historiography of late seventeenth-century French culture, Erica Harth and Joan DeJean have called our attention to the presence of female authors and polemics about gender in Cartesianism, in the literary field, and in the Querelle des anciens et des modernes.® ‘Yo have turned

gender into a publicly contested concept was perhaps seventeenth-century French feminism’s most enduring accomplishment and, I would argue, its major legacy to the Enlightenment.

Enlightenment views on gender are further complicated by the constant interaction between discourses on sexual difference and discourses on morals and manners.*! Especially in France, the early Enlightenment coincided with a profound transformation of aristocratic culture, in which the male nobility and gentry gradually abandoned

20 Introduction their traditionally uncouth and warlike behavior for the cultivation of politeness and belles lettres. As Jonathan Dewald has shown, the new aristocratic culture was a notably self-questioning and reflexive one in which formerly well-established boundaries of order, rank, and gender became blurred and contested.” The culture of honnéteté and politeness was less aggressively masculinist, and it displayed a definite affinity with the upgrading of the “feminine virtues” found in much of earlymodern feminist literature. Io a certain extent, male elite culture underwent a process of “feminization.” ‘Traditionally, the assignment of certain properties, virtuous or otherwise, to women as a group was part of a gendered discourse that refused women the versatility and universality implicit in the concept of “man.” However, when such discourses are linked to an affirmation of the equality of the sexes, the entire text becomes unstable, because its contradictory components have to be read in terms of each other. Most feminist authors built their argument on subtle combinations of “equality” and “difference,” and we will see that Poulain’s feminism, despite its forceful emphasis on equality, also contains a subtext on female virtue and difference. The discourse of the “equality of the sexes” was, then, both marginal and central to the Enlightenment. It was marginal inasmuch as feminism always remained the voice of a minority, yet central inasmuch as the social conventions governing the behavior of all men and women in elite society were called into question. The fact that some groups of women overstepped the traditional boundaries of the female domain caused widespread apprehension and deep anxiety. As I will show in Chapter 2, late seventeenth-century French society was the scene of a veritable “culture war” over female autonomy.

The nature of women thus became a battleground of competing discourses, and in the end the very notion of the “natural” was destabilized. In this discursive field, Poulain’s Cartesian feminism represents

one possible avenue of Enlightenment thought. His philosophy is made possible by feminism, and at the same time it establishes a space for feminism within the Enlightenment. In the larger spectrum of Enlightenment thought, Poulain stands at one extreme and Rousseau at the other. All Enlightenment discourses on gender and sexual differ-

ence are articulated in the tension-ridden space constituted by the these extremes. It makes no sense to ask whether Poulain or Rousseau, or those situated somewhere in between, represent the “real” Enlight-

Introduction 21 enment. They all do, and none of them does. In the same vein, the modern, biologistic theories of sexual difference discussed by ‘Thomas

Laqueur do not alone represent the Enlightenment, for they are contradicted by a feminist Enlightenment that continually transforms “sex” into “gender.” In the final analysis, the Enlightenment discourse on sex and gender is constituted in the dialectic interplay between these contradictory impulses.

Enlightenment with and without God Two chapters (7 and 8) of this book are devoted to Poulain’s religion and theology. Religious issues were important to him throughout his life, and his last years were almost entirely taken up by theological studies. Chapter 7 discusses the religious and theological ideas in Poulain’s feminist treatises, Chapter 8 those of the last decades of his life, ending with his 1720 book on biblical criticism. In the first period he was a French Catholic, in the second a Genevan Calvinist. A careful reading of his writings demonstrates, I think, that after his conversion to Cartesianism in the 1660s, he was neither Catholic nor Calvinist, except in name. Poulain’s real religion is a rational Christianity that shows affinities with Socinianism and deism. It is not easy to ascertain which elements of traditional Christianity still have validity for him. We may surmise that Poulain himself would have had great difficulty giving a clear-cut answer to that question. His predicament is representative of the great

majority of early Enlightenment thinkers. They felt unable to subscribe to the full assortment of Christian doctrines, whether Catholic or Protestant, but to a certain extent their conception of a “rational deity” still reflected the image of the Christian God. Downright atheism remained a minority phenomenon. ‘Io most Enlightenment thinkers it was inconceivable to be an atheist. Although the atheist option was intellectually available in seventeenth-century Europe, it faced formidable objections. As a definitely nonradical contemporary of Poulain, the popular moralist Jean de La Bruyére, put it: the atheists deny that there is a creator and author of the universe; it necessarily follows that all nature is subject to chance. But, La Bruyére objects, we know that the stars incessantly follow their course year after year: their movements display such constancy that we can foretell what their positions will be

22 Introduction in twenty thousand years. If that is chance, he rhetorically asks, then what is order?*? Most of his contemporaries would have found the argument convincing. It was an old argument, known as the argument from design. Poulain, we will see, fully accepts it. There is thus a God. But how do we know that this is the historical

God of the Bible? There were several other great religions in the world, a circumstance seventeenth-century European intellectuals were well aware of. Poulain at one moment observes that “Mahometans” accounted for almost half of the world’s population.¥ The bare factuality of Christianity was thus not enough to guarantee its truth. Many of Poulain’s contemporaries were fascinated by stories about exotic lands, such as the relation of the French embassy to the king of Siam in the 1680s. In reply to the French Jesuits’ exposition of the truth of Christianity, King Phra Narai observed that if God had willed to be worshiped in the same manner all over the world, he would in his omnipotence certainly have arranged it so—but, as every welltraveled man knew, he had not.*

Most Enlightened men and women staked their religious claims somewhere between atheism and orthodox Christianity, but their attitude was often ambivalent. A totally skeptical materialism was attractive to the critics of tyrannical rulers and privileged minorities because it offered a refutation of all claims for a divine sanction of the established order. But it could also be turned against itself. Behind the critique of all religion lurked the specter of a ruthless mentality, a world where everything was dissimulation and deceit, where the very notions of justice, truth, and reason were reduced to opportunistic playthings. That ambivalence explains, in my opinion, why materialistic and religious ideas are so frequently juxtaposed in Enlightenment writings: hatred of the established churches, bulwarks of oppression and censorship, pushes them toward materialism, while the desire to secure an impregnable foundation for their moral ideals pushes them back toward some variety of a natural theology, frequently combined with admiration for primitive Christianity.* In the development of Poulain’s religious thought we will see this dialectic at work. His religious opinions are not easy to pin down, moving as they do between an uncompromising critique of all parts of Revelation that run counter to reason and equality, and an equally unshakable conviction that God’s will and goodness are the ultimate bedrock

Introduction 23 of truth, charity, and justice. Apart from that, the story of Poulain’s life is an object lesson in the risks and obstacles faced by all those who went

from orthodox Christianity to rational religion. In Chapter 8 we will see that Poulain was still struggling with it at the end of his life. In his last will he identified himself as a “Christian philosopher.” A philosopher he was indeed, and a Christian as well. But his entire life was marked by an abiding tension between his philosophy and his religion. What precisely remained of his Christian faith after a lifelong endeavor to divest it of everything that was “repugnant to right reason” is not so easy to determine. Not for Poulain, and not for us.

The Making of a Philosopher

THE MIDDLE DECADES of the seventeenth century were a time of political confusion, religious strife, and intellectual ferment. Poulain was born in Paris shortly before the eruption of the Fronde,

and he left France a few years after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Most of the ideas and issues found in Poulain’s writings origi-

nated in the intellectual hothouse that was mid-seventeenth-century Paris. His formative years in college and as a theology student gave him ample opportunity to reflect on the volatility of power and authority, the bewildering vagaries of the theological polemics between Jesuits, Jansenists, and other Catholic reformers as well as Protestants, and the

radical challenge to traditional standards of knowledge posed by the Cartesian revolution in philosophy. All of these were important in

shaping the personality and the intellectual career of the young Poulain. The Fronde and the subsequent turn to absolutism left him skeptical of arbitrary authority and rebellious agitation alike. ‘The intel-

lectual inadequacy of Scholasticism occasioned his turn to Cartesianism and imbued him with a passionate aversion to pedantry and academic officialdom. The religious polemics of the 1650s and 1660s also had a double effect on Poulain: they surely explain his lifelong hostility to dogmatism and intolerance, but they also induced him to take religion seriously and to look for more secure foundations for his faith. Instead of opting for unbelief or an arational fideism, he embarked on the quest for a rational Christianity. 24

The Making of a Philosopher 25 This chapter focuses on how Poulain dropped out of scholastic theology and went on to explore more promising intellectual avenues. Instead of a theologian he became a “philosopher,” a self-identification he would cling to for the rest of his life.

Poulain’s Youth and Family Background Francois Poulain was born in July 1647, the third child of a prosperous bourgeois family. The precise dates of his birth and baptism are unknown because most Parisian parish registers were destroyed during the Commune.! No letters, recollections, or other personal documents have survived to inform us about his youthful sentiments or the particular circumstances of his upbringing. We must thus be content with what we can infer from the history of France, and especially Paris, in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. It is probably of some significance that the years of Poulain’s child-

hood were among the bleakest and most turbulent of the century. Growing up in Paris in midcentury meant an early encounter with poverty and human misery. With over 400,000 inhabitants Paris was the largest city on the European continent, and every tremor in the French economy was felt there with particular acuteness. ‘Ihe economic condition of the country had been steadily deteriorating since the early years of the century, and the French intervention in the Thirty Years’ War

did nothing to improve matters.’ The prices of bread and meat had been intermittently rising since the beginning of the century, but in the Fronde years prices in the Parisian markets would sometimes double or triple within a few months.’ Widespread destitution was a visible reality to anyone strolling through the streets of the capital: the number of vagrants in the 1650s was estimated at “more than 40,000 or almost a tenth of the city’s population.”* Starving or mortally sick people and exposed infants left to die or to be found were not uncommon sights. Death and violence were never far away. Paris was a disorderly and

dangerous place: before 1667 it was underpoliced, to put it mildly. Ruffians were plentiful, and after nightfall the city was a dark maze of streets and alleys in which an unarmed man might easily come to harm.> Economic conditions remained precarious all through the 1650s and 1660s, and in 1662, when Poulain was fifteen, a serious famine struck France. It was particularly severe in the Loire and Parisian regions.°

26 The Making of a Philosopher Living in the sheltered environment of a settled bourgeois family, the young Francois did not personally have to endure the physical hardship experienced by the rank and file of the people. Madeleine

Alcover has investigated Poulain’s family background, and, even though the surviving records do not allow for absolute certainty, she has established with a high degree of probability that his father was Nicolas Poulain, a lawyer at the Parliament of Paris.’ Francois’s greatgrandfather had been a receveur des tailles (tax collector), and his grandfather was an official of the cour des monnaies (the Mint). By becoming a

parliamentary lawyer his father ascended from finance to the lowest rung of the vobe. His marriage fits in with the picture of upward mobility: Poulain’s mother, Genevieve Boucot, came from a family of somewhat higher status. Her father was one of the four échevins (aldermen) of Paris in 1649, and he later purchased the office of a secrétaire du roi.

The position of échevin was an ennobling office, so that Boucot belonged to the oblesse de robe, the group of high officials that made up the core of the embryonic absolutist state constructed by Richelieu and Louis XIII.

After Richelieu’s death in 1642, closely followed by that of Louis XIII in 1643, the political fabric of the French monarchy slowly came

apart, culminating in the chaotic civil wars of the Fronde, which erupted when Francois was only a six-month-old nursling and ended when he was five years old. As we have seen, Poulain’s maternal grandfather was an alderman of the city in 1649, the most eventful and dangerous year of the Parisian Fronde. In the contest between the king’s men and the Parliament of Paris, the provost and most aldermen sided with the court.* ‘Thus Poulain’s grandfather would probably have associated himself with the royalists. On the other hand, the parliamentary affiliation of his father points to a probable frondeur background. It is also possible that the family changed sides in the course of the Fronde, as did so many others during those turbulent years. The milieu of the robe was the seedbed of the humanist political culture expressed in the literary model of the honnéte homme, basically an idealized picture of the polite, cultivated member of an urban elite. Ac-

cording to Robert Muchembled, this new elite culture developed in opposition to the warrior ethos of the traditional nobility. He underlines the importance of the reign of Louis XIII for the emergence of the new trends in politics and culture, and he singles out the 1630s as a

The Making of a Philosopher 27 period of accelerated cultural change.’ Poulain’s parents, who married in 1641, would thus have been part of the generation that came to maturity in the 1630s. Against the old emphasis on military valor, honor, physical prowess, overweening pride, and personal vengeance, the culture of honnéteté was built upon the values of self-control, moderation, polite manners,

and literary taste. One of the key contentions of the champions of honnéteté was that virtue was more important than birth, even though a well-bred man should always behave in accordance with the require-

ments of his station and rank.!° Nonetheless, the shift in emphasis is unmistakable, as in Vincent Voiture’s exclamation when his modest ori-

gins—his father was a wine merchant—were held against him: “true nobility comes from virtuous conduct that gives us a second birth, better and more glorious than the first one.”! The robe was at the center of the monarchical state, where it competed for eminence with the nobility of the sword, and it also constituted the core of the new literary public analyzed by Alain Viala.! Three out of four of the Parliament lawyers possessed a library of some importance.’ In view of Poulain’s later feminist sympathies it is important to note, as Joan DeJean has demonstrated, that women, both as au-

thors and readers, played a significant part in the emergent literary scene of the post-Fronde decades.'* Likewise, as Ian Maclean has pointed out in his study of seventeenth-century literary feminism, the rise of honnéteté was tied up with the ascendancy of the salons and the acceptance of women as partners in conversation, linked to an increas-

ing appreciation of the civilizing effect of female company.! In her well-known study of the salonnieres, Carolyn Lougee has shown that the advocates of a greater public role for women were frequently also champions of ennoblement based on personal merit.'° Such a worldview was attractive to women of letters, if only because the preference of personal worth over blood lineage displayed a discursive analogy

with the preference of individual merit over the biological accident of sex.

However, there was no straightforward opposition between a “bourgeois” and an “aristocratic” culture but rather a series of overlapping mutations of both, eventually resulting in a new mode of sociability in which a large part of the nobility and the higher reaches of the bourgeoisie interacted under the guidance of the court. The Fronde repre-

28 The Making of a Philosopher sented the last stand of the traditional warrior aristocracy, which clung to its pretended right to a share in the government of the realm, and its defeat was as much cultural as political. Poulain’s childhood thus largely coincided with the final consolidation of the culture of bonnéteté. We may summarize the main values of that culture as personal merit, moderation, self-control, a solid education, literary taste, politeness, and a certain softening, or “feminization,” of manners. It is further significant that both Cartesianism and

Jansenism were very strong in the parliamentary milieu in which Poulain grew up.'” It is thus quite plausible that he got his first bits of information about them from family members or acquaintances. ‘The post-Fronde years also gave him ample opportunity to develop an interest in public affairs. His student days were marked by major political events such as the beginning of the personal government of Louis XIV in 1661, closely followed by the spectacular arrest and subsequent show trial of Nicolas Foucquet, the powerful superintendent of the treasury.

These portentous, unexpected, and, to many Frenchmen, shocking events heralded the emergence of the political system that was later called an “absolute monarchy.” How much and which of the emerging ideas and moral values Pou-

lain ingested from his family we cannot know with precision. We do know, however, that the basic values of the culture of honnéteté remained with him until the very end of his life. Likewise, his early interest in Cartesian philosophy and social issues cannot be doubted. His serious and conscientious attitude to religion and the study of the Bible, evinced by his earliest writings, points to Jansenist or Protestant influences, or possibly both.

Student Days Because his parents had destined Poulain for a church career, he had to obtain a university degree in theology, the prerequisite for access to all but the lowest clerical positions. Poulain himself tells us that he pursued his studies from the age of nine onward “with great application.”!® This was the usual age to enter college, the first stage of any higher education.!? His frequent scoffing at the useless and vain pursuits of “the vulgar” suggest that he was not comfortable with the buffoonish lifestyle exhibited by so many of the college boys from wealthy families.

The Making of a Philosopher 29 College discipline was harsh: the masters used the rod and the whip on students who misbehaved in class. Most pedagogues believed that corporal punishment should be used sparingly, but some professors resorted to it for every minor offense.”° In the university system of those days, the college taught the propaedeutic arts: grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. After eight years the student acquired the title of master of arts, which gave access to the higher faculties. During the first four years, the greater part of teaching was devoted to an extremely rigorous training in Latin. ‘Teaching was itself conducted in Latin, and use of the vernacular in the classroom was frowned upon.”! The teachers encouraged competition between individual students as well as between classes, and outstanding students were honored to deliver a speech to the entire school or to the local notables. The topics of such oratorical exercises were often taken from

antiquity, but Christian and contemporary subjects were also quite popular, especially encomiums on French arms and the Grand Roi. The cultivation of rhetorical skills was further stimulated by the school theater, which also privileged ancient and Christian themes. In the seven-

teenth century, attacks on the “Protestant heresy” were a cherished topic, but there were also plays about the greatness of Louis XIV and, after 1688, the tragic fate of the House of Stuart and the perfidy of the English. ‘The students thus acquired the basic skills of rhetoric and literary representation, but only in Latin, not in French: before 1690 the role of spoken French in the colleges was negligible.” The required readings in Latin covered a wide variety of selections from Roman and Christian authors, invariably including a staple diet of Cicero’s speeches and moral treatises. In the higher classes Latin historians and poets were added. Greek readings often included selections from the New ‘Testament and the early fathers of the church. History and geography were not taught as separate subjects, but students ingested a fair amount of historical and geographical knowledge from the texts they had to read, translate, and analyze. Many professors also discussed European expansion and world geography, frequently drawing on contemporary travelogues. Finally, the last two classes of the college curriculum were devoted to philosophy, subdivided into logic, ethics, physics, and metaphysics. Logic was taught from Aristotle’s Organon, elaborated in an impressive series of metaphysical questions and conceptual problems. Ethics was

30 The Making of a Philosopher further subdivided into general ethics, which covered human nature, the moral qualities and expediency of actions, and the good life; and the

ethics of the family and the state, with natural jurisprudence treated rather perfunctorily, since it properly belonged in the higher faculty of law.

Poulain obtained the master’s degree in July 1663.73 At the age of sixteen he could call himself a maitre és-arts. The complete theology cur-

riculum of the Sorbonne was inordinately long and demanding, more so than in other universities, but Poulain, like many students destined for the priesthood, went only as far as the bachelor’s degree, which he obtained on 1 December 1666.74 What sort of theological knowledge did he acquire in those three years? The basic framework was Thomistic Scholasticism. Theology was taught in two major parts, called positive theology and scholastic theology. The first dealt with the Christian revelation and sacred history: it was organized chronologically, and it contained no really systematic discussion of Christian dogma. Scholastic theology, on the other hand, was devoted primarily to a systematic, theoretical discussion of the field. ‘This was the theoret-

ical hard core of the theology curriculum. A common view about the relation between positive and scholastic theology held that the latter provided the student with the analytical skills needed to deploy the truths expounded by the former in particular cases and, above all, in polemical exchanges with religious adversaries—that is, Protestants and Jansenists. On the whole, the university curriculum was rigorously orthodox. It

was certainly not innovative, and Cartesian philosophy, mathematics, and the new physics and astronomy were almost completely absent from it until the early eighteenth century. In his magnificent book on French higher education under the Ancien Régime Laurence Brockliss emphasizes the deeply conservative spirit that permeated the curriculum. According to Brockliss almost all instruction was used as a vehicle “for political and religious indoctrination.” The student was “thoroughly conditioned in the belief that the path of righteousness lay in being obedient and subservient to his parents, the Church, and above all divinely constituted authority.”?> Brockliss is undoubtedly right in underlining the strong ideological core of university teaching, but in his recent treatment of religious culture in seventeenth-century France Henry Phillips voices a salutary warning against too deterministic a view of higher education. According to Phillips, philosophical and reli-

The Making of a Philosopher 31 gious discord was especially virulent among the members of the intellectual elite, so that we may expect it to be reflected in university teaching, albeit in muted forms.’° In the same vein, Alan Kors has shown that the interminable “refutations” of atheism to which students were

exposed had the unintended effect of making them aware of it as a thinkable philosophical perspective.?’ Apart from that we may wonder if the canonized and approved education of the colleges always accomplished what it intended. In the first place, there is the disputatious, argumentative style of so many of the

classical authors, who in their writings obviously refer to a world in which no absolute certainties existed. Admittedly, the readings from Greek and Roman authors were carefully selected, and “dangerous” texts, such as Lucretius, were of course totally off limits. Yet we must at least allow for the possibility that some students were able to enlist some

classical polemics and ideals in a critique of contemporary practices and institutions. As an example of such possibilities I will take Cicero’s De Officiis, because it was by far the most popular text among college

professors, so that we can be sure that every college student had to study it carefully.

The general tenor of Cicero’s treatment of the moral duties of the virtuous citizen is moderately conservative. All important issues are addressed from the standpoint of the well-educated, propertied member of the community, and Cicero emphatically affirms that political equality and democracy are chimerical and, above all, dangerous ideas.”* For

all that, he embraces the Stoic ideal of the universal fellowship and moral equality of all men, established by nature, even if he draws no egalitarian conclusions from it. Cicero further explains “that there is no

social relation . . . more close, none more dear than that which links each one of us with our country.””’ There is no reason to doubt that the

average seventeenth-century French student took this as an exhortation to love the French realm and respect and venerate the king. Still, an attentive and less conformist student might opt for a different reading, taking Cicero’s term “republic” to mean what it stood for in Aristotelian political thought: that is, a nonmonarchical regime. In the second half of the 1650s, when Poulain was at the Sorbonne, some bright students might even have recalled that as recently as 1649 England had executed its king, abolished the monarchy, and settled its government “in the way of a Commonwealth.”*° But even apart from the dangerous and disreputable English exam-

32 The Making of a Philosopher ple, Cicero’s glorification of the Roman republican ethos may have seemed double-edged to students in the late 1650s and the early 1660s, barely a decade after the Fronde had pitted the monarchy and the high aristocracy against each other. In a period marked by polemical tension between the traditional aristocratic values and the culture of honnéteté, Cicero could be seen to come down on the side of the latter: his praise of an austere, dignified style, his aversion to the conspicuous display of

luxury, as well as his contemptuous critique of those who sought to achieve personal glory at the expense of the public weal were to a great extent at variance with the mentality and the lifestyle of the old aristoc-

racy. Io many Frenchmen in the 1660s, this would have recalled the frondeur nobility, with its exuberant lifestyle and disregard for the fate of the rest of the nation. However, any attentive reader of De Officiis must also have noticed its anti-Caesarean, and more generally antityrannical, message. Cicero’s conservatism definitively excluded the glorification of unlimited power in the hands of one man, and some readers might with good reason have wondered what his judgment would have been of the personal government of Louis XIV. Generally speaking, Cicero’s conservative republicanism represented a deeply ambiguous political and moral language in the context of post-Fronde society. It could readily be used to foster obedience and patriotism, and it was easily associated with the language of honnéteté and against the arrogance of the old aristocracy.

However, it could also be used to decry the corrupt power of high finance in the new absolutist state, and, finally, it might be deployed in a critique of absolutism itself. In this, the ambiguities in Cicero’s moral philosophy closely paralleled the tensions in the language of honnéteté itself.

In these circumstances it seems improbable that an astute and intelligent young man such as Poulain was completely taken in by the conformist reading of Cicero and other classical authors presented by the

majority of his teachers. Nor can we simply assume that all teachers subscribed to such a reading. I have illustrated the point with Cicero, but it has a more general bearing: texts are never completely unambiguous, and teaching in the humanities always entails a certain amount of dialogue and argumentation. Poulain’s student years were especially marked by such contentiousness, for the colleges and the university were not isolated from the surrounding society. They were part of a

The Making of a Philosopher 33 larger intellectual world that was marked by bitter philosophical and religious polemics.

An Age of Philosophical Polemics Apart from the official curriculum, university students of all times and places tend to develop a healthy curiosity about everything going on in their faculties, in particular matters surrounded by a discernible odor of scandal, or about which there is infighting among their professors. On any list of such matters drawn up in the 1660s, Cartesian philosophy would have figured prominently. In November 1663 Descartes’s philosophical works were put on the Roman Catholic Index, but this

did not prevent his followers from publishing new editions of his works.?! The Vatican Index did not have the force of law in France, and the right to censure books was a matter of contention among royal officials, the parliaments, and the Sorbonne faculty of theology.*? Only after 1667, when Nicolas de la Reynie was appointed lieutenant of police of Paris, was the royal censorship effectively centralized and enforced.*?

Cartesian philosophy was not included in the curriculum of the colleges and faculties, but in fact Descartes’s ideas were taken up by some professors of philosophy, while others testified to the influence of Cartesianism by arguing against it. In the 1660s every candidate for a chair in philosophy at the Sorbonne had to declare that he would deny and refute the pernicious “new philosophy” in his teaching.*# One effect of this requirement was of course to draw everybody’ attention to Cartesianism and Gassendism, the other major strand of the “new philosophy,” and it must have stamped the professorial refutations with a taint of hypocrisy in the eyes of many students. Combined with the activity of private lecturers who freely discussed Cartesian philosophy, such a state of affairs was bound to make students curious and to draw some of them to the new philosophy instead of insulating them against it. According to Jean de Viguerie’s history of education under the Ancien Régime, the new philosophy and natural science did not enter the curriculum until the early eighteenth century, but their exclusion does not, of course, imply that teachers and students were unaware of them in Poulain’s time. ‘The contrary is the case: In the 1660s, Cartesianism, Gassendism, and other new currents of thought gained a certain popu-

34 The Making of a Philosopher larity in the salons, and the private lectures by several Cartesian teach-

ers, such as Jacques Rohault, drew a considerable audience among the Parisian robe milieu.** The philosophy teachers in the colleges felt

compelled to argue against the new ideas, and their students henceforth learned to argue “contra Cartesianos, contra Gassendum, contra recentiores.” Likewise with the new heliocentric astronomy. As late as 1684, for example, a teacher in the southern town of Tarbes presented his students with four arguments why the Copernican theory was false: we see the sun move, the earth is at rest because all objects on its face are at rest, several passages in the Bible affirm the movement of the

sun, and the popes have condemned the theories of Copernicus and Galileo.* Regular attacks on the new ideas by college teachers became com-

mon all over France from the 1660s onward, but in a few colleges Cartesianism was discussed more sympathetically as early as 1660.*’ Some remarks in the Education des dames, written six or seven years after

Poulain left the university, demonstrate that he was exposed to “refutations” of Descartes during his college education. After a sneer at the inflated praise lavished on Aristotle and other classical authors, he recalls:

Our professors .. . inspire us with their aversion for those philoso-

phers who were of a different opinion than they, strengthening their disapproval with religious considerations; they inculcate in us hatred of some unfortunate authors we have scarcely heard of, trying to keep us from reading their books while they themselves have often not even read the tables of contents of those books because they are moved by the same fright they seek to instill in us.**

It is against this background that we must read Poulain’s story of his conversion to Cartesianism. We know that he dropped his theology studies shortly after obtaining the bachelor’s degree in December 1666. In the Education des dames he gives the following account of his decision to abandon theology: “one day I paused to take stock of the knowledge I had acquired. ‘Io my surprise I discovered that I had labored in vain ... that all my knowledge was of no use whatsoever in the world, except to make a living in a specific walk of life I did not want to engage in.”

This final remark clearly indicates that Poulain had by that time decided not to pursue the church career his parents had projected for

The Making of a Philosopher 35 him. It is, however, also apparent that he was deeply dissatisfied with scholastic philosophy as such. After more than ten years of hard work, he complained, “I was hardly more advanced than if I had never studied anything at all, and according to some of my acquaintances I was well advised to start from scratch all over again.”3? When he was in this downcast mood, Poulain continued, he found himself in the company

of some Cartesians. He engaged in conversation with them about philosophical topics, and they took him to a lecture. Not so long before, he added, he would not even have deigned to listen to the followers of Descartes, for he “knew” that their philosophy was worthless, even though he had never so much as read beyond the covers of their books. There follows a glowing account of how he finally arrived at real philosophical knowledge with the help of the Cartesian method. Poulain’s assurance that he had never read beyond the covers of the Cartesian books should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt. It fits a lit-

tle too well into the streamlined conversion story he presents to his readers. Francoise Wacquet has shown that such stories, invariably set in a milieu outside the university, were quite common among students and professors who recounted their turn to the nouvelle philosophie.* Poulain’s wholesale dismissal of his university education should also be

approached with some caution. ‘Io a certain extent, his bitter disappointment with his university training in Scholasticism was undoubtedly justified. It was a frequent complaint among students in those days that scholastic philosophy burdened them with a medley of incomprehensible terms and empty names instead of knowledge about the real world. Yet we should not take such complaints at face value. Poulain’s account of how he saw the Cartesian light after stumbling in the scholastic darkness conforms to the narrative genre of the conversion story, and it is probably no reliable guide to his student experiences. After all,

he also recounted that he pursued his studies “with great application and success,” and this was probably no empty boast: from his early writings he appears as a man who has thoroughly mastered the traditional canon he is demolishing with such relish, and his theological opinions demonstrate that he made good use of his Sorbonne learning.

Theological Quarrels While philosophy was in turmoil, the state of affairs in theology was even more fraught with conflict in the years Poulain spent at the Sor-

36 The Making of a Philosopher bonne. The curriculum of the faculty of theology might radiate a serene orthodoxy, but the student body could hardly have been unaware of the acrimonious polemics about church government and the Jansenist “heresy” in which the Sorbonne doctors took such an active part. In 1661-1663 several defenses of theses were disturbed by serious incidents over Gallicanism.*! ‘The French church had never officially received the decrees of the Council of Trent, and the French state sought to retain a firm grip on church politics. The Parliament of Paris encouraged the Gallicans on the faculty of the Sorbonne and other Paris colleges to take a firm stand against the defenders of unlimited papal jurisdiction. In 1663, the year Poulain obtained his master’s degree, sixty-two doctors at the Sorbonne signed a faculty declaration in support of Conciliarism, the doctrine that ultimate power in the church was vested in a general council rather than in the pope.” The main cause of strife, however, was Jansenism. Jansenism was a reaction to as well as a part of the broad Catholic reform movement that had been gaining momentum since the late sixteenth century.* Catholic reform aimed at a better-instructed clergy who would impart to their flock a more earnest religious sensibility in which Augustinian themes and personal piety gained new importance. It furthered “a more personal approach to salvation and one that used a language more adapted to the individual Christian.”*+ In mainstream Catholicism this

amounted to a moderate compromise between the demands of “the world” and the urge to live as a true Christian. The Jansenists, however, tied a highly personal approach to salvation to a radically pessimistic Augustinian theology. ‘They tended to depict worldly success as vain and transient, and they stressed that all forms of self-glorification were deeply sinful and unchristian. In their eyes the Molinist appreciation of “good works” championed by the Jesuits was no more than a covert Pelagianism. The Jansenist rejection of good words and free will came dangerously close to the Calvinist doctrine of grace, a fact their enemies were not slow to exploit. Like Calvinism, Jansenism tended to

combine a somber view of the impotence of postlapsarian humanity with a highly activist attitude in practice. Its emphasis on individual conscience had potentially subversive implications. ‘The Jansenists repeatedly refused to obey the orders of the pope and sometimes resisted those of the crown as well. In 1643 Antoine Arnauld, the then major spokesman of the movement, declared that “it is far better to cause

The Making of a Philosopher 37 trouble and to shock the community than to abandon the truth.”* Several Jansenists declared that men in the seats of power remained fallible humans and could err, and thus their authority should not be followed blindly.*° Others, notably Pascal, urged external deference but insisted that deference did not necessarily imply sincere respect for the high and the mighty.””

Jansenism thus had potentially subversive implications. Its emphasis on conscience might lead to the dangerous notion of a personal right to

resist authority and, with a little rationalistic twisting, to the notion that only a faith that was freely assented to was “real”: that is, to a doctrine of toleration. Finally, Jansenism was by no means isolated from the Cartesian turn in philosophy. While many Jansenists were not Car-

tesians and most Cartesians had little to do with Jansenism, the two currents overlapped and intersected in manifold ways.** Apart from the syntheses of Jansenist and Cartesian ideas attempted by individual thinkers, there were some affinities between the intellectual style of the two currents. Both regarded introspection and self-reflection as a privileged avenue to moral knowledge, and both valued an austere and frugal lifestyle.” The Jansenist controversy was widely disseminated by the publication of Pascal’s Provinciales in 1656, the year Poulain entered college. Pascal made fun of the bizarre tactics of the Dominicans, who pretended to agree with the Jesuits on the doctrine that God had bestowed sufficient grace on all men, but then explained that in this particular case “sufficient” did not mean what it usually meant, but something far more subtle.*® Pascal’s demand that the terms of theological debate be assigned clear and unambiguous meanings, in accordance with common usage, had a definite Cartesian flavor, despite his deep aversion to Descartes’s rationalist conception of God.

Finally there was Protestantism. In Poulain’s Sorbonne days the Calvinists were still an important presence in Paris, numbering some 10,000 to 12,000 souls, even though their religious cult was outlawed in the capital.>! Although the Protestant nobility had dwindled to a tiny minority after 1600, they were strongly represented in finance, commerce, and the professions, as well as in the cultural life of the capital: two of the founders of the Académie Francaise, Valentin Conrart and Jean Ogier de Gombaud, were Calvinists.°* ‘The Calvinist pastors were frequently better educated than the Catholic clergy.*? Works on biblical criticism by Hugo Grotius and Louis Cappel, a professor at the

38 The Making of a Philosopher Protestant academy of Saumur, were published in Paris in the 1650s. The polemics between French Catholics and Protestants filled many volumes in the 1660s and 1670s, when the Protestants still enjoyed “a certain liberty to reply” to Catholic attacks..4 Some very popular Calvinist devotional tracts were printed in Paris and sold in Charenton.» In view of Poulain’s endorsement of the same ideal in his later work it is perhaps significant that in the late 1660s several influential fig-

ures, Antoine Arnauld and Richard Simon among them, suggested that Catholics and Protestants might come to an agreement on a common body of Christian doctrine.** These ideas came to nothing, but they may have influenced Poulain’s ideal of a “reasonable” Christian faith.

Any halfway-curious Sorbonne student was likely to become acquainted with these polemics and to learn a good deal about the seamy side of theology in the process. It was not for nothing that Pascal felt warranted to quote an “unhappy saying” that was circulating in Paris: J/ opine du bonnet comme un moine en Sorbonne (he talks through his hat like

a monk in the Sorbonne).*’ ‘Io many students these never-ending polemics in which their betters threw impressive amounts of mud at each other must have been bewildering and sometimes frightening. What

were the limits of permissible opinion? Whom should one believe among the countless authorities contradicting each other? What was true and what was not? Through one of his speakers in the Excellence des hommes Poulain voices with great poignancy the disorientation felt by many of his contemporaries:

Men have by now been seeking the truth for four or five thousand

years ... [hey have filled arsenals and storehouses with the harvest of their learned predecessors. And what have they accomplished with all that? Chimerical ideas, prejudices, errors, sects, quarrels, heresies, superstitions that have served only to disturb the tranquility of the world. And after having amply discussed and investigated things for so many centuries, some of them maintain

that the truth is at the bottom of a pit into which nobody can descend, others that the sum total of science consists in admitting our ignorance, and the most modern that we have until now been deceived by prejudices, and that we must go back to the ABC in order to become learned, as if we had never learned anything.**

The Making of a Philosopher 39 This outraged indictment of seventeenth-century learning comes at the end of the book, where it is pronounced by a “learned lady” who is exasperated by the puffed-up claims of male “science.” It thus represents a hyperbolic overstatement of Poulain’s real case. Nonetheless, it may well reflect his unsettled state of mind during his last years at the Sorbonne, when he had lost confidence in Scholasticism but did not yet know what to put in its place.

The Académie des Orateurs Paris offered its university students a great variety of entertainment, from pubs and brothels to the salons and the theater. Moliére’s plays attracted the Parisian public in droves. In 1659, when Poulain was in his fourth year at the college, the Précieuses ridicules was a smashing success; Poulain may well have seen it. Quite apart from his specific opinions

Moliére’s plays expressed a skeptical turn of mind, and his amusing mockery of convoluted language and academic pidgin-Latin bespoke his affinity with the new philosophy. Whatever the preferred language of Parisian socialites was, it was definitely not Scholasticism. One of the few things we know of Poulain’s whereabouts in his student days is that for a time he frequented the sessions of the Académie des Orateurs.*? This was a school of eloquence housed on the prestigious Place Dauphine, a typical vobe location at the western tip of the Tle de la Cité, close to the seat of the Parliament. It was founded and directed by Jean de Soudier de Richesource, who came from a Calvinist family in Loudun. Richesource started organizing public conferences

in 1654, and shortly thereafter he publicly converted to the Catholic faith. By 1660 his academy had developed into a quite successful undertaking, attracting many young men who were projecting a career in

the robe. Poulain probably participated in its sessions in the mid1660s, when he was in his late teens. Thrice a week the academy assembled for a full afternoon to discuss a set thesis, either selected by Richesource himself or proposed by one

of the regular attendants. he main goal was to train young gentlemen in the art of adversarial rhetoric. As a rule, two or three participants were assigned to defend the proposition of the day while others were to refute it. There was also a public gallery where gentlemen and ladies could follow the debates, but active participation was not permitted to

40 The Making of a Philosopher women. [The rhetorical training imparted by his academy, Richesource asserted, would be of great utility in a teaching career or at the bar, as well as in “civil conversations.” He advocated a “simple and easy style” as the most suitable for the art of “critical discourse,” the ability to argue against an opponent in a public debate. ‘The academy would enable young gentlemen to acquire “daring and ease in public speaking, an art they had not mastered in college, where they were trained only to re-

cite arguments not composed by themselves.” Participants were also invited to propose subjects for debate. ‘The choice of topics was free, but theology and matters of state were excluded.*! The teaching method of the Académie des Orateurs was thus in several respects the opposite of the common practice of the university. In the first place its working language was French, a fact especially important for students of law, for since the 1539 Villers-Cotteréts Decree the

French state had conducted its business in French, not in Latin. Second, instead of following classical examples students had to fashion their own arguments. Furthermore, public speaking called for quickwitted improvisation instead of the fixed rules of rhetoric and logic privileged by the university; and finally students were invited to cultivate a simple, straightforward style instead of trying to imitate the great orators of antiquity. This approach originated with ‘Théophraste Renaudot, who had organized rather similar public conferences at his famous Bureau d’Addresse in the 1630s. Renaudot’s meetings were also

conducted in French. As in the later Académie des Orateurs, debates on religion and politics were not allowed, and rhetorical skill was valued as highly as informational content. Richesource had frequented Renaudot’s conferences for some time, and the two men were longstanding acquaintances: both came from Loudun, both had a Calvinist upbringing, and both went over to Catholicism at some point in their career. However, Richesource’s choice of topics for debate conformed more to a literary drawing-room style, while Renaudot devoted more time to natural philosophy and medicine and sometimes discussed “dangerous” topics, such as the motion of the Earth (in 1633, the year of the Galileo trial). In view of the possible influence of the Académie des Orateurs on Poulain’s intellectual development, it is of more than passing interest that questions concerning the differences between the sexes repeatedly came up for discussion. For example, the question whether the passions

The Making of a Philosopher 41 of women were more violent than those of men, if an orator could persuade men with more facility than women, whether the study of the sciences was becoming for a lady, whether it was better to grant women liberty (as was the rule in France) or to confine them to the home (as in some other countries). The debates sometimes gave the impression of a playful game for beaux esprits, but usually the discussants presented entirely serious arguments. We should not, I think, see these aspects as polar opposites but rather as two sides of the same debating culture. In

the debate on the passions of men and women, for instance, some speakers would routinely refer to the general weakness of the female sex, beginning with the biblical story of Eve’s seduction. Another, however, pointed to the fact that women were debarred from all sorts of higher education and concluded that they were not to blame for their violent passions, since the men were denying them the means to cultivate their rational minds. ‘The implication of such an argument was, of course, that female psychology was molded by culture rather than by nature. [he next participant in the debate, a lawyer named Le Barbier,

brought forward the even more piercing argument that most arguments for male superiority were advanced by men motivated by selfinterest and vanity. Le Barbier’s intervention shows that the feminist critique of the partisan bias of men proclaiming the superiority of their own sex was not unknown to young Parisian lawyers. ‘The resolution of the Academy, as usual drawn up by Richesource himself, sided with the pro-woman speakers.” Many other subjects were broached in the Académie des Orateurs. In the midst of a debate about women and rhetorical persuasion some-

one drew attention to the cultural roots of prejudice. Just as men thought themselves superior to women, so nations were generally con-

vinced of the superiority of their own customs. Referring to the debates between Greeks and Persians about marriage and funeral rites, he stated that even the ancient Greeks, an “enlightened, polite, and learned” nation, were not easily persuaded of anything than ran counter to the basic tenets of their own culture.© The example was, of course, taken from the famous debate on Greek and Indian funeral customs at the court of Darius in book 3 of Herodotus’ Histories. ‘The application of Herodotus’ cultural relativism to contemporary issues provides us with yet another instance of the critical use to which an ancient canonical text could be put.

42 The Making of a Philosopher Other topics discussed in Richesource’s academy included the utility of the sciences, the relative merits of the contemplative and the active

life, whether civil society was based on prudence or on eloquence, whether a woman should save her father rather than her husband in a situation of grave and imminent danger, whether a poor and learned man was happier than a rich and ignorant man, whether fearing death was compatible with wisdom, whether the invention of powder and artillery had made warfare more cruel than before, whether the advent

of the printing press had been a blessing or a curse for the republic of letters, whether prose was more persuasive than poetry, whether the throne of Alexander was more desirable than the tub of Diogenes, whether men who married renounced their liberty, whether it was

more advantageous for a woman to marry a man of the vobe than a member of the noblesse d’épée, and whether animals possessed rationality

or should be considered as mere mechanical devices. The last subject again demonstrates the reverberations of Cartesianism and the polemics it generated, for the theory that animals were automatic machines was one of Descartes’s most contested doctrines. The casual style of the debates in the Place Dauphine is not always a reliable guide to their content. Where one debater perceived only an engaging topic for light conversation another might find an occasion for serious reflection. ‘lake, for example, the following critical aside in a

discussion about fashion: “What custom approved yesteryear is condemned today.” ‘This remark arose during an argument to advocate the apparently conformist thesis that it was always best to follow the latest fashion. But it was preceded by a diatribe against the “obnoxious and

boring sort of men” who always preferred the ancient to the modern. Anyone familiar with the conflicts then raging in the intellectual world would of course have known that the champions of Scholasticism had customarily branded their opponents as dangerous “novateurs,” and calling those who preferred the ancients “obnoxious and boring” was a transparent allusion to the much broader issue of the guerelle des anciens et des modernes that would play such a prominent role in French intellectual life in the decades to come.

The transactions of the Académie des Orateurs present us with a motley collection of serious and frivolous subjects, which probably gives a quite reliable impression of the topics of polite conversation among students and junior members of the Parisian robe, the milieu in

The Making of a Philosopher 43 which Poulain moved in the 1660s. Dedications and other data indicate that Richesource’s school of eloquence was well connected to the Parliament of Paris. ‘The curious mixture of ancient and modern opinions encountered in its debates reflects the transitional intellectual culture of the parliamentarian lawyers in this period.’ For Poulain, who was still a student when he visited Richesource’s academy, the debates pro-

vided a precious opportunity to get to know older and more experienced men, to pick up information about current affairs, and to get wind of new ideas circulating in the capital.

The Fortunes of Cartesianism Poulain was among those who finally concluded that the way to true knowledge was not to be found within the walls of the university. As we have seen, he “converted” to Cartesianism in or shortly after 1666. The only further information he gives in his conversion story is that he had

already lost all appetite for Scholasticism when one of his acquaintances took him to “a gathering where a Cartesian addressed us about something concerning the human body.”®* We cannot have absolute certainty, but it seems very plausible that Poulain and his companions visited one of the famous Wednesday lectures of Jacques Rohault. These popular lectures offered what was then the best available introduction to Cartesian physics in Paris. Moreover, it squares with the subject mentioned by Poulain, for part of Rohault’s course discussed Descartes’s mechanistic physiology.”” Rohault must have made a very favorable impression on Poulain, for he figures prominently on the list of recommended readings in the Education des dames, and Poulain ad-

vises his readers to start with the fourth part of Rohault’s handbook of Cartesian physics, precisely the chapters discussing human physiology.’!

To understand the sort of philosopher Poulain became we must first determine why Cartesianism was such an attractive option to a dropout student of theology. Poulain himself gives us some hints in his writings: he frequently states that it was the method of Descartes he liked above all, rather than his system. Consequently we do not find any extensive treatment of vortices, the plenum, and other landmarks of Cartesian physics in Poulain’s writings. Neither do we find a thorough engagement with Descartes’s metaphysics. ‘That is not to say that natural phi-

44 The Making of a Philosopher losophy and the foundations of metaphysics were of no interest to Poulain, but they do not explain his initial response to Descartes. What was it, then, that made Cartesianism so attractive? In Poulain’s discussion of it, two points stand out: the clarity of Descartes’s language and argumentation, and his merciless critique of prejudice. For Poulain, Descartes’s language and method of presentation represented above all else a clean break with the cumbersome style of Scholasticism. Poulain frequently points out that Cartesian philosophy is “simple” and “easy to understand.” Scholasticism made the universe look more complicated than it really was, while the new philosophy gave a clear and compelling account of apparently intractable problems. Moreover, Descartes’s accessible French prose was a precious

asset, not only in the competition with Scholasticism but also with Gassendism, the other major current of the “new philosophy,” because Gassendi’s Christianized Epicureanism was available only in recondite Latin treatises. The first edition of Francois Bernier’s accessible introduction to Gassendi’s thought did not appear until 1674.”

The universities, Poulain declared, were full of mediocrities who only excelled in pedantry and a blind belief in authorities and titles. Many of their interminable disputes were no more than vain wordplay.” It followed that the good philosopher should not bow to bookwisdom and academic titles. Instead, he had to combat prejudice, in himself as well as in others. One of the Cartesian authors Poulain later recommended was Louis de la Forge, who had published the posthumous edition of Descartes’s De ’homme in 1664 and his own Traité de Pesprit de Vhomme in 1666.”* De la Forge provides a good example of the

critical spirit Poulain found so attractive in Cartesianism. He incited his readers not to remain the “slaves” of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, or any other philosopher. His words deserve to be quoted in full: It ought to be as shameful for a philosopher to yield to their authority when it is not supported by reason as it is honorable and advantageous for a man of good sense to submit to reason even if it is supported by no authority at all; just as it is praiseworthy for a Christian to submit (as I shall do as long as I live) to the authority of the church, which is infallible.”

The fortunes of the new philosophy in the years immediately following Poulain’s conversion to Cartesianism gave ample occasion for such sar-

The Making of a Philosopher 45 casm and ironic wit on the part of the champions of Descartes and Gassendi.

In June 1667, when the famous “second funeral” of Descartes took place, the court forbade the pronouncement of the funeral oration by Pierre Lallemant, the chancellor of the university abbey. Once again, Cartesianism was at the center of a major scandal.”° Next, in 1671, came the partially successful attempt to purge the universities of the new philosophy, as a result of which some lecturers suspected of Cartesian leanings were chased from their chairs, and some were forbidden to teach in any French university. ‘This time Cartesians and Gassendists responded in kind with the publication of two fake decrees, the famous arrets burlesques by the literary critic Nicolas Boileau and the traveler Francois Bernier. Boileau and Bernier, both well-known and widely acclaimed figures on the Parisian literary scene, utterly ridiculed the attempts to secure the monopoly of the Aristotelians.

Boileau attributed his farcical decree to the “Grand Chambre du Parnasse,” which had promulgated it “in support of the Masters of Art, Doctors of Medicine, and Professors of the University of Stagyra in the Land of the Chimerae,” in order to counter the seditious machinations of “an unknown lady named Reason who sought to gain forcible entry to the Schools of the said University.” “The Grand Chamber, Boileau

concluded, “maintains and keeps .. . Aristotle in the full and undisputed possession and enjoyment of the said Schools” and “orders that he shall always be followed and taught by the . . . professors of the said

University, which is not to say that they will be required to read his books or to understand his language and his opinions.””” Bernier, for his part, drafted a decree which complained that “the Prince of Philosophers” was unjustly beleaguered by the personages “Reason” and “Experience,” who had enlisted the assistance of “certain quarrelsome fig-

ures, called by the names of Cartists and Gassendists.” ‘These new philosophers brazenly discussed novel discoveries, in flagrant contradiction of Aristotelian doctrine. The said villains aired their disrespectful views in a slanderous manifesto “published under the spurious title Journal des Scavans” (France’s most prestigious learned review, which had started publication in 1665). Bernier’s decree commanded, among other things, forthwith to deliver Saturn from the ring in which it is so unjustly imprisoned by Mister Huguens .. . That the Sun shall thoroughly

46 The Making of a Philosopher scrub its face and shall not any more appear in public with those villainous spots which are a sign of corruption . . . That Mister Denis shall be made to repair at his own expense all the rifts and

clefts he made in the heavenly spheres in order to permit the passage of the most recent Comets in 1664 and 1665 ... That Messers Kerkerin and Stenon shall throw all their anatomical in-

struments into a river... and that they are ordered to remove from their writings the following insulting remarks addressed to women: “You produce eggs; You are hen; We are cocks” .. . That the sole authority of Aristotle, on account of the respect he has acquired in the course of so many years, shall prevail over Reason and Experience. Bernier was referring to recent scientific advances: Christian Huygens had discovered the rings of Saturn in 1655; Jean-Baptiste Denis had published a Discours sur les comeétes suivant les principes de M. Descartes

(Discourse on the Comets, Following the ‘Theory of M. Descartes) in 1665; Niels Stensen (Stenon) had discussed eggs in live-bearing animals in 1667; and ‘Theodor Kerkerin had published his research on the ovaries of women at the beginning of 1671, only a few months before the polemics reported here.” The literary campaign of Boileau and Bernier exemplifies the transition from the Renaissance genre of the burlesque” to the ironic mockery that was to become a hallmark of the French Enlightenment. It probably contributed to the reluctance of the Parliament of Paris to deliver a formal decree against the new philosophy; at least it gave its first president, Guillaume de Lamoignon, who was himself sympathetic to the new learning, a welcome pretext for doing nothing. According to Bouillier’s nineteenth-century history of Cartesianism the upshot was ambiguous: Cartesian ideas could no longer be openly discussed in the universities, but the publication of books treating various aspects of Descartes’s thought continued apace.*® Despite the reorganization of censorship it was not at all easy to control the circulation of ideas. ‘The coming of regular postal services after midcentury had facilitated the emergence of a periodical press. In 1666 the Academy of Sciences was established by Colbert, with the protestant Christian Huygens as its first secretary. A few years later, the opening of the new observatory in Paris stimulated public interest in the new astronomy and, indirectly, in

The Making of a Philosopher 47 Cartesian physics. In the hands of lay authors the nature of philosophy changed: it became a wide-ranging discourse on nature and the human condition, less formal and less neatly compartmentalized than its academic counterpart. In this literary-philosophical genre a considerable liberty subsisted, provided that a writer handled his language with care and knew where to draw the line. Such was the climate of opinion in the early 1670s, when Poulain embarked on his writing career. An author could still get away with quite a lot, and he might gain public acclaim and perhaps the rewards of patronage when he deployed the new philosophy in an elegant and attractive way. But too much boldness could be a recipe for trouble, especially in the case of a young author lacking powerful protectors. Certain theological issues were definitely dangerous ground, and any straightforward critique of absolutism was simply unprintable. Poulain’s books show the influence of this climate of opinion. In the second conversation of the Education des dames, Eulalie, who has the part of the female apprentice-philosopher, inquires about the use of all those “approbations des Docteurs” mentioned on the final pages of many books. Stasimaque answers that they serve to protect religious orthodoxy and to prevent deviations from “certain vulgar opinions of the land that one is not permitted to offend.”*! Likewise, Poulain was well aware of the harassment the Cartesians were exposed to in the universities. In the fifth conversation of the Education des dames, ‘Vimandre, the honest gentleman who is becoming gradually convinced of the truth of the new philosophy, recounts that most people he has met with detest Epicurus and Descartes, and that no French university is willing to admit the Cartesians. Oh yes, retorts Stasimaque, that’s what they always say, but I answer them that nowadays many “gens de qualité et d’esprit” have embraced the philosophy

of Descartes, and that there are entire universities in England, Holland, and Poland that have chased Aristotle away and put Descartes in his place. Sophie, the intelligent woman who sides with Stasimaque, thereupon brings up another question. Is it not true, she asks, that Aristotle himself has had “a bizarre fate” in the history of the university?

Stasimaque eagerly responds that such is indeed the case, and that there even was a time when Aristotle was banned from the University of Paris by a decree of the Parliament. Eulalie thereupon exclaims that in that case the partisans of Aristotle can hardly pretend to be the only

48 The Making of a Philosopher good French Catholics. Stasimaque-Poulain finally concludes that it is better to follow Descartes and Gassendi, who were good Christians, than Aristotle, who was after all a heathen Greek.® This passage demonstrates that Poulain was well informed about the history of Aristotelianism in the University of Paris. ‘The condemnations of Aristotle he refers to took place in the thirteenth century, the best known being those of 1270 and 1277, when hundreds of Aristotelian propositions were formally condemned by the French church. According to Roger Ariew, the thirteenth-century condemnations were perhaps unknown to Descartes and his generation, but interest in them was revived in the 1650s by Jean de Launoy’s De Varia Aristotelis in Aca-

demia Parisiensis Fortuna. The changing fortunes of Aristotelianism were also mentioned by the Cartesian Jansenists Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole in the Port Royal Logic.** ‘The pretension of the university

Aristotelians that their philosophy had represented the sole truly canonical knowledge from time immemorial was thus exposed as a historical fraud. For all his mockery about censorship and the silly beliefs of the “vul-

gar,” Poulain never underestimated the risks inherent in airing unorthodox opinions. In the Education des dames Stasimaque repeatedly warns his companions that the philosopher should be careful in selecting his or her partners in conversation. ‘The best general maxim is to “think like the wise and speak like the vulgar.” The sage willingly goes along with the customs of the country in which he finds himself, for customs are everywhere different and there is nothing wrong with respecting them unless they violate the fundamental prescriptions of eth-

ics and religion. The man who insists on always speaking the truth, withholding nothing and whatever the circumstances, runs the risk of being killed, or even of causing a civil war. The philosopher must not adopt the posture of zealot, and surely it would be preposterous and reckless “to attempt to reform the public mind against the will of the government.”* Poulain’s rules of conduct are obviously inspired by Descartes’s wellknown maxims for a provisional morality, which were in their turn in-

debted to skepticism; but there is a difference. Both Descartes and Poulain recommend a prudential accommodation to prevailing standards of behavior, and both believe that philosophers should refrain from meddling in politics or stirring up revolt. Descartes, however,

The Making of a Philosopher 49 really kept aloof from social and political matters, and so did the overwhelming majority of the first generation of Cartesians. In this respect,

Poulain is the conspicuous exception, for his philosophy not only touches on social and political issues; it is in fact mainly about such mat-

ters. He may well protest his political innocence, but, as we shall see,

his opinions about power and politics, however prudent, were not those of an enthusiastic supporter of absolutism. Likewise, his egalitarianism ran counter to the entire political culture of the society of orders. It is precisely because of these features of his philosophy that Poulain

was an exceptional Cartesian. That he became a Cartesian in the late 1660s is in itself not so unusual. Many of his generation took the same step, although around 1670 the Cartesians still represented a beleaguered minority in French intellectual life. What was truly exceptional was Poulain’s adoption of a feminist position and the way he thereupon welded feminism and Cartesianism into an egalitarian social philosophy that transcended both. Poulain was the first and perhaps the only of his time to produce a social Cartesianism. But before discussing in detail the various lines of thought that made up Poulain’s social philosophy, it is perhaps useful to ask what sort of philosopher he was. Or, to put it in a slightly different way, what did Poulain mean when he called himself a “philosopher”?

What Is a Philosophe? In the historiography, Poulain is usually not identified as a “philosopher,” but first and foremost as a “feminist.” ‘There is no good reason to doubt the sincerity of his feminist convictions. His writings show a personal and heartfelt indignation about the oppression of women. Why he chose the subject we cannot ascertain, given the absence of sources on his personal life, and in particular his contacts with women. The only thing he tells us in his writings is that he had conversed about various everyday and intellectual topics with women from all walks of life and had found their opinions at least as reasonable as those of most men, if not more so.* However, accepting Poulain’s feminist credentials should not blind us to other significant arguments in his books. At any rate, the historian is well advised to start from Poulain’s own self-identification. Unlike

50 The Making of a Philosopher many others who wrote in defense of women, he never advertises himself as a gallant champion of the “beau sexe.” The subject of the equal-

ity of the sexes, he submits, can be treated in two ways: “either in a gallant fashion, that is, in an amusing and flowery manner, or as a philosopher and by means of arguments, in order to investigate the heart of the matter.”*’ In his very first publication, a little translation manual (Les rapports de la langue Latine avec la Francoise, 1672), he justifies his preference for a systematic to an alphabetical ordering of vocabulary by the useful effect it will produce in children: they will learn Latin and at the same time learn “to order their thoughts properly.”** ‘Io philosophize, Poulain insists time and again, is to think clearly and systematically instead of falling prey to the fancies of fashion and the vagaries of vulgar opinion. Poulain never wavered from this conviction: from his first books, written in the 1670s, to his last will, drafted in 1721, he always identifies himself as a philosopher. The question what a philosopher is can also be answered by identifying the philosopher’s natural enemies. In Poulain’s writings, these are not hard to find: they are the purveyors of pedantry, fanaticism, and persecution. With that sort of men, Poulain laments, it is impossible to engage in reasonable debate, and when they have the upper hand it is best to steer a prudent course. But the matter does not end there. For Poulain, to philosophize 1s far more than just a cerebral exercise: it is first and foremost a way of relating to the world. In this regard his attitude is closely related to that of a famous contemporary, the Gassendist Francois Bernier, who declared in 1674 that to philosophize “is not only to reason with yourself, but to converse with others,” to instruct and to be instructed by them.*? ‘To come to fruition, the philosopher’s sense of personal identity, his critical views of morality and history, must be shared with others. ‘Io be a philosopher, then, is to reason freely and critically, and to engage in mutual conversation with kindred spirits. The esprit de critique is thus the mark of the true philosopher. Historically, this was a new meaning of the term philosophe. In due course, it would become one of the defining characteristics of the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment.”

The enemies of the woman who desires to be an autonomous human person are also the enemies of the true philosopher. Once more, Poulain’s ideal of the philosopher and his feminism join hands, for both hinge on his hatred of oppression and pedantry: “I hate the word mas-

The Making of a Philosopher 51 ter,” he declares in the Education des dames.?' At the same time, Poulain makes it abundantly clear that his allusions to fanaticism and persecution refer not only to the patriarchal oppression of women but also, and perhaps in the first place, to religious persecution. In Chapters 7 and 8 I will show that religious questions were central to Poulain’s entire in-

tellectual career, as well as to the most troublesome and critical episodes of his life. Here it must suffice to say that his identity as a philos-

opher was from its very inception shot through with an unresolved tension between the ideal of unfettered free inquiry and the notions of religious truth and religious authority. Once more, Poulain’s philosophy exhibits a trait that will be characteristic of later Enlightenment thought. Finally, Poulain’s style of thinking is experimental. He urges his readers to think methodically and systematically, but there is nothing of the system builder in him. He was only twenty-five when he was writing the Egalité des deux sexes: a young man, deeply dissatisfied with

the traditional learning of the schools, and only recently converted to the “new philosophy,” set out to formulate the guidelines for a Cartesian social philosophy, something that nobody before him had even so much as attempted. Consequently, Poulain’s books present us with a peculiar combination of systematicity and an essayistic, eclectic, almost playful mode of discourse. Here again, his work shows some traits that will later be considered typical of the Enlightenment style of philosophizing. ‘he equality of the sexes, his chosen subject, affords him the much-needed liberty for his philosophical experiment. Other subjects, not always clearly announced as such, are freely intertwined with it. In this way, Poulain engaged in a great number of disparate lines of thought, formulated bold hypotheses on manifold subjects, and explored, in some respects, the limits of the thinkable in late seventeenthcentury France.

The Feminist Impulse

BY THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, early-modern European feminism could already claim a history traceable back as far as late-medieval times.! It would therefore be a serious misreading of intellectual history to assume that Poulain’s feminism was a consequence

of his Cartesianism. While there existed an autonomous egalitarian thrust in Cartesian thought, it was the feminist impulse that radicalized

Poulain’s social views. The contribution of earlier feminist ideas to Poulain’s philosophy has sometimes been underestimated, but it is vital to a historically adequate understanding of the grounding of his entire philosophy. What Poulain contributed was a reworking of existing ar-

guments for gender equality into a social philosophy on Cartesian lines, probably the first attempt to give feminism a systematic theoretical foundation. Poulain’s focus on knowledge and education represents a continuation of earlier feminist aspirations to gain access to the world of learn-

ing and letters. “Iwenty years ago Joan Kelly argued that the earlymodern feminist impulse was “rooted in the humanistic form of literacy some women acquired while it was being denied to women as a sex.”? We will see below that the femme savante was indeed the epitome of seventeenth-century feminism. But beyond that other issues were at

stake. Feminist authors questioned the authority of men over women in marriage, and several of them broached the larger topic of political 52

The Feminist Impulse 53 authority as well. hey were compelled to discuss the role of women in the public sphere, for men frequently objected to female learning on

the ground that women did not need it because they were excluded from public office. Likewise, feminist authors had to contend with the biblical justifications of patriarchal rule, which pushed them into the theological arena. Feminists had to pursue their arguments in so many directions because masculine power was present in all the institutions and discourses of society. The emerging feminist voice was a response to the endlessly recycled misogynist arguments in literature, philosophy, and medical doctrine, and it provoked in its turn a new spate of masculinist hostility. The significance of the notion of the equality of the sexes in the emerging public sphere in seventeenth-century France is attested not only by those who spoke out in favor of it but also by those, such as Moliére and some other very popular authors, who felt compelled to refute and ridicule it. Post-Fronde French society was fraught by a profound ambivalence about the status of women, an obsessive anxiety about female

transgression. It was the scene of what we, in today’s terminology, would call a culture war about gender, in particular about female autonomy.

This chapter takes a closer look at the context, the rhetorical strategies, and the arguments of this culture war. It focuses on two closely intertwined intellectual trends: the “invention” of modern gender equality and the making of gender into a publicly contested concept. Against this background, Poulain discarded certain elements of earlier feminist thinking, took up and reworked others, and finally reformulated the entire argument in a Cartesian framework.

Early-Modern Feminism as a Literary Genre Early-modern feminism was a literary genre rather than a definite philosophical current. It was a heterogeneous collection of writings that sought to plead the cause of women in an unending polemic against the

misogynist arguments of mostly male authors. This literature was a European phenomenon that intermittently continued from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century and beyond. These pro- and antiwoman polemics were generally known, in France and elsewhere, as the guerelle des femmes.

54 The Feminist Impulse At the beginning of the quere/le, insofar as a beginning can be assigned to intellectual trends, stands the imposing figure of Christine de Pizan, who lamented the ubiquity of misogyny and masculine self-agerandizement as early as the final years of the fourteenth century. In the Epistre au Dieu d’Amours, written in 1399, she pointed out that the nearly unanimous vilification of women found in the corpus of ancient and Christian writings had to be explained by the elementary fact that all those texts were written by men:

But if women had written the books I am sure they would have done it differently For they know quite well that they are falsely accused.' According to Pizan the received “wisdom of the books” did not reflect female nature but rather the representation of women through the distorting lens of male prejudice. ‘This was a truly impressive insight, and the writings of Pizan are so important because they demonstrate that a convincing critique of misogyny was thinkable in the late fourteenth century, and perhaps even earlier.’ Pizan was no radical egalitarian: generally, she argued for equity, not equality. She contended that the intellectual abilities of women equaled those of men, but she admitted a “natural” division of labor between the two sexes. In particular, women should not aspire to public office because their inferior bodily strength made them unfit for the enforcement of the law and the art of war. In Pizan’s Christian worldview the sexual division of labor was part of the grand hierarchical order of created being, instituted by divine providence. But the subordinate station of women in God’s terrestrial order did in no way entail their intellectual or moral inferiority. Actually, many of the historical examples of ruling and valiant women discussed in Pizan’s writings went well beyond the “natural” tasks assigned to the female sex. Only ten pages after the categorical affirmation that women could never dispense justice because they lacked the strength to subdue the evildoers “with physical constraint and force of arms,” Pizan recounts with great relish how two Amazon maidens, Menalippe and Hyppolita, successfully fought the Greeks, and not just any Greeks, but the proverbial heavyweights Hercules and Theseus.*

When all was said and done, however, the world of letters held

The Feminist Impulse 55 greater promise for women than the battlefield. Christine de Pizan might extol the warrior virtues of the Amazons, but she herself chose to raise the bastions and ramparts of her Cité des dames on “the field of letters.” The allegorical figure of Lady Reason explains to Christine that

her city will be far stronger and more durable than “all earthly kingdoms”: many men will wage war on it, but it will never be conquered.°® Christine’s city, then, is an allegorical representation of the public voice

of women, which, once raised, will never be silenced. It symbolized a hope for women in times to come.’ The literature of the guerelle expanded considerably during the fifteenth century. The introduction of printing gave birth to a new literary world, wider in scope than anything that had gone before. In her seminal study of Renaissance feminism, Constance Jordan takes as her sources the printed texts in the vernacular languages, arguing that a fairly large, partly female audience and the multiplication and repetition of similar tropes and arguments were the defining characteristics of the guerelle, making it into more than a series of isolated intellectual utterances.® ‘The sheer number of feminist texts over the period 14501650 is impressive; it seems to increase over time, although as yet no reliable quantitative data are available. An indirect indication of its popularity is that the debate on the relative merit of the two sexes is also played out in Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, one of the most widely published books in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Two of Castiglione’s characters uphold the equal dignity and abilities of women, and he clearly assumes readers’ familiarity with the subject.’ In his study of the reception of the Courtier Peter Burke underlines its sympathetic treatment of female learning.!° What can be stated with certainty is that by the beginning of the seventeenth century the quere/le represented a well-established and familiar genre. What we also know is that French authors and texts gained a particular prominence in the seventeenth century as a French-speaking republic of letters established itself in Europe, and French began to compete with Latin as the major language of elite sociability."!

Marie de Gournay’s Egalitarian Feminism Marie de Gournay’s work is a suitable starting point for a discussion of the idea of equality in French seventeenth-century feminist writing.

56 The Feminist Impulse Gournay was among the first to organize her entire argument around the concept of equality, disavowing all notions of female superiority. She published under her own name, and her friendship with Montaigne as well as her subsequent role as the editor of the latter’s Essazs earned her considerable literary renown. On the other hand she had to cope with all the ridicule and bad faith a woman author was bound to meet with in a period in which old-style misogyny still prevailed.” Gournay is frequently mentioned by feminist authors in the second half of the seventeenth century; clearly, both her writings and her status as a woman of letters set a positive example to succeeding generations. Gournay was a typical Renaissance intellectual. She writes in a manner that is clearly designed to demonstrate her mastery of the humanist

literary canon.’ Likewise, her defense of the female sex in the Egalité des hommes et des femmes (1622) relies on standard humanist values: eru-

dition, the reliance on authorities, the virtue of moderation, and the conviction that wisdom can be attained only by an elite. Gournay was deeply influenced by Montaigne’s skeptical humanism, she moved in the intellectual orbit of the /zbertinage érudit, and later she was on good

terms with La Mothe le Vayer, a noted skeptic and a friend of Gassendi.'* Her work was part of the upsurge of skepticism that came out of the Religious Wars and formed the immediate precondition for the midcentury emergence of the “new philosophy” of Descartes." Gournay’s goal was not so much the construction of a rationalistic theory of equality, but rather the erudite deconstruction of vulgar as

well as “learned” masculine prejudice. She lashes out against slowwitted men who only ape the opinions of the vulgar multitude: “See how such men compare the two sexes: according to their opinion, the highest goal women can attain is to emulate the common run of the men: for them it is unthinkable that a great woman could define herself as a great man, with the sex changed.” For Renaissance humanists true wisdom consisted in moderation. Accordingly, Gournay presents her case for equality as a mean between

the two extremes of male and female superiority: “Shunning all extremes, I am satisfied to make them [women] equal to the men, nature opposing itself in this respect as much to superiority as to inferiority.”!” The final phrase seems to refer to the concept of natural equality found in the philosophy of natural law, but Gournay does not pursue that line

The Feminist Impulse 57 of thought.!* She declares that she will refrain from a theoretical demonstration because “reasons” are liable to be questioned by pigheaded people (“opiniastres”). Instead, she wishes to establish her case in what appear to be more traditional terms. She invokes the authority of God (Gournay writes “Dieu mesme,” and not “Dieu luy-mesme”: God is not gendered in her text), the pillars of the church, and the great men who have enlightened the world. However, a careful reading of the text shows that she actually attributes her own arguments to various philosophers who figure as “authorities.” Gournay’s chief arguments against inequality are the importance of culture and education,!’ the spiritual essence of the human person, historical examples of female intelligence and virtue, and, in theology, the nongendered nature of God and the special role of the Virgin Mary. On the subject of education Gournay observes that the differences between women are as great as those between women and men, and that these differences are explained by differences in education as well as differences between town and countryside and between nations. If women were to receive an education “a l’égal des hommes,” they would surely emulate the accomplishments of men. ‘Thereupon, however, she goes on to establish the more radical claim that the human soul is neither male nor female. In the final analysis, Gournay contends, “the human animal is neither man nor woman, the sexes not being made directly but accidentally ... the unique form and specificity of this animal consists exclusively in the human soul.””° The human soul, then, has no sex, a view that ultimately derives from the Scriptural truth that both men and women were created in the image of God (Gournay quotes Genesis 1:27 rather than 2:22). These theoretical arguments are as a

matter of course supplemented with historical examples. Following Renaissance usage, Gournay takes her examples from Antiquity as well as from Sacred History: She mentions the Amazons, Diotima, Aspasia, Dido, the Sybil, Judith, and Mary Magdalen. In recent French history,

there is Jeanne d’Arc, and Gournay dedicates the Egalité to Anne of Austria, the spouse of Louis XIII and future queen-regent. Finally, Gournay seeks to answer potential theological objections to gender equality. She has to deal with two awkward scriptural “facts”: Saint Paul’s injunction to women to keep silent in the church, and the indisputable fact that Jesus Christ was a man. Concerning the first point, Gournay recalls that in all the nations of antiquity the priest-

58 The Feminist Impulse hood was open to both sexes. Saint Paul’s command was not meant to degrade the female sex, she explains, but referred solely to bienséance

(custom and manners): the grace and beauty of women surpassing those of men, their public appearance as preachers would be tantamount to temptation. Likewise with Christ: in order to convert as many as possible he had to mingle among all sorts of people, by day and by night; for a woman that would not have been Lienséant, especially in

view of “the malevolence of the Jews.”?! Here, she is drawing on the doctrine of accommodation, which taught that many passages in the Bible were couched in the customs and language of their time and had to be interpreted accordingly. However, Gournay also advances another, more uncompromisingly egalitarian objection against Saint Paul. She contends that the exclusion of women from administering the sacraments is explained by the desire to secure masculine authority “ever more completely,” and she concludes “that in the matter of the divine service the mind and the faith are to be considered, not the sex.””? This is not presented as a straightforward criticism of Saint Paul, but it certainly looks like one.

Moreover, and more importantly, the argument about the nongendered nature of the soul also applies to God: those who picture God as

male or female, Gournay declares, only demonstrate their nullity in philosophy as well as in theology. Finally coming to the question of the gender of Christ, she says that while it cannot be denied that Christ was a man, his masculinity is balanced by the feminine glory of Mary, the only human being free from the stain of original sin.

Feminist authors in the second half of the seventeenth century frequently referred to the example of Marie de Gournay. Another influential and often-acclaimed champion of female learning was the Dutch savante Anna Maria van Schurman.”} ‘The debate between her and the

Huguenot minister André Rivet was originally published in Latin in the Dutch republic (1641), then in a French translation in Paris (1646), and finally in English in London (1659). Schurman referred to Gournay’s Egalité, pitting “the voice of reason” against “a pernicious custom.” She contended not only that women were capable of entering the world of learning but also that those who had the means and the leisure to do so should pursue a fulltime intellectual career.”+ Rivet objected that morals and customs followed “the temperament of the body,” and that knowledge was useless for women because they were

The Feminist Impulse 59 not admitted to state and church offices or to university chairs; at the most, they could pursue the bonnes /ettres, but only in exceptional cases.

In her reply, Schurman stated, just like Gournay, that she did not seek to elevate her sex above that of men. The point at issue, she asserted, was whether, “in the century we are living in,” it was “in principle” suit-

able for an unmarried woman to devote herself to learning. In support of this claim, Schurman referred once more to Gournay.” Schurman did not offer an elaborate egalitarian argument, but the validity of her case crucially depended on such an argument, and her reference to Gournay demonstrates that she was aware of its existence, and, what is perhaps more important, that she assumed that her male opponent as well as her readers were familiar with Gournay’s writings. Schurman’s own work played a similar role; like Gournay, she became one of the most frequently cited authorities in later feminist texts. It is worth observing that the egalitarian arguments advanced by Gournay and Schurman were known all over Europe. As we have seen, Schurman’s plea for female learning was published in Latin, the international language of the world of learning, and in English and French. There was also a Latin translation of Marie de Gournay’s Egalité des hommes et des femmes, which the German feminist Johann Herbin recommended to his countrymen. Herbin was acquainted with Anna Maria van Schurman and defended the cause of women in his writings.2° Another well-known feminist treatise, particularly in the German-speaking world, was Henricus Cornelius Agrippa’s De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus (Cologne, 1532). Agrippa’s book was re-

printed and translated in several languages during the next century. Agrippa opened his treatise with the egalitarian creation story in Genesis 1:27, and then explained that God “impartially” endowed man and

woman “with the same, and altogether indifferent form of Sou/, the Woman being possess’d of no less excellent Faculties of Mind, Reason, and Speech, than the Man.”’ In Spain the same principle was affirmed by Maria de Zayas in her Novelas amorosas y eemplares (1637): “las almas

nison hombres ni mujeres” (souls are neither men nor women).’* Likewise in Italy. As early as 1600, Lucrezia Marinella referred to the argument that male and female souls “are of the same species and therefore of the same nature and substance,” although she followed this up with a defense of female superiority.’? In 1651 Arcangela ‘Tarabotti, in Che le donne siano della spezie degli uomini, asserted that women were “of the

60 The Feminist Impulse same species as the men” because they were endowed with “la ragione e anima razionale” (reason and the rational soul).*° ‘Tarabotti’s writings

were part of an intermittent polemic that reached a fairly large audience.?!

To sum up: during the period 1620-1660 the egalitarian argument that the soul, the mind, and reason were not sexually differentiated was

put forward and widely discussed in France, England, the Dutch republic, the German lands, Spain, and Italy. It represented a European feminist critique, and most of the participants in the debate were aware of this fact.

The Feminization of Elite Culture The issue of learning and letters, the demand to speak and to be heard, as well as the anger and frustration that came from speaking and not being listened to remained central to all subsequent feminist publications. After 1640 the tone became somewhat more assertive and optimistic.

Jeannette Rosso has compiled a list of French publications on the “woman question” from 1600 to 1789. For the whole seventeenth century she lists 142 publications (her list is, as she herself admits, far from complete). The distribution over the decades shows a steady increase in

the number of publications, peaking in the 1640s and subsequently continuing at a somewhat lower but fairly regular rate:* 1600-1609: 5 1610-1619: 11 1620-1629: 10 1630-1639: 16 1640-1649: 36 1650-1659: 15 1660-1669: 15 1670-1679: 10 1680-1689: 4 1690-1699: 20

The prowoman texts are in the majority, especially in the second half of the century. The picture tallies quite well with Ian Maclean’s conclu-

The Feminist Impulse 61 sion that the 1640s mark the emergence of an autonomous feminist discourse that was more vigorous and more self-assured than the earlier literature.** The rule of Anne of Austria as queen-regent may well have enhanced this trend.

The high output of feminist publishing in the 1640s and 1650s is well documented in the historiography, but in the 1660s this trend continued apace. Major publications included an anonymous Apologie de la science des dames, published in Lyon in 1662;*4 a fourth, enlarged edition of Jacques Dubosq’s L’Honneste Femme, also in 1662;>> Le Cercle des femmes savantes, published in 1663 and reissued in 1667, by Jean de la

Forge, probably a brother of the well-known Cartesian philosopher Louis de la Forge;** a Dialogue de la princesse scavante et de la dame de famille, by Elisabeth Marie Clément (1664);3’ Les Dames illustres ou par bonnes et fortes raisons i se prouve que le sexe féminin surpasse en toutes sortes

de genre le sexe masculin, by Jacquette Guillaume (1665);3* a fifth edition of Dubosq’s Honneste Femme, also in 1665;3? Louis Lesclache’s Les Avantages que les femmes peuvent recevoir de la philosophie, published in 1667;* and finally, in 1668, Nouvelles Observations sur la langue francoise avec les éloges des illustres scavantes tant anciennes que modernes, by Mar-

cuerite Buffet. Some of these books, especially the one by Lesclache, were somewhat insipid, but others, notably those by Clément, Buffet, and the anonymous author(s) of the 1662 Apologie, were frankly egalitarian.” It is also noteworthy that the nature of the historical examples of female accomplishments underwent a significant change. Especially after the Fronde, the figure of the “Amazon” warrior queen was gradually eclipsed by that of the cultivated and peace-loving savante.* Almost all feminist tracts continued to draw on the historical and mythical record, continuing the well-established tradition of the publication of lists and dictionaries of famous and learned women.** However, the seventeenth-century galleries of famous women contained far more contemporary examples than the older literature, and the overwhelming majority of these were women of letters.*° Several contemporary authors,

notably Jean de la Forge and Marguerite Buffet, provided lists of learned ladies in their books. De la Forge, for example, dedicated his book to the countess de Fiesque, and further mentioned Marguerite de Navarre, Marie de Gournay, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the

62 The Feminist Impulse marquise de Rambouillet, Madame Deshouliéres, and some ten other French women. He also listed the Dutch women Anne de Vuischers

(probably Anna Roemer Visscher) and Marie de Schurman (Anna Maria van Schurman, discussed above). About the ladies de Bonnevaut, de Guedreville, d’Outresale, and d’-Hommecour, de la Forge stated that

“they study philosophy with great application, and in particular the work of Descartes.”*° De Bonnevaut was also singled out by Marguerite Buffet as “very learned” in the philosophy of Descartes.*’ Altogether Buffet mentioned some twenty learned women, most of them contemporaries. Ioward the end of the century Guyonnet de Vertron would publish a list containing as many as 183 savantes, 112 of whom were still alive in 1698.* We may conclude that while in the 1660s learned women were probably still considered exceptional, they were definitely more than a negligible minority, and within the Parisian elite they represented a siz-

able company. The same can be said of the broader category of the précieuses: in her meticulous study of this group Carolyn Lougee has identified over 170 names.*? Many of these women wielded a certain intellectual influence in the world of the salons, although it is hard to say what such influence precisely amounted to. This accords well with

Maclean’s observation that “the debate about the ‘conversation des femmes’ is undoubtedly won by the feminist faction .. . after 1650 little is written to question the value and agreeableness of mixed social intercourse presided over by women.”*® Pierre Bayle was perhaps right when he asserted in 1685: “I know quite well that one has also written against women, but the number of such writings is insignificant compared to what has been written in their favor.”>! The rise of salon culture was tied to a broader shift in elite sociability as the old, swashbuckling culture of the sword nobility gradually lost ground to the culture of politeness of the moblesse de robe and the haute bourgeoisie. In post-Fronde elite culture the “feminine” virtues such as elegance, douceur, and a love of peace and beauty were definitely upgraded, and it now became fashionable to look back on the early decades of the century as a primitive age of civil war, sexual license, inces-

tuous behavior, and drunken brawls. With some caution we might speak of a “feminization” of French elite culture. ‘The assertive tone of some feminist authors is probably to be explained by the contradiction between the enhanced freedom of action of women in the new culture

The Feminist Impulse 63 of politeness and the continuing limitations on their opportunities in other social spheres.

Apologies of Female Learning The genre of a polemical exchange between a feminist voice and one or more opponents remained attractive. A fascinating example is the Apologie de la science des dames (1662). The book begins with an exchange between Cléante, who defends the savantes, and Aristide, who was perhaps modeled on the figure of Anna Maria van Schurman’s op-

ponent André Rivet. However, in the second part of the book it is Cléante who comes in for criticism: his argument is “unmasked” as halfhearted and insufficient by a collective female voice introduced as “the ladies who are indebted to Cléante for the key to knowledge.” The first part ends with the conclusion that women may know as much as men, and engage in conversation about all subjects, on the condition that they do not parade their knowledge too brazenly—this is a softer version of the line Moliére will take in Les Femmes savantes. However, reading must not lead to neglect of the traditional feminine pursuits,

and surely the ladies should not appear in the colleges and the law courts.» The female voice in the second part takes issue with those conclusions. The ladies praise Cléante for his criticism of Aristide, but they wonder whether he has foreseen the consequences of his critique. Why does he stop halfway? Why can women, for example, not officiate as judges? If passion would disqualify them, men would be equally unfit to judge, for they, too, are moved by passions. If women are capable of

knowledge, then why should learned women be “as few and far between as the huts of Canada”? Women commanded the government of the towns in ancient Gaul, so why should they be excluded from the seats of justice today? God has bestowed the gift of reason on both sexes:

With men we partake in life’s journey, and thus we need the same lumiéres as men to illuminate our path ... All of nature lies open before our and your mind alike . .. On her treasures we have the same rights as you, and since nature does nothing in vain, we cannot see why she has inspired us with such an avid curiosity, were it not as a faculty to acquire knowledge about her.**

64 The Feminist Impulse Drawing on the Christian-Aristotelian commonplace that nature does nothing in vain, the ladies manage to put the traditionally misogynist image of women’s curiosity to feminist use. But the argument goes beyond such witty inversion in its linkage of knowledge and an equal right of both sexes to the treasures of nature: that is, the entire world. The Apologie shrewdly observes that knowledge is not like material riches: women can appropriate it without in any way impoverishing men. In general, the sciences are depicted as a realm of liberty: “They [the ladies] can reign there without tyranny, for they willingly acknowledge that men command there without violence”; in short, in the empire of the sciences the two sexes, and indeed all individuals, can be equally sovereign. The war between the two sexes has endured long enough: “in the end peace will prevail, and the two sexes will enjoy in equality the gifts God’s grace has bestowed upon both of them.” The author(s) of the Apo/ogie start from the assumption that women and men are equally rational, since “the lights of the mind” are the same in the two sexes. God and nature have willed it so. The bodily needs and the illnesses of the two sexes are also identical: the authors simply pass over sexual difference. Their main argument is premised on the strategic role of knowledge, since “science is now the Mistress of the World.” However, their Christian-rationalistic discourse in no way prevents them from using other arguments as well: they point to the example of the learned women of the past as well as to “our précieuses,”

and at the end of the book they invoke the radiant example of the Virgin Mary, who is pictured as an active, resourceful woman who stood beside her son in his disputations with the learned rabbis (they just stop short of saying that Mary was really a savante). Two years later Elisabeth Marie Clément published A Dialogue of a Learned Princess and a Housewife (1664). It contains a series of polemical

exchanges between the learned Pauline and the solid, down-to-earth Penelope, presided over by a male judge. As in the Apologie, the emphasis gradually shifts: at first the two women dispute each other’s views,

but in later chapters the learned Pauline confronts the Judge, who in the end yields to her egalitarian argument. Clément’s book opens with a reference to contemporary discussions about “’humeur des dames,”

probably the extremely popular writings of Marin Cureau de la Chambre on the nature of the passions and the characters of men and women. [The narrator recalls a conversation in which only she and a

The Feminist Impulse 65 very illustrious man championed the cause of the savantes. What baffled her most was that several women condemned the savantes and thus “spoke against themselves.”°° The dialogues that follow provide both an illustration of and a correction to these real-life conversations. In the first exchange Penelope asserts that learning is useless for women, since they do not participate in public life, and that the savantes are arrogant ladies who neglect their apparel. Pauline retorts that philosophy teaches that clothing is no more than outward appearance. The gendered nature of fashion appears in its true light when Penelope replies that her daughters have to follow fashion, because otherwise no man will want them. Fashion, then, stands for the power of men over women. The critique of fashion is expressed in the opposition of the inner self to outward appearances, a metaphor that recurs again and again in the dialogue. The first exchange ends with the verdict of the Judge, who, to the utter astonishment of Pauline, sides with Penelope. ‘The turn the text then takes is reminiscent of the rupture that occurs between the first and the second part of the Apologie de la science des dames.

Penelope quietly fades into the background, and the rest of the book consists of a series of polemical exchanges between the arbiter and Pauline. Part of the exchange goes as follows:

Fudge: Women need prudence and economy. What use in the household is knowledge of the boreal pole or Stoic philosophy? If women follow such a course, their next demand will be to become members of the senate. Pauline: You have admitted that I ought to be a personne d’esprit, but in a conversation with a real learned man shall I be left helpless? Fudge: You'd better reply with a smile or a witty remark. I’m taking leave of you. Pauline: Don’t go yet! You are capable of pronouncing a better verdict! I dare say that your judgment is quite defective if you

want to deprive the ladies of the sciences and the art of war, that is, of all the noble pursuits women are no less capable of than men.°’

The Judge briefly restates his argument, but Pauline stands her ground. She points to the example of Queen Semiramis (an Assyrian queen-regent who ruled from 810 to 805 B.C.E.) to prove that women

66 The Feminist Impulse are capable of founding and governing cities. ‘The judge answers her at first only half-seriously: Fudge (smiling): Really, milady, I don’t know from which country you come to tell me such things. One would think that your ideas belong to antiquity. Pauline: I willingly admit, wise judge, that my ideas are not fashionable, for fashion only wants a woman to ape her husband. The result is, however, that men leave their homes to seek the company of more spiritual ladies. Judge: Not a few men avoid the company of the savantes like the plague, for they fear that such women will surpass them in knowledge and finally will lord it over them. Pauline: Well, well, great man, I see that you have been instructed by some inferior, envious, and cowardly spirit. ‘The detractors of the savantes mostly belong to the scum of the earth, who can think of nothing but to exclude us from the learned academies, the scientific cabinets, and all places where one gets instruction in the sciences.**

The Judge now accepts that women may become learned. But that is not the end of the matter. Pauline and the Judge agree that the learned ladies have to remain a restricted elite. Pauline further observes that the true savantes are modest: they are not like the frivolous sort who talk a lot but do not actually read much. The Judge at once retorts that many learned women are not modest at all, but Pauline simply throws the argument back in his face: vanity and hubris are found in men no less than in women.” ‘The next question the Judge brings up is whether learned women will still be obedient spouses. Pauline, however, refuses

to accept the question in those terms, arguing instead that marriage ought to be a partnership. Like many before her, she uses the biblical story of Eve’s creation out of Adam’s rib to make her point: “[Eve was fashioned out of Adam’s rib] not out of his foot nor out of his head, and that was to declare that she would be neither the mistress nor the slave of the man; but she was made of his rib, so that she would be his companion, his equal, and his helpmate.”® ‘The Judge then protests that by mixing up sacred and profane matters she oversteps the bounds of her sex. Pauline retorts that she is not the first to do so, adding that, being a

The Feminist Impulse 67 real savante, she is conversant with the pagan classics as well as the Bible and is perfectly capable of telling them apart. After this exchange the Judge is definitely convinced and calls Pauline a “princess of learning.” In the final section of the book the identity of the male judge is disclosed. He is none other than Monsieur de

Conrart, one of the founding members and longtime secretary of the Académie Frangaise. The contemporary point of Clément’s Dialogue now becomes apparent. In the 1650s Gilles Ménage and Gervais Charpentier had nominated several learned women, notably Madeleine de Scudéry, Antoinette Deshouliéres, and Anne Dacier, to membership in the French Academy, but their proposal came to nothing.®! Clément’s dialogue thus represents an imaginary alternative scenario in which the savantes carry the day. A few years later Marguerite Buffet published her Nouvelles Observations sur la langue francotse . . . avec les éloges des illustres savantes tant anciennes que modernes (1668). The first part of the book contains les-

sons in rhetoric and elegant writing, but the second part, a long list of learned women, is prefaced by a short treatise on the equality of the sexes. Buffet asserts that both women and men are created in the image of God, and thus stand in the same relation to the deity. She points to historical examples of female accomplishments (Anna Maria van Schurman, among others) and ridicules those men who boast about their greater bodily strength: the same could be said of many dumb beasts. Buffet also refers to the arguments for gender equality in Plato’s Politeia. She concludes that “souls having no sex at all, it follows that the accomplishments of the mind do not share in the difference between man and woman.”” ‘This was written in 1668, only five years before Poulain declared that “the mind has no sex at all.” Both the Apologie de la science des dames and Clément’s work deploy their argument in the form of a dialogue. They present gender equality as a constantly contested discourse, a position that is reached only after all sorts of obstacles have been successfully negotiated. Buffet does not

use the genre of the dialogue, but her style is highly polemical. She writes as if she were addressing an imaginary male-chauvinist opponent: her entire argument is structured by an opposition between “I / we / our sex” and “they / them,” those who oppose equality (such as the “dwarfish” Aristotle, who detested women because they laughed at his deformity). Such texts give us some inkling of what it must have

68 The Feminist Impulse been like for women to argue for equality in those days. The unpolished reasoning and meandering course of these polemical exchanges, which have sometimes been held against their authors, almost certainly

mirrored discussions in real-life settings in seventeenth-century France.

Public Debates and Lectures There is some evidence that the subject of women and learning was taken up in public debates between men at an early stage. In 1636 one of the weekly conferences at Théophraste Renaudot’s Bureau d’Adresse discussed the question “whether it is expedient for women to be learned.” The issue was viewed from the perspective of justice and power. [he advocate of female learning contended that it would be unjust to deprive women, who were anyway held in “veritable servitude,”

of the precious treasure of knowledge. His opponent objected that women already exercised more than enough power over men, even without the help of knowledge.” Elisabeth Clément, writing in the early 1660s, was certainly aware of contemporary discussions. She made a disparaging remark about

Moliére, but she spoke highly about teachers of philosophy like Lesclache, Richesource, René Bary, Descartes, and Samuel Sorbiére.

Those names in fact cover the spectrum of philosophical teaching available to women in the 1660s. Louis de Lesclache, who delivered public lectures on philosophy that were visited by many ladies, was a middle-of-the-roader, an anti-Cartesian who felt that women should

receive some training in scholastic philosophy to immunize them against the dangerous new philosophy of doubt. Richesource we have already met; René Bary was the author of La Fine Philosophie accommodée a Vintelligence des dames (1660); Descartes needs no introduction;

and Samuel Sorbiére was the French translator of Hobbes and a close acquaintance of Gassendi and Marin Mersenne. As we have noted, Richesource’s Académie des Orateurs repeatedly discussed issues of gender. Reports of the debates were regularly published. A few examples suffice to show that the questions discussed at the Place Dauphine were the same as those we have encountered in the feminist literature. In the debate on the greater or lesser difficulty of an orator in persuading a man or a woman, conducted in the summer of

The Feminist Impulse 69 1660, one speaker argued for equality because he did not want to condemn either half of the human race. Besides, he deplored the one-sided composition of the academy. If women could take part in the debate, he averred, they would surely contradict any man who accused them of weakness of mind. In another session, probably in the early spring of 1661, the academy took up the question whether the study of the sciences was fitting for women. ‘The antifeminist party took the lead in

the debate. According to Monsieur de Godonville, the heart of the matter was simply a question of power: if women sought to uncover the secrets “that we keep hidden from them,” he lamented, “they will become more arrogant and presumptuous, and we, the men, shall be re-

duced to utter subjection”: “As their constitution is much less constricted than ours .. . and the spirits that nourish their brain more subtle, they perceive light where we stumble in darkness . . . they sink their nails into the tightest knots, and the most abstract ideas will not escape their penetrating gaze.” Ihe next speaker, a Monsieur Prieur, did not agree. In the first place, there was the example of great men like Pythagoras and Cicero, who willingly dispensed knowledge to women,

and, more recently, the great Montaigne had assisted Marie de Gournay in becoming learned. There had been numerous learned women in the past: the annals of history could thus be summoned in support of the cause of the savantes. Finally, it was fitting for women to be learned because nature herself had willed it so, having given imagination, intelligence, and memory to women as well as to men. By way of conclusion, Prieur forcefully addressed his fellow men: “Yes, gentlemen, women have the ability to become learned, just like ourselves.” Prieur’s speech was followed by an even more profeminist broadside

delivered by a lawyer, Philippe Cattier. Like Prieur, Cattier referred to illustrious historical examples: Istria, queen of the Scythians, had taught her son Greek; and in his own time there was the great example of “that illustrious maiden, the Dutchwoman Marie Anne de Schurman.” The final verdict of the academy, signed by Richesource himself, was in favor of intellectual equality. Another example, perhaps even more significant, of this kind of discussion is found in Esprit Fléchier’s well-known account of the GrandsFours d@’Auvergne, the proceedings of a special commission sent from Paris to Clermont in 1665 to inquire into the Fronde years and to prosecute the most notorious troublemakers. ‘The members of the commis-

70 The Feminist Impulse sion moved in the better circles of the town and discussed all sorts of topics. One day they talked about the numerous ladies and demoiselles in

Paris who possessed good sense and intelligence, demonstrating “that

the mind is of both sexes and that nothing prevents the majority of women from becoming learned, if only they can obtain instruction and

the liberty to acquire knowledge.” ‘Thereupon one of the ladies exclaimed: “Why is it that they seek to forbid us to engage in reasoning? ... It is an injustice that our minds have been held in captivity for so many centuries, and men are wrong to imagine that the faculty of reason is entirely theirs.”*’ Here we have, then, a woman in a provincial town speaking out for her sex in the mid-1660s (with the agreement of a large part of the male company, if we may credit Fléchier). What are we to make of these feminist and antifeminist voices in the 1660s? In the debates in Richesource’s academy, feminist and antifeminist positions were distributed rather evenly, but this fact only reflects the organizational pattern of the conferences. In the debate on women

and knowledge, Cattier intimated that the majority of the academy supported his feminist line, but it seems hazardous to generalize from such a remark. Richesource himself usually took a middle course, in favor of intellectual equality of the sexes and liberty for women within the confines of the established institutions of marriage and civil society. Such a middle-of-the-road position may well be representative of an

important current of moderate, enlightened opinion in the Parisian magistracy and the intellectual circles associated with it. In this connection it is relevant to mention that the subject of the savantes was proposed for discussion by Parachon, a lawyer in the Parliament of Paris, while the printed report of the session bore a dedication to Guillaume de Lamoignon, the first president of the Parliament. ‘These discussions demonstrate that the arguments found in feminist writings such as those of Gournay, Schurman, Clément, and Buffet reached a larger, male as well as female, audience. They also show that the argument about the equality of the sexes was unresolved, and gender roles a publicly contested issue. In the same decade, several public lecturers attracted a partly female audience. Apart from Lesclache, there were Gilles de Launay’s Gas-

sendist lectures, de Fontenay’s lessons on physics and chemistry, Nicolas Lémery’s on chemistry, Guichard Duverney’s on anatomy, and,

the most popular of all, Jacques Rohault’s introduction to Cartesian physics, probably the best then to be had in Paris. ‘There was also a

The Feminist Impulse 71 great vogue for astronomy, and many ladies paid a visit to the new Parisian observatory, which opened its doors in 1667.° ‘Thus far, some fifteen learned women of this period have been identified as Cartesians.” There were probably more of them. Gustave Reynier observes that the Cartesian and Gassendist private lecturers introduced both women and

men to a philosophical culture that had hitherto been exceptional in upper-class circles.”

The groundwork for the popularization of the “new philosophy,” which historians frequently attribute to Bernard Fontenelle’s work in the 1680s, was laid by these public lectures and debates in the 1660s. The emergence of feminist egalitarian ideas was thus tied up with the first phase of the dissemination of Gassendism and Cartesianism beyond the extremely restricted intellectual elite they had been confined to in the 1640s and 1650s; without this development, the tremendous success of Fontenelle in the 1680s would not have been possible. ‘These private lectures created a space in which women could participate in intellectual life.”! However, they participated mainly as listeners and very seldom as speakers. Moreover, the 1660s also saw the emergence of a

new, institutionalized academic world from which women were entirely excluded.

A Culture War over Female Autonomy Female autonomy was as much a cultural experience as a philosophical concept. Not all of the independent women later called by the ambig-

uous name of précieuses were philosophers, let alone Cartesians or Gassendists, but their lifestyles as well as their ideas were at odds with the reigning ideology of masculine supremacy. Female friendships and vindication of the single woman were central to their way of life, and they also advocated women’s psychological independence within marriage, while some envisaged reforms ranging from trial marriages and free liaisons to modes of terminating unworkable unions.” One of the précieuses is quoted by the Abbé de Pure as saying: “La plus grande des douceurs de notre France est celle de la liberté des femmes.” Another declares that she wants to work for the liberty of her sex and the destruction of the “awful subjection” of women.” These extremely visible independent women attracted a lot of attention, often hostile. The first documented use of the ambiguous catchword preétieuse was in 1654, the Abbé Michel de Pure’s La Prétieuse

72 The Feminist Impulse appeared in the years 1656-58, Moliére’s famous satirical play Les Prétieuses ridicules was first staged in the autumn of 1659, and Baudeau de Somaize’s Grand Dictionnaire des prétieuses was published in 1660.” The next year Somaize produced another book, the Grand Dictionnaire historique des prétieuses, which disclosed the names of numerous women whom the author labeled as “précieuses.” Usually Somaize mentioned

only their last names, without any further identification. Carolyn Lougee has established the historical identity of 171 of them, with a further 80 remaining of uncertain identity, while only 14 names appear to be entirely fictitious. According to Lougee, these women came from

both the old and the new nobility, with a strong representation of both the military nobility and the higher reaches of the robe.”° Most in this quite heterogeneous group advocated female independence in one form or another. De Pure, Somaize, and Moliére depicted the group as more homogeneous and unified than it really was, but their portrayal of the précieuses as women who refused to comply with the dominant standard of submissive, womanly behavior was basically accurate.” The précieuses, then, were women of high social status who sought to

carve out a sphere of personal and intellectual autonomy for themselves in French elite society. Generally, three accusations were leveled against them. The first was that they were vain and used hyperrefined

language. The second was that they rejected physical, heterosexual love; they were sometimes called Jes jansénistes de Pamour. The third was

that they were learned; their enemies brandished the word savante as a

term of abuse. Nicole Aronson has shown that all three accusations rested on a malicious interpretation of the behavior and the writings of the précieuses.”* Moliére’s highly successful play consecrated the negative signification of the term and, by its metonymic effect, of learned and independent women in general.” One of the criticisms leveled at the précieuses in the Abbé de Pure’s book was that they represented a new species of women who were not produced “by sensible and material nature”; instead, they were “immaterial,” “an extract of the mind, a ‘précis de raison.’”® ‘Vhis disparagement implicitly refers to Cartesian dualism. As we will shortly see, Moliére also associates female independence with the Cartesian notion of the autonomy of the mind. The polemics about the femme savante mark the issue of learning for women as a crucial one. ‘The reigning standard of good manners (bienséance) outlawed the learned woman.*! The ideal of the honnéte

The Feminist Impulse 73 homme softened traditional distinctions of rank and order, but attempts

to establish an independent and emancipatory ideal of the honnéte femme did not enjoy wide acceptance.* Under such circumstances the précieuses could hardly avoid being on the defensive. ‘They generally at-

tempted to remain within the confines of “good manners,” and they were reluctant to identify themselves openly as savantes; Madeleine de Scudéry even declared that a woman must on no account be known by “that horrible name.”*

Against this background, Moliére’s treatment of the issue in Les Femmes savantes had a strong negative influence. He was an extremely

popular author who had successfully turned the ambiguous term précieuse into an unambiguous term of opprobrium. Moreover, his de-

fense of the freedom of daughters to choose their marriage partners and of the dignity of women within marriage made it impossible to dismiss him as an old-fashioned, boorish misogynist.** In his attack on the

savantes he knew that he had mainstream opinion on his side. ‘The learned women were portrayed as ridiculous impostors who sought to do what women must on no account do, to pursue philosophy at the expense of their household duties and to aspire to full equality with men, both of which Moliere deemed to be “against nature.”* Les Femmes savantes was first staged in March 1672, even as Poulain was drafting the manuscript of the Egalité des deux sexes. In order to un-

derline the “unnaturalness” of female learning Moliére had hired a male actor to act the part of Philaminte, the chief savante, while all the other female characters were played by actresses; and the part of Chrysale, the slow-witted but sympathetic husband of Philaminte, was taken by Moliére himself.*° The woman who ventured into the masculine realm of knowledge was thus impersonated by a man posturing as a woman. Right at the beginning of the play Moliére constructs an opposition between “philosophy,” which stands for female intellectual autonomy, and marriage, which stands for love and good sense. Armande berates her sister, Henriette, who has set her mind on marrying her beloved Clitandre: Loin d’étre aux lois d’un homme en esclave asservie, Mariez-vous, ma soeur, a la philosophie, Qui nous monte au-dessus de tout le genre humain, Et donne 4 la raison |’empire souverain.*’

74 The Feminist Impulse Intimating that Armande is actually motivated by envy, Moliére undermines her position even before she gets the opportunity to present her argument: the audience is given to understand that her “love” of philosophy is in reality caused by her inability to experience actual love. Later in the play there is a definite suggestion of frigidity, as Armande celebrates “that union of the hearts in which the bodies have no part.”**

The male characters in the play repeatedly point out that they, “of course,” have a body and that it, “of course,” causes them no problems at all.

To Moliére “real” love means physical, heterosexual love. He uses one of the silliest characters in the play, Armande’s aunt Bélise, who admires pedantic learning and naively believes that all men are secretly in love with her, to expound a mock-Cartesian discourse of frigidity. ‘The

not-so-hidden subtext is that the pursuit of the new philosophy on the part of women will destroy their femininity and deform their emotions: Mais nous établissons une espéce d’amour Qui doit étre épuré comme l’astre du jour: La substance qui pense y peut étre recue, Mais nous en banissons la substance étendue.*? Once again, female autonomy is metonymically linked to the Cartesian

notion of the autonomy of the mind. Jean Molino has suggested that Moliére was a Gassendist in philosophy: another reason, perhaps, for his dislike of the mostly Cartesian savantes.”

Moliére’s “philosophical” jokes illustrate the dissemination of the basic concepts of Descartes’s and Gassendi’s thought in polite society. Moliére is fully aware of women’s interest in modern science and philosophy, and he takes for granted that his audience, both gentlemen and ladies, will understand his witty allusions to Cartesian vortices, comets and falling stars, subtle matter, Gassendist atoms, and the horror vacui.?! The women in his play, however, do not engage in a serious discussion of natural science. They are depicted as parading their superficial knowledge in a vain game of name-calling. In a crucial monologue, Clitandre, who represents Moliére’s honnéte homme, explains why he has abandoned his initial passion for Armande and now offers his love to Henriette:

The Feminist Impulse 75 Et les femmes docteurs ne sont point de mon goit. Je consens qu’une femme ait de clartés de tout: Mais je ne lui veux point la passion choquante De se rendre savante afin d’étre savante; De son étude enfin je veux qu’elle se cache, Et qu’elle ait du savoir sans vouloir qu’on le sache, Sans citer les auteurs, sans dire de grands mots.” Superficially this position resembles Madeleine Scudéry’s, but in reality

Moliére and Scudéry represented contrary attitudes within the broad spectrum of bienséance. According to Scudéry, learned women must never advertise their knowledge; rather, they should make a certain sort

of arrogant men feel their ignorance in an indirect, subtle fashion. Moreover, Scudéry herself was widely known as the author of massive and important novels, although they were published under the name of her brother George; whereas according to Moliére, women must never aspire to be authors. Scudéry preferred an oblique subversive language to an open challenge of the laws of bienséance, but she challenged them all the same.”? Coupled with her strictures on the legal slavery of mar-

riage and her defense of the autonomous woman who chose not to marry, her attitude still amounted to a telling critique of the reigning discourse of femininity.

By contrast, Moliére’s sarcasm is precisely directed against women who shunned the bonds of matrimony. In Les Femmes savantes, female learning, the status of the “spinster,” and hints of frigidity are linked, and in the resulting web of sarcasm and mockery the voice of female intellectual autonomy is silenced before it can even begin to speak. Even Moliére’s most liberal standpoint—women are permitted to know everything provided they do not display their knowledge—entrapped the savantes in a double bind: either they could acquire knowledge without putting it to any use, a deeply contradictory and psychologically selfdestructive position; or they would do something useful and visible with their knowledge, only to be condemned and ridiculed for their trouble.” The topic of women’s learning was also put on the stage by Moliére’s lesser-known contemporary Samuel Chappuzeau. Like Moliere, Chap-

76 The Feminist Impulse puzeau was no feminist, but his male chauvinist characters receive even less sympathy. In his plays the femmes savantes have the best texts, and men, especially would-be aristocrats, are often ridiculed, but in the end the women have to submit to the laws of marriage.?> Chappuzeau’s second comedy, L’Académie des femmes, was published in Paris in 1661 and again in 1662; the participants in Richesource’s conferences (including

Poulain) may well have read or seen it. The play ends with the complaint of the learned Emilie when her supposedly dead husband returns, much to her regret, and at once orders her to throw all ber books out of Ais house:

Quel est nostre malheur! maudite obeissance! Et que Phomme a sur nous une injuste puissance! Adieu Plutarque, adieu Seneque, adieu Platon, Adieu Campanella, Des Cartes, Casaubon. Rentrons puis qu’il le faut, rentrons dans l’esclavage; Que tu m’as peu duré trop aimable veuvage.” Both Moliére and Chappuzeau exemplify a new, modernized response to feminist discourse. They have abandoned the old misogynist language, and they admit that women should be treated with dignity and equity, but they marginalize (Chappuzeau) or ridicule (Moliére) women’s aspirations to real social and intellectual autonomy. Other popular authors, such as the moralists La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyére, likewise speak in extremely sarcastic terms about women’s aspirations to participate in intellectual life.%’

The obsessive recurrence of these themes in moralist treatises and plays betrays a deep ambivalence about the status of women in postFronde French society. Neither Molicre nor the moralists engaged in any serious discussion of the ideas of the women they treated as examples. Instead they focus on their behavior, their language and manners. They are depicted as stereotyped, flattened characters, not as real persons. It is against this background that the vast array of feminist and prowoman writings and utterances acquires its true significance. Not

only ideas but also manners and behavior were at stake. It is well known, for example, that Madeleine de Scudéry never put her name on anything she published. So when Marguerite Buffet advertises herself as “une fille de condition qui s’est vue obligée de se soutenir par la pro-

The Feminist Impulse 77 fession des Lettres,””* she is doing far more than just stating an accessory circumstance of her authorship. What she is really saying to her

opponents is: “I am the sort of person that according to you has no business to be around in the first place!” ‘The prowoman authors and speakers were not just playing literary games, as some historians have suggested; they were involved in a highly serious debate about the limits of the permissible behavior and opinions of both sexes, but, as so often, especially of women. French society was deeply divided on these matters. It is no exaggeration to speak of a culture war about female autonomy. When he decided to write and publish in defense of the equality of the sexes, Poulain was thus entering a cultural battlefield with well-established front lines. He would have understood that certain groups in elite society, in particular in the vobe, would be sympathetic to his argu-

ment, while others would not even be willing to listen, let alone go along with him. It is also clear what he set out to do: he sought to dem-

onstrate the backwardness and the narrowmindedness of the antifeminist party by showing that their opinions could be redescribed as “prejudices” in the Cartesian meaning of the term, and, conversely, that the equality of the sexes was a necessary corollary of the new, Cartesian philosophy. His approach further entailed that he had to discard some of the traditional feminist arguments such as the value of historical examples and the belief in specific feminine virtues. But before all else he had to clarify his own position as a male defender of the cause of women.

Poulain Enters the Fray: Philosophy against Gallantry “Nothing is more delicate than explaining your views about women. When a man speaks in their favor, people will at once believe that he is driven by gallantry or love.” With these words Poulain opens the Fgalité des deux sexes. He seeks to convince his readers of his sincere philosophical intentions, announcing that he is going to set forth “a solid science.” Gallantry, however, is not only a matter of method and intention; it concerns style as well. The subject of equality, Poulain avers, “can be treated in two ways, either in gallant fashion, that is, in an entertaining and flowery fashion, or as a philosopher and by first principles, in order to examine the matter in depth.””? Now those two

78 The Feminist Impulse modes of discourse must not get mixed up, for the maxims of eloquence teach that one cannot at the same time enlighten and cheer up the mind. In most discussions about women, frivolity diverts the spirit, so that the (female) readers lose sight of the real issues that ought to occupy their attention. Poulain also warns his female readers not to let themselves be duped by those who exercise authority over them, but to judge for themselves by the elementary standards of “clarity” and “evidence.” Considering that the Egalité des deux sexes was published a year after Moliére put Les Femmes savantes on stage, it is noteworthy that Poulain adds a soothing

remark about the supposedly baneful consequences of serious reading by women: “Pray consider that the dreaded effects of this enterprise, suggested to them by a panic terror, will perhaps not happen to any woman at all, and that they will be counterbalanced by the great advantages they shall gain from it.” Elsewhere he observes that women who manage to get hold of good books frequently have to hide their superior knowledge because their companions never fail to reproach them of “acting like the précieuses.”!° Although Poulain never mentions the playwright by name it cannot be doubted that he was well aware of the powerful effect of Moliére’s plays on public opinion.!” Not only women must beware of prejudice; men must do so as well, perhaps even more. In the Education des dames the power of masculinist

ideas is illustrated by an exchange between Sophie and Stasimaque/ Poulain:

Stasimaque: Come on, show that you possess the mind of a man in the body of a woman! Sophie: Tut tut! You insult us after having treated us with justice. Keep in mind that we have as much esprit as the men. Stasimaque: I beg your pardon; the prejudice is so powerful that it caught me unawares.!”

In Poulain’s philosophy, as in most feminist writing before him, access to intellectual life is the key issue. Poulain certainly believes that women are in principle fit to enter all professions and offices, from the church to the army, but he knows full well that the pursuit of learning is one of the few activities women are not debarred from by formal rules. It is no accident that the Egalité des deux sexes was followed by the Education des dames, which contains, among other things, a modern, Carte-

The Feminist Impulse 79 sian curriculum for female education. Poulain therefore sees it as one of his main goals to convince his readers that the cognitive abilities of women equaled those of men, and that the alleged pathological effects of study and reading were wholly chimerical. Quite the contrary, he asserts, women will take great profit from it, for it is in many cases the sole alternative to an enforced idleness (and, as everyone knows, idleness leads to vice).

Poulain also seeks to allay male anxiety about female insubordination. As we have seen, several speakers in Richesource’s Académie des Orateurs were alarmed by the prospect that women’s learning would induce them to lord it over the men. Poulain’s answer is perfectly gender-symmetrical: “Just as only men lacking judgment will abuse the advantages over women that custom has granted them, so only injudicious women will use this book to preach revolt against men who treat them as their equals or their companions”!> How they should handle less-reasonable men Poulain does not tell. ‘Those men who simply cannot swallow the argument of the book receive two pieces of advice: first, to vent their aggression on the truth and not on the author; and second, to approach the argument as a jeu d’esprit but to digest it nonetheless.

Poulain announces that he is going to deal with two sorts of adversaries, the “multitude” (“le vulgaire”) and “almost all of the learned.” As those two categories of adversaries are also going to be his readers, he projects two strategies of persuasion. The first addresses the multitude: because the opinions of the common run of men rely entirely on custom and external appearances, the best strategy is to show them how women have always been oppressed, and excluded from learning and the professions. ‘The second part of the book will discuss and refute

all the “proofs” the learned have adduced to demonstrate the inferiority of women. With the idea of equality thus established “by positive reasons,” it will be shown that the defects women are ordinarily accused of are either imaginary or caused by the nature of the education they receive. Actually, the two parts of the Egalité des deux sexes are not so neatly separated as Poulain suggests. Moreover, several arguments presented

in his first book are further elaborated in his two later treatises. However, it remains useful to begin our consideration of Poulain’s feminism with his treatment of the prejudices of the “multitude,” the more so be-

80 The Feminist Impulse cause he makes it clear that the “learned” in fact share many of the erroneous opinions of the “vulgar.”

Why the Common Opinion about Women Is Erroneous People judge the world by what they see, and what they see is mostly the surface of things. For example, most people believe that the sun revolves around the Earth because that is what they “see” when they look at the sky. hey are like children who believe that the coast is receding when they stand on a departing vessel. ‘This sort of superficial observation of the world, Poulain contends, will of course confirm men in their dim view of women, for wherever they go they observe the same “facts”: women are different from and subservient to men:

When you ask every man in particular what he thinks about women in general, and if you insist on a sincere answer, he will undoubtedly say that women are made only in order to serve us, and they are good for nothing but the education of little children and the chores of the household. The most insightful men will perhaps add that many women possess intelligence and diligence; but, they

will continue, if you take a closer look at the most excellent of those women, you will always observe something that makes you aware of their Sex, that they lack strength and resolve.!™ Precisely because such opinions are based not on reason but on custom,

Poulain continues, it is extremely hard to persuade men to abandon them, the more so because most women themselves believe their subjection to be reasonable and natural. ‘They never think twice about the condition in which they are born and reared, they spend their days in servitude, and they end up believing that their minds are as different from men’s as their bodies. Generally, the prejudices about women, like all prejudices, are based

on custom and interest. Observing that women have been subjected from time immemorial, and that their condition is the same in all coun-

tries and climes, they assume that it is an immutable fact of nature. In this connection, Poulain makes an interesting comparison between gender and class. “The inequality of riches and rank,” he observes, “makes many people believe that human beings are not equal at all.”!%

The Feminist Impulse 81 Suppose, Poulain continues, that the course of history had been different, and that women were lecturing in the chairs of the universities, pleading in the law courts, acting as presidents of parliaments, commanding armies, or conducting embassies to foreign princes. Well, if such had been the state of affairs from the earliest times, would we not be as used to seeing women in those employments and offices as they are at present used to seeing us in such positions?!°° Moreover, most

men assume that there must be good reasons for the exclusion of women; they never stop to consider how this came about, and they set far too much store by the fairness of the male sex. But men are not disinterested participants in history. In fact it suits them all too well to believe in their own superiority, for such a belief gives them both material advantages and an enhanced self-esteem. When all is said and done, Poulain submits, the laws do not reflect reason and justice; they rather seem to be made almost exclusively to maintain men in the privileged positions they enjoy at present.

Poulain contends that all these so-called facts are nothing but “superficial appearances”: the much-vaunted universal phenomenon of sexual difference does not reflect the true nature of the two sexes. ‘Io arrive at the truth one must go “behind” the appearances. ‘The question is, then, how to explain the present condition of women without eter-

nalizing it. In the first place, Poulain posits, we should not take a starry-eyed view of human affairs, for, whether we survey the past or the present, one brutal fact stands out: Reason has always been the weaker force; and it seems that all the books of history were written only to demonstrate what everyone observes in his own time, that ever since humankind came into existence, power has always prevailed. ‘The greatest empires of Asia

were founded by usurpers and brigands; and the debris of the Greek and Roman realms have been collected by men who believed themselves capable of resisting their masters and lording it over their equals. Such has been the conduct of men in all societies, 107

The best way to persuade ordinary people of his views, Poulain believes, is to examine the historical origins of the inequality of the sexes. He calls this enterprise a “historical conjecture.” It begins with human

82 The Feminist Impulse society in the first age of the world. In that remote age, “both sexes tilled the soil and went hunting,” and there was no systematic inequality between the sexes.!°* Was there no inequality at all in those days? Well, says Poulain, men

noticed that they surpassed women in physical force, and so they fancied that they might be superior in all other things as well. But this did not matter so much, because their way of life was too simple to give such ambitions much room. Those who excelled in hunting were the most esteemed, regardless of their sex. The most salient difference between men and women was that women became pregnant and cared for the babies, which made them for a time dependent on the assistance of their husbands. According to Poulain, the consequences of that dependency were insignificant as long as the families were small, consisting only of a father, a mother, and a few nurslings. So things remained until a more complex form of social organization arose. Poulain does not explain how or why it happened: he simply notes that at some moment in history families became larger, a rudimentary division of labor was introduced, and a hierarchy of “higher” and “lower” occupations gradually emerged. One consequence of the extended chains of dependency was that voluntary obedience was replaced by coercion. As a result, all women and the majority of men henceforth lived in a state of subjection. Thus Poulain theorizes the origins of the oppression of women as part of a broader process in which multigenerational families and the division of labor lead to conflicts over the division of property among quarreling sons, organized violence ensues, and finally some men succeed in subjecting others, in the process establishing the first states. In the same process, organized religion made its appearance, and naturally the men became its priests. In this way, the authority of men over women gradually evolved into the fundamental organizing principle of society.!” Given such a state of affairs, Poulain concludes, it is hardly surprising that women had no part in the invention of the sciences, and that they could not afford the leisure for reading and study. From time to time enterprising women did master the sciences and often equaled the most outstanding men, but as the sentiment that it was not fitting for women to study had already gained the upper hand, other women did not dare to seek their company. Therefore they could not gather a fol-

The Feminist Impulse 83 lowing, and their learning died with them. ‘Thus the great majority of women remained entirely excluded from the growth of knowledge. We may therefore safely conclude, Poulain declares, that the fact that only an extremely small number of women manage to excel in knowledge proves nothing whatsoever against the female sex. It would

be otherwise if access to schooling were granted to those with the greatest aptitude for the sciences, but such a course is not followed even among men: children learn the trade of their father, and generally the choice of a profession is the product of chance, necessity, or interest. Those who are born into a humble position never get the opportunity to rise above their station. Such is the situation among men, but women are in a far worse position, for it is not chance and interest but an almost insurmountable barrier that stands in the way of their ambitions. That some women nonetheless manage to overcome those obstacles speaks in favor of the female sex. So how can anyone honestly affirm that women in general are less talented than men?!!°

The Gentle and Reasonable Sex Poulain’s discussion of female nature now takes an unexpected turn, at least to the average twenty-first-century reader. Instead of a philosophical demonstration of equality, we get a lengthy panegyric on female abilities and virtues. ‘Taking into account the legacy of earlier literary feminism, Poulain’s approach is perhaps less surprising, for the opinion that women were somehow “more virtuous” was a common feature of the genre. We have only to recall Jacquette Guillaume’s encomium of the Dames illustres published less than ten years before. She had maintained that women were more noble, useful, faithful, gentle, generous, and less cruel than men; they were more pious as well, and less given to malice and religious skepticism. Poulain is obviously indebted to that type of earlier feminism. It seems that he has not, after all, freed himself entirely from the tradition of “literary gallantry.”

One has only to pay attention to children playing games, he contends, to see that the girls display more gentleness and dexterity: “as long as their minds are not stunted by fear or shame, they speak in a more intelligent and pleasant way. In their conversation there is more energy, more loveliness, and more liberty: when you instruct them with

84 The Feminist Impulse the same application they learn a good deal faster, they are more attentive and more patient in their work, more dutiful, more modest, and more disciplined.”!!! Now Poulain wants this to be understood in the context of his egalitarian argument, for he immediately adds that these

are the qualities usually ascribed to the most promising boys, those who are expected to accomplish great things. Accordingly, the list of excellent qualities enumerated above is presented as nongendered. Nonetheless, those qualities are introduced in a way that makes them look distinctly like “feminine virtues,” for it is precisely Poulain’s argument that they come more “naturally” to girls than to boys. In some passages Poulain comes very close to the notion of a specific female nature, as when he asserts that one has only to watch the physiognomy and deportment of women to realize that they “display a certain equipoise, wisdom, and honesty that distinguishes them markedly from the men.” Women, he goes on to say, always observe good manners, they never use ambiguous language, and they are horrified by any indecency or obscenity. Women easily engage in polite conversation; they propose their opinions with softness and complaisance, in contrast

to men, who argue in a dry and harsh manner. As a matter of fact, women are more eloquent than men: their bodily gestures and their manner of speaking are always in harmony, they have a “soft and well-

modulated voice,” and “the beauty and elegance accompanying their speech ... open the doorway of the heart.”!” Poulain presents all this to his readers as his personal observations, drawn from conversations with women from all walks of life, in the city as well as in the countryside. Apart from those whose minds have been

dulled by hard labor he has encountered nothing but good sense. Women are not fooled by scholastic subtleties: they are perfectly able to tell the difference between real explanations and empty verbiage. Ordinary women in the countryside express realistic views about the connection between the harvest and the weather, in marked contrast to the astrological beliefs of many so-called learned men. It is true, Poulain admits, that women know nothing about mathematics and optics, but their ignorance reflects the fact that those sciences are discussed only in academies, where women are not admitted.!! But apart from their involuntary ignorance, Poulain argues, women are as capable of scientific thought as men. In some respects they are superior to men, especially to the common run of savants, who hide

The Feminist Impulse 85 their ignorance under the cloak of a mysterious terminology (Poulain is obviously thinking of the scholastic doctors). In contrast, women tend

to be more modest and less in love with their own ideas. Therefore, women have a greater claim than men to good sense and clear reasoning. [his superiority can be easily observed in women of the middling ranks of society, but when one engages in conversation with the ladies in courtly society one discovers a still higher refinement of the spirit. According to Poulain the seventeenth century counted more learned ladies than all the past ages of the world. People should pause to consider what this meant: As they have emulated the men they are to be esteemed more than men, for definite reasons. They have had to surmount the lassi-

tude in which their sex is reared, to renounce the pleasures and idleness to which they are reduced, to overcome certain formal impediments to their education, and to disregard the popular condemnation of the savantes, quite apart from the prejudices against

their sex in general. hey have accomplished all that. Perhaps those obstacles have sharpened their minds, or those qualities may be natural to them. At any rate, they have become proportionally more smart than the men.!!*

Poulain’s explanation is somewhat equivocal. His observation that women need more application and perseverance to succeed in a maledominated society is, of course, unexceptionable, but he seems unable to decide whether the great qualities of the savantes are “natural” or

rather, the more logical inference, the result of their uphill struggle against male prejudice and arrogance.

His discussion of the moral qualities of women displays the same

ambivalence. ‘The heading in the margin of the text reads “That women possess as much virtue as we do,” which seems to announce an egalitarian argument. The examples that follow, however, vacillate be-

tween an affirmation of equality and the conviction that the female sex 1s somehow more “moral” than the male. ‘The example of religion

provides an apt illustration. Women are no less Christian than men, Poulain argues, but then he adds that it is generally accepted that they are more devoted and pious than men. Admittedly, they sometimes practice devotion to excess, but this fact largely reflects the ignorance

86 The Feminist Impulse in which they are reared and thus is no fault of theirs. In particular, the

cardinal Christian virtue of charity comes more naturally to women than to men, Poulain maintains, citing the example of the nuns of the Hotel-Dieu who have renounced the world to serve the wounded and the sick in the name of Jesus Christ. At the end of the first part of the Egalité des deux sexes Poulain summarizes his argument as follows:

Such were my general observations on women with respect to the faculties of the mind, the use of which is the only true measure of distinction among men . .. one will find that if there are some appearances speaking against women, there are still more that count very much in their favor; that it is not for want of merit, but for want of felicity and power that their condition is not equal to ours; and finally that the common opinion [on these matters] is a popular and ill-founded prejudice.!"

It is not easy to pin down Poulain’s precise intent in these pages. He stops short of saying that women are intrinsically more intelligent than men, but he is saying that they generally put their reason to better use: they are less constricted by pedantry and arrogance, and consequently more open-minded. Even so, the upshot is the egalitarian argument that women possess sufficient good sense and intelligence to excel in all the pursuits and professions hitherto monopolized by men, such as law, historiography, theology, medicine, and the other sciences. Finally, we should realize that this is not the philosophical demonstration “by first principles” that Poulain has announced in the preface to the Egalité. His utterances on female superiority exemplify his debt to the Renaissance feminist tradition, but at the same time they are no more than a part of a larger argument that is uncompromisingly egalitarian.

Cartesian Equality

WHEN POULAIN STARTED WRITING he did so as a self-

conscious Cartesian, but he also declared that it was Descartes’s method rather than his system which was of lasting value. Poulain, then, adapted Cartesianism to his own purposes, and we must pay close attention to his reading of Descartes’s philosophy. He was far more interested in the critical and egalitarian aspects of Cartesianism than in its metaphysics. As we shall see in this chapter and the next, Poulain’s approach to knowledge is no faithful copy of Descartes’s epistemology: it is proto-Lockean rather than strictly Cartesian. Poulain’s chief goal was to construct a social philosophy, a subject on

which Descartes himself had not much to offer. The only element he could borrow directly from Descartes was the latter’s epistemological and moral egalitarianism. Next, he enlisted the famous Cartesian dualism of mind and matter in his feminist argument, demonstrating that “the mind has no sex.” To grasp the true significance of that famous aphorism we must look carefully at Descartes’s dualism and Poulain’s reworking of it. We will discover that Poulain does not confine his egalitarian case to the mind, for he also seeks to prove the equality of the sexes in material terms. In this connection, I will show that the egalitarian potential of Descartes’s biology enabled Poulain to minimize the importance of physical sexual difference. Descartes’s psychology in Les Passions de Pame gives us only a physio87

88 Cartesian Equality logical explanation and a general taxonomy of the passions. ‘The theory

cannot explain why particular people are more strongly affected by some passions than by others. Descartes provides little more than some interesting hints about “dispositions” that people acquire in the course

of their lives. In fact Les Passions de ame has more to say about the virtues than about the social psychology of the passions. Poulain, however, is primarily interested in the latter subject. He expands the explanation of people’s disposition to particular passions into an environmentalist social psychology to demonstrate that current differences between “masculine” and “feminine” psychology are the products of history and education, and not of “nature.”

Cartesian Egalitarianism The Discours de la méthode opens with the ironical observation that rea-

son is the best-apportioned thing in the world, since everyone is convinced that he has enough of it.| Quoted out of context, Descartes’s irony might be taken as an instance of an elitist political discourse. The sentence could easily be inserted into one of Socrates’ sarcastic comments on the democratic creed of the Athenian multitude. But that is not at all what Descartes has in mind, for he immediately adds that rea-

son, the faculty of judgment and the ability to distinguish between truth and error, “is naturally equal in all men.” However, some people

use their reason with more application and method than others, and that fact accounts for the multiplicity of opinions in the world. But method is not naturally given: it can be learned, in principle by everyone. Descartes illustrates the point with an example that brings out the egalitarian implications with particular force: Those who have the best arguments and who put their thoughts in the best order, to make them clear and intelligible, will always be the most persuasive, even though they speak only in a provincial dialect [bas breton] and have never been instructed in rhetoric.’ The choice of bas breton as an example was probably a deliberate provo-

cation, for the Celtic patois spoken in Brittany was incomprehensible to the French elite. Parisians looked down on the dialects spoken in the provinces, and the Académie Francaise, founded a few years before

Cartesian Equality 89 Descartes published the Dzscours de la méthode, sought to introduce a rigorous notion of “correct” French spoken by “well-mannered people,” sharply distinguished from the “vicious,” “barbaric,” and “low” (“bas”) language of the provincial rustics.° According to Descartes, a critical attitude to traditional knowledge is especially difficult to attain for those who overrate their own abilities. His language suggests that he greatly dislikes such pedantic and arrogant men. On the other hand, those who are deeply aware of the insufficiency of their own knowledge run the risk of meekly following the

opinions of others instead of striking out on their own to look for better alternatives. Descartes thereupon tells his readers how he managed to escape such blind obedience, although he was well aware of the limits of his own abilities. In the first place, the differences of opinion among the learned demonstrated that not all of them could be right.

In the second place, there was an entirely different experience that prompted him to reconsider received opinions, namely travel. It was during his voyages that Descartes had learned “that all those who have opinions that are entirely at variance with ours, are not therefore barbarians or savages, but that several of them use their faculty of reason as well as or better than we.”* Cultural relativism was, of course, nothing new. It can be traced all the way back to Xenophanes and Herodotus, and Descartes’s text surely echoes Montaigne’s sarcastic essay “On the Cannibals,” which was familiar to every literate Frenchman.*> However, the egalitarian thrust implicit in all varieties of cultural relativism car-

ries more weight in Descartes because it is linked to his outspoken epistemological egalitarianism. Among the great philosophers, Descartes is one of the very few who produced no systematic treatment of ethics. Nonetheless, his theory of the autonomy of the mind, as well as his discussion of virtue in Les Passions de Paime, contains the foundations of a moral theory. In his recent treatment of Descartes’s ethics John Marshall has un-

derlined its egalitarian aspects. That Descartes actually believes that human beings ought to treat each other as equals, Marshall argues, is demonstrated by his discussion of generosity in Les Passions de l’ame. Generosity, Descartes explains, is a virtuous form of self-knowledge and self-esteem that disposes people “to follow virtue in a perfect manner.” Such a moderate, enlightened self-love prevents them from looking down on others, because they acknowledge that others are autono-

90 Cartesian Equality mous agents like themselves. Generous persons do not feel inferior to those who surpass them in wealth, reputation, intelligence, knowledge,

or beauty; nor do they think themselves superior to those who are less well endowed.° Marshall concludes that Descartes’s concept of generosity as the supreme virtue implies a morality grounded in the basic rule “that freedom of persons establishes a benchmark of equality among all human beings and provides at once a moral barrier to their being ill-treated, on the one hand, and moral reasons for seeking their

true good, on the other.” Descartes’s egalitarian ideas display a definite affinity with modern natural-rights theories in political thought. Just as the latter posit that there is no “natural authority” in the body politic, so it follows from Descartes’s argument that there is no natural authority in the realm of the mind. ‘The Cartesian notion of reason was potentially subversive of

the established social and political order simply because most traditional claims to authority could not be demonstrated with sufficient logical rigor and conceptual clarity. ‘This was, of course, also true of al-

most all arguments underpinning the authority of men over women. That Descartes was perhaps aware of this is indicated in a passage in a letter to Mersenne: “If I would say that sound judgment is sufficient to be an honest man, one could not object to me that it is also necessary to be of the sex that distinguishes us from women, because that is not relevant in this context.”* I am not saying that Descartes was a democrat or a feminist.’ But his

critique of the authority of tradition, his epistemological and moral egalitarianism, and his theories of the mind and the body opened up certain possibilities that were then taken up by some of his followers in the 1660s and 1670s, when Cartesianism established itself as a distinct school in philosophy. In 1666 Louis de la Forge, a physician living in Saumur, where he was in contact with the Oratorians as well as with the Protestant Academy, published a treatise on the human mind that was seen by contemporaries as a sequel to Descartes’s Traité de ’homme,

which de la Forge, together with Claude Clerselier, had edited two years before.!° Right at the beginning de la Forge declares that “the human mind is not subject to the authority of any prince.” He further explains that the ability to learn languages is what distinguishes human

beings from animals: dogs cannot learn languages, but “on the other hand there is no Tupinambu who will not, as a little child, learn French

Cartesian Equality 91 as well as we do, provided he is taken to France at an early age.”!! The example was well chosen, for the Iupinambu, a Brazilian Amerindian people, were familiar figures to the French reading public. Their inclusion in the company of rational human beings was certainly meant to shock the reader, since they were usually portrayed as hideous savages and cannibals.” Jacques Rohault, another well-known Cartesian author and popular lecturer, made a similar point. In his extremely successful textbook of Cartesian physics, first published in 1671, Rohault makes fun of the

learned Scholastics who look down on the common people. “Well, then,” he inquires, “what difference would there be between the answer of a peasant and a philosopher when you ask them to explain why

the lodestone attracts iron? The peasant would reply that he did not know how to explain it, and the Philosopher that it was the effect of an

occult virtue and quality . . . Is it not clear that the first is honest enough to admit his ignorance while the second’s vanity incites him to hide it?”'} In other words, a humble peasant has at least the good sense to know the limits of his own knowledge, while the learned doctors of the Sorbonne seek only to befuddle the public with empty verbiage. Not all Cartesians were epistemological egalitarians. ‘Io take one,

but very influential, example: Nicolas Malebranche, writing in the early 1670s, does allow for the existence of learned women, but argues that “as a rule [women] are not capable to penetrate truths that are a little difficult to discover; everything that is abstract, is incomprehensible to them.” Malebranche explains the weakness of women’s intellect by the greater “delicatesse” of the fibers of the female brain.'t Some other Cartesians likewise referred dismissively to “superstitious women,” the “credulous populace,” and the “vulgar multitude.”

Nonetheless, the egalitarian observations quoted above display a certain consistency. What they have in common is an inversion of social prejudice: the Breton-speaking rustic, the “savage” ‘Tupinambu, and the barely literate peasant were usually relegated to the very bottom of society; to adduce them as examples of the universality of reason came close to an intellectual provocation. ‘There is thus an unmistakable egalitarian subtext in Cartesianism, and at least some Cartesians were willing to emphasize that aspect of their master’s thought. No Cartesian was more willing to do so than Poulain, who takes up Rohault’s evocation of the good sense of ordinary peasants but gives it a

92 Cartesian Equality sharper radical edge: “Are there not many at the very bottom of society [dans la poussiere], who, with a slight push, could make their mark? And peasants who would be great doctors if pushed to study?” Likewise, de la Forge’s contention that “every Tupinambu” could learn French finds a more radical parallel in Poulain’s argument: “Popular views hold that Turks, barbarians, and savages are less adept at [learning] than Europeans. Nevertheless, should five or six of them turn up with this ability, or with a doctorate, which is not impossible, this opinion would definitely be corrected, and we would concede that these peoples are human beings like us, with the same abilities, and that, if educated, they could equal us in any respect.”'’ We ought certainly to rate the women who are living with us as highly as the barbarians and the savages, Poulain ironically concludes. Here, he is freely using terms like “barbarians” and “savages,” but two years later he doubts whether it is fitting to use the term “savages” at all, referring to “those whom the vulgar call savages because they have heard them called by that name and because they have other customs than he has.”! What was a subtext in Descartes and several of his followers becomes

the main text in Poulain’s writings. Drawing on the egalitarian elements in Descartes’s philosophy, he sketches the contours of a general egalitarian argument that applies to rank, to “race,” and, above all, to gender. The argument itself could not, of course, be proved by isolated examples of learned “savages” or quick-witted peasants. As a good Cartesian, Poulain understood that particular examples can never demonstrate a general rule. he equality of the sexes had, therefore, to be established “by means of principles”: that is, by a theoretical argument. ‘To appreciate the way Poulain set about that task we must now turn to the much-discussed subject of Cartesian dualism.

Cartesian Dualism I: The Autonomy of the Mind When Descartes declares that reason is “the only thing that makes us human and distinguishes us from the animals,” he seems to be stating a commonplace of European thought.!’ However, his notion of reason or mind as an autonomous “nonmaterial” substance was closer to Plato, to the Stoics, and to Augustine than to the Aristotelian tradition. In particular, the Stoic conceptions of mind, will, and reason prefigure those of Descartes. According to the Stoics, the “seeds” of reason and virtue

Cartesian Equality 93 are present in all human beings, giving their philosophy a distinct egal-

itarian thrust.'* ‘They also have a theory on the predisposition of the human mind to certain ideas that resembles Descartes’s innatism.'? For the Stoics, rational knowledge, including self-knowledge, is the necessary precondition for proper moral conduct.’? Descartes would have agreed on the cardinal role of knowledge, but he puts an even greater stress on the freedom of the will than the Stoics, and his theorization of reason is more radical. Descartes’s opinion on the freedom of the will is extremely outspoken. All our faculties, he declares, have a limited scope; only our free will is boundless. In a formal sense, as the power to give or withhold assent, the freedom of the human will is not inferior even to the freedom of God, although God’s will is incomparably greater than man’s

when one takes into account its object, its power, and the knowledge to which it has access.*! Descartes’s affirmation of the absolute liberty of the human will induced some of his critics to accuse him of Pelagianism, that is, the denial of original sin and the necessity of grace.” I will discuss the theological background in Chapter 7. For now, the important point is Descartes’s strong conception of the intellectual and moral autonomy of the human person. Apart from and preceding its ethical role, reason is the bedrock of Descartes’s entire metaphysics. It is the Archimedean point from which the existence of the mind itself, God, and the material universe can be deduced. Without reason, there is, in a sense, no world at all. As Descartes himself explains in the Meditations, the first positive step out of the darkness of hyperbolic doubt is absolute certainty of the reality of the self, and the only sure way to such certainty is a correct understanding of the nature of the self as “a thinking entity.” The faculty of rea-

son thus represents the very core of the human being, the foundation of its particular, privileged status in the order of created being. In the final analysis the human personality is “mind” before it is anything else; for the mind, being incorporeal, is directly infused by God and will survive the body.

That is not to say, of course, that Descartes is not interested in the body. Quite the contrary, he always underlines the union of body and mind as a constitutive element of the human person. But it remains true that body and mind do not have an equal status in Cartesian metaphysics. The certainty of the existence of the mind precedes that of the

94 Cartesian Equality body and is the precondition of it. It is the mind that first arrives at knowledge of itself, then moves on to the demonstration of the existence of God, and thence to the veracity of sense experience. As ‘Iom Sorell summarizes Descartes’s position: “The rational soul does not depend for its operations on the sense-organs, for it is only contingently connected to a body.”*4 This point is absolutely crucial to Descartes’s refutation of skepticism in the Second Meditation: even if we grant that all our sense experiences are deceptions, he argues there, it is still possible to establish the existence of the self as a thinking entity. It follows that the faculty of pure, speculative reason (not, of course, of practical reason) is completely independent of the body.” Descartes himself never formulated the obvious conclusion that the

mind is nongendered, but Poulain took the nonmaterial nature of the mind as a foundation for his proof of the equality of the sexes “by means of principles.” ‘Chis comes in the second part of the Egalité des deux sexes, after a refutation of the arguments of the poets, the orators, the historians, the philosophers of natural law, and the Scholastics. Poulain offers compelling arguments against all of them, but he feels that these are not sufficient. The prejudices against women are so deeply entrenched that he finds it necessary to clinch his argument by direct recourse to “the principles of sound philosophy”: that is, the philosophy of Descartes: “It is easy to observe that the difference between the sexes pertains only to the body, since it is only the body that is ac-

tually used for human reproduction; the mind only assents to it, and since it does so in the same way in all humans, one may conclude that it has no sex.””° The principle is summarized in a maxim in the margin of

the page: L’Esprit n’a point de Sexe. The expression “ne... point” in French conveys a peremptory denial that leaves no room for doubt. A literal translation would yield: “the mind has no sex whatsoever.” Generalizing his argument to all human relationships, Poulain adds that the mind “is equal and of the same nature in all men,” an opinion that is simply a restatement of the epistemological egalitarianism of the Discours de la méthode.?’ However, Poulain’s argument for gender equality is not simply a reiteration of Descartes’s position: it certainly follows from the Cartesian conception of the mind, but at the same time it rep-

resents a rephrasing of the feminist arguments of Marie de Gournay, Marguerite Buffet, and others in the language of Cartesian philosophy. The pre-Cartesian feminists were strongly inclined to disconnect the

Cartesian Equality 95 mind from the body because traditional misogyny usually based itself on the theory of the bodily humors, which explained and justified sexual difference in terms of the temperature and the degree of humidity of the body. What those feminists lacked, however, was an alternative to the Aristotelian, Galenic, and Hippocratic biological theories. As we shall see, Descartes provided just that. Poulain does not deny the existence of some differences in the physical makeup of men and women, but he refuses to give them a foundational status, because the body “is no more than the covering . . . and the garment of the soul, and its slightly lesser robustness in women than in men does not preclude the soul from having the same power to act and to practice virtue. It should be further observed,” he continues, “that in order to be perfect, virtue presupposes the enlightenment of the mind and a strong willpower, so as to use the body as an instrument. Which properties are found in a like manner in the two sexes.””® In all of this much more was at stake than just the capacity to become

learned, however important that was. Reason and the mind are for Poulain more than just cerebral matters. Following Descartes, he insists time and again that a proper training of the mind is the necessary prerequisite for understanding oneself, one’s place in the world, and the imperatives of morality and religion. Christianity, Poulain declares in the Education des dames, is undoubtedly true, but it must be examined

“with method,” so that we may “distinguish between popular opinion and the true sentiments of Jesus Christ and the church, in order to arrive at a reasonable understanding of the truths we must know.””? Ultimately, faith depends on reason. Here Poulain clearly goes beyond Descartes’s careful demarcation of the domains of reason and faith. Even more than Descartes, Poulain insists on the cardinal importance of reason to attain virtue. Io begin with, he observes that “all the happiness of men, whether real or imagined, consists in knowledge, that is, in the belief that they are in possession of the good they pursue.” All of which, he continues, implies that real felicity in this life can be assured only by “the ideas of the truths one acquires by studying, and which are secure and independent of the possession or the lack of goods.” Here Poulain takes up the Stoic theme in Descartes, who also praised the happiness of the reasonable, moderate man and warned against any impassioned craving for those things over which we have no control.*!

In the margin of the text, he notes: “Que la vertu consiste dans la

96 Cartesian Equality connoissance.” Poulain actually pushes this line of thinking to an extreme, asserting “that one must be learned to be truly virtuous.”* In the end, the argument for a nongendered view of reason is thus equivalent to an argument for a nongendered view of virtue. Given the supreme moral and religious importance of right reason, women’s participation in it can be regarded as a condition of their full personhood and, eventually, the salvation of their souls. In Poulain’s Cartesian worldview, a living being is either in the possession of a rational mind and thus fully human or it is nonrational and thus an animal-machine. There is no third way; in particular there is no such thing as degrees of rationality. Women are not animals: it logically follows that they are fully rational human persons.

Cartesian Dualism I: ‘The Union of the Body and the Mind In the Méditations Descartes explains that the mind is not lodged in the body like a navigator on his ship: the body and the mind are far more

closely connected. ‘he examples he draws on to prove the point are feelings of pain, hunger, and thirst. he mind does not act as an external observer that takes notice of the body’s needs; it is the mind itself that actually experiences pain, hunger, and thirst. Descartes concludes “that I am tied very intimately to [the body], and so fused and mixed with it, that I form as it were a unity with it.”*? Thus Descartes theorizes the body and the mind as entirely distinct “substances” (extended material entities and thinking immaterial entities respectively) and yet

as also united, mixed, and “fused together.” This raises the obvious question how the union of body and mind has to be theorized, and how such ontologically different “substances” can act upon each other at all. It is well known that Descartes took a great interest in human physiology. The posthumously published Traité de Phomme is almost entirely devoted to a mechanistic-hydraulical explanation of bodily processes. Descartes conceives of the human body as a machine in the most literal, seventeenth-century meaning of the term: it’s all pulleys, cords, wires, little shutters opening and closing, tubes transporting fluids and “animal spirits,” vapors and liquids heating, expanding, cooling, and contracting. The construction of the human body is introduced as an imaginary tale about the manufacture of intelligent beings: not real humans but a kind of “humanoids” who will populate a new world, pre-

Cartesian Equality 97 sumably on some remote planet in outer space (this fictional setting is, of course, meant to keep the theologians off his back).*+ At the end of the story Descartes contends that the man-machine thus constructed will act like a real human being in almost all external and internal aspects, just like a smoothly functioning clockwork, without the need to conceive of “any vegetative or sensitive soul, nor any other principle of movement and life, than its blood and spirits, agitated by the heat of the fire that continually burns in its heart, and which is of the same nature as all fires in inanimate bodies.”*> Only a hairbreadth seems to separate Descartes’s position from materialism. ‘That hairbreadth is, of course, the rational soul. It is only by God’s infusion of the soul that the machine can be turned into a real person. The crucial question thus remains how the linkage of the soul to the bodily machine is explained. In Les Passions de ’ame, the last work of Descartes to be published in his lifetime, he comes dangerously close to a materialist theory of the union of the body and the soul. He explains that “there is a little gland in the brain, in which the soul exercises its functions more in particular

than in the other parts [of the body].” This is the notorious pineal gland. Why should we identify this particular gland as the “seat” of the soul? Well, explains Descartes, all our sense organs and all parts of the brain are double, but we have “a sole and simple idea of one thing at one time, so there must of necessity be some place where the two images... can be joined together before they reach the soul.”** This looks like a straightforward argument, but it fails to explain by what particular mechanism the sense impressions actually reach the soul. According to Descartes, the pineal gland is connected to the entire

nervous system, “but it can also be moved by the soul in different ways,” while the soul “receives as many different impressions as there are different movements in that gland.” The pineal gland is here depicted as the early-modern version of a computer interface, receiving and transmitting impulses between two devices, the body and the soul.

The impulses are carried through the body by the nervous system, through “tiny tubes originating in the brain and containing, like the brain itself, a certain very subtle air or wind called the animal spirits.”*’

As a seventeenth-century mechanistic explanation of the body-mind interaction this account is quite satisfactory. A literal reading of Descartes’s explanation suggests a mechanistic-materialist theory of the soul. However, in the context of Cartesian metaphysics it simply can-

98 Cartesian Equality not work, for Descartes has never explained how an immaterial substance such as the soul can move or how it can exercise its functions in a

particular location in space. The difficulty is compounded by Descartes’s definition of matter as extension. It follows that anything that occupies a place in space has extension and therefore must have a corporeal nature. Conversely, a nonmaterial entity cannot occupy space and thus cannot meaningfully be said to reside in some particular place or to move from one position in space to another. It is therefore utterly meaningless to apply the notions of place and movement to the soul.** Applied to the soul, movement can be used only metaphorically, but not as a physical-mechanical concept.*? This conundrum is inherent in the Cartesian system, and no Carte-

sian has ever been able to solve it. Louis de la Forge, for example, largely follows the lead of the master in his Traité de l’esprit de Phomme (1666), enlarging here and there on it, but his elaborations only add to the confusion. According to de la Forge the power of the soul over the body is like “willpower and commands” which are imparted to the rest

of the body through the pineal gland and the nerves, an image of the soul rather like that of an invisible general commanding his army with the help of a telephone operator.*” He further observes that the pineal gland in humans is smaller and more refined than in animals, and that its greater subtlety accounts for the greater powers of the human imagination, but he fails to address the implied analogy between animals and humans: how can animals, being mere machines, possess “imagina-

tion,” however limited, at all? Descartes himself denied that animals have imagination, which raises the obvious question why they have pineal glands.*! ‘The great dexterity of apes compared to other animals, de la Forge further asserts, is likewise to be explained by their anatomy and physiology, which resemble the human body. This is surely a fascinating observation, but it would fit better in a materialist comparative biology than in the Cartesian theory of the mind. The same can be said of his thesis that children cannot think clearly because their brain tissue

is not yet properly developed.” In the end, de la Forge, anticipating Malebranche’s occasionalism, tends to “explain” the interaction of the body and the soul by God’s continuous coordinating action. These contradictions betray a tension between materialism and spiritualism that is found in the entire “new philosophy” of the seventeenth century, and with particular acuity in Cartesianism. When called upon

Cartesian Equality 99 to explain in clear and distinct language how things work, Descartes’s mechanistic physics and biology push him toward the dangerous shore of materialism, but each time he restates his findings in metaphysical

terms he reverts to a spiritualist dualism. Descartes and subsequent Cartesians continually mixed up two languages: the traditional language of metaphysics and the nascent language of a mechanistic natural philosophy. In the first language one could uphold the dualism of mind and matter, but it became utterly impossible to explain how mind and

body interacted. In the second language one might formulate the beginnings of an operational hypothesis, but the better it worked, the more materialist it got. This fundamental contradiction in Descartes’s doctrine had already been noticed by some of his contemporaries. In 1662 the well-known literary critic and member of the Académie Francaise Jean Chapelain delivered the following comment in a letter to the Gassendist philosopher Francois Bernier, who was then residing in India (discussing Descartes and Gassendi with his employer, the Aga Danechmend Khan):

Coming to the subject of books, [there is a new one] by the late Mr. Descartes, entitled De Homine .. . in which one seeks to demonstrate that the human body, and a fortiori that of the other animals, is no more than a machine set in movement by inanimate objects, which pass through the senses into the substance and the pineal gland of the brain; a chimerical doctrine that destroys itself if the soul is immortal, which it is and as the author also supposes; or that destroys the immortality of the soul if its principles can be upheld. For all that, this doctrine has one doesn’t know how many

supporters! How we feel the loss of our beloved Mr. Gassendi to expose its fallacies as he did with the meditations of this new

doctor! Chapelain, like Bernier, preferred the traditional doctrine of the animal or sensitive soul, which facilitated a nonmechanistic explanation of the working of the body of human beings and animals alike, and so avoided both Descartes’s rigorous dualism and the danger of materialism. The lesson to the historian of ideas is that it is probably more useful to trace the materialist and dualist strands, and the uses to which they

are put, than to attempt to square the metaphysical circle with the

100 Cartesian Equality benefit of hindsight. ‘The latter approach can easily lead to a distortion of Descartes’s scientific theories, and, moreover, it implies the assump-

tion that his metaphysics are in some way more fundamental than his natural science.** Recent studies of Descartes, however, underline the overriding significance of empirical research and mechanistic science in Descartes’s overall intellectual project. Metaphysics and natural

science are two autonomous sources of ideas that Descartes forever sought to reconcile without ever quite managing to do so.*’ This explains, I think, why Poulain’s thought, though far less subtle than Descartes’s, displays the same duality. On the one hand, he lays great em-

phasis on knowledge of the body, and he uses Cartesian biology to minimize the importance of physical sexual difference. On the other hand, he draws on Descartes’s dualism to demonstrate the autonomy of the nongendered, immaterial mind.

Materialist Arguments for the Equality of the Sexes ‘Toward the end of his life Poulain admitted that a satisfactory explanation of the union of the body and the soul had always eluded him. In his 1720 book on biblical criticism “mysteries” and “miracles” are generally approached with the utmost suspicion, but he acknowledges that there are things he is unable to understand: “If I admit mysteries in nature; if l admit hidden things and incomprehensible truths, it is because it is impossible for me to deny them: for example, I admit the mystery

of the lodestone, that of the union of the soul and the body, that of the generation of the insects, and I confess that to me there is something incomprehensible in all of them.”** Poulain goes on to say, how-

ever, that he feels compelled to accept the truth of the union of body and soul because he has observed and experienced its very real consequences in human life. When all is said and done, human beings are embodied souls rather than mechanical devices. In his youthful feminist writings Poulain is less worried about the ul-

timate explanation of the union of body and soul. He rather insouciantly juxtaposes the dualist and the materialist side of the Cartesian dilemma discussed above. Having stated the principle that the mind has no sex, he first gives a rather simple account of the union of body and mind: “It is God who joins the mind to the body of woman, just as to that of man, and he does so according to the same laws. ‘The sensations,

Cartesian Equality 101 the passions, and the dispositions of the will produce and entertain this union, and the mind, which does not function in a different way in one sex or the other, has the same capabilities in both.” Here it is God who takes care of everything, from the union of the body and the mind to

the equality of the sexes. This argument, which, like de la Forge’s, prefigures Malebranche’s occasionalism, is, however, immediately followed by another. ‘This time the materialist side of the Cartesian equation is brought to the fore:

This [the equality of the sexes] becomes even more evident when we only consider the head, which is the sole organ of the sciences, and where the mind exercises all its functions. The most meticulous anatomy has failed to demonstrate any difference between the male and the female head: their brains are entirely similar to ours.*”

In itself this certainly was a pertinent argument, for the notion of a gendered fabric of the brain was a rather common one, routinely used by the opponents as well as the champions of learned women. We may recall, for example, Malebranche’s assertion that the fibers of the female brain were more delicate than those of the male brain. Ironically, while Malebranche concluded from this that women were incapable of abstract thought, Father Jacques Dubosq had argued in his popular and frequently reissued L’Honneste Femme that it was precisely the greater “delicatesse” of women that enhanced their intellectual abilities.*° In the previous chapter we saw that de Godonville, in Richesource’s Académie des Orateurs, likewise opined that the spirits that nourish the female brain were more subtle, so that women had a keen understanding, “and the most abstract ideas will not escape their penetrating gaze.” ‘Ilo complicate matters further, let us recall that this observation was part of a warning against the dangerous consequences of learning in women..*! By simply pointing out that empirical observations had failed to iden-

tify any of the alleged differences between the male and the female brain, Poulain demonstrated the irrelevance of all such arguments, whether for or against female learning. Looked at in the context of Cartesianism, however, Poulain’s observation on the brain underscores the ambivalence between materialism and spiritualism. If reason resides exclusively in the mind, the argu-

102 Cartesian Equality ment is strictly speaking superfluous, for in that case it is only the noncorporeal mind that thinks. ‘The material argument, however, depends on the idea that thought is a process that takes place in the brain. Sense impressions, Poulain writes, are received and bundled in the brain, and it is also there that they are stored for retrieval by the faculties of the imagination and memory. The “bundling” of sense impressions suggests that the act of classification takes place in the brain, so that at least some “thinking” seems to be going on there. We may conclude that in Poulain, as in Descartes, the boundary between the material brain and the immaterial mind is fuzzy and questionable.

Sexual Difference in the Pre-Cartesian Body Poulain’s assertions about the absence of sexual difference in the brain, followed by statements about the identical nature of the sense organs of

men and women, obviously raised the question whether, and to what extent, sexual difference could be said to originate in the human body. The bodies of men and women differed in certain visible respects,

so that one might conjecture that the influence of the body on the soul would be gender-specific as well. ‘There existed, moreover, an ex-

tremely influential doctrine in seventeenth-century thought that the passions, and more generally the characters, of men and women were indeed fundamentally different and that these differences could be explained by physiology. The reigning doctrine of sexual difference was the famous theory of the bodily humors. Women were thought to be wet and cold, men dry and hot.*? An influential and innovative representative of this way of thinking was Marin Cureau de la Chambre, a physician and man of letters who was among the founding members of the Académie Frangaise, and the first curator of the Royal Jardin des Plantes.*? Cureau devoted

much time to the study of human and animal anatomy, he opposed Descartes on the question of animal mechanism, and he cultivated a broad interest in anthropology. His major works, Les Caracteéres des passions (1640) and L’Art de connoistre les hommes (1659), went through numerous editions. ‘Chey belonged to a popular genre of writing, directed at a mainly male aristocratic and robe audience, professing to teach “the

art of knowing men” (and women, one may assume), as well as how to control one’s unruly passions.** Although Cureau was definitely not a slavish disciple of Galen and Aristotle, his treatment of sexual differ-

Cartesian Equality 103 ence in L’Art de connoistre les hommes, his most popular work, is based squarely on the Galenic theory of the humors.»

To Cureau de la Chambre, the “cold and wet” nature of women is a self-evident fact of nature, confirmed by everyday observation. No one familiar with the looks and demeanor of women, he contends, could fail to notice their bodily weaknesses, smaller limbs, natural timidity, softness of flesh, and “the quantity of fluids” in which they abounded. Men, Cureau asserts, are naturally “hot” and therefore “strong, bold, glorious, magnanimous, frank, liberal, compassionate, just, grateful.” They are also “dry”: that is, “firm, constant, patient, modest, faithful, judicious.” Women represent the opposite to all of this. They are “cold,” and consequently “feeble, timid, pusillanimous, suspicious, diffident, wily, feigning, obsequious, dishonest, lightly offended, vindictive, cruel in revenge, unjust, greedy, ungrateful, superstitious.” Finally they are “wet,” and therefore “fickle, superficial, unfaithful, impatient, easy to persuade, contemptible, loquacious.” If such judgments seem a little harsh, Cureau explains, we must realize that in actual life women are better than their objective nature because education and custom can to a large extent counterbalance the effects of physiology. For example, timidity may be transformed into modesty and thus restrain women from even greater vices. Finally, many “vices” are “natural” to women and ought therefore not to be considered defects, just as it is not an imperfection in a hare to be timorous.*® Cureau de la Chambre sexualized not only the humors but the entire female body. He explains the form and appearance of women (softness, delicacy, fluidity) as an external manifestation of their internal essence. In his well-known history of theories of sexual difference Thomas Laqueur argues that the theory of the humors did not really explain masculinity and femininity in terms of corporeal differences. According to Laqueur, the ranking of the sexes “on the great chain of being” was not

a mere metaphor, but it was “not just corporeal either.” Both bodily differences and the social categories of gender were part of a metaphorical-corporeal ordering of reality.’ Laqueur’s interpretation is right insofar as it means that the medieval and early-modern theorists he refers to were no modern biological materialists. On the other hand, the explanation of sexual difference in the theory of the humors was certainly consistent with mainstream Aristotelian natural philosophy, which explained a// terrestrial phenomena in terms of the four elements: water (wetness), earth (dryness), air (coldness), and fire (hot-

104 Cartesian Equality ness). [he specific balance of those elements determined the qualities of the entire sublunary world.** Laqueur’s thesis that this theory is, in the final analysis, no more than a projection of gender onto biology is perhaps correct as a present-day feminist critique, but it fails to come to terms with Aristotelian natural science on its own terms. In his study of the Renaissance medical discourse on woman, Ian Maclean observes that after 1600 the vast majority of physicians rejected the traditional Aristotelian theory of woman as an imperfect male, and its corollary, the merely passive role of the female in reproduction, in favor of the Hippocratic argument from specific sexual function: “Both sexes are needed for reproduction; one sex begets in another, the other in itself, and each has an appropriately differentiated physiology.” Likewise, by the end of the sixteenth century most anatomists abandoned the parallelism between the male and the female genitalia. However, they generally clung to the theory of the humors, despite some cogent and widely known criticisms. Woman was no longer regarded as “monstrous” or imperfect: she was now considered equally perfect in her sex as the man was in his. But “her physiology and humours seem to destine her to be the inferior of man, both physically and mentally.” According to Maclean, this view of woman was reinforced by the metaphorical association of women with “mother earth, nutrition, fruitfulness and the fluctuations of the moon,” but also by “the primordial nature of sex difference.”*”

In their detailed study of early-modern French medicine, Laurence Brockliss and Colin Jones show that, while most physicians rejected the materialism implicit in Galen’s medical doctrine by supplementing it with the formative power of the immortal soul, “the physiology, pathology, and therapeutics taught in the faculty schools was unambiguously Galenic.” Laqueur is certainly right in pointing out the metaphorical uses of the humors, but he rather plays down their empirical identification in the form of blood, phlegm, and black and yellow bile.

Brockliss and Jones further relate that the professors in the French medical faculties generally accepted the Hippocratic two-seed theory of reproduction instead of the Aristotelian alternative, which located the active role in generation exclusively in the male. But most professors of philosophy and theology continued to teach the Aristotelian doctrine. Like Laqueur, Brockliss and Jones stress the difference between the

Cartesian Equality 105 Galenic theory, which placed women in the same spectrum of being as men, and the later Enlightenment theories of a polarized sexual difference. Unlike Laqueur, however, they also identify the difference be-

tween men and women as the most fundamental and all-important distinction within this spectrum: “Females were supposed to be colder

and moister than males. In consequence, their blood flowed more thickly and they had difficulty in excreting superfluous humours .. . hence the necessity of menstruation and the disastrous consequences for health if a woman’s menstrual cycle was abnormal.”°! We may conclude that within the Aristotelian-Scholastic cosmology,

with its metaphorical-functionalist principles of hierarchy and homology, sexual difference was explained largely in terms of the physiological and bodily processes that were central to the prevailing medical

doctrines of the times (which are quite different from Enlightenment biology: there we can agree with Laqueur). It is against this background that we shall now look at the Cartesian conception of the human body.

Sexual Difference in the Cartesian Body Descartes’s mechanical-hydraulic theory of bodily processes excludes all classifications of human beings according to external properties. Softness, physiognomy, color, and the like are secondary qualities that do not enter into his scientific explanation. Cartesian physiology thus excludes theories of “race,” and it seems not even to leave much room for sexual difference, apart from the reproductive apparatus itself. The physiology presented in the Traité de ’homme does not discuss the reproductive organs and contains no reference to sex or gender. It is only in the unfinished manuscript of the Description du corps humain, published by Clerselier as a sequel to his 1664 edition of the Traité de P’homme, that Descartes briefly examines the mechanics of animal re-

production. There he declares that the seed of the higher animals is usually a liquid that is produced by the joint action of the two sexes. The production of the animal seed, Descartes explains, “is no more than a promiscuous mixture of two liquids that act as a kind of yeast to each other.” Far from stressing sexual difference, he goes out of his way to emphasize the similarity between the male and the female “liquid”: “And to this end those two liquids do not at all need to differ greatly

106 Cartesian Equality from each other. For, just as we see that old dough can be used to make new, and as the froth of beer suffices as leavening for new beer; so it seems very likely that the seeds of the two sexes, mixed together, func-

tion as yeast to each other.” Descartes further asserts that a thorough knowledge of the nature of all the parts of the seeds of some animal, “for example those of man,” would suffice to deduct the entire form and composition of all of its parts “by means of totally mathematical & certain arguments.”® In the Latin notes, published much later as Prima cogitationes circa generationem animalium, Descartes does offer a tenta-

tive explanation of sexual difference. Interestingly, he uses a crucial tenet of the traditional theory of sexual difference in his hypothesis, namely the notion of the vagina as an inverted penis. But he seeks to explain this mechanically:

The fetus, on account of the sympathy of its movements with the

mother, sends forth a penis as from the back of the mother .. . Hence if the head of the embryo is toward the navel of the woman, while its buttocks are toward the spine of the back, the fetus will

become a male, and the penis will go outside. If, on the other hand, the head of the embryo is toward the spine, and the buttocks toward the abdomen, it will be female, since then the penis curves back toward the navel of the mother toward the interior parts of the embryo.®

This mechanical account is followed by a quite different explanation based on the amount of liquid food retained or excreted by the fetus, arguing that the male fetus is more robust, excretes more fluids, and is therefore drier than the female. ‘This is easily recognizable as a hydraulic explanation of the traditional notion of the dry male and the wet female. Descartes posits that the male is more robust because the spine

of the male fetus gets its nourishment closer to the mother’s spine. Finally, he conjectures that the males will be more intelligent because in their formation the pure part of the seed may be carried higher, but he fails to give a precise mechanical explanation of this claim.“ Descartes’s attempt to explain sexual difference makes fascinating reading. His explanation of the bigger size of the male body harks back

to the traditional notion of “sympathy,” a concept that has no secure place in a rigorously mechanistic theory of natural processes. Next he seeks to give a modern, hydraulic explanation of a traditional “fact,” the

Cartesian Equality 107 “wetter” constitution of women. His conjecture about the greater intelligence of the males represents an unambiguous concession to the prevailing masculinist ideology. Interestingly, it is precisely on that score that his explanation is painfully unconvincing. It is a “mechanical” explanation without a clearly circumscribed mechanism. Poulain had read the Traité de homme, and in all probability also the Description du corps humain, but not the Cogitationes circa generationem animalium, which was not published until 1702. Poulain is thus totally

sincere when he ascribes a gender-neutral biology to Descartes. But he is far more concerned than Descartes to deny any physical foundation for conventional gender differences. Right at the beginning of the Egalité des deux sexes he announces that he is going to prove by irrefut-

able “raisons Physiques” that “the two sexes are equal in body and mind.” As we have seen, he contends that neither the brain nor the sense organs display significant sexual differences. In the Education des dames the constitution of the human body comes up for discussion sev-

eral times, and always in nongendered terms. Elsewhere, responding to theorists who contend that women are “monsters” or “imperfect males,” he sarcastically declares: “Without doubt it is because their chins are beardless; otherwise I cannot see any sense in it.” He does not deny that the disorders of the body, such as a slight rise of temperature

or heightened activity of the gall bladder, can cause horrible mental convulsions and illnesses, but he underlines that men are no less vulnerable to such afflictions than women.® With regard to prevailing medical theories, Poulain peremptorily rejects the notion of a different and “inferior” female “temperament”: That way of thinking pushes sexual difference too far. It should be restricted to God’s intention to produce men by means of the concourse of two persons, and it must not be extended further than is necessary to that end. And so we observe that men and women are similar in almost everything pertaining to the interior and exterior constitution of the body, and that the natural functions on which our preservation depends function in the same manner in both of

them. In order to give birth to a third person it is therefore sufficient that one of them has some organs the other does not have.

Acknowledging the biological differences between the sexes, Poulain seeks to confine them to the reproductive functions of some parts of

108 Cartesian Equality the body, and he absolutely rejects the sexualization of the entire body. Even if the much-vaunted differences between the temperaments really existed, he contends, an impartial observer would soon discover that the differences between men were as great as or even greater than those between men and women. Without much ado Poulain dismisses the “vulgar” opinion that men

contribute more to conception than women; a sidenote announces simply: “Women contribute more to generation than men.”® Poulain’s self-assurance on this count is probably explained by the recent discovery of ovulation, to which the fournal des Scavans had dedicated two critical reviews in 1672.% Such statements are by no means pe-

ripheral to Poulain’s philosophy: he repeatedly declares that a correct knowledge of the human body is a necessary condition of selfknowledge, which is in turn the stepping-stone to all true knowledge. Accordingly, he advises women to undertake or witness dissections of the human body, in order to examine its fabric with their own eyes.°”

A correct knowledge of the working of the body is as important to Poulain as it was to Descartes. Both men gave an essentially nongendered account of the human body, confining sexual difference to the reproductive organs. However, Descartes does allow for a biological foundation of male superiority, though we do well to realize that this comes in an isolated observation in an unfinished manuscript which he did not publish during his lifetime. Poulain is far more outspoken in his rejection of biological justifications for male superiority. In the first place he warns against what we would call a sexualization of the body: sexual difference should not be extended beyond its repro-

ductive function. Second, he expresses scorn for the theory of the bodily humors, putting an extensive exposition of it in the mouth of his sexist straw man in the Excellence des hommes. In the third place, Poulain offers a cogent critique of all attempts to base masculine supremacy on the presumed “facts” of biological nature: “It is not reasonable to send

us back to the animals to judge the excellence of the men. If we hold the males among the animals in higher esteem than the females, it is because we esteem them more highly among ourselves.” In other words, men are simply projecting their prejudices into what they call “nature,” instead of examining the real nature of things, that is, their “internal and essential disposition.””°

Cartesian Equality 109 Against this background, Thomas Laqueur’s interpretation of Poulain is a serious misreading. According to Laqueur, the late seventeenth century witnessed a transition from “gender,” a basically sociocultural category, to the purely biological category of “sex.” Laqueur then characterizes Poulain as “one of the earliest writers in the new vein.” Poulain, he says, “illustrates the turn to biology when an old ordering of man and woman collapses ... de la Barre [Poulain] is committed to the Cartesian premise that the self is the thinking subject, the mind, and that it is radically not body. From this it follows that the mind, this decorporealized self, has no sex and indeed can have no sex. Gender, the social division between men and women, must therefore have its foundation in biology if it is to have any foundation at all.””! But this is not at all what Poulain is saying. Laqueur omits all discussion of Descartes in his book, but neither Descartes nor Poulain equates the “self” with “mind.” Both emphasize again and again that the living human person can exist only in the specific mode of the union of the body and the mind. Far from disconnecting mind from body, they underline the vital importance of their interaction. Finally, both of them, but especially Poulain, minimize sexual difference, not only in their theory of the mind but also in their treatment of the body. Contrary to what Laqueur implies, Poulain does not look for a foundation of gender in biology. Poulain explains gender in terms of education, power, and history. ‘The radical core of his feminism is precisely that he does not look for a foundation of gender. “Gender” is, in the final analysis, explained by “gender”: it is no more than a cultural construction, while “sex” is no more than a particular function of the body. In Poulain, the connection between the two has become radically indeterminate. Laqueur concludes: “Specifically for de la Barre, the task is to demonstrate that the organic differences corresponding to the social categories of man and woman do not, or ought not to, matter in the public sphere. For others the project was quite the opposite. But whatever the political agenda, the strategy is the same: indeed, sex is everywhere precisely because the authority of gender has collapsed.”” In the concluding chapter of this book I will question the general validity of this view of the modern history of sex and gender. For now it must suffice to conclude that Cartesianism does not fit into Laqueur’s analysis. Wherever sex is located in the Cartesian scheme of mind and body, it is definitely not “everywhere.”

110 Cartesian Equality Are the Passions Gendered? According to Descartes the human passions arise in the soul when it is influenced by bodily movements, transmitted to the pineal gland by the animal spirits in the nervous system. We have seen that the mechanics of such “influence” are, to say the least, unclear; when considering the Cartesian passions we must simply accept it as a working hypothesis. Descartes’s treatment of the passions is totally nongendered. It contains no trace of the idea that the passions of women are different from those of men. For example, section 133 of Les Passions de ’ame is titled “why weeping comes more naturally to children and oldsters”; most contemporaries would have added women to these—Descartes does

not. Likewise, the discussion of sexual desire is couched in general terms, with no reference to a specific masculine or feminine type of desire. Instead of the usual disquisitions about the beauty and the “hidden power” of women, the section concludes with the dry observation that this particular passion produces the most singular effects, which “fur-

nish the principal subject matter of novelists and poets.” Speaking about love, Descartes outlines the following sequence: the impression of the representation of the object of love on the brain causes the animal spirits to move through the nerves toward the muscles, enveloping the entrails and the stomach, thereby causing the meat juices, which are transformed into fresh blood, to move directly to the heart, bypassing the liver; the blood enters the heart in great abundance and thus augments its heat; the heart then propels more spirits toward the brain,

reinforcing the original effect of the representation of the object of love, so that the soul is forced to remain attached to it. “It is in this,” Descartes concludes, “that the passion of Love consists.”” In the 1660s, when Poulain was making his transition from Scholasticism to Cartesianism, the new mechanistic account of the passions coexisted with the theory of the bodily humors as well as with the more subtle theorizing of moralists such as Pascal and Nicole. The topic of the passions also came up for debate in Richesource’s Académie des Orateurs, probably during the spring of 1660. ‘The question to be dis-

cussed was “whether the passions of women are more violent than those of men.” No less than six men took the floor, three of them sup-

porting the thesis while the other three sought to refute it. One man opined that the passions of men were “essentially” more vigorous be-

Cartesian Equality 111 cause of their greater hotness and the abundance of spirits in their more ebullient blood; in practice, however, women’s passions seemed stronger because men were better able to keep their hot passions under the control of reason. Another believed, mainly on the authority of the story of Eve in the Bible, that in men the virtuous passions were stronger while women were plagued by forceful “unruly passions.” ‘The next speaker agreed, exclaiming that the passions of “that sex” wrought more havoc in the world than a hostile army. Iwo other speakers, however, argued that the passions were sexually indifferent. In his formal conclusion of the session, Richesource took the latter position. ‘The passions, he concluded, were as violent in men as in women because

their intensity depended mainly “on the diversity of their subjects, their ends, and their objects.” In this context sex was no more than “a simple accidental difference”: “men and women, belonging to the same species and depending on the same basic principles, have . . . the same passions occasioned by the presence of the same objects which operate in the same manner.” Richesource believed that individual temperaments varied, under the influence of a specific “mixture of humors,” but in his conclusion there is no mention of the gendered theory of the bodily fluids.” In these debates the traditional theory of the humors is still influential, but it has become controversial. Some of the participants in the debate voice fairly egalitarian opinions, and the conclusions of the academy show some affinity with the Cartesian position. On the whole, the Académie des Orateurs is probably representative of the multiplicity and diversity of the opinions circulating in the university and the robe on these matters.

The Passions between Physiology and Social Science In the Egalité des deux sexes Poulain observes that there is nothing in physics and medicine that cannot be comprehended by women as well as by men. With the knowledge of the passions it is no different. ‘Their operation depends on “the movements of the body, and the thoughts and the emotions of the soul that are conjoined with it. Women can understand these matters as easily as we can.””

What sort of learning should men and women pursue in order to understand themselves? The fourth conversation of the Education des

112 Cartesian Equality dames addresses this question in connection with the relationship between body and mind. Stasimaque, who speaks for Poulain, explains that self-knowledge is the beginning of all wisdom. ‘This is meant in

a literal sense: the most essential knowledge is not to be found in “ancient books” but by an examination of one’s own body and mind.

Stasimaque then submits that such an inquiry into human nature should start with the body. ‘Timandre comes up with the conventional objection: would it not be better to begin with the mind? Stasimaque’s response introduces the topic of body and mind: “What you say is true ...1f you would take body and mind separately. But when we consider

them in the condition of their union and dependency . . . I am convinced that knowledge of the body should precede that of the mind.” Ordinary sense experience, he goes on to say, suffices to discover most properties of the human body, except for the “animal spirits,” which are

too small to be observed by the naked eye. What we must know, in short, is Descartes’s physiology, although we do not have to master all the details of human anatomy and physiology. It is sufficient to get acquainted with the overall functioning of the fabric of the body. ‘The need for such knowledge, Stasimaque/Poulain explains, arises because many people do not really understand how the body acts as an “organ” of the mind, and their ignorance of the way matter imparts sense impressions and how these are processed by the nervous system stands in the way of an adequate self-knowledge.” At this point Poulain introduces the passions. In response to Sophie’s remark that this is a rather perplexing subject, Stasimaque explains that the key to a correct understanding of the passions lies in the knowledge of the way the mind is intimately joined to the body, and is affected by

everything that happens to it. ‘Io that end, the body should be theorized as a machine that is connected to its material environment in such a way that exterior events can either promote or hamper its preservation. The body is capable of moving toward the things that further its

well-being, and of keeping away from unpleasant and harmful influences. [hese movements are brought about by the heart and the circulation of the blood (Poulain forgets the nerves), and their impact on the mind causes the passions of the soul. Following Descartes, Poulain distinguishes six basic passions: wonder, love, hate, sadness, joy, and desire.” The “bizarre” effects of the passions we so often encounter in daily

Cartesian Equality 113 life, he further observes, are easily explained by the circumstance that most passions are complicated mixtures of the six fundamental ones. ‘Io understand how this mixture operates, in ourselves as well as in others, “we have only to examine all the circumstances, like the time, the place, the object, the antecedent dispositions such as age, temperament, sex, social rank (“condition”), religion, and a hundred other considerations that enter into our way of thinking.” This observation introduces the issue of the social aspect of the passions and, more generally, of all human behavior. Logically speaking, it is already implied in the idea that the passions originate in the reciprocal “movement” of the body and its material environment, for the elementary reason that the environment consists in large part of other human bodies: that is, society. Apart from the science of ourselves as individuals, which occupies most of the fourth conversation, there are also, Stasimaque explains, the social sciences (“les sciences de societé”). When Eulalie asks which sciences he is referring to, he mentions grammar, ethics, jurisprudence, and politics.”8

The place of social factors in Descartes’s treatment of the passions 1s obviously not his chief interest, but nonetheless it comes up a number of times in Les Passions de ’ame. In the first place Descartes observes that the same object can cause opposite passions in different men because not all brains are predisposed in the same way.”? Our habits as

well as our learning capacity, he further explains, influence the way our soul “processes” the passions. Some passions, such as exaltation (“gloire”) and shame, are closely tied to our perception of the opinions others have of us, especially our desire of praise and our fear of blame. Emulation, Descartes explains, is nothing but “a hotness that disposes the soul to undertake something that it hopes to accomplish because it has seen others succeed in it.” Other sorts of passions, such as phobias—Descartes mentions phobic aversions to roses and cats—are caused by the imprint in the brain of childhood experiences, which subsist during a lifetime even though they are not present to our conscious memory.*?

These examples show that the mechanistic explanation of the passions in terms of movement contains the germs of a social explanation of individual character and motivation.*! In fact it needs the inclusion of social factors to function as a proper explanation of behavior, for without them the mechanical model is, so to speak, empty. Interest-

114 Cartesian Equality ingly, this emptiness has strong egalitarian implications. In the Cartesian model there are no substantial linkages between particular types of people (men, women, Frenchmen, “savages”) and specific characters or passions, except for the environmental impulses that mold the “predispositions” of the soul in the course of a lifetime. The impact of the social environment on individual psychology is obviously of great importance to Poulain, given his central thesis that

the so-called nature of women is really a historical product. In the fourth conversation he raises the question of the social influence on character, in a section which is mainly about eloquence and which fol-

lows the introduction of the idea of the “sciences of society.” Eloquence is the art of persuading people, and as such it is a part of the faculty of communication, which helps to keep society together. ‘Io speak well, Stasimaque further explains, one needs to think well, to have “sci-

ence et lumiére”; otherwise we remain trapped in the confused language of the “vulgar.” ‘Io practice eloquence, ‘Timandre thereupon proposes, we must be well informed about the passions and interests of men; we must comprehend what accounts for the diversity of temperaments, that is, the influential examples, the customs and practices, and everything that makes the minds of men as different as their physiognomy. Yes, replies Stasimaque, that is surely necessary, but you forget the most important and least observed aspect of it, the origins of prejudice and error. We have to examine which of them come from nature, and which from society, such as age, sex, rank, custom, and religion, these being the most common incentives of our behavior.* In the Egalité des deux sexes Poulain has already categorically stated that the observable differences between the customs and manners of men and women are not a true mirror of their “natures” but have to be explained by the different education they receive. Generally, he continues, men trouble themselves to discover why it is that they have certain defects or particular manners, but they will never find the answer unless they pay attention to the enormous influence of habit, practical activities, education, and “exterior circumstances” such as sex, age, wealth, employment, or more generally “where one is situated in society.” For example, the same maxim will be interpreted in widely different ways by bourgeois, soldiers, judges, and princes, and their consequent actions will differ accordingly. Most men, Poulain explains, are guided by exterior circumstances; they go along with prevailing prac-

Cartesian Equality 115 tices, and they regard their own station in life as the yardstick of everything else: those who belong to the nobility of the sword are scandal-

ized by behavior that would be considered flattering in the milieu of the robe, and vice versa. People possess the capacities that suit their rank and profession, so that it would be as unreasonable to accuse of cowardice a man of letters who refused to fight a duel as to express contempt for a soldier who shied away from arguing in public against a learned philosopher.*? These and other examples serve to bolster Poulain’s main contention, that it is unreasonable to reproach women that they have not cultivated those qualities and pursuits from which education and social custom continually deter them. All temperaments are indifferent with respect to the propensity to virtue and vice, Poulain further declares, and many notions of virtue are anyway conventional and subject to historical change. If we really want to know why so many women appear to follow a female “nature” in their behavior and beliefs, we should take a hard look at the conditions to which most women are subjected from early childhood. Poulain then projects the outline of what we today would call a social psychology of female socialization. He points to the effects of clothing and daily exercise, the unceasing supervision of girls by their mothers and governesses, the continuous talk about the perils of venturing alone in the streets or even in churches, the persistent inculcation of fear of the wider world. He also mentions the way people look at girls and talk to them, which makes them aware of the importance of beauty and feminine behavior from an early age onward. And look what happens to those women who seek to escape from this sordid treadmill, Poulain continues: they have to teach themselves, for no one is willing to instruct them. With great difficulty some of them manage to get hold of certain books, which they understand with difficulty. And on top of that they frequently have to do their reading in secret because most of their companions, driven by envy or whatnot, will unfailingly accuse them of playing the précieuses.**

The example shows that Poulain’s awareness of the role of subtle psychological mechanisms goes far beyond a simplistic model of straightforward indoctrination and coercion. Similarly, he points out that the timidity and irresolution so often found and deplored in women are no accident: “Women are reared in a manner that disposes them to be frightened of everything. ‘They do not receive enough en-

116 Cartesian Equality lightenment to avoid being caught unawares in matters of the mind. They take no part in training in the art of attack and defense. ‘They have to suffer the outrageous and unpunished behavior of an unruly sex that looks down upon them with contempt and frequently treats its fellow men with greater cruelty and rage than do wolves.”* Given such circumstances, Poulain concludes, timidity is not a defect but a “reasonable passion.” In the Education des dames Sophie, reflecting upon the obstacles to an improvement in the education of women, makes an observation that can be seen as the counterpart to the earlier explanation of womanly timidity:

I believe that we are stronger than we think; and that people who are ignorant of their own abilities fail to undertake many things that they could in fact accomplish. And I fancy that the great geniuses and authors of books were in the beginning like women, and that in their infancy, when they had not yet tested themselves, they believed themselves incapable of what they accomplished later in life.* Poulain applies the same approach in an analysis of the social psychology of honnéteté. The idea of politeness, he submits, emerges from the involvement of men in society. For example, although all ways of relieving the body are equally natural and, indeed, necessary, and none is intrinsically imperfect or contemptible, nonetheless some are considered less polite because they are shocking when performed in public.*’

This passage is probably an allusion to the refinement of manners in aristocratic society after the Fronde. The traditional culture of the gentry and nobility, especially during the Fronde years, was noted for its lack of decorum. Many noblemen took great pleasure in retching, belching, and farting in public. Jonathan Dewald characterizes the contrast between the old and the new aristocratic culture as that “between the free rein of animal impulses and cultivated refinement.”** Poulain certainly valued polite manners and he was by no means a champion of farting in public, but he emphasizes the relativity of bonnéteté, pointing out that standards of politeness change according to time and place. The point he seeks to make is that the gendered standards of male and female politeness are equally arbitrary. ‘This is a crucial argument, for, as we have seen, one of the major impediments to female learning was

Cartesian Equality 117 the widespread opinion that it was “not done” for women to pursue an intellectual career. Poulain’s explanation of the origins of the passions shows that he has come a long way from Descartes’s physiology. ‘The mechanistic model explains how the passions are produced in the interaction of body and soul, but it has nothing to say about the specific content of the passions. The physiological approach cannot by itself produce a “thick description” of any passion. Insofar as Descartes explains specific passions, he either characterizes them as psychological traits common to all human beings or attributes them to stimuli from the external environment, an explanation that essentially boils down to the impact of social interaction. Because Descartes’s physiology precludes any notion of intrinsic, physical differences among human individuals (except for the effects of

age), it provides no foundation for a gendered or racial psychology. The only inegalitarian openings in Les Passions de Paime are Descartes’s incidental references to “weaker” and “stronger” souls; but a weak soul can, he submits, be corrected by a well-drilled and disciplined will.*

The sole remaining option is an environmentalist psychology in which the passions are explained by the life experience of an individual. That is, of course, precisely the approach Poulain takes to explain how women have become what they are. Theorizing the empirical passions in terms of specific mixtures of the six fundamental passions that are produced under the influence of social forces, he lays the groundwork for an environmentalist social psychology. Poulain’s environmentalist theory of human nature opens up several avenues of explanation. In the first place, it leads to an emphasis on the power of education to shape

and change human “nature.” Second, it poses the issue of power, for the characters of persons, and of women in particular, are molded by those who exercise power over them. Finally, it can be approached in terms of history and anthropology. In the next three chapters, I will show that Poulain develops his philosophy in all three directions.

Elitist Elements in Cartesianism It remains to examine whether there are also inegalitarian and, in particular, gender-biased elements in Cartesianism. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty argues that Descartes was an epistemological egalitarian about some kinds of knowledge, but not about all. According to Descartes,

118 Cartesian Equality she says, “any and every mind is capable of evaluating the claims of mere authority and superstition .. . Any and every mind is capable of the Cogito and of following the proof for the existence of God. But very few minds are capable of engaging in high science and high philosophy. In principle, more are capable of correcting some of the errors of high science, and many more are capable of a critical evaluation of the claims of high science.” ‘This seems a fair judgment. Many readers in Poulain’s time could easily understand the descriptive accounts of new scientific discoveries in the pages of the Journal des Scavans, but not a few (then as today) might find it hard to follow Olaiis Romer’s article on the determination of the speed of light by means of the shortening

and lengthening of the apparent periods of the Galilean satellites of Jupiter. The new philosophy replaced the Aristotelian world picture, which could be described in terms of ordinary sense experience, by mathematized and hypothetical models of natural processes that were not within the grasp of the average untrained mind. Against this background, Poulain’s unrelenting insistence that the new philosophy is “easy” and far more accessible than Scholasticism has to be reexamined. What he means is not that it takes no hard thinking to understand the new science, but that the terms of its discourse are clearly defined and that it dispenses with incomprehensible jargon and empty verbiage. Most of his examples of scientific explanation are

of a rather elementary empirical sort, such as the liquidity of water, which can be observed without special instruments and explained by a quite simple corpuscular hypothesis. Poulain admits that it takes time and assiduity to understand the finer points of natural science, but he adds that it is equally demanding to learn practical arts such as tapestry or painting.”! The last example shows that his concept of cognition is

more practical, inductive, and empirical than the method set out by Descartes. In some respects, his explication of the formation of knowl-

edge is more proto-Lockean than Cartesian, and correspondingly more accessible.

Poulain’s comparison between scientific knowledge and the arts and crafts is in line with his dim view of the sort of “savants” who were particularly thick on the ground in seventeenth-century Europe: men who could argue endlessly about terminological squabbles, but who

considered it beneath their dignity to learn anything about the ordinary business of life, and who looked down on artisans, craftsmen, and,

Cartesian Equality 119 of course, “ignorant” women. Poulain often calls them the “vulgar” savants, to distinguish them from the real ones. ‘The term “vulgar” refers to people, usually men, who are so blinkered by their prejudices that

even the most elementary truths elude them. Of all the vulgar, the vulgar savants are the worst, because they regard their own confused thinking as the acme of wisdom. From this, and from Poulain’s insistence on the equal status of natural science and the knowledge of craftsmen, it is evident that in his ar-

gument the term “vulgar” does not stand for the popular classes or the common people. In his usage, as in that of some of his fellow Cartesians, it is not a “class” term at all but rather denotes an obtuse and arrogant mentality that can be found in all layers of society. Poulain would certainly have admitted that not everybody can understand everything, and he had no high opinion of the popular classes in their current condition; but he would have refused to countenance the idea that certain social groups were essentially unqualified for scientific knowledge. And least of all would he have accepted the contention that women as a sex were unable to engage in scientific learning. It follows that Poulain’s distinction between the “reasonable” and the “vulgar” cuts across all those traditional social categories. Within the context of Cartesian philosophy, Poulain was largely correct in his assertion that ordinary people, women as well as men, could indeed understand the new science. The greater part of the new science was experimental, and not all of it depended on abstruse mathematics. As Margaret Jacob has recently shown, much of the new science was indeed in the course of the eighteenth century taken up by people in the “middling ranks” of society and in many cases by craftsmen and artisans as well.”” ‘This trend has continued into our time. In the twenti-

eth century the basics of Galilean-Newtonian physics were taught in secondary schools the world over, to pupils from both sexes and from all walks of life (although the prejudice that boys are better at natural science and mathematics still has not vanished). With the benefit of hindsight we can thus affirm that those who regarded the new science as an arcane knowledge accessible to a small elite were simply wrong. This conclusion is not anachronistic, for the real obstacles to a wider dissemination of the new philosophy in Poulain’s time were not its intrinsic difficulty, but rather institutional and

social factors. The educational system resisted the new ideas, most

120 Cartesian Equality teachers did not take the trouble to examine the new philosophy with an open mind, and the prevailing doctrines of social rank posited that it was superfluous and, indeed, dangerous, to supply the common people with too much knowledge.

Is Cartesian Dualism Gender-Biased? In an influential review of the history of Western philosophy from a feminist perspective, Genevieve Lloyd asserts that Descartes’s severance of the links between a pure, immaterial faculty of reason and the material, mechanical body furthered an ideal of philosophizing that was essentially abstract and masculine. After the Cartesian turn, Lloyd states, philosophy became “a highly rarified exercise of intellect, a complete transcendence of the sensuous.” Although Lloyd acknowledges Descartes’s epistemological egalitarianism, she submits that his “emphasis on the equality of Reason had less influence than his formative contribution to the ideal of a distinctive kind of Reason . . . the sharp-

ness of his separation of the ultimate requirements of truth-seeking from the practical affairs of everyday life reinforced already existing distinctions between male and female roles, opening the way to the idea of distinctive male and female consciousness. We owe to Descartes,” Lloyd concludes, “an influential and pervasive theory of mind, which provides support for a powerful version of the sexual division of mental labour. Women have been assigned responsibility for that realm of the sensuous which the Cartesian Man of Reason must transcend, if he is to have true knowledge of things.”” That there exists a historically contingent connection between abstract reason, the institutional development of science and philosophy, and the exclusion of women from it, no one will dispute. In the same vein, most of us will endorse Susan Bordo’s observation that the dual-

istic opposition Mind/Body has been “culturally coded not only as male/female, but also along racial and class lines.” ‘The effect of such gendered codes is also highlighted in Erica Harth’s subtle discussion of “Cartesian women” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” It is worth stressing, however, that these were the dominant cultural encodings, not the only possible ones, and actually not the only ones in historical fact (as Poulain’s writings show). The moot question is whether there is a causal nexus between the encodings and the inner logic of Cartesian thought.

Cartesian Equality 121 As far as I can see, there is not much evidence that the dominant encodings of “difficult knowledge” were tied to any particular philosophical current, and Cartesianism seems actually one of the more unlikely candidates. Descartes’s philosophy was, after all, hardly more

“abstract” and “remote from the concerns of ordinary experience” than, say, Scholasticism. By his new style of presentation, in accessible French, Descartes put an end to the semimonopoly of the male clergy on philosophical discourse. It seems far more plausible that the domi-

nant practice of male exclusivism in scientific institutions and the equally dominant prejudice that a// “difficult” reading and writing, Cartesian or not, was “unfeminine” have historically sustained gendered (and other) cultural encodings of knowledge. ‘To further clarify the argument, I want to make two preliminary observations about dualism. In the first place, all philosophy rests on an intuitive dualism, because it invokes a third-person perspective on the self. All philosophy is based on self-reflection in the quite literal sense of looking at oneself from an imagined outside position, questioning one’s habitual beliefs about oneself and the world. In the practice of reflective thought the individual asks herself who she (really) “is” and thereby abstracts from her present, everyday “material” self, engaging in an imaginative act of “self-estrangement.” So understood, philosophy is no more than an intensification of the reflective mood of any human being who questions the “naturalness” of his or her way of living. This reflective dualism is not especially Cartesian. Descartes’s fateful innovation was to define the faculty of self-reflection as an ontologically distinct, and unitary, “substance.”% The second preliminary point concerns the religious roots of dualism. Christian teaching always stressed the perils of the temptations of the flesh, and enjoined believers to regard the material body as “lower” than the immortal soul. Coupled to the myth of Eve’s seduction, first by the devil and then of Adam, this view could result in a misogynist theology in which woman was somehow “lower” and “more material”

than man. Even though formal theology usually upheld the nonmateriality and, by implication, and in some cases explicitly, the nonsexed

nature of the soul, the vision of the female as more material than the male was pervasive in the Christian culture of medieval and early-modern Europe. It is against this background that we must situate Descartes’s version of dualism. Descartes’s explicit epistemological egalitarianism, coupled

122 Cartesian Equality with his nongendered view of the mind and the passions and, for the most part, the body, stands in conscious opposition to both traditional

elitist views of reason and to the gendered visions of the body in Galenic and Aristotelian medical doctrine, as well as to the dominant imagery of the sexual hierarchy in Christianity. Finally, the fact that Descartes placed the mind above the body, in conformity with the Platonic-Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul, does not mean that he subscribed to a starkly negative view of the body as a source of evil and confusion. Although our senses can deceive us, and certain “disorderly” states of the body can cause certain kinds of passions to usurp reason’s rightful command, the road to a sane and well-ordered mind does not lie in a flight from the body. ‘The mind, Descartes argues, thinks “with” the body as well as “against” it. It cannot process any sort of empirical knowledge without the aid of the body, but it is often compelled to correct and criticize sense experience in order to arrive at reliable knowledge. Likewise, the message of the Passions de aime is that we must seek to understand the operation of the passions, and in particular the role of bodily processes in their generation, in order to use them as “beacons” for the soul, to “ride” them rather than to become their slaves, but not to annihilate them (which is simply impossible). If there is a way of life that is peremptorily excluded by Cartesianism, it is asceticism.” As a mode of philosophizing, Cartesianism was much more attuned to an empirical, inquiring turn of mind than were most other contemporary strands of thought, with the possible exception of Gassendism (but Gassendi’s inaccessible Latin was an impediment; the general reading public had to wait for Bernier and Locke). ‘This greater accessibility is borne out by Fontenelle’s enormously successful popularization of Cartesianism in the Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes habités (1686), in which he presented the basics of heliocentric astronomy and Cartesian physics in an attractive form, accessible to the general read-

ing public.” If there ever was a man who personified Cartesianism “going public,” it was Fontenelle. ‘The Entretiens consists of a series of conversations between a philosopher and an aristocratic lady, the Marquise. Fontenelle explains that this lady is an imaginary personage who stands for the intelligent woman who takes an interest in natural science but has had no instruction in philosophy. It is significant that he so emphatically includes women in the audience for a discussion of nat-

Cartesian Equality 123 ural science. Let us recall that Fontenelle made his literary début in the Mercure Galant and that in the 1680s Donneau de Visé, the editor of the Mercure, ran a regular advertising campaign for his writings. ‘The Mercure catered to an aristocratic public, notably also to a feminine public; it had a wide dissemination in Paris and in all the provincial towns of France.” However, Fontenelle never spells out the implications for women’s education and the equality of the sexes we have encountered in Poulain’s writings. Moreover, the flirtatious language and sexualized metaphors in which his philosopher addresses the imaginary marquise tends to undermine the egalitarian message of the text. It is also noteworthy that Fontenelle was the secretary of the Académie Royale des Sciences, which excluded women, however learned they might be.!° Even so, his inclusion of women in the audience for natural philosophy is significant. That such an inclusive attitude was by no means self-evident is shown by its total absence from Francois Bernier’s popularization of Gassendism published in the same decade."®!

We may conclude that, concerned as it was with tangible, empirical issues, the new philosophy was probably more accessible to nonspecialists, including women, than Scholasticism, although the realization of its egalitarian potential depended on other factors as well. Poulain may have overstated his case with his repeated assurance that the new philosophy was “easy” but at least we can say that he exaggerated in the right direction.

The Power of Education

POULAIN WAS NOT ALONE in his zeal for learning and edu-

cation. In the course of the seventeenth century the French came to appreciate knowledge and enlightenment more than ever before. An im-

portant aspect of the culture of bonnéteté was the rising status of knowledge, even among social groups traditionally hostile to it, such as the noblesse d’épée.! Even a nobleman excelling in the art of war, it was now felt, should not neglect the cultivation of the mind. As Antoinette de Salvan de Saliez, an aristocratic lady from the southern town of Albi, put it, people had seen enough of the sort of men “who believe that to be a true nobleman one must dwell in utter ignorance.”

The educational system significantly improved during the seventeenth century. Spurred on by the confident, expansive spirit of the thriving urban elites, as well as by Protestant competition and the élan

of Catholic reform, the towns, the church, and the state intensified their educational efforts from the late sixteenth century onward. Literacy, though remaining the preserve of the upper and upper-middling strata of society, steadily increased. At the beginning of the seventeenth century about 16 percent of adult males could read and write; by 1675 the share had climbed to 29 percent. Literacy was higher than average in the northern part of the country, and highest of all in Paris.* ‘These figures should be evaluated in the light of the prevailing economic and political doctrines. Mercantilist economists feared that too much education might divert the people from agriculture and commerce. Most 124

The Power of Education 125 political leaders believed that the common man should not receive more instruction than he needed in his station, lest an “unnatural” craving for social mobility should fan the fires of popular discontent. Education of the lower strata of society was in the first place a question of law and order, and the poorest people could frequently not even afford to send their children to the charity schools.* If learning and letters thus failed to reach the bulk of the population,

the middle and upper layers of society were considerably better provided for. The seventeenth century saw an impressive expansion of secondary education, mostly provided by the colleges. Here it was not the

church but the towns that took the lead. All over France, the urban elites founded and funded “their” schools destined for the children of the “bon bourgeois.”> Teaching was mostly in the hands of the religious orders, above all the Jesuits, but the civil authorities controlled finances, administration, and appointments.® In 1560 there were only 47 colleges in the entire country, but between 1560 and 1650 153 new colleges were founded, and between 1650 and 1700 another 32, bringing the total to 232. By the end of the century every major town and

a substantial number of lesser towns had their own colleges.’ In his history of French education under the Old Regime, Jean de Viguerie puts the number of college pupils in 1660 at about 60,000, two-thirds of whom frequented schools run by the Jesuits; the rest were taught by the Oratorians and a few other religious orders.* ‘These schools progressively introduced the modus Parisiensis, the organization of the curriculum in a cumulative sequence of classes. According to George Huppert, many men in towns all over France valued the education offered by these schools for its own sake and not just as a preparation for the university.’

In post-Fronde France the heightened prestige of knowledge was widely acknowledged. French historians have called attention to the obsessive recurrence of the word raison in the Testament politique usually attributed to Richelieu.'° Louis XIV’s principal minister, Colbert,

proved to be a true adept of the great cardinal, setting up a veritable politics of knowledge in order to enlist the sciences in the service of the state.!! ‘The 1650s and 1660s were peak decades for the founding of pri-

vate and official academies, both in Paris and in the provinces.’ According to Henri-Jean Martin, “a new literature that aimed at being clear and reasonable” became accepted in the latter half of the century.!3 We may thus conclude that the Cartesian enthusiasm for “rea-

126 The Power of Education son” was not an isolated phenomenon. It was part of a broader current of opinion in favor of learning and education. ‘This explains why it appeared so attractive to some and so threatening to others.

The Education of Women The opening sentence of Francois de la Mothe-Fénelon’s De l'éducation

des filles, published in 1687, asserts that “nothing is so neglected as the education of girls.” Although Fénelon’s harsh judgment did no justice to the educational efforts of countless nuns throughout the realm, there was much truth in his observation. By the 1680s overall female literacy was 14 percent, less than half the percentage for men.!* This figure suggests that the overwhelming majority of Frenchwomen received only a rudimentary education. However, the picture was not entirely bleak. In the first place, primary schooling for girls expanded during the century: in 1600 girls’ schools were rare; in 1700 they were common.) In some parts of the country almost as many girls as boys went to primary school.!° In theory primary education was sexually segregated, but poor parishes in villages and small towns could not always afford a separate girls’ school, so mixed classes were quite common in practice, despite all the efforts by the church to stamp them out. Thus the absence of girls’ schools in many localities does not prove that girls received no formal education.!’ Those girls who went to school got at least a basic grounding in reading (not always writing) and arithmetic. The daughters of the aristocracy and the town burghers received a higher level of instruction. In the second part of the century a modicum of French and church history was added to their curriculum. On the other hand what little Latin there had been was mostly replaced by French, so that girls’ schools gave no access at all to

the world of higher learning.'* It should be added that much of the time was spent on a severe disciplining of morals and manners rather than on teaching proper, while the required readings were mostly devotional and moralizing. Girls were also admonished to avoid “bad reading” such as novels and comedies. That was, of course, also the case in boys’ schools, but the emphasis on the noncognitive subjects was greater in the education of the girls.!” However, the real locus of exclusion was in higher education. Here

the gender gap was not gradual but absolute. While girls profited, though less than the boys, from the improvement of primary schools,

The Power of Education 127 the great leap forward in secondary education did not benefit them at all (secondary schools for girls did not arrive until the Third Republic, and full access to the col/éges came only in the twentieth century). Insofar as women received any education beyond elementary school it was by home tuition, an option available only to wealthy families. Whether such tuition would comprise more than a restricted, “feminine” curriculum depended entirely on the preferences of their fathers and, to a lesser extent, their mothers. Against this background we can understand the angry outburst of an upper-class lady from Clermont Ferrand, quoted by Esprit Fléchier, that “the men have wrongly believed that reason belonged solely to them.”’° All around her she could see the new opportunities available to men, but to her, “only” a woman, the gates were closed. Such complaints had been voiced by many literate women at least since the fif-

teenth century, but it is probable that the spread of learning in the seventeenth century, coupled with the highly visible improvement of educational opportunities for men, gave this long-standing grievance a new edge and a larger audience. What we know with certainty is that many upper-class women shared in the new intellectual ardor of the 1660s and 1670s. We also know that their aspirations were highly con-

tested and frequently frustrated or even ridiculed. The heightened prestige and strategic value of knowledge were felt by all parties concerned, and this circumstance goes a long way to explain both the fervor of the intellectual strivings of many women and the impassioned reactions they evoked.?!

When one of the members of Richesource’s academy of eloquence objected to female learning because knowledge was power,”? he was probably voicing a widespread opinion. On the prowoman side of the debate, the anonymous author of the Apologie de la science des dames like-

wise observed that “knowledge is now the mistress of the world.” From opposing viewpoints both attested to the same truth: anyone who wished to be a full-fledged member of society, to become a person in his or her own right, had to get an education.

Cartesianism and Pedagogy Poulain’s impassioned plea for knowledge and education was thus fully in accord with the spirit of the age, even though his conviction that the

human personality was the product of the social environment so that

128 The Power of Education the improvement of education opened up almost unlimited possibilities, and the sweeping egalitarian consequences he drew from it, were probably less widely shared. Yet almost no one questioned the need for educational reform. The discussion was in fact mostly about the educa-

tion of the upper classes, the future personnel of the absolutist state and the church, and was therefore considered of strategic importance. It was inevitable that the philosophy of Descartes would have a major impact upon pedagogy. The Cartesian precept to proceed from the known to the unknown held the potential of a pedagogical revolution. The pathway to real knowledge outlined in the Discours de la méthode naturally suggested a new method of teaching. A Cartesian pedagogy had to employ clear and unambiguous language, to subdivide difficult problems into their component parts, to explain every step in a chain of reasoning logically, and finally to use examples taken from nature or from human society. ‘The counterpart of the experimental method in scientific research was the use of practical demonstrations and exer-

cises in education. In his history of French pedagogy from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, Gabriel Compayré contrasted Decartes with the more experimental pedagogy of Bacon, but Descartes’s method was in fact more experimental than his rationalist metaphysics suggested.”* And Poulain’s method was more experimental still: he reworked Descartes’s epistemology in a more empiricist, proto-

Lockean direction. His approach tied in with the conviction that education could really “change the mind” as well as the notion that the mind of the newborn child was a tabula rasa, an idea also found in other contemporary pedagogical authors. However, this still left open several important questions, such as what subjects had to be taught, whether women should get the same

education as men, and how much knowledge the common people should receive. Finally, there was the question whether education could

really change men and women. Could it transcend custom and “nature”? And if so, how would it affect the existing hierarchy of society?

The Pedagogy of Persuasion At this point it may be useful to look at the educational philosophy of some influential pedagogical reformers in Poulain’s time. I begin with

Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, who published the Port Royal

The Power of Education 129 Logic in 1662, when Poulain was still at the Sorbonne. Next comes the Abbé Claude Fleury. His Traité du choix et de la méthode des études was first drafted in 1675, when Poulain had just published the Education des dames, but Fleury kept revising the text until its publication in 1686.” Then there are Francois Fénelon and Anne- Thérése de Lambert. Both Fénelon’s Education des filles, published in 1687, and Lambert’s Avis Wune mere a sa fille, probably drafted in the 1690s but not published until 1728, discuss the reform of pedagogy, including the education of women. Though presented as a new textbook of logic, the Port Royal Logic is also a pedagogical treatise, advocating both new content for the curriculum and a new pedagogical approach. Like other educational reformers of the time, Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole privilege the disciplining of judgment and the will over the traditional emphasis on book knowledge and commentaries on canonical authors. In their view, understanding the world, learning to analyze problems and to make wellinformed judgements are more important than simply amassing knowledge.”° The Jansenist authors of the Logic are Cartesians in philosophy,

though not in religion, and they are more pessimistic than Poulain about human nature.”’ Many people, they declare, are simply unteachable; they “cannot be reformed by imparting them an understanding of the truth, but rather by keeping them to what is within their reach, and by holding them back from pronouncing judgment on things beyond their understanding.”?* Many of the false judgments of men, however,

arise not from this shortcoming, but rather from a lack of method, sloppy reasoning, and prejudice. At the other extreme are those presumptuous men who transform reasonable doubt about popular opinions into a vain and arrogant skepticism. Credulity and skepticism are thus the two opposing extravagances of the human mind. Arnauld and Nicole cite “vraie raison” as the means to avoid both extremes, enabling the mind to doubt what is doubtful, to reject what is false, and to accept in good faith what is evident. This view of knowledge is not so very different from that of Descartes or Poulain. Throughout the Logic scholastic opinions and the scholastic method of teaching are singled out for sarcastic criticism. “Experience shows,” Nicole and Arnauld assert, “that among ten thousand young men who attend classes in logic, fewer than ten have any knowledge of it six months after the completion of their lessons.””? ‘This sorry state of af-

130 The Power of Education fairs stems from the traditional method of teaching, which is too abstruse and too remote from ordinary experience, so that pupils get the impression that logic is a useless and bookish subject best forgotten as soon as possible. And in fact most existing textbooks of logic were extremely dull and repetitive.*”

In contrast to the hidebound traditionalism of most university texts, the title page of the Logic announces “several novel observations.” Advertising novelty as an asset was in itself a pedagogical innovation, for the overwhelming majority of the university establishment still regarded “novelties” with the utmost suspicion. The new Logic was indeed up to date. The chapter on fallacies, for example, discusses such topics as the horror vacui, which had been refuted in 1648 by “very ingenious experiments” on the heaviness of air conducted by Blaise Pascal. In the 1660s the existence of the void was still a highly controversial issue.*! Other examples refer to contemporary points of contention between Catholics and Protestants. Despite its Jansenist emphasis on mortification and humility, the Port Royal Logic is remarkably attuned to worldly concerns as part of the authors’ point that a knowledge of logic is not only an intellectual asset, but also useful for the conduct of life in civil society. In the second edition (1664), the authors supplement the discussion of fallacies in science and philosophy with a long chapter on the “fallacious arguments people adopt in civil society and in ordinary conversations.”? Arnauld and Nicole approach knowledge in a rationalistic and utilitarian spirit in accordance with the advocacy of moderate, enlightened self-interest for which Nicole is so well known. The pedagogical objective is to attract pupils to difficult subjects such as logic rather than simply ordering them to study those subjects. The pedagogy is designed primarily for males in the upper and middling strata of society. Although it does not explicitly exclude the lower orders, it is not markedly egalitarian either. Likewise with gender. We know that Nicole valued the education of women to some extent, but he was definitely not a partisan of a full intellectual curriculum for women.*? Like Arnauld and Nicole, Claude Fleury was sympathetic to Cartesianism. He had been present at Descartes’s so-called second funeral in 1667, and he was a friend of the well-known Cartesian philosopher Géraud de Cordemoy.** His pedagogical method is similar to that of the Port Royal authors, but his critique of the prevailing didactic

The Power of Education 131 method is even more trenchant. One of the principal defects of the colleges, he declares, is their complete lack of understanding of the mental world of a boy of nine or ten years old. Instead of having him recite only abstractions and formal rules, Fleury argues, the teachers should also use examples from daily life: “studying does not consist only in reading books.” Reasoning is of course necessary, but “experience and the knowledge of particular things” are even more needful. Like Poulain, he sets off the practical knowledge of the peasant against the abstractions of the philosopher: “I prefer a peasant, who knows which kind of grain yields the best bread and where to procure such grain, to a

philosopher, who only reasons about the good, the perfect, and the

infinite.” The prevailing system, Fleury complains, produces great quantities of pedantic nitwits who believe that they have no need for new knowledge because they have already completed their studies.*° That sort of men mostly follow “vulgar opinion,” such as the prejudice that the Muslims have always been ignorant about the sciences. “Most men,” Fleury contends, “apply their reason only within a limited field.” Such people have “vulgar minds,” whatever station in society they occupy, be they learned doctors, ministers of the state, or even princes. ‘Irue learning has to free itself from the shackles of the vulgar mind. It is not enough to know facts and to read many books. ‘The really learned man

“does not stop at the authority of others nor at prejudices, but he probes ever deeper, until he discovers a principle of such natural light and manifest truth that it is impossible to doubt it.”’” Fleury’s ideal of true learning is obviously indebted to Cartesianism. The true goal of education, Fleury believes, should be to forge honest and intelligent men. He advocates a modernized humanistic curriculum. ‘The study of literature and jurisprudence comes first, accompanied by a thorough grounding in the French language. Latin is needed only to read the ancient authors and to communicate with foreigners. Greek he considers almost useless; most boys forget it anyway within a few years after leaving college. Political science is useful, but teachers should not confine it to “ancient examples,” for modern events interest us more and instruct us better. Politics must be based on morality and virtue, not on power and greatness at the expense of the people. Fleury warns in particular against the teachings of Machiavelli and “the Englishman Hobbes,” and recommends Plato and Aristotle instead. His-

132 The Power of Education tory must likewise pay attention to modern as well as ancient develop-

ments, and it should “even” include some Oriental history. For the rest, Fleury values logic as well as practical knowledge about the arts, and social and economic matters. Finally, students should be taught some natural history, in particular the anatomy of the human body and cosmography “following the latest observations of the astronomers,” as well as some geometry. Physics should be based on “experiments” and not on the authority of Aristotle and his Arab commentators.** Speaking in general terms, Fleury advocates instruction for all, including the poor, artisans, soldiers, and women, “for it is not right that so many people who are endowed with reason like the others should be left without instruction.”*? Nevertheless Fleury does not share the outspoken egalitarianism of Descartes, let alone that of Poulain. The amount and nature of education should depend on one’s station in society. In principle, all children should recetve some elementary education, but Fleury warns against the perilous consequences of extending education too far. It would saddle the nation with an overabundance of idle men who believed themselves greatly superior because they knew a bit of Latin. Most of the poor, he asserts, can do without reading and

writing. His observations on practical and economic knowledge assume as a matter of course that the pupils have servants at their disposal, and that they must learn “to understand the language of working men” to avoid being cheated by them. It is obvious that such lessons are intended for the children of the bon bourgeois. In his turn, the bourgeois must be content with the knowledge useful to his estate. Bourgeois and artisans, Fleury declares, have no need of political knowledge. When they dabble in politics, engaging in discussions about “the interests of the powerful” and seeking “to prescribe rules for their conduct,” they only expose themselves to derision.” Fleury begins his discussion of the education of women with a list of what women ought ot to study: Latin, Greek, rhetoric, and “the philosophy of the colleges.” Some women have sought to master those subjects, he admits, but they have only made themselves “odious to other women and contemptible to men” (a faint echo of Moliére). On the other hand, one should not believe that women’s souls belong “to another species from those of men.” Women have “a mind to cultivate” just as men do, and accordingly they should not be left without instruction. For all that, Fleury is convinced that women should not know too

The Power of Education 133 much. What they need above all is practical knowledge to manage their

household well. The “affaires du dehors” are for the most part the province of men, although women, especially widows, must have some

knowledge of economics and the law. Beyond that, they need little knowledge, although Fleury warns that reading serious books will do them more good than the perusal of novels.*! On the whole, Fleury’s opinions on the education of women are contradictory and unsettled.

In contrast, Francois Fénelon focuses largely on the education of women. Fénelon was not a Cartesian, though Claude Fleury was one of his friends. De P’éducation des filles was published in 1687. ‘The first thing

to note about it is that the opening chapters are not about the upbringing of girls but about education in general, spelling out what remains an implicit message in Arnauld and Nicole and a cursory discussion in Fleury. ‘Io succeed in education, Fénelon argues, the tutor should always start at the mental and emotional level of the child. The care of young infants should not be left to “indiscreet and sometimes dissolute women.” The soft brains of little children, he points out, are extremely impressionable, and the ideas and habits instilled in them at an early age often have a profound and lifelong influence. Fénelon’s picture of the child’s mind comes close to a Lockean tabula rasa: “he ignorance of children, on whose brain nothing is as yet imprinted, and who have acquired no habits, makes them pliable and inclined to imitate every-

thing they see.” According to Fénelon, the power of education is enormous, and its abuse can have horrific consequences. He mentions the example of dueling, “based on a spurious notion of honor,” which has led to the untimely death of so many noblemen brought up with the belief that putting one’s life at risk for a trifling insult is the mark of the true gentleman. If education can bring about such barbarous customs, Fénelon concludes, it can surely do even more in the service of virtue when it is supported by reason and the hope of salvation in the hereafter.* Education should be based not only on teaching but also on example: “At all ages,” Fénelon declares, “the example has an astonishing influ-

ence on us; in our infancy its power is boundless.” Children, he explains, are far more aware of what is going on around them than most adults believe. If one is not honest with them, they will notice it and become prone to dissimulation themselves. One should impart to them a pleasurable idea of the good and a hideous idea of the bad, but on no

134 The Power of Education account must one seek to frighten them or humor them: both will produce only adverse effects. ‘The proper strategy is to explain things in a manner the child is able to understand. Children, Fénelon further observes, are naturally curious, and educators should make good use of

that fact. When children ask questions about what they see around them, one should explain to them how things function: “On the countryside they see a mill, and they want to know what it is; you should

show them how the food on which men are nourished is prepared. They watch reapers and you should explain what they are doing, how the corn is sown and how it multiplies itself in the soil.” In a town, workshops and markets offer materials for instruction. Everyone needs this sort of practical knowledge in the conduct of life. Later Fénelon broadens this into a general maxim for the instruction of the child: “Always show him the utility of what you teach him . . . Otherwise, his studies will seem to him an abstract, barren, and odious toil.” Fénelon’s educational maxims apply to boys as well as to girls, but he also formulates specific recommendations for female education. ‘Text-

books of French, or even European, history still frequently mention Fénelon as the main champion of education of women in the seventeenth century. Set against the background of seventeenth-century feminist literature, however, the Education des filles presents a decidedly restricted vision of female education. Like Fleury, Fénelon starts from

the assumption that the intellectual powers of women are weaker than those of men, and he regards their vanity as an innate disposition. His own insight about the malleability of the child’s character might have

led him to challenge conventional opinions about the “nature” of women, but instead he explicitly endorses such opinions. Fénelon also fully accepts the prevailing exclusion of women from the public sphere, and finally he recommends a specifically female curriculum adapted to the customary functions of women in society, with a fair amount of religious instruction.* It is, in the words of Carolyn Lougee, a program “designed to produce hard-working, frugal, and simple mothers of noble families.” ‘The girls’ school established by Madame de Maintenon in 1686 at Saint Cyr was inspired by Fénelon’s feminine pedagogy. Its curriculum was, if anything, even more restricted than Fénelon’s.* Fénelon’s program for women’s instruction does not represent a “moderate” version of Poulain’s; it looks rather more like an antifeminist counterproposal.

The Power of Education 135 Anne-Thérése de Lambert’s two educational tracts were originally drafted as private lessons for her son Henri-Francois (born 1677) and her daughter Monique-Thérése (born 1669), but they also represent her reflections on her own education and the fortunes of her family.*’ The Avis dune mere a son fils and the Avis d’une mere a sa fille are not

formal pedagogical treatises, and they do not contain elaborate methodical and theoretical disquisitions of the sort found in Fleury and Fénelon. But Lambert’s debt to Fénelon is obvious. In addition, she has

borrowed many ideas and expressions from the moralists, especially Montaigne, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, and La Bruyére. She was also sympathetic to Cartesianism, perhaps as a result of attending the salon of Marguerite de la Sabliére, where Gassendists and Cartesians were plentiful.** Finally, it is clear that she had read Poulain. In both educational tracts Lambert dwells at length on moral educa-

tion, emphasizing the virtues of humility, moderate self-esteem, uprightness, and politeness. ‘The chief ideal she seeks to impart to both her son and her daughter is honnéteté. Although she begins her counsels

to her son with an encomium on military skills and glory, her notion of nobility is based on merit rather than lineage: “Birth bestows less honor than it bestows obligation, and to vaunt one’s lineage is to sing the praise of somebody else.” Paraphrasing Pascal, Lambert asserts: “There are real and personal grandeurs, and conventional ones [grandeurs d’imstitution]. One has to pay respect to persons elevated to high status; but it is only an exterior respect; esteem and heartfelt respect are due to merit.” Most people, she warns, care only for personal gain and reputation: they think “lowly,” they are given to flattery, and they ape the reigning fashions. Lambert warns her children that the court is full of such “peuple” (this ironic definition of “peuple” is also found in La

Bruyére and Fontenelle)? With regard to knowledge, Lambert recommends history to her son. However, he should not just fill his memory with facts, for without reflection history teaches us nothing. Generally, she wants him to perfect his mind, but she does not dwell very long on the cognitive side of her son’s education. It tells us something

about her view of the education of women that there is much more about knowledge in her counsels to her daughter. Like Fénelon, Lambert begins her discussion of female education

with the assertion that the instruction of women has been neglected through the ages: “One has abandoned women to their fate, as if they

136 The Power of Education belonged to a different species.” What education most girls receive only serves to produce an effeminate softness, to promote base feelings

and timid passions, and to further superstition rather than religion. Girls are taught to please and to amuse themselves, but they are not instructed in virtue and fortitude. Lambert concludes that “it is an injustice, or rather a folly, not to see that such an education will turn against them.” Every aspect of the upbringing of girls seems to aim at the promotion of foolish behavior, but according to Lambert education is not the sole cause of the deformation of most women’s character: “Girls are

born with a burning desire to please; as they discover that the roads leading to glory and authority are closed to them, they take another path to pursue their goal and to indemnify themselves with amusement.”*° Lambert does not deny that women can impress and influence

men with their charms, but she warns girls that their beauty will not last all their lives: the loveliness of their youth will wither away sooner than they think. Lambert’s admonitions to virtue and a serious moral life offer a countermodel to the prevailing standard of feminine behavior. She is acutely aware of the narrow range of opportunities open to women and of the cultural pressure on them to adopt the appropriate womanly part in a male-dominated society, and she cautions her daughter not to follow that path. This is especially apparent from her discussion of what a girl must know. ‘Io begin with, Lambert welcomes curiosity. On no ac-

count should a girl extinguish that sentiment; what is important is to direct it at the right objects. Curiosity is only the beginning of knowledge; it is “a natural inclination paving the way for instruction.”*! Lambert’s definition of curiosity (“une connaissance commencée qui vous fait aller plus loin et plus vite dans le chemin de la vérité”) is an almost verbatim quotation of Poulain’s Egalité des deux sexes.°* Unmistakably influenced by both Fénelon and Poulain, in stating what kind of know!ledge a girl needs Lambert goes beyond Fénelon but not quite as far as Poulain.

Girls, Lambert posits, should engage in the study of “sciences solides.” In the first place come Greek and Roman history, which elevate the soul and nourish courage through their great examples. Next they should study the history of France, because it is impermissible to ignore the history of one’s country. Lambert also advocates “some philosophy, especially the new one.” This is, of course, a direct reference

The Power of Education 137 to Cartesianism, a subject not mentioned by Fénelon. She also advises her daughter to adopt a critical attitude to knowledge in general:

A girl should have docility and little self-confidence; but one should not push that docility too far. In matters of religion one must conform to the authorities; but in any other field one should respect only the authority of reason and evidence. By extending docility too far you infringe upon the rights of reason, you abandon the use of your own lights [/umieéres] .. . The testimony of men is trustworthy only insofar as they have obtained certainty by an

investigation of the facts. ‘here is no prescription against truth ... Do not judge like the people; do not follow the opinion of the day; liberate yourself from the prejudices of childhood.*?

These counsels clearly reflect the attitude to knowledge found in Descartes, Poulain, and most other Cartesians. In moral and natural philosophy Lambert recommends, unsurprisingly, Cicero and Pliny. It is surely significant that Lambert’s advocacy of a Cartesian attitude to knowledge is found in the advice to her daughter, not to her son. It is clear that she is particularly anxious to impart a critical and autonomous spirit to her daughter. Coming to the issue of languages, Lambert declares that a woman may content herself with the vernacular but that those who feel so inclined are free to study Latin, which is, after all, the language of the church. Apart from that, Latin opens the doors to all the sciences, and it gives access to the best writings of all ages. Many women, Lambert

further observes, learn Italian, but she warns her daughter that it is a dangerous language, because Italian authors speak too much about love. Generally, poetry has to be distrusted, and novels are even more dangerous. Even so, one should not forbid girls to read them, for all prohibitions offend liberty and augment desire. Finally, girls should not spend too much time on “les sciences extraordinaires,” by which Lambert means the natural sciences.** She thinks them dangerous— without explaining why—and not so useful for the conduct of life. In such cases, girls must show modesty, and they must be aware of the limits of their understanding. Here Lambert shows that although she is influenced by Cartesianism, she is not herself a Cartesian. ‘The curriculum for female education she outlines in the advice to her daughter is a

138 The Power of Education mixture of Fénelon’s restricted ladies’ curriculum and the more audacious ideas of the Cartesians. Some common threads run through the texts discussed above. All of them make the point that education is effective only when it is based on persuasion.** Closely tied to that is the conviction that understanding is at least as important as, if not more important than, knowing. Finally, practical knowledge related to the present is valued for its utility, and the traditional curriculum is rejected as too “bookish.” ‘The new ideas about education start from the proposition that one cannot order people into reason. Coercion can make people stamp received doctrines in their heads, but it cannot bring them to see the connections between them, let alone to reflect critically on them. Whether one seeks to get schoolboys to apply logic to the facts of life, to make little children understand elementary ideas, or to seduce the “gens du monde” into critical philosophy, the basic principle is always the same: one must guide as

well as lure them into a positive attitude toward knowledge. Finally, three of the educational treatises discuss the education of women in one way or another, and in all three cases their tone and conclusions are ambiguous. They admit women to the realm of knowledge, but not on equal terms with men.

The philosophical assumption underpinning the pedagogy of persuasion is the Cartesian notion of clear and distinct ideas: the conviction that everyone will recognize the truth when it is expressed in a transparent language. In Descartes, this was a stringent philosophical concept that he put to a quite specific use, but in the texts we have reviewed it has a more commonsense meaning, which is plainly polemical: if one does not take the trouble to express oneself in clear language,

one will not be listened to. Education, all the authors believe, should further knowledge and intelligence, not prejudices and pedantry. ‘They agree that the authority of a good teacher is necessary, but they warn that it can work only if pupils are allowed, indeed encouraged, to think for themselves.

Poulain’s Ideas on Education At the beginning of the Education des dames Poulain explains that he does not wish to credit the idea of a specifically feminine pedagogy. The educational program he is going to present will be “no less useful for men, just as the treatises addressed to a male audience are equally

The Power of Education 139 useful for women, because there is only one method to instruct both sexes.”°® Most people believe, Poulain continues, that education is the art of rearing and teaching children, but it should actually be taken in a broader sense, because we are still learning new things when we have reached adulthood. Moreover, since the quality of education depends

chiefly on the teachers, the best starting point is the formation of teachers. What Poulain proposes is thus an instruction course for future teachers in girls’ schools, “maistresses” as he calls them. The Education des dames, he announces, is the first installment of a larger work, the second part of which will discuss the education of children (the second part never materialized).*’

Nonetheless, Poulain offers some interesting observations on the situation of young children. Pray consider, he says, our condition when

we are newborns: we are “like strangers deposited by the sea on the shores of a new world of which we know nothing, neither the things found there, nor the peoples living there, nor the language they speak, nor the laws they obey.”** Confronted with this bewildering new world,

the child will follow the erratic path of the imagination, leaving it in a perpetual state of wonder, prone to ever new impressions and unable to form solid judgments. Moreover, because the child’s mind is closely joined to the body, its

mental development will in large part be determined by its bodily needs. This circumstance, Poulain explains, accounts for much of what follows. During childhood we cannot obtain the necessities of life without the assistance of those who take care of us. As a consequence “the idea of those necessities becomes joined to that of those persons in such an intimate fashion that the two become inseparable; and the need for nourishment, for example, does not revive in the child the image of the breasts which supply it without at the same time calling forth the image of the woman who proffers them.” In the end, identification with the parents becomes so strong that they acquire an “absolute authority” over the minds of their children: “their passions and their judgments come to govern ours in everything.” What identification and dependence have not yet accomplished is achieved by threats and promises, rewards and punishments. The deference people show for their superiors in adult life, Poulain concludes, is no more than an “emanation” of the “blind submission” to parental authority acquired in early childhood.°?

What Poulain is saying about the impressionability of young chil-

140 The Power of Education dren is not so different from Fénelon’s analysis, but whereas Fénelon highlights the good use the educator should make of the malleability of the child’s mind, Poulain worries about its harmful consequences. ‘The education most children receive breeds a habit of blind submission to authority. It produces people who “act on the basis of memory instead of trusting their judgment.” Such people may behave in a morally acceptable manner, but “their virtue is a virtue of fashion, a virtue of imitation, an apish virtue of the theater.”®° Fénelon recommends an educa-

tion along fairly traditional lines, with a heavy emphasis on Catholic doctrine and morals, while Poulain stresses the importance of critical thinking. They agree on a pedagogy of persuasion, but their objectives are quite different. Fénelon seeks to produce well-adjusted personalities who will submit to authority, while Poulain’s goal is the autonomous individual who obeys authority because he or she believes it reasonable and useful to do so.

Poulain intensely dislikes the prevailing educational culture. Students are brought up to regard their professors as infallible oracles, they adapt to the system, and they become professors in their turn; and so the same outworn dogmas perpetuate themselves from generation to

generation. Most people fall in with this way of thinking, and thus come to believe that every novelty is monstrous and ought to be stamped out as soon as it appears. A contributing psychological factor

is a sort of false politeness, a reluctance to say “shocking” things in front of others, nourished by the fear of finding oneself at odds with the majority.°!

What! asks ‘Timandre, do you really mean to say that one should reject all “opinion”? Yes, absolutely, replies Stasimaque/Poulain. Sooner or later you will have to take that step; otherwise you will have no profit at all from your studies. Stasimaque reminds his interlocutors that he himself was forced to recommence from scratch when it had finally dawned upon him that most of what he believed to “know” was actually

worthless. Thus Poulain turns the philosophical concept of radical doubt into an educational strategy. For Descartes, methodical doubt was an intermediate step in a definite chain of reasoning. In Poulain it becomes something quite different. On the one hand, he is nowhere as concerned as Descartes about the proof of the existence of the exterior world. But on the other hand, he calls for a lifelong radical skepticism toward the opinions of others, including parents and teachers. In order

The Power of Education 141 to benefit from one’s application to one’s studies, Poulain urges future students, one should not believe one’s masters to begin with. Likewise,

some people believe everything they read in travel books, but it is better to visit foreign lands oneself. Like the pedagogues surveyed above, Poulain believes that prejudices stand in the way of a good education. But his attack on received opinion is far more radical. For Poulain, a good education is before all else a training in criticism: the esprit de critique is the single most impor-

tant stepping-stone to real knowledge. He compares the situation in the sciences unfavorably with that in the mechanical arts: “How do you

think pupils could be instructed by their teachers, and equal and surpass them, such as happens all the time in the mechanical arts, and as it ought likewise to happen in the sciences . . . lest we recognize . . . that we must use our own understanding to be able to judge what is taught

us, to discover the errors therein . . . and finally to improve things by adding our discoveries to those handed down to us.”® Poulain’s pedagogy is predicated on the conviction that knowledge is in flux, that it is

not a static storehouse of facts and opinions established once and for

all. A good education should thus offer more than a large fund of knowledge: its most precious asset is precisely that it fosters the competence to identify errors and therewith to expand and deepen knowledge. Conversely, there is nothing so pernicious as a false humility that enfeebles the mind and reduces it to a spineless plaything of others. ‘To drive home the supreme importance of intellectual autonomy, Stasimaque/Poulain repeatedly insists on the necessity to go it alone, to dare to defy the opinions of the great majority, even if there are men of authority and renown among them. Eulalie then objects that it is frequently advantageous to examine things together, instead of on your own: “Conversation,” she proposes, “opens the mind, one man views a topic from one side, another from the other side, everyone contributes what he knows about it .. . and so men give each other the occasion to notice important truths that might have eluded a single man in his cabinet.” Stasimaque explains that he meant to say that one should always verify a train of thought for oneself, not that one should actually shun the company of others. His aversion to groups, he explains, pertains only to large assemblies, “where passion is always at work.” He is all for

conferences and discussion, provided they take place in a small company of three or four persons who engage in a sincere search for the

142 The Power of Education truth: “It is certain,” he agrees with Eulalie, “that by means of that sort of conversations we shall make far more progress than if we proceeded in a solitary fashion.”® Only two years before, the editor of the Journal des Scavans had voiced the same opinion, pointing out that there now existed means of communication among learned men all over Europe, so that they could accomplish in little time what used to take centu-

ries. ‘To the traditional pedagogical ideal of a passive transmission of knowledge from one generation to another, Poulain opposes a dynamic, dialogic model of education. ‘This model also clearly shapes his

attitude toward Latin. At the present time, Poulain observes, women are excluded from the civil and ecclesiastical offices for which Latin and

Greek are needed, so why should they spend years and years of study on those languages? His remark occasions the following exchange: What! exclaimed Eulalie, you really mean that we could acquire the finest knowledge without learning Latin or Greek? You can, Stasimaque replied, by means of French books. ... Actually, Sophie declared, I have here French translations of most of the Latin authors. And what is more, Stasimaque continued, we have modern authors who are as excellent as the ancients, both in style and in content.°’

Some authors had published Latin grammars in French in the 1640s, and virtually all the important champions of educational reform endorsed this practice, along with better training in French grammar.® In 1672 Poulain himself had published a little tract on translation. So he was clearly interested in the question. Poulain may also have been inspired by the polymath and purveyor of “universal science” Charles Sorel, who in 1664 published his Bzblio-

theque francoise, an annotated reading guide (perhaps the first in its genre) for those who wanted to acquire learning without the use of Latin and Greek.” ‘Though no feminist, Sorel pointed out that his approach would be of great utility in the “instruction of the ladies.””° He scorned the men of the old school who believed themselves learned because they had Greek and Latin, reserving his praise for philosophers who blazed new trails, like Descartes and Mersenne. The Journal des Scavans welcomed the book and observed that henceforth it would be

The Power of Education 143 possible to “become learned” without Greek or Latin.”! Sorel himself, however, declared that he wanted to do more than just make accessible

Latin books to a wider public. He pointed out that it was no longer possible to become a well-informed, all-round savant without reading French books, because much of the newest knowledge was available only in French.” Like Poulain, Sorel presents a dynamic view of knowledge, replacing the timeless canon of the classics with the latest contributions of contemporary authors.

The ‘Truth Has No Sex The truth, Timandre declares in the First Conversation of the Education des dames, is the eldest daughter of nature, which has granted her beauty and grace to be adored by all men. “If I were a man,” Eulalie responds, “I would love to see that lady become the first and the paragon of my mistresses.” Stasimaque/Poulain then asserts that she can pursue the truth on the same footing as any man. ‘To that end, he has the truth engage in a double cross-dressing operation. The truth, he explains, “is

a man to the women, and a woman to the men, without any of the inconveniences the two sexes have for each other.” Poulain is here consciously subverting the time-honored allegory that pictured the truth as a female figure, to be conquered and penetrated by the male philosopher.

Not a few of Poulain’s contemporaries believed that the search for the truth was a potentially unhealthy endeavor, especially for women. Is it not a well-attested fact, Timandre says at the beginning of the First Conversation, that meditation and study readily occasion a withering of the body: the heart contracts, the imagination lags, the eyes darken, the face becomes pale and somber. Women, ‘Timandre concludes, are

of a more delicate temperament than men, so that they are more susceptible to these deleterious effects. Sophie, disregarding the argument about female delicacy, replies that she has met quite a number of learned women and men who are healthy and civilized persons, among them Timandre himself. You are too polite, ‘Timandre replies; if you would enter our schools you would soon think yourself stranded in a land of barbarians and savages. Stasimaque now joins in the argument, declaring that Timandre may well be right, given the unhealthy conditions currently prevailing in the schools.” Later on he suggests that the participation of women will have a sal-

144 The Power of Education utary effect on the rude manners of the male savants, and also that female competition will induce “a noble emulation in the heart of all men.” Fearing to be surpassed by women in a field in which they vainly believe to be advantaged by nature, they will double their efforts to perfect the sciences. Stasimaque’s first argument we have met before; it harks back to the ideal of the feminine virtues. The second argument, however, points to a utilitarian logic. In fact the utility of women’s learning, both for themselves and for society at large, is a recurring argument in Poulain’s work. Just like men, he says, women need knowledge, both for their salvation in the afterlife and for their conduct in society. Sophie agrees, comparing the enduring joys of knowledge with the transient pleasures of the body, which are no more than a tempo-

rary “diminution of pain” (a Stoic commonplace). If women are at present frequently distracted and melancholic, it is because they are deprived of knowledge and forced to waste their time in trivial pursuits, Eulalie interjects. If women received good instruction, she further con-

tends, “marriages would be improved, families better governed, and children better educated.”” The last remark should not be taken to imply that Poulain seeks chiefly to produce better mothers and housewives. We will soon see that this is not the case. Meanwhile, let us pursue the issue of utility a little further, for the conversation continues in an interesting direction. This time it is Timandre who gives the discussion a practical turn. What one might do to facilitate matters, he proposes, is to arrange things in such a way that there will be schoolmistresses perfectly instructed in the sciences; they will teach the young girls, and they can also train governesses. Yes, Sophie agrees, and that makes me think of another possibility: many girls are placed in convents: now what would prevent us from having the nuns instructed so that they could teach the girls, as well as other nuns who would then become schoolmistresses in

their turn?’ That should not be too difficult, Timandre says; we need only some persons of good standing to start along this road and a convent that is willing to organize things. In the Egalité des deux sexes, Poulain has already explained that the simplest and most natural use women can make of knowledge is to teach it to others: “If women had studied in the universities, together with men, or in universities specially created for them, they could take a degree and acquire the title of doctor, and master in theology or medicine, or in one of the two

The Power of Education 145 branches of the law: and their disposition to learning would also give them the aptitude to teach successfully.””?7 Only one task remains, Timandre says, summing up the entire discussion about the reorganization of education: somebody should write two books, one for the instruction of the schoolmistresses and another about how to teach young children in the right manner. ‘The Education des dames, we may safely assume, is a model for the first of these textbooks; the second is the one Poulain projected but never wrote.

What Subjects Should Women (and Men) Study? In the final part of the Education, Poulain outlines a curriculum for the education of women, emphasizing that it is in no way a “ladies’ curriculum.” The best subject to start with, Poulain believes, is geometry, not to make a prolonged study of, but to train the mind. Geometry is about figures and proportions, which are as a rule not the object of our prejudices: it is therefore very suitable to acquire the habit of considering a rational argument apart from any human authority.”* The next subject is grammar. Poulain was planning to write a book on the foundations of

the French language (which he never did),” but in the meantime he recommended the Grammaire raisonnée. This is undoubtedly the socalled Grammaire de Port Royal, published in 1660 by Claude Lancelot

in collaboration with Antoine Arnauld. Its full title was Grammaire générale et raisonnée, contenant les fondemens de Vart de parler expliques Wune maniere claire et naturelle. Lancelot’s grammar was far more than a

textbook of French usage: it discussed phonetics, grammar, semantics, and syntax. It came as close to a general introduction to linguistics as the seventeenth century produced.*° Linguistics was to be followed by logic, for which Poulain recommended the Port Royal Logic, discussed above.

Then comes philosophy. Not surprisingly, Poulain advises women to begin with Descartes. They should first read the Discours de la méthode, and then the more demanding Meditations métaphysiques. ‘Vhereafter

they can proceed to Géraud de Cordemoy’s treatise on the union of the body and the soul, Le Discernement du corps de aime en six discours,

first published in 1666. In this work Cordemoy partly accepted the atomistic hypothesis as well as the existence of the void in order to give a more satisfactory account than Descartes of the substantiality of mat-

146 The Power of Education ter.*! Some Cartesians were disturbed by Cordemoy’s departure from the master’s teachings. His inclusion in Poulain’s reading list indicates that the latter was not a slavish mouthpiece of Descartes. Poulain’s list continues with the fourth part of Jacques Rohault’s Traité de physique (1671), dealing with human and animal physiology. Next comes Descartes’s 1664 Traité de Phomme, with commentary by Louis de la Forge and edited by Claude Clerselier.*? De la Forge’s remarks chiefly concerned details of Descartes’s physiology. Poulain recommends further

study of the subject in de la Forge’s Traité de esprit de Phomme (first published in 1666). Next one should study Descartes’s Passions de l’ame,

along with Cureau de la Chambre’s treatise on the same subject (Poulain does not give a title, but he is surely referring to Les Caractéres des passions, a multivolume work published from 1640 to 1662). The inclusion of Cureau de la Chambre may seem surprising, given that he defended a fairly traditional, gendered theory of the passions. Poulain, however, recommends the book for its style and its “curious observations.”*> What he appreciated in Cureau was probably the colorful phenomenology of the passions, the descriptions of their waxing and waning and the concomitant changes in physiognomy and bodily sensations.™*

Next Poulain recommends the three first sections of Rohault’s textbook of physics, followed by Descartes’s Principes de la philosophie, which

after restating Descartes’s metaphysics and epistemology focuses chiefly on physics and astronomy. The Principes contain Descartes’s astronomy and his hypothetical theory of the origins of the stars, the solar system, and the Earth. It would also be a good idea, Poulain cont-

inues, to read Descartes’s correspondence with Queen Christina of Sweden and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia: “In those letters you will discover that he deemed women not incapable of the most exalted sci-

ences.” Poulain declines to offer a reading list on history and theology, because doing so would take too long. He only observes that all sound theology is based chiefly on the New ‘Testament: one cannot begin reading it too soon. There are, he adds, several French translations among which to choose.* Poulain here echoes Jansenist and Protestant views, for mainstream Catholic opinion was extremely reluctant to permit laymen, let alone women, to engage in unsupervised reading of the Bible.*” On other topics only a few hints are provided. Some knowledge

The Power of Education 147 of the principles of jurisprudence will come in handy, so one might have a look at the French translation of the Institutions of Justinian. The books on rhetoric are not so useful, Poulain warns, but if one wishes to learn something about the subject, there are French translations of the

major treatises on rhetoric by Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. According to Poulain, political science is not very difficult, but he gives no titles.

Finally he proposes that after the study of Descartes it might be useful to take a look at “vulgar philosophy.” He points to Lesclache and to an abridged version of Gassendi’s philosophy that had just come off the press.** Louis de Lesclache’s Les Avantages que les femmes peuvent recevoir de la philosophie (1667) was a scholastic and anti-Cartesian work to which Poulain’s qualification “vulgar” would certainly apply. But the

same cannot be said of the other publication he refers to: the first, 1674, edition of the famous traveler Frangois Bernier’s Abrégé de la philosophie de Gassendi. It was in its way as “modern” and radical as Des-

cartes’ work, defending atomism and the void against the Cartesians’ plenum and subtle matter. Finally, Poulain presents several guidelines for methodical reading.*° In the first place, one should carefully scrutinize all arguments and accept them only after thorough examination. Second, one should not follow those who ascribe to the First Cause (that is, God) and to supernatural intervention what can be explained in terms of ordinary experience and secondary causes; too many so-called learned men are prone to invoke mysteries to fill the gaps in their knowledge of nature. Third, it is unwise to cling prematurely to attractive ideas, for they may be no more than a halfway house on the road to the truth. In the fourth place, one should not read too many books: it is quality that counts, not quantity. Moreover, reading has to be supplemented by observation of “the theater of the world,” that is, the spectacle of nature and human society. Finally, Descartes’s philosophy is the best because it is transparent and exposes all sorts of prejudice, but it is not infallible: even Descartes cannot excuse us from thinking for ourselves, Poulain warns. There are three striking features in Poulain’s proposal for the education of women. First is its radically nongendered nature: nowhere in Poulain’s educational scheme is there the slightest hint at a special feminine curriculum. ‘The difference from Fleury and Fénelon could not be more patent. Second is the radical modernity of his proposed curric-

148 The Power of Education ulum; in the 1670s a more up-to-date reading list could hardly be imagined. Philosophy, language, logic, and natural science make up the

greater part of the program, while a traditionally important subject such as rhetoric is dismissed as “not useful.” Classical antiquity is only marginally represented, and the space allotted to religious instruction is very modest for the period. ‘The proposal to start with geometry was in line with very recent ideas, also found in the Port Royal Logic, and pioneered by the Jesuit Honoré Fabri in 1656 (the great importance of geometry for the disciplining of the mind was generally recognized in French higher education only in the eighteenth century).”

The third striking feature is the radical method of studying advocated by Poulain: instead of merely “learning” book knowledge he recommends that students retrace all the major arguments for themselves

so that they may truly make them their own, and correct them where necessary. Moreover, bookish knowledge should be combined with and tested against the knowledge gained by the attentive and unprejudiced observation of society.

What Women Can Accomplish with Education and Knowledge In the preface to the Egalité des deux sexes, Poulain declares that the

study of the sciences is the best means to draw women out of their enforced idleness. He is clearly thinking of women from the upper classes, adding that studying is the only occupation at present permit-

ted to them.”! he demand for education and access to the intellectual world had been central to Renaissance feminism. In this respect Poulain was advancing nothing new. But the consequences he drew from the equal intellectual capabilities of women were more daring than those of most of his predecessors. Beyond access to scientific and literary pursuits, he envisages the opening of all civil, political, and ecclesiastical careers to women. Many men, Poulain asserts, admit that women can penetrate the natural sciences, but it is not so generally accepted that they can master the civil sciences, and still less that they can

hold political or civil office. He then seeks to refute those common opinions, showing that the only condition of efficient participation in any art or profession is the mastery of the rules governing it: that is, the mastery of a specific kind of knowledge.

The Power of Education 149 A few examples may serve to illustrate his approach. Let us begin with military command. ‘Traditionally this had been the preserve of men because it was supposed to demand great bodily stength. The standard feminist counterexample was the story of the Amazons, who were frequently pictured in the act of slaying sturdy Greek heroes. It should be noted that the historical reality of the Amazons was not seriously questioned before the eighteenth century, and indeed the myth was given a new lease on life by reports about the existence of contem-

porary “Amazons” in the Americas.” Poulain’s contemporary Pierre Petit devoted an entire Latin treatise to a demonstration of the historical reality of the Amazons.”’ However, their status as a positive example

declined. Joan DeJean has shown that after the Fronde the feminist ideal of the Amazon heroine was gradually eclipsed by that of the cul-

tivated and learned woman.” Poulain mentions the Amazons a few times, locating them either in antiquity or in South America, but the Amazon ideal plays at most a minor role in his argument. His demonstration that women can be army commanders is framed in entirely dif-

ferent terms. He mentions the arts of drilling soldiers, of putting an army in battle order, of carving it up into several divisions. “The eyes,”

Poulain drily observes, “are sufficient to read a detailed map, to discover all the roads through a country, to detect the good and the bad routes, the best places to lay in ambush, the good campsites.” Surely women can read maps and master the subtleties of strategy and tactics as well as men.

Likewise, women can govern a state or hold high office. Unlike many of his feminist predecessors, Poulain does not recite the examples of the famous queens of antiquity to substantiate his claim. Instead he points to the intellectual capacities that make a good ruler: a thorough

knowledge of the people one has to govern, the ability to select able and honest officials, a familiarity with neighboring states, and the organizational capacity to sound out their secret intentions with the help of spies and envoys. We know, Poulain continues, that women are able to head the complex organization of a convent, so why not a parliament or an entire state? After all, what else does one need to become the presi-

dent of a parliament or any other corporation besides an adequate knowledge of the relevant laws and customs? Is that really so much harder than the rules of certain games women excel in, or the complicated intrigue of a literary work? Likewise, nothing prevents a woman

150 The Power of Education from understanding the notions of natural equality, contract, and authority: that is, the fundamentals of law and politics. By a study of those ideas she will master all that is needed to be a jurist or a politician.” Theology, canon law, and church administration are not intrinsically harder to understand than the theory of the political contract. Women can study the Bible, in particular the New Testament, and the fathers of the church. We have already shown, Poulain submits, that women have

the capacity to teach. Now, of all the professions, the office of priest or minister of the church most closely resembles teaching, for it consists in the instruction of others in the knowledge and love of God and in the teachings of Christ. It would therefore be perfectly fitting for women to officiate as priests and to preach from the pulpit. The sole impediment to this actually happening, Poulain contends, is the power of custom.” It has not always been so, he notes: In the early church, women officiated as deaconesses and assisted in ministering the faith to other women.” Poulain’s approach is premised on a typically modern theorization of civil society, the state, and the church. He does not particularly appre-

ciate the art of war (“it is more rude, makes more noise, and causes more harm” than other arts),” but he discusses it in terms of organization, strategy, and tactics: that is, in terms of the professionalization of warfare brought about by the “military revolution” of the early seventeenth century. In a similar vein, he theorizes politics as an applied science, based on the philosophy of modern natural law. In Poulain’s view

of religion faith is based on knowledge, so that the ministry of the church can also be theorized as an exercise in applied science. By expunging all tradition-based and ritualistic elements from the arts and professions, he reduces them to specific applications of nongendered types of knowledge. In Poulain’s demonstration of the potential of education, the advocacy of equality and a modern theorization of society and the state are thus closely tied together.

A Proto-Lockean Perspective on the Mind The virtually unlimited potential of education in Poulain’s theory of socialization seems to imply that the human mind as such is basically a blank slate, a tabula rasa. In the history of philosophy, that notion has usually been associated with Locke rather than with Descartes. ‘The di-

The Power of Education 151 chotomy of empiricism and rationalism, still found in many textbooks of philosophy, is traditionally exemplified by the contrast between Descartes’s theory of innate ideas and Locke’s empiricist epistemology and environmentalist psychology. However, we should not too quickly accept the textbook view. In the first place, Descartes and Locke share a vital insight into epistemology, the critique of ordinary experience. It is of crucial importance to distinguish between Descartes’s strong in-

natism and his critique of ordinary sense experience, which is a far more inclusive concept. Furthermore, Locke admits that the mind can conceive ideas about its own operation without recourse to sense expe-

rience, but he conceives of these “internal” ideas as products of the mind’s reflection upon itself and not as innate qualities. Apart from the idea of God, Descartes’s innatism included axiomatic

mathematics, the foundational categories of perception and understanding, and the basic principles of ethics.!° The besetting difficulty to students of Descartes’s method, then as now, has been to find out which ideas belonged to this category, and what precise role these inborn ideas were supposed to play in the process of observing and un-

derstanding the world. In his well-known polemic with the Dutch theologian Gisbertus Voetius, in 1643, Descartes explained that inborn notions are not necessarily known in an explicit manner. He merely asserts that such ideas may be known “independently of the senses and by the force of the intellect alone.”!°! This view is in fact close to Locke’s,

and taken in a somewhat broader sense it would seem to mean that Cartesian innate ideas are rather like Kant’s a priori synthetic ideas, a limited number of categories such as space, time, geometrical forms, and the like, which are presupposed in sensory experience and cannot be theorized as products of experience.

A few years later, however, in an answer to another Dutch critic, Henricus Regius, Descartes offered a far more inclusive definition:

nothing reaches our mind from external objects through the organs of sense except certain corporeal motions .. . But neither the motions themselves nor the figures arising from them are conceived by us exactly in the shape they take in the sense organs, as I have explained at length in my Dioptrique. Hence it follows that the very ideas of the motions and shapes are themselves innate in us. The ideas of pains, colours, sounds, and the like must be all the

152 The Power of Education more innate if, on the occasion of certain corporeal motions, our mind is to be capable of representing them to itself, for there is no similarity between these ideas and the corporeal motions.!” Here Descartes seems on the verge of maintaining that all representational concepts are innate, for the elementary reason that our ideas are not “pictures” of the true essence of things. ‘he “real” world consists of extension and motion, and all the rest is in our minds. The distinction between reality and its representation is, of course, necessary to the critique of ordinary sense experience, but this extreme interpretation of the distinction obviously begs the question of how we distinguish between true and false representations of reality. In fact Descartes himself believes that true ideas, though not “pictures” of real things, somehow “fit” reality.!° ‘The moot question is, of course, which ideas fit better than others. When it comes to the question of how we come to possess actual knowledge about particular natural or social processes, and which of our ideas about such processes are false and which are true, Descartes is frequently no less “empiricist” than Gassendi or Locke.!% Admittedly, he needs his conceptual apparatus to confer the status of true knowledge on our sense perceptions, but in many treatises on more mundane matters innate ideas are routinely

bracketed or relegated to the ghostly status of tacit metaphysical knowledge. What is retained, however, is Descartes’s critique of ordinary experience, which taught one to judge sense experience critically. The senses, then, may lead one astray, but without sense experience not much reliable knowledge about the world can be gathered. Descartes privileges reasoning (a logical process) over learning (a sociopsychological process). His position is therefore highly dubious, for every child is endowed with the senses, but no child has the “innate” capacity to sift, organize, and judge experience in a systematic fashion. ‘The art of critical judgment has to be learned, in part by trial and error in everyday life, and in part under the guidance of others, in the process we call education. Descartes’s own treatment of problemsolving and his theory of the passions point to the vital importance of such learning processes, even though he never fleshes out the environmentalist psychology that is implied by his analysis of the passions. In contrast, Poulain in fact formulates the outline of a psychology of the learning process (as did Fénelon).

The Power of Education 153 Descartes’s identification of innate ideas with all ideas the mind is ca-

pable of arriving at without direct recourse to sense experience obscures the role of education in the formation of our mental powers. Locke would famously declare that in this manner the whole notion of innate ideas becomes virtually meaningless:

‘To say a Notion is imprinted on the Mind, and yet at the same time to say that the mind is ignorant of it, and never yet took notice of it, is to make this impression nothing. No Proposition can be said to be in the Mind, which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of. For if any one may; then, by the same Reason, all Propositions that are true, and the Mind is capable ever of assenting to, may be said to be in the Mind, and to be imprinted.

It is “by other’s teaching” rather than by “nature” that men acquire ideas, says Locke.'®* Locke’s point is relevant to our discussion of the power of education because it highlights the importance of experience and society. On this score, there is an ambivalence in Cartesian episte-

mology not unlike the one we identified in our discussion of Descartes’s physiology in the previous chapter. ‘There, he was moving back and forth between two discourses, the language of metaphysics and the

language of mechanistic materialism. Here, we encounter a similar phenomenon. When Descartes discusses epistemology in the context of his metaphysics, the issue of innatism looms large, but to a philosophically uninitiated reader of De ’homme or the Dioptrique the point would not necessarily be so obvious, for the substantial knowledgeclaims of Descartes’s physiology and optics are formulated by means

of a conceptual apparatus that does not depend on his metaphysics. Much, if not all, of Descartes’s reasoning in those treatises might be accommodated by a Lockean epistemology, for the crucial move of judg-

ing our ordinary sense experience critically is in fact shared by Descartes and Locke, so that the issue of innatism becomes redundant. For Poulain, the critique of ordinary experience is the starting point of all real knowledge. Right at the beginning of the Egalité des deux sexes, he alludes to the Cartesian theory of animal mechanism to illustrate the propensity of the untrained mind to trust the senses uncritically. Many people, Poulain explains, “assume that animals are monitored by some faculty of understanding, just as the savages believe that

154 The Power of Education there resides a little demon in watches and machines shown to them, of which they cannot perceive the mechanism.”!” ‘Io someone familiar with Cartesian physiology, however, it is obvious that animals are mere automatic machines whose functioning can be wholly explained in mechanical terms. When Poulain defines wherein science consists, he explains that all men have the same sense impressions and ideas about natural objects, such as their luminosity, temperature, and hardness: “all the science one seeks to acquire about such objects comes down to know in truth what is the particular, interior and exterior disposition of each object so that it calls forth in us the thoughts and sense impressions we have of it.” Teachers can lead us to such knowledge, Poulain goes on to say, by training our minds to scrutinize the objects of our experiences, to examine their properties with care, and to arrange our observations in the right order. Poulain takes the example of the liquidity of water to clarify his point. Suppose, he says, I had to explain to somebody without any schooling what liquidity is. ‘Io begin with, “I would not make any knowledge-claim; but I would ask her what she had observed about it, like the observation that water flows away when it is not contained in a cup; that is, all its particles separate and disunite by themselves even if no external object is inserted; that you can easily put your finger in wa-

ter without meeting any resistance, and that when you throw sugar or salt in it, you observe that those two types of substances become smaller and smaller, and that their particles are transported to all parts of the liquid.”! So far, Poulain continues, I have told her nothing new, but when I now explain to her in the same manner the concepts of being at rest and movement, I would enable her to understand that the nature of liq-

uids is such that their invisible particles are in a state of perpetual movement, so that they must be contained in a vessel, while hard objects can easily penetrate between them; and that the particles of water are small, smooth, and pointed, so that they seep into the pores of the sugar and fragment and disperse its components by their collision.! In this explanation of liquidity, the corpuscular hypothesis of matter is introduced in a purely inductive manner. ‘The way water disperses itself is

explained by the intuitive assumption that it consists of small moving components that are only loosely held together. ‘The next step is the hypothesis that the water particles are actually too small to be observed

The Power of Education 155 by the naked eye. Finally, an inference about the shape of those particles is made to facilitate a mechanistic explanation of the solution of sugar in water. Nothing in the entire chain of reasoning presupposes any inborn idea, and its validity in no way depends on the truth of Descartes’s metaphysics. In the Education des dames, Poulain offers a more general account of

“the operations of the mind.” They are few in number, and they apply equally to all the objects that present themselves to the mind. When an object presents itself to the extremity of our senses, the corresponding sensation is called feeling; when it presents itself to the eyes, seeing; and in the case of the ears, hearing (Poulain omits smell and taste). Having made these preliminary distinctions, Poulain explains how the mind processes sense data to arrive at knowledge: When we represent an object by means of some corporeal image, such as a lion or a palace, that is to imagine. And when an object

presents itself a second time to the mind, and the mind notices that it has thought of it before, that is to remember. ‘The judgment which is the second operation of the Mind, and which presupposes the first, is an action by which we attribute to an object what we perceive to be appropriate to it, or remove from it what seems to be unappropriate. And reasoning happens when we form a third judgment about the two others.!"°

Poulain has never drafted a systematic epistemology, but his observations on the subject give the impression that he leaned toward an empiricist perspective. That is also apparent from his rather idiosyncratic rendering of Cartesian metaphysics. He accepts the Cog7to but formulates it as follows: “ce qui doute agit, & ce qui agit existe.” ‘Thereafter, however, he completely deviates from Descartes. For Descartes, certainty of the existence of God necessarily precedes certainty about the existence of corporeal entities, including the existence of one’s own

body: only the proof of the existence of a supremely intelligent, nondeceiving God guarantees the reliability of sense experience. Poulain, however, proceeds directly from the Cogito to the body: “A short while ago I concluded that I, who am thinking, exist because I act; now, there being a thing of which I cannot separate myself, which gives me pleasure and pain, without my own contribution, and even very fre-

156 The Power of Education quently despite myself, it necessarily follows that this thing which I call my body, really exists.” We conclude that we have a body, Poulain summarizes his train of reasoning, “because we feel it,” and therefore we are likewise justified in affirming the reality of other bodies that make impressions on our minds through the intermediary of our own bodily senses.!!!

It is not clear whether Poulain is aware of the distance he has gone from Descartes. What he is saying here is that the reality of external

objects follows from the independent stimuli that they send to our minds and that cannot be controlled or accounted for by the internal working of the mind. Insofar as this can be related to a contemporary philosophical position, it recalls Hobbes’s conviction that our inability to conceive of change without cause is sufficient to establish the real existence of external things.!” It is clear that Poulain was well aware of the existence of conflicting

theories of perception and knowledge. First, he explains, there is the cardinal difference between those who maintain the identity of mind and matter and those who take the contrary stand. Coming to epistemology proper, Poulain distinguishes the following positions: Those who believe that the mind has no ideas that it did not receive from the senses hold a different opinion from those who hold that the senses only provide the occasion [for the formation of ideas in the mind]. And there are some who are persuaded that our concepts are merely words; and their adversaries reproach them that they have not sufficiently examined man, and ignore what language is. Finally there are the Cartesians . . .1!°

The first-mentioned group are the Aristotelians, and perhaps also the Gassendists. The second option is in all probability occasionalism, which was elaborated by Nicolas Malebranche in the early 1670s, when Poulain was working on his books. ‘The thesis that concepts are in the final analysis no more than words may be an allusion to Hobbes, but it may also refer to older nominalist currents such as Scotism. It seems clear that Poulain considers Cartesianism as a distinct philosophy that

cannot be reduced to any of the above-mentioned alternatives. His own brand of Cartesianism, however, leans toward an empiricist position that may reflect the influence of Gassendi and Hobbes, but that

The Power of Education 157 may also be of his own invention. In all his practical examples of how knowledge is obtained, Poulain employs the model of a critical sifting of sense experience. Innate ideas are almost never mentioned: the ideas that count are those we fashion, sift, criticize, and rework when we are collecting information about ourselves, nature, and society. Poulain’s views of knowledge do not add up to a consistent system, but the spirit informing his epistemology is probably best characterized as protoLockean.

Education and Equality Four features render Poulain’s pedagogy distinctive. First, its basic approach is in line with that of other educational reformers of the late seventeenth century. In particular, Poulain’s pedagogy closely resembles John Locke’s educational philosophy.!'* Recently, Brita Rang has demonstrated that Locke was influenced by the Dutch pedagogue Frédéric Rivet. Among other things, she shows that

Rivet pioneered the metaphor of the child as “a newcomer in an unknown land,” an expression that is usually seen as “exceedingly characteristic” of Locke’s pedagogy.'» It is surely revealing that Poulain employs precisely the same metaphor.!!° As we have seen, similar ideas can be found in France in the work of Fleury and Fénelon. The most reasonable conclusion is that these ideas were simultaneously formulated by authors who partly influenced one another. Rivet was the first to develop this approach, followed by Poulain and Fleury in the 1670s, and by Fénelon and Locke in the 1680s. A century later, the entry on education in Diderot’s Encyclopédie conveys a similar message: take advantage of the receptivity of young children, approach them reasonably, do

not frighten but persuade, let teaching not be too bookish and use practical examples, and teach children to correct their own false judgments.!17

Second, Poulain’s ideas on education do not depend on Descartes’s metaphysics. His primary goal of demonstrating the equality of the sexes pushes him toward a conception of knowledge in which education and experience are in the end more valued than pure metaphysical introspection. Poulain has a high regard for Descartes’s philosophy, but in his own reworking of the master’s thought he consistently opts for an empiricist emendation of Cartesian epistemology, and for a social, dy-

158 The Power of Education namic, perhaps even historical view of the mind. What are only implicit possibilities in Descartes’s treatise on the passions become the outline of an environmentalist social psychology in Poulain. ‘This social psychology is also indebted to other intellectual currents of the time, in

particular to the new ideas on education shared by a number of otherwise disparate authors. A third important, but seldom noticed, aspect of Poulain’s educational program is its pragmatic spirit. Because its underlying philosophy and its contents are so radical, it can easily be dismissed as “utopian.” But in fact Poulain’s organizational projects, such as a school for schoolmistresses and governesses, a girls’ school in a convent, and having nuns instruct other nuns, are eminently practical and indeed already considered realistic. Bishop Félix de Vialart, for example, had founded a school for schoolmistresses in 1672.!!® Poulain’s practical ap-

proach to these matters is close to Fénelon’s. If one has to judge the practical feasibility of Poulain and Fénelon’s projects in terms of organization and funding, there is not much to choose. The sole, but allimportant, difference lies in their opinions about the nature of women. Fourth, Poulain, while experimenting with ideas that were in the air, at the same time radicalized those ideas, putting them in the service of his feminist and egalitarian project. In his critical attitude toward the role of authority in education he went further than any of his contemporaries, and in his conviction that both sexes should receive exactly the same instruction he stood virtually alone. Bringing together his feminist convictions, his egalitarian critique of traditional knowledge claims, an empiricist reworking of Cartesian epistemology, and the new pedagogy of persuasion, Poulain produced a radically environmentalist social psychology. Given the right education, he argued, there is nothing a woman or a man cannot accomplish. Poulain, we may conclude, was one of the first authors in European history to argue that the power of education is in principle unlimited.

Reason and Authority

ALTHOUGH POULAIN did not identify himself as a political

philosopher, his writings contain a substantial amount of political ideas. As we saw in the Introduction, he declared in the Excellence des hommes that he would “use” the subject of the equality of the sexes to discuss several other topics, including jurisprudence and politics.! As we might expect, Poulain singles out for sharp criticism the patriarchal assumptions built into the philosophy of modern natural law. The oppressed state of women, Poulain explains time and again, is per-

petuated not only by prejudice and custom but also by the power of men over women, which is in turn buttressed by the power of the state. Poulain’s critique of patriarchal power thus naturally leads to a critical examination of the justification of state power. [he scattered observations on power and politics in Poulain’s three feminist treatises evince a skeptical attitude toward government and authority as they have been practiced throughout human history. Poulain’s strong egalitarian convictions naturally impel him to question the presumptions of some men to lord it over others, and to regard despotic rule as an affront to reason and justice. Likewise, he decries all attempts, whether by the church or the state, to curb freedom of expression. Beyond that, Poulain formulates a radical critique of all varieties of inequality, especially the aristocratic notion of rank, the linchpin of the society of orders. His view of absolutism, however, is cautious and ambivalent, especially when com159

160 Reason and Authority pared with his unsparing critique of patriarchal authority and aristocratic rank. It must be stressed that Poulain is in no way a revolutionary or a political utopian. His philosophy is egalitarian but definitely not demo-

cratic. While systematically questioning the moral and intellectual foundations of all authority, he resolutely eschews political action. Discussing censorship in the Education des dames, Poulain characteristically begins with an affirmation of intellectual liberty: “The navigators who

discover new lands are rewarded, and even artisans who have introduced innovations are accorded privileges; at the very least one ought to permit the learned to think as well as they can.” But he immediately goes on to warn against any sort of seditious activity. Wise men and women mind their own business, shunning the company of superficial novateurs and opiniastres, and on no account should anyone attempt “to reform the public against the will of the government.”

The textual proximity of the protest against censorship and the warning against political action is fairly characteristic of Poulain’s political outlook. He despises government and church interference with freedom of expression, but he is equally afraid of social unrest and civil

war. [he defense of liberty of conscience runs through all Poulain’s writings, and in Chapter 7 we will see that it is equally important to his theological opinions. ‘This was something he deeply cared about. We shall see, however, that he was chiefly concerned with individual liberty in civil society: the freedom of the “wise” to speak, to communicate, and to write freely about whatever subjects they were interested in. In

this respect, his ideal closely resembles the standard Enlightenment notion of the republic of letters: the wise should frankly speak their minds to one another, but to be useful members of civil society they must frequently accommodate themselves to the “vulgar” majority in public affairs. We should not forget that Poulain’s political outlook was shaped by the post-Fronde decades, which were marked by a certain psychologi-

cal fatigue with politics. Many Frenchmen in the 1650s and 1660s identified political action with civil war and aristocratic license. In their eyes, the imposition of order by Louis XIV was a welcome respite from decades of insecurity. Against this background the combination of personal liberty and political subjection is less paradoxical than it seems. The experience of the Fronde could be interpreted in many ways, but

Reason and Authority 161 one lesson seemed obvious to most: France had to choose between two

political regimes, aristocratic monarchy or absolute monarchy. Of course, these elementary terms were simplifications of a far more messy reality, but they nonetheless expressed the basic polarity in the political psychology of the time. Poulain’s position seems reasonably clear. His opinion of absolutism is ambivalent, but his negative judgment of the aristocracy is beyond any doubt. ‘Io him, as to many of his contemporaries, absolute monarchy is the lesser evil.

Poulain’s Attitude to Absolutism Poulain’s youthful conversion to Cartesianism and his feminist writings coincided with the consolidation of the personal government of Louis

XIV, the imposition of an effective censorship, and, generally, a significant expansion of state power, accompanied by an unceasing propaganda campaign that enlisted all the luminaries of the arts and the sci-

ences in the promotion of the cult of Louis le Grand.’ Nowhere in Poulain’s writings do we find any direct indication of his opinion on ab-

solute monarchy, let alone a condemnation of it, but in itself that silence does not tell us very much, because in the political climate of the 1670s any straightforward critique of absolutism had become extremely hazardous. In the first year of Louis XIV’s personal government several virulent antiabsolutist pamphlets circulated in Paris, but their authors were quickly silenced.* From 1667 onward, when Nicolas

de la Reynie reorganized the policing of Paris, censorship was rigorously enforced.’ ‘The authorities controlled public debate as well as printing. The statutes of Richesource’s Académie des Orateurs, for example, forbade any discussion of “matters of state.” We have one indirect indication of Poulain’s attitude toward absolutism. The Education des dames, the only one of Poulain’s books to carry a

dedication, is dedicated to the Grande Mademoiselle. This lady was Louis XIV’s niece, Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, duchess of Montpensier, a dashing figure who had played a spectacular role in the military events of the Fronde. In 1652, acting almost single-handed, like a latter-day Jeanne d’Arc, she brought Orléans into the antiroyalist camp by climbing through a forgotten door in the town wall. Later in the same year she opened Paris to Condé’s almost defeated antiroyalist army and personally directed the cannon fire from the Bastille towers

162 Reason and Authority to cover the retreat of Condé’s troops, thus snatching away the king’s victory at the very last moment. Louis XIV, who emerged victorious in the end, never forgave the duchess for her insubordination.’ Poulain’s dedication of the Education des dames to the Grande Made-

moiselle can scarcely be seen as an innocent literary gesture. It was perhaps a serious quest for aristocratic patronage, for the duchess was ex-

ceedingly rich, but as such it failed. But his praise of her “radiant example” to all women, as well as her “heroic qualities,” can refer only

to her military activities during the Fronde.* Such lavish praise of a known object of royal displeasure surely indicates a lack of enthusiasm

for the prevailing cult of the monarchy. Whatever his political views were, Poulain was not ready to participate in the public glorification of the absolute government of Louis XIV. He never wrote anything like the servile eulogies of the Grand Roi that were such a conspicuous feature of numerous other publications in this period. Another indication of Poulain’s attitude toward absolutist political culture emerges from his expression of scorn for its obsession with military glory. The desire for glory, he declares, “is of all the phantoms men have fabricated the most empty, notably when you obtain it only after your death.” It leads many men to esteem women less than men, he continues, because they

are not willing “to plant their sword in the breast . . . of an unknown stranger who would not be our enemy if he had not been given that name and if we had not been told that it is a glorious deed to kill him.” Conversely, those civilized and peace-loving men who abhor violence are considered effeminate cowards.’ Yet another element of absolutist culture criticized by Poulain is the unthinking worship of one’s own country: the “vulgar,” he explains, usually follow the opinion of the greatest number, but the opinions of those “who do not belong to their nation” are altogether disregarded.!° Nowhere in Poulain’s writings do we find the glorification of France and everything French that was part and parcel of absolutist political culture.!!

Masculine Rule Not Sanctioned by Nature All political philosophers had to confront the question of male authority in the family and society. Virtually all early-modern political theorists held, with Cicero, that the family was the foundation of society (principium urbis) and the nursery of the state (emnarium rei publicae).”*

Reason and Authority 163 Regulation of marriage and the family had long been the preserve of

the church, but in seventeenth-century France the state had reduced ecclesiastical authority in this domain to a mere shadow of its former self. As Sarah Hanley has shown, between 1556 and 1639 the French state enacted a series of laws that brought marriages, births, the status of children, alienation of family property, inheritance rules, separations, and adultery under civil jurisdiction. By the mid-seventeenth century most marital matters were juridically defined as property and contract issues and “brought under the jurisdiction of French courts beholden to French civil laws (rather than ecclesiastical courts and church canon laws).”!’ ‘The new legislation strengthened the authority

of fathers over their children, and made it far harder for sons and daughters to marry without parental consent. Fathers acquired more leeway to disinherit disobedient children and to exclude illegitimate offspring from the family. Two major goals of the new legislation were to safeguard the fam-

ily patrimony and to promote strategic ties between aristocratic and wealthy bourgeois families. his was not just a question of fortifying the patriarchal family for its own sake. ‘The “family-state compact,” as Hanley calls it, was meant to ensure a smooth continuation of the social and economic network of wealthy families upon which the cohesion of

the French governing elite to a considerable extent depended. ‘The French system of semiheritable venal offices in which women could be office owners but not officeholders made political offices into an object of the marriage strategies of elite families. Family formation and state building were thus closely intermeshed, and the power and authority of the pater familias was the linchpin of the system; it was a “private” authority, and yet it had considerable political significance. In the case of France, moreover, the patriarchal nature of the state was materially and symbolically affirmed in the masculinist definition of the monarchy it-

self. The so-called Salic Law, a fraudulent “invented tradition”—as Marie de Gournay had already observed—later replaced by an equally dubious French Law Canon, was held to exclude women from the crown. More than any other European state, the French monarchy defined itself as an exclusively masculine institution.'4

A particularly contested issue was the crown’s right to grant a divorce, a weighty question because of the economic and political consequences of terminating an elite marriage. In a treatise drawn up on the

164 Reason and Authority behest of Colbert, two French lawyers argued in 1670 that “the Prince must have sovereign authority over marriages: they are individual societies, which are the pillars of his state.”!5 Full divorce remained exceptional, but separations of property and domicile, or of property only, were frequently pronounced by the courts.!° The family-state compact

was premised on the marital authority of the husband, and it put women at a disadvantage in the case of a conflict over property or the choice of a marriage partner for their sons and daughters. Matrimonial conflict often led to litigation in the courts. In such cases, husbands often accused their wives of adultery or debauchery. Female adultery was punished more severely than male sexual transgression, which was often tacitly condoned.!’ It was not uncommon for both parties to put their case before the public, and such matrimonial pamphlet wars, surrounded by gossip and the odor of sexual scandal, attracted a lot of attention. For the women involved the stakes were high, for when they were found guilty, they stood to lose not only their marriage and their property but frequently their personal liberty as well. Quite a few of them ended up in convents, where they spent the rest of their lives in miserable circumstances. Against this background the frequent allusions to male “tyranny” and female “slavery” in seventeenth-century feminist literature acquire a heightened significance. They are much less metaphorical than they may seem at first sight. Likewise, references to the cruel fate of Lucretia in ancient Rome or to unspecified “ancient laws” might have a contemporary point that would not be lost on a well-informed audience. Consider, for example, the following observation, made by a lawyer, Le Barbier, in one of the debates in Richesource’s Académie des Orateurs: “Gentlemen! There is an old explanation of the law that permitted a man to kill his wife, if he discovered her in the act of adultery, and that forbade her to inflict any punishment on her husband,

if she discovered him in a similar situation. This law, the explanation says, is favorable only to the men, because it was promulgated by the men against the women.”!® As a lawyer, Le Barbier would have been well aware of current legislation, which, although it did not allow a deceived husband to murder his wife, certainly treated the adulterer with more leniency than it did the adulteress. His critical remarks show that not all Frenchmen took the masculinist bias in the law for granted.

Reason and Authority 165 The attitude of the précieuses toward marriage is also better understandable against this background. Many of them preferred to remain single. Some of them suggested radical remedies, such as experimental marriages, unions that could be terminated by mutual consent, and

marriages contracted for a finite duration. On the other side of the debate, the adversaries of préciosité advocated strictly male-controlled marriages as an antidote to the “disorders” of female autonomy.'? In the second half of the seventeenth century the institution of marriage had become a contested issue. It was one of the chief issues in the culture war over female autonomy. The lawsuits documented by Hanley demonstrate that women could bring charges against their husbands, and sometimes even win their case. However, female litigants were fre-

quently handicapped by the fact that only men sat as judges on the courts. Interestingly, marital law is one of the few areas in which Poulain formulates a concrete proposal for reform. At the beginning of the Education des dames, ‘Vimandre and Eulalie desire to know what Stasimaque/ Poulain would like most to do to ameliorate woman’s lot. Well, he an-

swers, “I would impose such severe limitations on marital authority that no man would abuse it.” ‘Io that end, he proposes a reform of matrimonial law, establishing a conseil souverain my-party d’hommes et de femmes to judge conjugal conflicts.2° Like Poulain’s proposals for educational reform, this project is less utopian than it seems. It addresses

one of the key issues of the family-state compact, namely its lack of fairness and justice to women. Poulain’s proposal for a mixed chamber fits into an ongoing debate in French society. His sarcastic observation that it is well known which of the two sexes is more faithful to the other belongs in the same context.7! But a reform proposal was not enough. Poulain also seeks to over-

turn the philosophical arguments for masculine authority in the political theory of modern natural law. During the first half of the seven-

teenth century, natural jurisprudence had been almost absent from French political thought, but after the Fronde it soon gained a growing audience.” The emergence of the new absolutist state and the destabilization of the fragile balance of aristocracy and monarchy on which traditional French political culture had been based undoubtedly stimulated the interest in a political theory that promised to base the power of the state on impregnable philosophical principles. Moreover,

166 Reason and Authority it was ideally suited to justify the family-state compact. It legitimated the authority of the civil law over marriages by theorizing marriage as a civil contract, sidestepping its status as a sacrament of the Catholic church. Modern natural law conceived of the state as a unified, homogeneous legal space: it left no theoretical room for an independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The reconfiguration of marriage as a civil contract, however, inevita-

bly raised the question of marital authority. A contract is a voluntary agreement between autonomous persons. So, how could it entail the entire subjection of one party to the other? Why, to put it more starkly, would an adult woman freely consent to enter into a compact that

amounted to voluntary subjection for life? Few political theorists doubted that conjugal power was vested in the husband. Had not the man been viewed as the “natural” head of the family from time immemorial? Some were perhaps privately of the opinion that male authority in the family went without saying, but all the major political theorists felt that an argument from tradition was insufficient because it was

manifestly at odds with the claim of modern natural law to build the science of politics on absolutely certain a priori principles that did not depend on the contingencies of time and place. ‘Therefore, they had to find a way to reason from the free and equal individuals in the state of nature to the patriarchal families that were, presumably, to provide a foundation for civil society. This led to various attempts to represent masculine rule as “natural.” ‘The resulting theoretical exercises are not among the most elegant in natural-rights philosophy. In the 1670s the towering European authorities on natural law were Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, and Samuel Pufendorf. Both Grotius

and Hobbes were well known in France in Poulain’s time. About Pufendorf we can be less sure, because his major works on natural law were published in Latin in 1672 and 1673, and French translations did not appear until the early eighteenth century.”

The earliest and most influential of the three was the Dutchman Hugo Grotius. In his Inleidinge tot de Hollandsche Rechts-Geleerdheid,

written in 1619-1621 but not published until 1631, he simply takes it for granted that marriage automatically converts a woman into a “minor” (“onmondige”). It is also significant that, while Grotius in the Inleidinge, written five years before De Iure Belli ac Pacis, was not yet willing to countenance a “pactum subiectionis,” in which someone

Reason and Authority 167 might surrender his or her entire liberty in exchange for life or protection as a general principle, he made an exception for marriage, declaring that “no one may bind his body by contract, except in marriage.”?4 Finally, he states in De Iure Belli ac Pacis (1625): “The right over persons

that originates in mutual consent is based either on a compact or on subjection. Matrimony is the most natural compact: but because of sex-

ual difference there is no common authority, but the husband commands his wife.”2> Why women would surrender their natural liberty and freely consent to such disadvantageous arrangements is a question that apparently never crossed Grotius’ mind.

Some thirty years later, Hobbes felt the need to argue the case in more detail. ‘Io begin with, he explains that in the state of nature, where neither law nor marriage exists, a natural promiscuity obtains. It follows that the identity of a child’s father is frequently unknown: only the mother can be identified with certainty. Insofar as anyone possesses

a “natural authority” over the child, Hobbes quite reasonably concludes, it is the mother. However, even the subjection of the child to maternal authority has to be justified: according to Hobbes it springs not from the biological fact of generation but from a tacit contract in which the child accepts the authority of the mother because it cannot survive without her assistance. ‘The child’s motivation is fear of death.

Hobbes further explains that the parents may also apportion their domination of the child by contract, but they cannot share it equally, “for no man can obey two Masters.” He then advances the radical argu-

ment that the authority over the child does not by nature fall to the man: “And whereas some have attributed the domination to the Man onely, as being of the more excellent Sex; they misreckon in it. For there is not alwayes that difference of strength, or prudence between the man and the woman, as that the right can be determined without War.”?6

Hobbes, who still accepts the historical existence of the Amazons, points to their example to show that the resulting contract is not necessarily patriarchal: “We find in History that the Amazons Contracted with the Men of the neighbouring Countries, to whom they had recourse for issue, that the issue Male should be sent back, but the Female remain with themselves; so that the dominion of the Females was in the Mother.” Of course, Hobbes knows full well that most families are patriarchal. He explains the situation as follows: “In Common-

168 Reason and Authority wealths, this controversie [between male and female dominion over the

family] is decided by the Civill Law: and for the most part, (but not alwayes) the sentence is in favour of the Father; because for the most part Commonwealths have been erected by the Fathers, not by the Mothers of families.”?”? This patriarchal foundation of the state, however, rests on a petitio principii, for nowhere does Hobbes explain how or why women have consented to such a disadvantageous political contract, nor does he clarify how anyone can in fact be a family father before the political contract is concluded. Without saying it in so many

words, Hobbes reasons as if patriarchal authority is either “natural” (which is contrary to his basic assumptions about natural equality) or enforced by naked power (which does not, according to Hobbes’s own admission, quoted above, explain why the men always win). Pufendorf faces the same problem as Hobbes, but he uses the concept of the natural in a far more insouciant way: “Whatever right a man has over a woman, inasmuch as she is his equal, will have to be secured by her consent, or by a just war. Yet since it is the most natural thing for marriages to come about through good will, the first method is more suited to the securing of wives, the second to that of handmaids.”?*

Pufendorf argues, contrary to Hobbes, that by nature the male surpasses the female in body and mind. As Carole Pateman concludes in her critical discussion of Pufendorf’s theory of male supremacy, “the assumption is that a woman a/ways agrees to subordinate herself as a wife.” In theory, Pufendorf admits that conjugal right originates in “an intervening pact and voluntary subjection of the part of the wife,” but by stipulating that all women are always willing to enter such a compact, and by intimating that no alternative course is 1n fact available to them, he strongly suggests that the subjection of women, just like marriage itself, is “the most natural thing.””? As is well known, John Locke,

writing a generation later, “solved” the problem of marital authority along similar lines, arguing that although marriage was a mutual compact, final authority over its common affairs “naturally falls to the Man’s share, as the abler and the stronger.”*® Like Pufendorf, Locke observed “that generally the Laws of Mankind and customs of Nations have ordered it so; and there is, I grant, a Foundation in Nature for it.”! Locke obviously assumed general consent among the learned, for he did not feel the need to address any contrary opinion. It is perhaps relevant to note that even an otherwise radically iconoclastic philosopher such as Spinoza went along with this view.”

Reason and Authority 169 Not long after Poulain, another Cartesian philosopher, Pierre Sylvain Régis, admitted, as Hobbes had done before him, that the authority of men over women did not exist in the state of nature, but was instituted by “an express compact.” He further observed that in Christian societies women put themselves under the obligation of perpetual obedience to their husbands, whereas the subjection of servants to their masters was usually restricted to a definite duration.*’ Régis clearly followed Hobbes, and like the latter he did not feel compelled to explain why adult women, enjoying liberty in the state of nature, would freely bind themselves to a contract that amounted to something like voluntary slavery for life. Beginning with Susan Okin in Women in Western Political Thought

(1979), feminist historians and political theorists have pointed out the contradictions in the natural-law case for male supremacy.** However, they have not acknowledged, or perhaps were unaware, that such a critique had already been voiced by a contemporary of Hobbes, Pufen-

dorf, and Locke. Poulain is probably the only seventeenth-century thinker to question the application of the concept of the natural to sexual difference by the philosophers of modern natural law. According to Poulain, the jurists “would have great difficulty to explain in clear language what they mean by ature in this context.” Furthermore, one can turn their own principles against them, “for they themselves admit that dependency and servitude are contrary to the order of nature, which makes all men equal.” ‘The jurists’ contradictory use of the concept of the natural, Poulain contends, is ultimately rooted in their sexual prejudice:

The makers and compilers of the laws being men, they have favored their sex, as the women would perchance have done if they had been in their place; and as the laws pertaining to women have been as they are today ever since societies were founded, the jurists, who also had their prejudices, have attributed to nature a distinction that originates solely in custom.*

What Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke, and others envisioned as a quasinatural rule established by ancient usage is thus in fact a usurpation brought about by countless centuries of male supremacy. We have seen that Poulain argues that women can participate in civil

society, the state, and the church on an equal footing with men. He

170 Reason and Authority knew quite well, of course, that the reality was far otherwise, and he also knew that most people deemed the work that women were actually

doing of little consequence. According to Poulain, the vulgar prejudices about women vastly underestimate their useful contribution to society. In the first place, their roles as mothers and educators are indis-

pensable to the preservation of society. But, Poulain contends, there are several other ways in which women contribute to the welfare of society, and many more ways in which they might do so when granted a greater liberty and a better education.

He signals the useful contributions of women to the healing of the sick. ‘They invent and apply a lot of remedies which are usually thought

of little account, “because they are less costly than those of the Hippocratics and are not prescribed by means of recipes,” but which are frequently more efficacious. Many women have acquired practical experience by their observation of the sick, so that their judgment is often superior to that of the schools. ‘Thanks to their familiarity with the sea-

sons and the natural environment, they have a penchant for understanding the natural causes of illness as well, and with the right education they would certainly not be so foolish as to explain changes in the human body in terms of the influence of the stars.** In his discussion of women’s medical skills, Poulain cleverly appeals to the widespread critique of university-trained physicians and other charlatans. Another example of women’s useful contribution to civil society is

the care of the poor and the disabled. “Is it not true,” Poulain asks, “that even today it is particularly the ladies who look after the poor and the sick in the parishes, who visit them in the prisons, and tend them in

the hospitals? Is it not the pious girls in the popular neighborhoods who distribute food among them?” According to Poulain, the most radiant example of all is provided by the women who care for the sick in the Parisian H6tel-Dieu; these are the true “femmes fortes” who really follow the teachings of Christ: they serve the poor and the miserable, “not by vain words” but by patient labor.*’

What Poulain attempts to demonstrate by these examples is that women can and do make a useful contribution to civil society, and that they could be even more useful if they received a better education and

got more opportunities to put their talents to good use. At the same time he makes a moral point, insisting that all useful contributions to society are equally valuable. ‘The “vulgar,” he notes, believe that caring for the poor and the sick is an inferior occupation and that the women

Reason and Authority 171 who do such work are no better than servants. Their opinion is not only wrong in this case, Poulain declares; it is generally mistaken “to pretend that those who have received particular talents from God are the servants and the slaves of those for whose benefit those talents are utilized.”>*

The lesson is that social prestige ought to depend on utility and hon-

esty: that is, on merit rather than on power and wealth. What really counts is utility, not prestige.*’? There are thus no “natural” differences

in social status. As we saw in Chapter 3, Poulain also highlights the learning capacity and potential of “savages” and peasants. Such views naturally lead to a critique of the society of orders.

The Deconstruction of Rank In line with his Cartesian critique of custom and tradition, Poulain deflates rank by reducing it to a merely conventional distinction. Hav-

ing explained that notions of honesty and dishonesty almost always originate in “the imagination and the capriciousness of men,” and that they vary according to time and place, Poulain observes: “And so it is with the nobility. In some provinces of the Indies, the farmers have the

same rank as the nobles among us; in certain countries the sword is preferred over the robe; in others the contrary opinion holds sway.”*” In such observations Poulain is drawing on the critique of outward

grandeur and self-glorification voiced by numerous French authors from Montaigne onward. In a section of the Essais devoted to “the inequality that exists among us,” Montaigne had questioned the customary notions of greatness: “Why then do we not judge a man by what is his? He has a great retinue, a beautiful palace, so much credit, so much

income: all of that is around him, not in him.”*! Closely tied to the topos of an opposition between the true inner personality and superficial outward appearances is the image of the theater, which was, according to Jonathan Dewald, an abiding metaphor for politics and society among French aristocrats and authors in the seventeenth century.”

All the world is a stage, and on the stage image counts for more than reality: in a certain sense, one is what one seems; but at the same time the confidence in a true, inner selfhood is fatally undermined, for one knows that one’s reputation, one’s very being, depends on the unpredictable ebb and flow of politics and courtly intrigue. In the second half of the seventeenth century, two interrelated fac-

172 Reason and Authority tors contributed to the sapping of aristocratic pride and confidence. The first was political. In the wake of the Fronde the role of the aristocracy as an independent political actor was marginalized, and with it disappeared a certain sense of unperturbed superiority. Political action was replaced by a self-questioning mood, as in Francois de La Rochefoucauld, who played a prominent role in the princely Fronde and then went on to become one of the most influential moralist authors of the 1660s and 1670s. All this was part of the broader cultural trend that Paul Bénichou in his classic treatment of seventeenth-century moral culture called “the destruction of the hero,” the erosion of the warrior ethos of the traditional sword nobility. The second factor in the transformation of self-awareness was the rise of Jansenism. ‘laking their theological inspiration from the Augustinian tradition, the Jansenists propagated a decidedly dim view of hu-

man nature. Forever tainted by the stain of original sin, man was so perverted that only God’s unilateral grace could save him; all else was mere vanity and illusion. ‘Io become a real Christian, one had to renounce all /ubris, and this was especially important for /es grands, whose sense of social self-importance could easily lead to the corruption of the soul. In 1670 Pierre Nicole published Pascal’s Trois discours sur la condition des grands as an appendix to his De l’éducation d’un prince. He explained that Pascal’s ironical dissection of greatness should be read as

a warning against three defects commonly found in great and powerful

men: first, their lack of self-knowledge and their inclination to lose sight of their “natural equality” with all other men; second, their propensity to forget the importance of virtue; and finally their licentious lifestyle.*#

Nicole further asserted that contemplation of the condition of Jes grands might provide a useful corrective for all those who exercised some power over their fellow humans: “Every gentleman is a great man

in his village: every master is a great man to his servants. And many govern their small empires with more haughtiness than princes rule theirs. There are thus good reasons to admonish all those persons not to abuse the authority that God has conferred upon them; and to recognize the natural equality that obtains between their inferiors and themselves.” Nicole himself dismissed any subversive implications of his and Pascal’s observations as “peu raisonnable”: the fear that such opinions might really diminish the stature of /es grands was wholly chi-

Reason and Authority 173 merical, for “as long as there is concupiscence in men, grandeur will be admired and desired.”* Nicole may protest his innocence as much as he likes, but there is a

significant difference in temper between Pascal’s cold irony and the way the opposition between inner personality and outward semblance is voiced in, for example, La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes, an extraordinarily popular book that went through five editions between 1665 and 1678. There we may read, for example, that “the world rewards the appearances of merit more often than merit itself.”*° The basic idea, that real merit is not proved by external appearances, is the same as Pascal's,

but its expression is much softer and avoids any explicit reference to rank or nobility. One has only to compare La Rochefoucauld’s psychological language with Pascal’s remarks on the nature of the respect due to the nobility to see the difference:

It is not necessary that I hold you in esteem because you are a duke, but it is necessary that I salute you properly. If you are a duke and a civilized man, I will pay both qualities their due respect ... But if you were a duke without being a civilized man, I would still do justice to you; for, while rendering you the external con-

sideration the human dispensation has attached to your birth, I would not fail to think of you with the inner contempt that the vileness of your mind deserves.””

In another well-known passage Pascal virtually reduces deference to a question of raw power: “he has four lackeys, and I have only one... soI have to give way.”** Here the critique of vanity and grandeur develops into a sarcastic deconstruction of rank that we might call social irony. Pascal is basically saying that the wise man respects authority but that his deference remains purely external. Like Nicole, Pascal is at pains to dismiss any socially subversive implications of this way of thinking, and he emphatically affirms that the outward order of society, once instituted, is no longer indifferent and becomes “just.”*? Social prestige and deference may be delusions, but, given man’s fallen state, they are necessary to keep society together. In Poulain, the same critique of rank carries a different meaning, because it is wedded to egalitarianism and a Cartesian conception of the

self. Io begin with, it is abundantly clear that Poulain draws on the

174 Reason and Authority Jansenist critique of rank and power. His observation that views on social hierarchy change with geography, quoted at the beginning of this section, recalls Pascal’s ironic remark that the Swiss prefer the bourgeois over the nobility.°° Likewise, Pascal’s famous observation that truth turns into error as one crosses the Pyrenees is paralleled by Poulain’s remark that truth is not the same in Spain as in France.*! Like Pascal, Poulain points out that the choice of a profession is decided by chance and custom, not by merit.*? Like Pascal’s, Poulain’s critique of rank is predicated on a stark opposition between the true, inner character of a man and his external, “artificial” social status.

However, when Poulain declares that the “exterior estates established by man . . . confer only a new name on those who are invested with them, without changing their nature,” this statement must be read in the light of his egalitarianism and contractualism. Poulain adopts a moderately optimistic vision of human nature that stresses its potential for self-improvement. His feminist egalitarianism and his condemnation of every form of power not founded on reason give his treatment of rank a critical edge that is lacking in Pascal. Likewise, the affirmation that women, peasants, “savages,” and Turks possess the same potential for self-development as upper-class European males, opening up the prospect of upward social mobility, points to a transcendence of ranks and orders in social reality, and not just to a theologically motivated critique of self-love. In some of his utterances, Poulain anticipates the eighteenth-century Enlightenment critique of the aristocracy as a parasitic caste, as in the Excellence des hommes, where he has an exas-

perated woman exclaim: “I really wonder why it is that the artisans, the

farmers, and the merchants, who contribute the greatest part of the state’s revenues, are held in less esteem than the nobles, who do nothing.”*} In Poulain, the moral critique of rank is tied to an emergent economic critique of aristocratic privilege, shifting the focus of attention from the nobles as individuals to the aristocracy as a social institution. His deconstruction of rank is premised on natural equality and utility. The Jansenist critique also drew on those ideas, but its ultimate foundation was the Augustinian condemnation of self-love. By contrast, Poulain’s critique of rank is underpinned by his Cartesian view of the human person. Contrary to Pascal’s bleak opinion that reason was unable to master the passions, Descartes saw the passions as more or less neutral impulses that could be turned to good as well as

Reason and Authority 175 evil purposes. As we have seen, he called upon reason not so much to subdue the passions as to “ride” them.*+ According to the Jansenists, human beings were always on the verge of being enslaved by their pas-

sions, and so they had to be ruled by basically nonrational devices (Pascal’s raison des effets).°> Like Descartes, Poulain endorses a funda-

mentally neutral, open-ended conception of the human personality. There is no trace of the Augustinian emphasis on original sin; insofar as the autonomy of the rational will is threatened, it is threatened not by excessive self-love but by prejudice and power. When Poulain uses the charged metaphor of enslavement, it always refers either to the inner enslavement of the mind to its own prejudices or to the effects of political and civil subjection on the subjected, never to the passions. He believes that happiness depends on intellectual and moral autonomy: the wise man or woman will also be the happy man or woman because he or she will possess self-knowledge and will be aware of the transience of

worldly pleasures.*° There are some traces of a resigned Stoicism in Poulain’s view of happiness, but it is also premised on the creative potential of reason. We have seen that Poulain theorizes education as a powerful agent of transformation. In glaring contrast to Pascal’s conviction that humanity is helplessly suspended between the extremes of muisere and grandeur, Poulain confidently envisages the prospect of selfimprovement. Placed in this context, the deconstruction of rank can be usefully set

beside the deconstruction of male supremacy. According to right reason, both are modalities of unreasonable power, and both are thus in principle superseded. Enlightened men and women know this, as they also know that it is frequently necessary to submit to them in the practical conduct of civil life.

Reason and the Political Contract The political message of Poulain’s critique of patriarchal authority is that absolute power of one person over another is not reasonable. In the Excellence des hommes there is a fairly extended discussion of author-

ity. God, Poulain declares, is the sole true sovereign to whom all men without exception owe allegiance. This statement may sound innocent to the post-Enlightenment mind, but to many contemporaries it would have smacked heavily of Protestantism. Calvin’s restriction of true maj-

176 Reason and Authority esty to God amounted to a denial of the semidivine status of the king, which was the linchpin of the political culture of the French monarchy. In this context, calling God “the sole true sovereign” is not a politically neutral statement.*’ Next Poulain sets forth the basic concept of equality in natural jurisprudence: “Now, the reason why no man is by nature subjected to the will of another man is that, their will being equally extensive, interested, and blind, and having all an equal right to all things, there is no reason why one of them should be in subjection rather than the other.” By way of contrast, Poulain points to the rightful human domination over animals because they are, at least according to Descartes, mere machines. Among humans it is far otherwise, and generally speaking, naked power and empire are always accompanied by disorder and injustice. This is especially true of the authority of princes, which is “reasonable and legitimate” only when it is accompanied by “wisdom and prudence,” and when force is used with moderation. From this Poulain

draws the frank conclusion that men who submit to the reasonable commands of the prince thereby in fact obey not the prince, but their own reason. [his may still sound rather commonplace, but it is followed by a more ambiguous explanation of the reasonableness of submission to the powers that be: “the wise do not recognize any other authority than reason: And when they comply with what is commanded them, if it is reasonable, they follow reason; when it is not at all reasonable, they are still following reason in obeying, for reason teaches the necessity to submit to custom and to the stronger, and to adapt to the weakness of the other.” It seems, then, that power buttressed by reason

is the best, while unreasonable power has to be endured, but those who wield such power do not thereby become reasonable themselves. Poulain’s further explanation of the good reasons for obedience to the prince follows the paradigm of modern natural law. It is easy to understand, he declares, that when men seek to make an unlimited use of their natural right on all things they find themselves in “a perpetual state of war.” It follows “that the fear of being deprived of one’s possessions is the first motivation of civil society.”** ‘Io drive home the point,

Poulain contrasts civil society, which is based on fear, with marriage, which is, or at least ought to be, based on love. In the Egalité des deux sexes, Poulain had likewise declared that men, when considered outside civil society, are all “free and equal,” endowed with “only the propensity to self-preservation and an equal right on ev-

Reason and Authority 177 erything they need for their sustenance.” In this condition, however,

they would live in a state of perpetual war or at least perpetual diffidence (“défiance”). This condition is fraught with mortal danger and cannot last: Natural reason would teach that they would not be able to live in peace without each of them surrendering his right, and without entering into conventions and contracts; that, in order to ensure the validity of these and to put an end to their troubles, it would be necessary to have recourse to a third party, which, assuming authority, would compel everyone to keep his promises to the others; that this third party was instituted only for the benefit of his subjects, and should thus not have any other end; and that, in order to be able to exercise his function, he should be master of properties [Liens] and persons, of peace and war.°?

Poulain’s explanation of the political contract and his insistence on the natural equality of all men “outside” civil society are clearly derived

from the philosophy of modern natural law, and Hobbes is his most likely source. Hobbes, who had lived in France in the 1640s, was probably a more

familiar figure to the French reading public than Grotius. The first French translation of Grotius’ major work, De Iure Belli ac Pacts, was

not published until 1687, while several translations of Hobbes’s De Cive were published in the 1650s and 1660s.” In his reading guide on French-language learned books, published in 1664, Charles Sorel had drawn up a list of recommended works on politics. After mentioning Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, and Justus Lipsius, he wrote that political science had recently been somewhat agitated by an Englishman called Thomas Hobbes who proposed to found it on wholly

new principles. Sorel warned his readers, however, to approach Hobbes’s writings with some caution.*! Others were more enthusiastic.

One of Hobbes’s translators, Francois Bonneau, even proposed to teach Hobbes’s political theory as the official doctrine in French schools and universities, but Louis XIV’s councilors, perhaps wisely, re-

jected the idea.” We can thus safely conclude that Hobbes’s political thought was widely known in France when Poulain embarked on his writing career. Moreover, Poulain’s specific formulations of natural law principles

178 Reason and Authority strongly suggest that Hobbes was his chief inspiration. ‘The dismal view of the unsocial propensity to war of “natural man,” the tenet that men in the state of nature have an equal right to everything, the assumption that fear constitutes the primary impulse toward civil society, and finally the stipulation that the sovereign ought to be “the master of properties as well as persons,” all strongly point to a Hobbesian influence. Poulain’s use of the term “diffidence” to characterize the mutual feelings of men in the state of nature provides a further indication, for Hobbes uses precisely the same term in the same context.® ‘The conclusion that fear is the prime motivation to engage in the political contract is likewise taken directly from Hobbes’s depiction of the “natural

condition of mankind.” As sources for Poulain’s views, Grotius and Pufendorf are much less likely, for both thinkers defended the idea of a natural sociability, and Pufendorf in particular forcefully rejected Hobbes’s contention that the impulse toward society was based primarily on fear.“

The hypothesis of a Hobbesian inspiration is further strengthened when we inspect Poulain’s conjectural history of inequality and power in the Egalité des deux sexes. Such a history could be constructed along

different lines. One might theorize it as the unfolding of mankind’s natural propensity to cooperate, allowing for the role of self-preservation but not reducing human motivation entirely to a selfish egotism; or, alternatively, it might be construed as a grim story of violence, con-

quest, usurpation, and coercion. Poulain wholeheartedly adopts the second perspective, and in the end concludes that “dependency being a purely corporeal and civil relation, it should be considered solely as a result of chance, power [violence], or custom.”© There is thus in Poulain, as there is in Hobbes, a sharp distinction between the contingent history of power and the philosophical foundations of the political contract. Insofar as people can overcome their unsocial nature they do so through the exercise of right reason. Apart from that, no natural sociability will do the job. One problem, however, remains: What is the relation between Poulain’s egalitarian convictions and the authoritarian theory of the state that looms so large in Hobbes? At one point, as we saw above, Poulain says that to be effective, the sovereign must be “the master of goods as well as persons.” ‘This is in fact another instance of his borrowing from Hobbes, who maintained that private property is an institution created by the law, and therefore subject to the law: that is, ultimately, subject

Reason and Authority 179 to the will of the sovereign.® Poulain was not constructing a systematic political philosophy, and he may have been unaware of the far-reaching consequences of the Hobbesian theory of property. On the other hand, he was not enamored with the aristocracy and the wealthy upper layers of society, and his own view of private property is definitely dim. In his

conjectural history of inequality, he describes the advent of private property as a process of robbery, usurpation, and deceit. It is thus certainly possible that Poulain willingly went along with Hobbes’s theory of property, which could, after all, be read as a legitimation for taxing the wealthy in the common interest of the realm. It could thus be regarded as a functional element of Hobbes’s absolutist contractualism, in which the people surrendered their rights to the sovereign in exchange for peace and prosperity. In late seventeenth-century France, such a view would appear plausible to all those who deplored the extravagancies of aristocratic “liberty” during the Fronde. There is something to be said for interpreting Poulain in this manner, but his opinions on intellectual liberty and “reasonable obedience,” as well as his scathing comments on the role of states in human history,

and finally his dedication to the Grande Mademoiselle, point in another direction. In Poulain’s rendering of Hobbes, contractualism looms larger than absolute subjection. So we return to the question of Poulain’s view of the state. If we cannot convincingly depict him as either an outright champion or a radical critic of absolutism, how should we characterize his political ideas?

A Bleak View of Politics We have seen that both Poulain and Pascal rejected the politics of revolution on basically the same grounds. Looking back on an era of civil war and untold suffering, they advocated political moderation, becoming “reluctant monarchists,” who accepted Louis XIV’s order as a provisional solution to the ills of society. Such views were attuned to the mood of French society after the Fronde.” In Pascal, this acquiescence

results in an embittered, ironical, and sometimes cynical attitude to power.® Poulain’s standpoint, that even the unreasonable exercise of political power must be endured by the wise for the sake of civil peace, is to a certain extent similar to Pascal’s political thought.” ‘Thereafter, however, Poulain and Pascal part company.

Whereas Pascal theorizes obedience to the state as a nonrational

180 Reason and Authority surrender to necessity, Poulain bases political obligation on a contractualist argument, and thus, in the final analysis, on reason. Pascal’s conception of political prudence is based on his somber view of human nature, while Poulain’s notion of prudence is securely anchored in the

Cartesian concept of rational personhood. The reasonable subject, Poulain is saying, always obeys his or her own reason, never renounces

the right to pass judgment on unreasonable power even if he opts for submission in practice, and holds his tongue in the company of “unreasonable” men. There are obvious echoes of Descartes’s provisional mo-

rality in such a position, but linked as they are to Poulain’s emphatic egalitarianism the resulting mixture is highly unstable. In his important study of the ideas of sociability and equality in the early French Enlightenment, Daniel Gordon has argued “that the concept of a latent sociability in human nature had a strategic value for those authors who wished to demonstrate the utility of royal sovereignty as a curb on the passions without resorting to the Hobbesian position that the state is based on a contract.” Gordon further points out that the “dangerous” aspect of contract theory lay precisely in the fact that “it rooted the legitimacy of the state in the rational choice of the subjects.”” ‘This is, of course, precisely the position taken by Poulain, which we may usefully contrast with the picture of the loyal subject drawn up by Louis XIV himself in his Mémoires for 1667: “His [the king’s] will is that whoever is born a subject shall obey without judgment [sans discernement].”7!

Moreover, Poulain has a definitely jaundiced view of political history. “From the earliest days of humanity,” he observes, “force has always prevailed. The greatest empires of Asia were founded by usurpers and bandits.” After the fall of the Roman Empire, the new kingdoms of Europe were built in a similar manner, and, he concludes, “such conduct can be seen in all societies.” Elsewhere he paints an even bleaker picture of the state. Spurred on by his zeal to demonstrate that mothers

are more useful and necessary than all the offices and dignities on which the male sex prides itself, Poulain seems on the verge of denying the necessity of the state:

One could absolutely do without princes, soldiers, and merchants, as one did at the beginning of the world, and as the savages still do

at present. But in childhood, no one can do without women...

Reason and Authority 181 Women never cease to be necessary to us. The officers of the law do hardly anything else than protect the possessions of those who own them: and women protect our lives . . . women take care of men when they do not yet know who they are, whether they have

enemies or friends, and when their tears are their sole defense against those who assail them. ‘he masters, the magistrates, and the princes frequently care about nothing but their glory and their particular interest.”

Read in isolation, such opinions might be interpreted as instances of a radical antiauthoritarian temper. However, we must bear in mind that Poulain, like most of his contemporaries, at least in France, did not think much of the political capacities of the common people either. For all his egalitarianism, he harbored no illusions about the receptivity of the great mass of the people to enlightened ideas. On the other hand, his personal experience in the university had taught him that the overwhelming majority of the “learned” were scarcely any better. The resulting ambivalence is well conveyed in an exchange between Sophie, Timandre, and Stasimaque in the second conversation of the Education des dames. Sophie laments the confusion and pigheadedness that easily get the upper hand in large companies: most people tend to drift along with mainstream opinion; for every individual who is really disinterested there are twenty others who are willing to acclaim whatever suits the strongest and the most numerous party. Stasimaque im-

mediately joins in, pointing out that things are no better in most learned assemblies. Yes, Sophie responds, I have even heard that many cultured and well-intentioned men refrain from criticizing all sorts of erroneous opinions because they are afraid to disturb the public order. At this point Timandre breaks into the discussion. “You should not be so astonished,” he exclaims; “the common people obstinately cling to their opinions and customs, and it is sometimes the best policy to leave them alone... they are always ready to revolt, to rise in arms, to set everything aflame, and to destroy themselves in order to preserve their chimerical ideas. Not without reason prudent political men regard the people as an unruly horse . . . It has always been said of the people that they want to be deceived and confirmed in their illusions, and that it is dangerous to disturb them.”” ‘This is a bit too much for Stasimaque,

who returns to his argument that the learned are no better than the

182 Reason and Authority rest. The blind obstinacy mentioned by ‘Timandre, he objects, is not

limited to “the rude and ignorant people”; the learned are equally prone to such behavior. A popular upheaval can easily be quelled by a skillful orator, and many revolts simply fade out because they lack a leader. Unfortunately, it is far otherwise with the quarrels of the learned, which tend to last forever because their divisions take possession of the innermost recesses of the mind. On top of that, these quarrelsome pedants are arrogant as well: “because they believe they possess more understanding than the common people, it is more difficult to restrain them.” In many cases only the full authority of the sovereign princes has sufficed to restore order in the schools.”

Later Stasimaque explains that there are two sorts of truths: the truths of philosophy, which do not depend on opinion and custom; and the truths of society, that is, the possession of correct knowledge of the rules of conduct in a particular country. Poulain calls the first type of truth “interior,” while the second is “exterior,” because it concerns our actions toward the outside world. When the philosopher acts in public

he should “speak and act like the vulgar,” all the while conserving his inner allegiance to the truths of philosophy. Eulalie then inquires whether it is really necessary to speak and act in a different way from what one really believes. Yes, Stasimaque responds, in many cases it is, for otherwise we would cut ourselves off from communication with the other members of society, a state of affairs that would lead to the “destruction of the principal end of society.”” Eulalie is not yet convinced. ‘To speak otherwise than one thinks is a sort of dissimulation, she ob-

jects, and it is well known that most people condemn insincerity. Stasimaque does not give an inch. He advises Eulalie to look more closely into the matter. Of course, he says, it is wrong to deceive others in order to obtain some advantage over them; such behavior is contrary to the fundamental duty of charity. But it is far otherwise when one dis-

guises one’s true opinions in the interest of others or in the general interest of society: “Do you wish to bring about your own death by ex-

posing yourself for no useful purpose to the rage of a riotous multitude,” he asks, “or would you perhaps be instrumental in fomenting se-

dition and civil war by refusing to assent to an opinion you do not really believe to be true? And would you not be afraid to act criminally

if some unfortunate man had sought shelter in your home, and you

would not lead astray the murderers who are out to kill hime” Stasimaque then goes on to apply this way of thinking to politics:

Reason and Authority 183 No, no... it is not forbidden to soften the medicine to make it easier to swallow the cupful, nor to gild the bitter pill. The constitution of men is such that it is best to conceal their infirmities, lest they become too dejected; to reduce the obstacles so as not to discourage them, and to look for colors and pretexts to cloak your designs. And you would destroy the entire society if you should want to prevent the politicians [/es politiques] from frequently making a deal, and having people ring the bell at one side while organizing a getaway on the other side.”

There is a whiff of Machiavellian politics in these observations. Poulain’s insistence that it is perfectly legitimate to tell lies in the general interest recalls Machiavelli’s famous dictum that “if one considers everything carefully, doing some things that seem virtuous may result

in one’s ruin, whereas doing other things that seem vicious may strengthen one’s position and cause one to flourish.””” This echo is not at all surprising, for Machiavelli’s chief political maxims were taken up by numerous French political writers in the seventeenth century (and relentlessly criticized by others).” However, Poulain’s “Machiavellian” discourse on political practice should not be taken as an instance of complacent cynicism. ‘To a certain extent, it fits into his overall vision of politics and society. As we have seen, Poulain entertains a cold, critical view of state power. Given the folly of men and the unjust foundations of existing societies, it is only

to be expected that a certain amount of manipulation and deceit is called for to keep the whole machinery from falling apart. However, this is no license for arbitrary government. Unlike Jean Silhon, an adviser to Richelieu and personal acquaintance of Descartes, Poulain stopped short of any idealization of rulers. Silhon had started from the need for order, and found his final solution in the superior wisdom of the prince.” In Poulain no such solution can be found. The person of the sovereign is, humanly speaking, no better than his subjects, and, like them, he is obliged to follow the teachings of right reason. In this connection it is significant that Poulain insists time and again

that the wise should on no account sacrifice their inner freedom of thought. It would be a capital mistake “to internalize the necessity to accommodate oneself externally to custom.”*? The other side of the coin is, of course, a peremptory condemnation of all and any attempts by the state and the church to curb freedom of thought. ‘The wise are

184 Reason and Authority part of society, and they must function as good citizens, but they also inhabit a private space of freedom and enlightenment that should be— but not always is—respected by the state. The mood of Poulain’s philosophy is perhaps best conveyed by the final words of the Education des dames. The four friends have terminated

their last conversation, and Timandre and Eulalie have joined the Cartesian ranks. Before they part company, Eulalie thanks the others for

the opportunity to share in their “lumiéres.” Poulain then drops the persona of Stasimaque and concludes the book in his own authorial voice:

At that moment the four companions rose and left the premises. Having paid their compliments to each other, they decided to form together a small fellowship, to meet as often as they could, and to engage in conversation according to the maxims they had established, in order to enjoy that reasonable liberty which is part of the delights of this life, and which distinguishes those who know how to savor it from the rude and preoccupied multitude.*!

The tone and content of Poulain’s politics are unresolved. His references to the unruly populace and the “ignorant multitude” obviously hark back to the experience of the Fronde, but his egalitarian convictions prompt him to redress the balance when Timandre voices the standard opinion on the stupidity and capriciousness of the common people. What remains is an aversion to conformism and fanaticism, coupled with the belief that these unpleasant phenomena are usually found in large gatherings, among the common people as well as among the learned. Likewise, Poulain’s Machiavellian utterances about the imperatives of political prudence follow a realistic and influential current

of political reasoning among his contemporaries, but they sit ill with his egalitarian insistence of the reasonableness of all people, high or low, man or woman, European or “savage.”

An Unresolved Ambivalence In France the post-Fronde decades were a period of political closure. Although the 1650s were still marked by political conflict, Louis XIV managed to neutralize virtually all opposition in the following decade.”

Reason and Authority 185 On 24 February 1673, when Poulain was probably still working on the Egalité des deux sexes, the king noted in his Journal secret: “The monarchy in France is absolute; our Parliament is not at all like that of London (may God forbid it), and it does not resemble the Estates of Holland; otherwise the realm of France would sink to the level of a republic.” The king was undoubtedly right. Poulain would probably not have liked the tone of the royal remarks, but it is extremely doubtful whether he would have countenanced the politics of the English parlia-

mentarians or the Levellers in the 1640s. Unlike the generations in England who lived through the Civil War and the political struggles of the Restoration, Poulain’s generation in France had no experience of a viable parliamentary politics (with the possible exception of some of the municipal governments, and the short-lived experiment of the Ormeée in Bordeaux during the Fronde). Seen from Paris, the choice appeared to be either aristocratic license and the specter of civil war, or internal stability ensured by a strong

monarchy. Most Frenchmen preferred the second alternative, especially in the 1660s and 1670s, when the Fronde was still fresh in everyone’s memory, the economy was doing fairly well, and royal policies seemed to be carrying everything before them, while the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had not yet clouded the political horizon. Yet a basic ambiguity remained. ‘Io a Parisian Cartesian such as Poulain, absolutism presented two faces, both of which can usefully be illustrated by the person of Nicolas de La Reynie, the energetic lieutenant-general of police for Paris appointed by Colbert in 1667. La Reynie fought corruption, created an efficient administration, introduced street lighting, and made Paris a more orderly and safer place. Of course, no one had

any reason to object to a better policing of the capital. However, the very same La Reynie was also instrumental in reorganizing and tightening the royal censorship of books, an institution disliked by Cartesians and many others for good reasons." Poulain, then, was not an outspoken opponent of absolutism, but neither was he an enthusiastic supporter of the regime of Louis XIV. His contractualism and his dismal view of the role of state power in his-

tory, to say nothing of his egalitarianism, were a far cry from mainstream political thought in this period. His proposals for educational reform and civil employments for women were radical but not utterly unrealistic or utopian. In those areas reforms seemed feasible within

186 Reason and Authority the parameters of the modernized monarchical state. ‘The reforms advocated by Poulain were predicated on a thoroughly egalitarian notion of merit and honesty; they represent a radicalized and feminist parallel

to other currents in late seventeenth-century social thought that put personal merit and virtue above estate and lineage, such as the rise of the ideal of honnéteté and the shifting balance of values within the nobility.*° In this light, we can understand why Poulain’s critique of rank is absolutely clear-cut while his opinions on absolutism remain caught in a fundamental ambiguity.

Scattered through his three feminist treatises, Poulain’s political ideas do not amount to a full-blown political theory. The explanation is not far to seek. His political opinions are fraught with a number of irreconcilable tensions. He is a convinced egalitarian and he firmly be-

lieves in the power of education to improve men and women, but he has a decidedly dim opinion of the political capacity of the common people. He considers himself a philosopher, but he is pessimistic about the prospects for enlightenment among the majority of the learned. In political thought he embraces a Hobbesian natural-law contractualism but also upholds the “Machiavellian” tenet of the necessity of dissimulation and subterfuge. He does not really like absolutism, but he is even more afraid of civil war. Poulain’s egalitarianism is robust and, to some extent, realistic in civil society, especially where feminist issues are concerned, and it is perfectly straightforward in his critique of rank, but it does not really work in politics. With regard to the politics of the state itself, Poulain goes along with

the mood of the times. The political, or perhaps we should say antipolitical, climate of the post-Fronde decades had left its mark on his generation.*® In those decades of resigned reflection, his egalitarian contractualism represented a challenging intellectual exercise, but it was bound to remain politically ineffectual. In the circumstances of the time, and given his own marginal position in relation to the centers of social and political life, Poulain was unable to resolve the tension between a radical egalitarian contractualism and a resigned acceptance of the necessity of order.

Anthropology and History

HISTORY AND TRAVEL, Descartes famously asserted, provide the same kind of knowledge. They relate the deeds and beliefs of

people in past ages and foreign lands, which are often different from ours but not necessarily worse or less reasonable for that. ‘Those who have never traveled, he added, are prone to condemn everything that deviates from their own parochial standards.! Travel as well as history thus taught the lesson of cultural relativism: customs vary and opinions change. This could, of course, easily result in a skeptical attitude, and in Montaigne the French reading public was confronted by a highly seductive example of historical and anthropo-

logical skepticism. No seventeenth-century man or woman of letters escaped the influence of Montaigne, and the great vogue in travel literature further deepened the awareness of the rich cultural mosaic of the world.2 Depending on one’s political and religious opinions, skepticism

could be highly attractive or deeply repellent.* Descartes and most Cartesians considered it possible to overcome the skeptical crisis by purely philosophical means. In the Cartesian project, however, history and anthropology could not be objects of scientific investigation, because they constituted the domain of the contingent and the “merely probable.” ‘Io others, however, the accumulation of knowledge about the past and the present held out the promise of a new human science. Might not history and anthropology yield something more than skep187

188 Anthropology and History ticism: a novel science of human nature; a positive knowledge of its variation, and, perhaps, its development over time?’ Some late seventeenth-century thinkers, Poulain and Fontenelle among them, were tentatively groping toward such ideas, pioneering a way of thinking that would eventually lead to the evolutionary human science of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Against this background, it is no wonder that interest in travelogues and historical erudition oscillated between skepticism and a new science of humanity. Poulain is no exception. As a good Cartesian he criti-

cizes narrative history, because it represents nothing more than the accumulation of the prejudices of the past. He uses anthropological evidence to question the notion of an immutable female nature, and he invokes the beginnings of human history to demonstrate that gender inequality is not a perennial fact of nature. Beyond that, there is a link between Poulain’s view of past development and his hope for future improvement. If customs and opinions have changed in the past, they might also be transformed in the future, notably by the improvement of education. Finally, Poulain, like several others of his generation, is groping toward the idea that past developments may explain the present state of society. He assumes that the way of life of contemporary “savages” closely resembles the conditions obtaining at the dawn of human history. In this connection, he seeks to account for the current inequality of the sexes by means of a conjectural history—a “conjecture historique” as he called it—of inequality. Although it would go too far to depict him as the inventor of what would later be called Aistoire philosophique, he is tentatively moving toward something very much like it. Beyond the generic theorization of history as change and development, however, Poulain is unable to put together a consistent vision of the evolution of humanity. His feminist perspective induces him to adopt the idea of an original equality of the sexes, and thus a rather rosy picture of “primitive” society, followed by a grim story of the growth of oppression and inequality. Yet, Poulain also sided with the moderns in the guerelle des anciens et des modernes, preferring French to Latin and generally vaunting the superiority of modern science and philosophy. He never really faced the ensuing contradiction, and his vision of history remains fragmentary and ambivalent. His modernist stance in the querelle suggests a progressivist view of history, but his pessimistic stand on the origin of inequality induces him to adopt a proto-Rousseauist

Anthropology and History 189 outlook in which history is represented as a story of usurpation and corruption.

French Interest in the Extra-European World The early-modern reading public was fascinated by the exotic. ‘Travel relations and ethnographic treatises found a ready market all over Europe. [The demand for this type of literature seems to have increased in the early-modern period. ‘This was certainly the case in France: in the seventeenth century, 805 books on the geography of extra-European lands were published, as against 263 in the sixteenth century.® In Poulain’s time the figures are truly impressive, both in France and elsewhere: for example, in the decades between 1660 and 1680 at least 471 travel narratives about Asia and Africa were published in western Eu-

rope, of which 161 were in French.’ In his study of the influence of travel literature on the development of seventeenth-century thought Geoffroy Atkinson concludes that to understand the mind of the Grand Siécle, it is imperative to read at least a few thousand pages of travel accounts.®

France’s colonial expansion lagged behind that of the other Atlantic seaboard nations, notably Portugal, Spain, England, and the Dutch republic. Early in the reign of Louis XIV the French made some attempts to redress the balance. Colbert launched the West India Company in

1664, quickly followed by the East India Company. In general the French colonial enterprise remained hesitant and ineffectual, but Colbert’s projects undoubtedly stimulated French interest in the extraEuropean world. In the 1660s there were French settlements in Can-

ada and the Caribbean, notably on Martinique, Guadaloupe, SaintDomingue, and Cayenne. A small colony on the Brazilian coast was lost to the Portuguese.’ Since the 1620s the French had participated in the slave trade along the West African coast, where an important settlement was founded in Senegal. ‘The trade was further stimulated by a tax exemption granted by Colbert in 1670.!° Farther east the French had less success: Madagascar was colonized in 1665 but lost after only a few

years. On the Indian subcontinent, a French trading post was established in Surat, but an attempt in 1670 to gain a more secure foothold ended in disaster; and the modest beginnings of the French settlement at Pondicherry came only after 1674."! Missionary activity provided another important conduit of European

190 Anthropology and History communication with the extra-European world. The Jesuits in particular set up missions in almost every part of the known world. French Jesuits took part in this effort, though they lagged behind their Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian brethren. They deployed missionary activities

in the Ottoman Empire (from 1609), in Tonkin (1627), and in Siam (1663). In the 1680s they arrived in China, and one French Jesuit even attempted to gain entry into Tibet; but their main field of activity was the Americas, above all the Caribbean and Canada.” These missionaries were among the first to acquaint the French with the customs of the “American savages.”!> More generally, the Jesuits were instrumental in bringing knowledge about other civilizations, in particular China, to the French reading public.4 Nonclerical travelers also brought stories about the marvels of faraway places. Examples from Poulain’s time include the young Jean Chardin, who returned from Persia in 1670; Jean Thévenot, who visited India, Persia, and ‘Turkey and died on his return journey in 1667; Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who voyaged through western Asia and Indiaand finally ended his days in Moscow in 1698; and above all Francois Bernier, who returned to France in 1669 after a sojourn of more than ten years at the Mogul court in India. Moreover, numerous nonFrench travelogues were published in French translations. In Poulain’s

time, Parisian booksellers offered a choice of travel accounts about almost all parts of the known world. By the time Poulain was working on his first book, some shopkeepers were also offering their customers cups of coffee. ‘This “exotic” beverage was first imported from the orient in Marseille in 1644. Its sale in Paris dated from 1662, but its popularity grew after 1669, when the Ottoman envoy Suleiman Aga visited Paris, occasioning a new fashion “a la turque” at the court of Louis XIV. Fascination with the exotic was thus part and parcel of the cultural politics of the absolutist state, and references to remote countries and foreign customs were the common coin of polite conversation. Poulain himself had never traveled outside France, but it is apparent from his writings that he was conversant with recent travel literature.

Interpreting Anthropological “Evidence” Cultural relativism came easily to Cartesians, given Descartes’s obser-

vations on the utility of traveling. Most educated Frenchmen were

Anthropology and History 191 also familiar with Herodotean cultural relativism: as we have seen, Herodotus’ relativist argument about funeral customs was referred to routinely in Richesource’s Académie des Orateurs. It is thus no wonder

that Poulain’s formulation of the basic principle of cultural relativism closely resembles the famous Herodotean passage: “Everyone believes,” Poulain declares, “that his own country is the best, because its customs are more familiar to him.”!° He uses the same argument in reverse when he seeks to undercut the traditional foundations of intellectual authority. If one clings to the conviction that the title of doctor is a

guarantee of the truth, Poulain says, one cannot avoid the corollary that “English, ‘Turkish, and Chinese doctors” are also in possession of the truth, an opinion that “not everyone would consent to.”"” Given Poulain’s feminist commitment, travel literature almost imposed itself, for gender issues, especially ideas about the proper place of women in society, figured prominently in most travelogues. In the con-

frontation between cultures, gender appears to have been a particularly sensitive issue. In 1661, when Francois Bernier was staying in In-

dia, Jean Chapelain, one of the founding members of the Académie Frangaise, asked him, among other things, about the condition of women in the Mogul Empire. He wanted to know “how they are treated over there, whether they are held in greater consideration than in Turkey and Persia, and if they receive visitors from outside their own household.” According to Chapelain the latter point was of particular significance, for the participation of women in social gatherings con-

tributed to politeness, “because men like to please them, and in conversation with them the men learn to soften the rudeness of their pronunciation.”!® As we have seen, Chapelain’s conviction that women’s freedom to move around in society promoted refinement in manners was widely shared.!? There was also a widespread belief that women in Asia were often confined to their homes. In Richesource’s Académie

des Orateurs the issue of female confinement came up for debate in March 1664: Was it better to grant women liberty, as was the custom in France, or would it be more expedient to imprison them in their houses, as “in certain other countries”? ‘The image of women sequestered in their homes of course called to mind Islam and the Orient, but Italy was also mentioned in this connection. One discussant, a Monsieur Hideux, expressed the belief that France was the most civilized country in the world because it accorded its women so much liberty.?°

The greater liberty of European women was also remarked upon by

192 Anthropology and History visitors from the Ottoman Empire, though they did not see it as a mark of cultural superiority.7! Poulain is less sanguine about European superiority than most of his contemporaries, but he nonetheless goes along with prevailing ideas about the degraded condition of women outside Europe. After observing that women are everywhere treated as inferior beings, he continues: There are even places where they are regarded as slaves. In China they keep their feet small from early childhood, to prevent them from leaving their homes, where they hardly ever see anybody but their husbands and their children. In ‘Turkey they are almost as severely coerced. ‘Their lot is not much better in Italy. Almost all the nations of Asia, Africa, and America treat their women as servants are treated here.”

In this passage Poulain is surely echoing recent travel narratives. A French translation of Athanasius Kircher’s popular book on China was

published in 1670; among many other peculiarities of the Chinese, Kircher discussed the custom of foot-binding.”* Orientalist examples of women’s oppression were quite common. Francois Bernier, for exam-

ple, after entertaining his readers with gruesome stories of widowburning, explained this Hindu practice almost as a matter of course as an “artifice” used by men to enslave their women. Another wellknown French traveler, Jean Thévenot, remarked in passing that the Turks treated their women like domestic animals, and that Muslims be-

lieved that women could not go to paradise.” It is important to note, though, that Poulain, while basically agreeing with such observations

about the condition of Oriental women, is far less confident than Bernier about the superiority of European civilization. The latter’s writings are one of the main sources of the eighteenth-century theory of “Oriental despotism,” and he also pioneered the notion of a division of humanity into physically defined “races” or “species.””6 In contrast, instead of postulating a clear-cut boundary between East and West, Poulain discusses women’s oppression in Asiatic countries as a particular instance of a worldwide phenomenon. His mention of Italy, which perhaps echoes the debate in Richesource’s academy, indicates a

European context, or perhaps a notion of “Mediterranean backward-

ness.” Looking back on the European past, Poulain observes that

Anthropology and History 193 even “the wisest legislators” have founded republics in which women were held in subjection. Apparently, there is no unproblematic linkage between female liberty and European civilization. However, the wholesale generalization about the servile status of women in “almost all the nations of Asia, Africa, and America” points in another direction. Elsewhere Poulain observes that women are far less oppressed in Europe than in Africa and Asia.”’ Such utterances seem to imply a dichotomous vision of the world in terms of Europeans and “Others.” However, Poulain also invokes quite similar anthropological evidence in an entirely different context. This time he is refuting an imaginary opponent who maintains that pregnancies and breastfeeding are impediments to women’s participation in public offices and professions:

The fact that married women have to carry the children in their bosom and feed them thereafter would not have caused them so many troubles and obstacles in the republics of Lycurgus and Plato, where the girls would have been reared with the same exercises as the boys, and would perhaps have acquired equal strength and vigor. And in fact we know that almost all over America as well as in the greater part of Africa, where the women work as hard as the men, pregnancies hardly bother them.’

The most likely sources for this information are Jean-Baptiste du Tertre’s Histoire générale des Antilles, published in 1667; and Nicolas Villault de Bellefond’s Relation des costes d’Afrique, published two years

later. Du ‘Tertre reports that the native women do most of the work of plowing, sowing, and harvesting, and he emphasizes that they resume their activities almost immediately after giving birth.’? In her study of early French colonialism in the Americas, Olive Dickason mentions

that most European observers noted that American women worked harder than the men.*? Villault de Bellefond says basically the same thing about the West African Gold Coast. Women cultivate the soil and perform many other tasks. Pregnancies hardly interrupt work: after delivery “they sleep two or three hours; thereupon they get up, and they have their babies washed, and they work as if nothing had happened.”?!

This type of anthropological “evidence” can be interpreted in widely

194 Anthropology and History different ways. Historians of slavery have pointed out that what they call “the myth of effortless delivery” was used to justify “working slave women throughout their pregnancies and returning them to the fields shortly after parturition.”>? Poulain, however, uses the same evidence

to discredit another myth, the contention that women are unable to participate fully in society on account of their pregnancies. Du Tertre, who produced the evidence in the first place, interprets it in terms of a paradigm of male despotism in primitive societies, asserting that “the wives of the savages are rather the slaves than the partners of their hus-

bands, for they are never idle . . . and it is considered shameful for a man to set his hand to women’s work.”®? Villault de Bellefond, for his

part, seems to hesitate between a picture of female subjection and an emphasis on the economic importance and relative autonomy enjoyed by married women on the Gold Coast.** Both du ‘Tertre and, somewhat less confidently, Villault de Bellefond thus subscribe to the “Orientalist” or “primitivist” view of the subjection of women in the extra-European world. We have seen that Poulain goes along with it to a certain extent, but his comment on the story of the easy pregnancies demonstrates that he also seeks to enlist his knowledge of cultural difference in his egalitarian-feminist argument. The same anthropological “evidence” could thus carry widely divergent meanings depending on the practical and intellectual context in which it was deployed. Poulain also formulates the beginnings of an explanation, as distinct from an interpretation, of cultural difference. Speaking about the kinds of knowledge women might usefully acquire, Poulain mentions, among other things, geography. ‘The subject matter of this discipline obviously impinges on the issue of cultural difference. Once again, Poulain proposes to start with self-knowledge. An examination of her own changing dispositions, he says, will enlighten every woman about the dependence of her passions and temperament on changing circumstances, such as the seasons, the place where she lives, her age, dietary habits, the company she finds herself in, and finally the activities she engages in. She will easily understand, he continues, that the same factors will produce the same effects in entire nations as in individuals: [Nations] possess different inclinations, customs, morals and laws, in accordance with their greater or lesser proximity from the seas,

from the South or the North; depending on whether there are

Anthropology and History 195 plains, mountains, rivers, and forests in their lands, the degree of fertility of the soil, the specific foodstuffs it yields; and on the commerce and the communications they pursue with neighboring or remote nations.*>

The environmentalist psychology that Poulain employs elsewhere to deconstruct the allegedly immutable nature of women is here transformed into the rudiments of a comparative sociology. His exposition is rather sketchy, but the line of thought he embarks on displays a marked similarity to later Enlightenment thinkers, in particular Montesquieu. Just as with cultural relativism, the ultimate source for this rudimentary theory is the Greek classics, notably Hippocrates.

The Hippocratic social theory was grounded in the doctrine of climatological determinism.** In seventeenth-century Europe, this was an extremely popular explanation of the variation in human culture, which we have already encountered in the work of Cureau de la Chambre. In Poulain’s version, however, climate is replaced by a more inclusive no-

tion of the natural environment. Moreover, he adds a factor to the equation that is absent in Hippocrates and Cureau de la Chambre: the commerce and communication people have with other nations. ‘This points to the possibility of change caused by cultural diffusion, a rather more Herodotean than Hippocratic concept.*” Such a mixed theory accords well with Poulain’s dismissal of the explanation of sexual difference in terms of the bodily humors. It was the medical-physiological theory of the humors that served as an intermediary link between climate and human nature in deterministic theories. In that context, an acceptance of traditional climatological determinism was tantamount to accepting a biologistic explanation of sexual difference.** We shall shortly see that Poulain’s overall approach to society emphasizes historical change over a static geographical view, another reason why climatological determinism would not be congenial to him.

Ancients and Moderns The science of history, Poulain explains in the second conversation of the Education des dames, produces knowledge of what people have done

and said in times past. As we ourselves have no direct access to those times, our knowledge of them necessarily depends on the testimony of

196 Anthropology and History the men of the past. Poulain then pauses to consider the reliability of such knowledge, which is not based on our own firsthand reason and observation. When we find that there is general agreement, he says, in particular among intelligent people having different interests and concerns, there seems to be no good reason for withholding our assent: “Otherwise we would be obliged to renounce everything that goes by the name of history, and believe only what we see ourselves.”*? Poulain thus accepts the pragmatic standard of a reasonable degree of probabil-

ity. Once again, his epistemology is Gassendist and proto-Lockean rather than strictly Cartesian.” As Poulain/Stasimaque and his companions pursue their conversation, it soon becomes clear that Poulain does not set great store by tra-

ditional historical knowledge. Much of history, he declares, tells us what people said and thought in the past, but the intrinsic value of such knowledge is questionable. An opinion does not become more true because it has survived for several centuries, he warns his conversation partners: “neither truth nor error depends on the antiquity of an opinion.” In the Egalité des deux sexes he decisively rejects all arguments for the subjection of women in terms of their antiquity: even if the historians adduce the opinions of a thousand authors, Poulain asserts, “such

history is no more than a tradition of prejudices and errors,” based on the common prejudice in favor of antiquity, which many people depict in the image of a “venerable old man.” Such an image is deceptive, he warns, for “the ancients were men like us, and no less subject

to error.” Such an outspoken demotion of the stature of the ancients indicates Poulain’s position in the querelle des anciens et des modernes, which had been going on intermittently in France since the early 1660s. In all his

writings Poulain invokes the antithesis between the ancients and the moderns, invariably siding with the latter. In textbooks the querelle is still frequently situated in the 1680s, with Perrault and Fontenelle as the main protagonists on the modern side. In fact all the main elements of the debate can already be identified in texts from the 1660s. As early as 1671, Gabriel Guéret, a lawyer in the Parliament of Paris, published a book about the quarrel, referring to the recent “troubles in the

literary republic.”** The relative merits of antiquity and the modern age were also discussed in Richesource’s Académie des Orateurs, probably in the summer of 1664. The question set for debate was whether

Anthropology and History 197 the reading of ancient history yielded more useful knowledge than that of modern history. he champions of the moderns argued that ancient historiography no longer provided a reliable guide to action because the “unceasing revolution of all things” in modern history had completely transformed the conduct of government and warfare. The conclusion of the academy, drawn up by Richesource, stated that ancient history was more useful from the viewpoint of “curiosity” and “amusement,” but that the utility of modern history was greater for “the practical conduct of life.”#

Apart from the literary issue of French versus Latin and Greek, many arguments in favor of the moderns invoked the recent progress of the natural sciences and the mechanical arts (the most popular examples were the telescope and the microscope, both of them seventeenthcentury inventions). In his extremely popular textbook of Cartesian physics, Jacques Rohault observed, for example, that recently invented “machines to make things” merited our admiration more than “all the inventions of antiquity put together.” In the pages of the prestigious Journal des Scavans such arguments became almost commonplace in the

1660s and 1670s. The so-called wisdom of ancient natural historians, the fournal declared, had not been scrutinized severely enough, and far too many people still followed unthinkingly in their footsteps.” ‘The Journal depicted the ancients as careless observers who studied books rather than nature; with the help of the telescope and the microscope, the editor triumphantly declared, the moderns “have discovered more new facts in a few years than the ancients in several centuries.”**

A few years later the Journal stated that ancient descriptions of the human brain had proved completely unreliable, and that even Descartes’s views were now “outdated.”*? ‘The Aristotelian conjectures on the heavenly fires were dismissed as “entirely chimerical,” and a report on the invention of the reflecting telescope by an Englishman named

Newton noted in passing that the ancients, who had no telescopes, “had committed an infinity of errors.”*° Reporting the discovery of “eggs” in women, the fournal summarily declared that it was a “bad maxim” to reject an opinion solely on the grounds of its novelty. Admittedly, novelties were dangerous in theology, but in natural science “experiences, however new, always triumph over the false conjectures of antiquity.”*!

Such utterances are significant in several respects. In the first place

198 Anthropology and History they betoken the polemical mood of those who saw themselves as the

standard-bearers of intellectual progress. The disdainful use of the word “ancients” carried a double message. The term referred not only to the Greeks and the Romans but also to their current spokesmen, the adversaries of the moderns. ‘Io take an example from another quarrel: when, in 1670, the biblical scholar Richard Simon advocated the introduction of Hebrew and Greek as required subjects in the faculty of theology at the Sorbonne, he wrote to an acquaintance: “Your ancients will surely combat this novelty.”*? Three years before, the Cartesian Louis le Laboureur had published a short tract about the advantages of the French language over Latin. Right at the beginning he jeers at the ancients, “who are learned only in Latin and are more burdened than

enlightened by their knowledge . . . take away the prestige of their Latin and nothing will be left.”53 Le Laboureur refers as a matter of course to “our French” and “their Latin”: the ancients are “them,” the adversary that has to be slain. His booklet apparently found a fair number of readers: it was reissued in 1669, just before the author died, with a dedication by Samuel Sorbiére (the French translator of Hobbes’s De Cive). The “message from the bookseller to the reader” in the 1669 edition announces that it is destined for the court and the university but also for the ladies. This later edition contains two new tracts in which, among other things, Le Laboureur makes fun of the difficulties encountered by modern Latin authors when they have to discuss arts that were unknown to the Romans.**

The polemical mood of “we” versus “them” was part of an emergent notion of intellectual progress. ‘The expression “the progress of the human mind” was coined only later, probably by Fontenelle, but the dea of the progress of the human mind was very much on the mind of the

“moderns” of the 1660s.°° Sometimes the notion of intellectual advancement was linked to broader historical currents, notably political ones. The Abbé Gallois, the editor of the Journal des Scavans from 1666

to 1675, declared in the “Epistre au Roy,” published in the first issue

under his editorship, that science and power went together: “The Greeks became the masters of the entire world only when they were the most learned of all men; the Romans marched forward simultaneously to the sciences and to monarchy, and without looking for examples in other countries.” According to one of the protagonists of the moderns in the language debate, the literary old-timer Desmarets

Anthropology and History 199 de Saint Sorlin, the French now enjoyed the same advantage over the Romans that the Romans in their time had over the Greeks. Antiquity, he asserted, represented the youth and the rusticity of time, the springtime of the centuries: to compare it with the present was like “comparing the first dwellings of men with the splendid palaces of our kings.”*’ Three mighty steps in the forward march of humanity could thus be discerned: Greek civilization, the Roman Empire, and European, especially French, society in the seventeenth century. Each period had its master language: first Greek, then Latin, and finally French. Yet within the broad parameters of such a grand historical scheme several philosophies of history were thinkable. ‘he worldviews of the “moderns” were highly disparate. In the case of Desmarets, who had been a close collaborator of Richelieu and later became a fervent apologist of Christianity, the defense of the moderns was basically grounded in an antipagan ideology, and besides, his defense of the moderns was part of a eulogy of French grandeur.** The philosophical underpinnings of his historical vision should therefore not be confused with the idea of a Cartesian such as Le Laboureur. Likewise, Gallois’s encomium on French civilization, printed in his opening address to the king, is partly explained by the circumstance that the Journal des Scavans was a gov-

ernment-sponsored publication. However, not all the enthusiastic champions of scientific progress endorsed such a glorification of the French monarchy. The mere fact that Poulain sides with the moderns thus hardly sums up his view of history and human development. It bespeaks his antitraditionalism as well as his faith in the advancement of learning, and an emergent notion of a forward movement in time. But it is by no means clear that Poulain embraces the notion of historical progress in a morally meaningful sense of the term. As we will shortly see, much of his thinking about the history of humanity is informed by a rather dim view of the past accomplishments of the species (prefiguring Rousseau rather than Condorcet).

The First Stage of Humanity In the Egalité des deux sexes, Poulain refers to the state of affairs “in the

beginning of the world.” His picture of the dawn of humanity is fairly rosy:

200 Anthropology and History Things were very different from what they are today; there was no

government, no science, no civil office nor established religion, and the notion of dependency was not yet tainted with evil. I conceive of them as children and that all rivalry was like a game. ‘The men and the women, who were simple and innocent in those days,

occupied themselves equally with the cultivation of the soil and with hunting, just as the savages still do today.*°

In this vision of “the beginning” Poulain associates the early history of humanity with the absence of a gendered division of labor, and he assumes a basic similarity between early human society and the way of life of the “savages” in America and Africa. The idea that the “savages” encountered by European travelers in America and elsewhere represented the earliest stage of humanity was

fairly widespread in seventeenth-century Europe. The notion of the “Americans” as representative of the beginning of history was found in

Grotius as well as Hobbes and Pufendorf, and later in Locke (“in the beginning all the world was America”). In England John Ogilby, an almost exact contemporary of Poulain, compared the Americans to the Germans and other peoples of antiquity as well as to the contemporary inhabitants of Greater ‘[artary (America: Being the Latest, and Most Accurate Description of the New World, 1671).°! The association of the first

stage of humanity with the contemporary “savages,” in particular the Americans, was thus neither new nor exceptional. However, Poulain’s depiction of the remote past as a happy age of innocence and equality is by no means self-evident. Admittedly, many authors subscribed to the stereotype of the “noble savage,” a picture of happy and peaceful men and women living in harmony with nature, untouched by the corrupting influences of modern civilization. However, Ronald Meek showed

long ago that numerous other seventeenth-century travelers rather emphasized the “primitivism,” “barbarity,” and “lack of civilization” of

the inhabitants of extra-European lands, in particular the Americas. The equality obtaining in “savage” societies, which was widely observed,” could also be interpreted both ways: as a blissful state of virtue and innocence, or, on the contrary, as a mark of barbarian primitivism. As a matter of fact, the idea of the noble savage had always coexisted with its less attractive double, the ignoble savage. Ogilby’s juxtaposi-

tion of the Americans and the ancient Germans is a case in point, for

Anthropology and History 201 ‘Tacitus, the authoritative source on the Germans, needed only a few pages to pass from a picture of the Germans as brave, upright, and uncorrupted men to a story of drunken brawls and reckless gambling.® Generally, the Greek and Roman classics abounded with examples of both the idea of an original “golden age” and the notion of a dismal and “primitive” infancy of the human race.” A comparison of Poulain’s views with those of some of his contemporaries may enable us to elucidate his position in this tension-ridden discursive field. Let us begin with Jean-Baptiste du ‘Tertre’s description of the Antilles, already cited above as one of Poulain’s sources. Du ‘Tertre begins his discussion of the native inhabitants of the islands with a critique of the common notion of them as “savages,” that is, “barba-

rous, cruel, and inhuman men, devoid of reason . . . and hairy like bears.” Not so, he objects; these men “are savages in name only,” and he goes on to sketch the familiar picture of natural equality and paradisiacal innocence. However, as the story progresses, the “savages” become less and less noble and more and more savage. According to du Tertre, they lack civilization and the Christian faith, so that it is no wonder that their minds are filled with superstition, errors, and silly ideas; their children get hardly any education, politeness is unknown to them, they go around naked and defecate in public. In addition, polygamy and incestuous behavior are quite common among the natives. Du Tertre relates stories about fathers who married their own daughters

and even about sons who married their mothers.® In the end, the reader gets the distinct impression that du ‘Tertre’s judgment of the Antillians is unsettled: both the noble and the ignoble savage figure in his text, and the tension between the two is never quite resolved.™ A totally different picture emerges from Villault de Bellefond’s West African travelogue. The noble savage is virtually absent from his pages;

his entire account is condemnatory. The inhabitants of the African coasts are superstitious, they are tall and well-built but with hideous faces, and some are said to be cannibals. The girls go naked and are prone to mischief, and many of them are prostituted to foreigners or offer themselves to them. Villault’s account of the natives of the Gold Coast is more favorable, but even in their case he declares that they are inveterate liars, indulge in excessive drinking, and frequently suffer from venereal diseases.°

Still another contemporary traveler, the Gassendist philosopher

202 Anthropology and History Francois Bernier, observes that recently the Europeans have discovered “entire Nations that .. . were living like our remote ancestors.”® ‘The

ignoble savage looms large in his writings. In some cannibal tribes, such as the Iupinambu and the Huron, he asserts, nature is so corrupted that they “retain less humanity.” Bernier advances the hypothesis that some animals might possess a very primitive language, and he compares them to “Canadians and those other savage nations with a very limited vocabulary.” He even upholds the legitimacy of natural slavery, “by which those who excel in the powers of the mind command those who excel only in brute force, just as the soul governs the body, and man rules the animals.” In his outline of a racial classification of humanity, Bernier’s discussion of black Africans is based almost entirely on observations made in Arabian slave markets during his voyage to India: Africans are people who are “for sale” or who are “transported” and experimented with.” In Bernier’s worldview there seems to be no place at all for the noble savage.7! A frequently mentioned aspect of early or “primitive” society is the absence of clearly defined standards of masculinity and femininity. A fascinating example is Pierre Petit’s book on the Amazons. In the De Amazonibus Dissertatio Petit, a medical doctor who had also written about the nature of animals and the customs of the cannibals, seeks to establish that the Amazons have really existed and thus has to confront various opposing viewpoints, notably the contention that a commonwealth of women went against nature and could therefore not have ex-

isted. In response, Petit points to the example of the great queens of antiquity, but he also advances a more “modern” argument, namely that human nature varies according to place and time. Drawing on Hippocrates, he offers a climatological explanation of the origin of the Amazons.” The ancient sources located the Amazons in Cappadocia,

but, Petit conjectures, they probably originated much farther north. Their northern origin may explain the existence of woman warriors, for “in those parts where human nature is less developed the character and habits of women and men are harder to distinguish . . . [especially] in cold lands.””? Among the Samoyeds, the Lapps, the Scythians, the

Siberians, the Norwegians, the Icelanders, and the Zemblians, Petit further relates, it is sometimes virtually impossible to distinguish the women from the men.” A similar viewpoint is found in Jean-Baptiste ‘Tavernier’s description of the Kalmuks. ‘Tavernier, who had traveled ex-

Anthropology and History 203 tensively in Asia, depicts the Kalmuks as “robust men, but the most ugly and deformed you will meet with in the whole world.” But they make good soldiers, and their women and daughters “are as valiant in war as the men.” Finally, their religious ceremonies are of an extreme simplicity, and there are no towns or fortresses in their lands.” ‘The gender equality prevailing among the Amazons and other nations is thus explained in terms of a primitive “sameness” of men and women in

an early stage of human society, in accordance with a long tradition, going back to Herodotus, in which the peoples of the far North are depicted as extremely primitive, sometimes monstrous, but also sturdy and courageous.” A few years later Fontenelle transformed the disparate accounts of historical primitivism and extra-European “savageness” into a general law of human development. For Fontenelle it is time, not climate, that provides the ultimate explanation of primitivity. “If need be,” he asserts, “I might very well show an astonishing similarity between the myths of the Americans and those of the Greeks . . . which demonstrates that the Greeks were once savages just like the Americans.”” According to Fontenelle all peoples of the earth had passed through a stage of savagery and mythology (with the sole exception of the Jews, he added for a safety measure).”*

Poulain’s depiction of the beginnings of humanity presents a stark contrast to these primitivist views. In his writings there is almost no trace of the notion of “primitive backwardness.” He does not use terms like “innocence” and “bliss,” but his portrayal of life at the dawn of history is definitely closer to the notion of the noble savage than to that of the ignoble savage. Not surprisingly, he regards the low degree of gender differentiation in early society in a quite different light from Petit and ‘lavernier: it is not a mark of primitivism but rather the absence of an unjust and “unnatural” dominance by the male sex. Nevertheless, he by no means fully endorses the stereotype of the “noble savage.” As we have seen, he believes that “Turks, barbarians, and savages . . . are human beings like us, with the same abilities . . . if educated, they could equal us in any respect”; and he doubts whether it is fitting to use the term “savages” at all.” In itself, the assertion that the very name “savage” reflected European prejudices against people with different habits was not new. Montaigne had said as much in his famous essay on the cannibals. Poulain’s wording is actually very close to Montaigne’s “ev-

204 Anthropology and History eryone calls barbarian what differs from his own customs.”*° But in conjunction with Poulain’s Cartesian egalitarianism, such utterances acquire a different meaning. In Poulain, Montaigne’s playful inversion of cultural difference is assimilated into a discourse centering on other concerns, notably the equality of the sexes. We may conclude that, while Poulain’s critique of the vulgar notion of the backward savage is undoubtedly indebted to Montaigne’s critical reflection on the image of the “ignoble savage,” it cannot be fully assimilated to standard discourse on the “noble savage.” ‘Io some extent, Poulain’s vision of equality transcends the traditional discourse on the “savage,” which, whether laudatory or censorious, was always a language of difference. The egalitarian thrust of Cartesianism was also noticed by others. In his Nouveaux Mémoires pour servir a UVbistoire du cartéstanisme (1692) Pi-

erre Daniel Huet quotes an anonymous, and in fact fictitious, traveler. Huet’s spokesman, who has presumably just returned from a voyage to the far North, discloses that Descartes is not dead at all: he is living in northern Sweden, instructing the Laplanders in Cartesian philosophy. Huet’s mockery shows that he associates Cartesianism with the “preposterous” assumption that such utter savages as the Lapps were rational persons who could understand philosophy. April Shelford, who reports Huet’s remarks, believes he had read Poulain.*! His choice of the example of the Lapps shows that he had probably also read Bernier’s essay on racial classification. ‘Io Bernier, the Lapps were subhuman, more like beasts than civilized men; to Poulain, they were human beings endowed with reason and free will.

A Conjectural History of Inequality It remains to be seen how Poulain’s depiction of the “beginning of the world” fits into his overall view of the historical development of the human race. In the Egalité des deux sexes he introduces a “conjecture

historique” to explain the origins of inequality, in particular the inequality between women and men. What Poulain calls a “conjecture historique” is a hypothetical history of humanity that accounts for the emergence of dependency out of the original state of freedom and equality. In fact he presents two such hypothetical histories: one in the first part of the Egalité des deux sexes, the other in the final section of the Excellence des hommes.

Anthropology and History 205 The first account discusses the origins of the patriarchal family, pri-

vate property, the state, and religion. In the first age of the world, Poulain posits, sexual difference was not very consequential, and the two sexes by and large performed the same tasks. He stresses that men and women shared all activities and that only achievement counted for something: “The man went his way, and the woman went hers; the one who brought home more enjoyed the highest esteem.”*? On account of their greater bodily strength, Poulain further reasoned, the men fancied that they could lord it over the women in all things. Moreover, they took advantage of women’s temporary weakness during childbirth and of the women’s need of their assistance in the care of their children. So it came to pass that the wife became subject to the husband and the son honored his father. In the extended families that evolved in the early history of the human race a rough division of labor was imposed. The men gradually restricted the women’s range of activities until a gendered separation between the home and the outside world came into existence. Poulain explains how in the next stage of development the original state of peace came to an end. The first armed struggles were occasioned by conflicts over the distribution of property: the firstborn son often appropriated all the family land, and the younger boys were left to fend for themselves. Some of these propertyless youngsters organized themselves in gangs, robbing and enslaving others whenever they

could. Usurpation and subjection thus made their appearance, and women, who took no active part in these aggressive practices, came to be seen as part of the booty. Consequently they were despised and con-

sidered inferior, because conquerors always look down on the conquered. As a result the institution of marriage underwent a fateful change: in the beginning women had married men from their own extended family who treated them like sisters, but now they were forced to marry unknown strangers who were more likely to treat them like servants. From this time, Poulain declares, dates the belief that women are inferior to men. The formation of the patriarchal family was the first stage in the development of human society. ‘The next soon followed: “Some men con-

tented themselves with this first usurpation, but others, more ambitious and emboldened by their victorious exploits, wanted to pursue their conquests still further.” It was in this way that the first states came

into being, and so it happened that women were from the outset ex-

206 Anthropology and History cluded from the seats of political authority. Moreover, the example of the first princes, says Poulain, was before long followed by their subjects. Everyone sought to outdo and outshine his neighbors, and women, who were less adept at playing the tyrant, and less willing to engage in bloodshed and warfare, were considered unfit to contribute to the maintenance of the state. Finally, the establishment of states led to the institution of ranks and distinctions: “Symbols of honor . . . and signs of respect were introduced .. . In this way the notion of power became joined to the external manifestations of submission rendered to those who exercised authority.”* After discussing the formation of states, Poulain moves on to the origin of religion. He considers it certain that God has been worshiped since the world was made, but he adds that religious cults were established only when men and women were assembled in “public societies.” The nature of these early cults bore the imprint of the power relations in the societies in which they originated: As people were now used to revere the powerful by means of sym-

bols of respect, they believed that they ought also to honor God with some ceremonies to demonstrate their belief in his greatness. Temples were built and sacrifices were instituted. And the men who already controlled the government did not fail to secure the direction of religious affairs as well. Custom had already convinced women that all things belonged to the men, so they did not demand to take part in the ministry. The notion men had of God was extremely corrupted by myths and poetical fancies, and so they fabricated themselves male and female deities; and priestesses were appointed for the worship of the deities of their own sex, but only under the guidance and bon plaisir of the priests.™

The last observations obviously apply to the polytheistic cults of antiquity. About Christianity and its special place in history Poulain keeps a prudent silence, although his observations about the male monopoly

of priestcraft would have reminded many readers of the structure of Christian churches, and in particular of Roman Catholicism. Poulain concludes his conjectural history of inequality with some observations on the origins of the sciences. The invention of learning, he suggests, was occasioned by the idleness of priests. Some Egyptian priests with nothing worthwhile to do amused themselves with conver-

Anthropology and History 207 sations about the natural world, their ideas stirred the curiosity of other men, and so science got started. Only much later were the sciences perfected and academies founded. Women, who could not accede to the priesthood and who were confined to their homes, had no part in all of this, so that the academies were masculine institutions from their inception. There was, however, another province of human activity in which women played a major role: fashion and the ornaments of the body. In the first age of the world, there was no such thing as fashion; people simply covered themselves as best as they could. But over time

clothing became a means to impress and please others. Women excelled in this art and discovered that they could soften the rude manners of men by enhancing their beauty. At present, Poulain concludes, this habit is so ingrained in men as well as in women that it seems impossible to question it.®

Poulain’s first account does not add up to an optimistic view of history, let alone a belief in progress. In his second discussion of conjectural history, in the Excellence des hommes, Poulain paints an even bleaker picture. In my student days, he tells his readers, I used to believe that I was a lucky man to be born in a flourishing realm where pleasures, wealth, and all manner of goods from distant lands were in abundant supply. Later, however, when I came to rely more on reason than on custom, and when I turned my attention to the way of life of the “first men” and those the vulgar call “savages,” the scales fell from my eyes.

After this account of his disillusionment with modern society Poulain offers a picture of “the first age of the world” that comes extremely close to the traditional “noble savage” and “golden age” stereotypes, although he nowhere affirms in so many words that the condition of the actual “savages” in Africa and America is a happy one. It was an age of

innocence and bliss (““amours innocens ... bergers & bergéres .. . plaisirs de la vie rustique”) when all men and women were equal, just, and honest, while common sense was sufficient to keep the peace. Everyone was satisfied with his plot of land, and men and women lived longer (up to “a century”) than in modern society. ‘Io the misfortune of the human race, Poulain continues, this happy state of affairs was soon disrupted: Some men, abusing their power and leisure, conceived the design to bring the others into subjection, thus transforming the golden

208 Anthropology and History age of liberty into an iron age of servitude: oppression confused interests and goods to such an extent that one man became dependent on another for his livelihood. As the state of innocence and peace receded into the past, this confusion increased yet more, engendering greed, ambition, vanity, luxury, idleness, arrogance, cruelty, tyranny, falsehood, quarrels, wars, insecurity, anxiety. ‘Io sum up: almost all the illnesses of body and mind we are plagued by.° Anticipating Rousseau, Poulain attributes all the ills of modern society, notably its ruthless competitive mentality, to the growth of inequality:

the fateful usurpation of liberty by a cunning and greedy minority at the expense of the great majority of mankind, including, of course, the female sex. Especially noteworthy, with a view to Rousseau’s critique of private property in the Discourse on Inequality, is the observation that

the “confusion” of interests and goods made some men dependent on others for their livelihood. Poulain’s brief outline of a conjectural history of humanity is perfectly consistent with his egalitarian critique of modern society, for it explains how such a society developed out of an original state of equality. It is also in accordance with his bleak view of politics, discussed in the previous chapter.

The Possibility of Change As we have seen, the temper of Poulain’s philosophy is neither optimistic nor utopian. He was well aware of the obstacles to an improvement of women’s lot and, more generally, of the awesome power of vested in-

terests and the tenacity of ingrained prejudices. Yet he envisaged reforms in education which were not entirely far-fetched and for which there was probably some support in late seventeenth-century France. It is therefore worthwhile to review his opinions on the feasibility of a change in the social relationship between the sexes against the background described above. Let us first consider Poulain’s opinion on the sexual division of labor. In the Excellence des hommes, he establishes the general principle that

the division of offices and trades between men and women is “indifferent,” no occupation being intrinsically masculine or feminine. His second principle is that laws favoring the men and putting women at a

Anthropology and History 209 disadvantage are unjust and tyrannical. But what about the practical consequences? Addressing the question if women ought actually to be called to all the employments of society, Poulain first declares that strict justice does not require this: “It is in no way an injustice not to share with them [the women] what we [the men] possess.” Next he formulates a general rule: “Given that it is not necessary to the welfare of society that the [employments] are equally distributed among men and women, it is indifferent whether the former or the latter exercise them,

on the condition that those who have them in hand do not misuse them.”*? He elucidates the rule by a comparison with economic inequality. The unequal distribution of honors and wealth is not in itself unjust: it is only the abuse of riches and reputation that is contrary

to the principle of equality. The argument ultimately rests upon a meritocratic variety of the rule of equality, in accordance with the critique of rank discussed in the previous chapter. In the last section of the Excellence des hommes, Poulain returns to the

issue.** Here he sets out to refute an imaginary opponent (the “antiPoulain” of the middle part of the book) who has advanced the commonplace argument that the full participation of women in civil society would be “inconvenient”: that is, not feasible. Poulain first repeats the point discussed above: he has not proposed that women should actually participate in all trades and offices, but only that they are capable of it.

This time, however, he seems to feel that this argument is not sufficient, for he now pushes it a bit further:

Apart from the fact that an inconvenience cannot stand against a truth, the arguments of our opponent rely entirely on custom, and they apply only to the present state of civil society, as it is governed

and ordered by the men. They do not sufficiently consider that civil society has not always and everywhere been organized in the same way, without functioning any the worse for it. If the women had governed, they would have ordered the activities and the employments in their way, just as the men have done.*

A similar observation is made by Sophie in the third conversation of the Education des dames:

Does one at present have the same laws, the same customs, the same politics, and the same instruction as in the past? Are not all

210 Anthropology and History men subject to change in their ideas, their manner of speaking, their actions, and their aims, as with fashions, according to occasion and experience?” Here we must be attentive to the context. Sophie’s remarks occur in the middle of a discussion of the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, and are thus tied to a “progressivist” view of history. The observation about the changeability of civil society, however, is textually close to Poulain’s pessimistic utterances about the history of inequality. Both passages evoke the possibility of social change, but they point to contrasting, if not actually contradictory, philosophies of history.

An Ambivalent Vision of History It is in the context of his remarks about the changeability of civil society that Poulain adduces the anthropological evidence discussed earlier in this chapter. However, he does not really manage to fashion a systematic philosophy out of the analogies between the historical evolution of society and the cultural variety in the extra-European world, al-

though the logic of his argument pushes him in that direction. ‘The same logic is discernible in his tentative observations on the analogy between the earliest stage of history and the way of life of contemporary “savages.” Like several of his contemporaries, Poulain experimented with the analogies between anthropology and history; but like most of them, he got no further than some suggestive, and sometimes contradictory, suggestions. His conjectural history does not progress beyond an extremely cursory treatment of the development of society. It was Fontenelle, writing some fifteen years later, who put together the first pieces of a coherent philosophy of history in which the temporal and spatial extensions of the European knowledge of the world were conceptually linked, so that geographical knowledge might determine the deeper meaning of historical facts, and vice versa.”! Perhaps Pou-

lain vaguely felt the possibility of such a connection, but it finally eluded him, leaving the disparate threads of the argument hanging in midair.

Likewise, he was unable to make up his mind about progress and corruption. His conjectural history of inequality pushes him toward a proto-Rousseauian view of history as the corruption of original virtue,

Anthropology and History 211 but his definite preference for the moderns in science and philosophy seems to entail a protean notion of “the forward march of the human mind.” ‘The two parts of Poulain’s emergent philosophy of history thus point in diametrically opposite directions. In the same manner, he depicts the condition of women in Europe sometimes as just as degraded as in the rest of the world, and at other times as more dignified. Europe is likewise portrayed sometimes as more civilized than the Orient and sometimes as equally corrupt. All the divergent lines of thought found in the later Enlightenment philosophies of history can thus be identified in Poulain’s writings, but precisely for that reason he was in the end unable to produce a coherent philosophy of history.

The Road to Geneva

THE MAJOR TURNING POINTS in Poulain’s life were closely

connected to the evolution of his religious beliefs. In fact the course of his entire life was shaped by two conversion experiences: first, the philosophical conversion from Scholasticism to Cartesianism, which impelled him to abandon the prospect of an ecclesiastical career and to become a “philosopher”; and second, the far more dangerous conversion to Calvinism in the late 1680s, which forced him to leave his ancestral country and move to the Genevan Republic. Between those two fateful conversions lay his arduous years as a village priest.

Without questioning the sincerity of Poulain’s dedication to the ideal of the equality of the sexes or his lively interest in other secular is-

sues, it seems safe to conclude that religious questions worried him more than anything else. Whatever else it was, the late seventeenth century was a deeply religious age. Poulain did not abandon his theological studies out of religious indifference: from all his books it is clear

that religion was supremely important to him. We must also keep in mind that, apart from the intellectual issues involved, the source of Poulain’s rupture with the Sorbonne was his decision not to become a Catholic priest, and for that reason alone a thorough rethinking of his own faith imposed itself. At the same time, he was well aware that religious issues were fraught with danger. Here, where philosophy impinged on theology, was the high-risk zone of early-modern intellec212

The Road to Geneva 213 tual life. The overwhelming majority of censorship cases involved theological questions. As a Cartesian, Poulain had especially good reasons for caution, for Cartesians were often suspected of heterodoxy. Like most Cartesians, he found it increasingly difficult to accept the entire corpus of Roman Catholic theology, and from his later writings it is clear that his doubts about the doctrine of the Eucharist dated at the very least from the early 1680s, and possibly from his student days. This chapter takes a closer look at Poulain’s theological trajectory. Although the three books he published in the 1670s are not theological treatises, religion is discussed in all of them, and the theological opinions put forward are quite audacious. In particular, Poulain’s “historical” reading of the Bible is extremely close to the method adopted by Spinoza. We will see that these ideas arise out of his egalitarian and feminist views. At a deeper level, Poulain’s opinions on religion are informed by a profound aversion to persecution, fanaticism, and oppression, an aversion that he shared with Descartes and with many of his Cartesian contemporaries. ! The philosophical influences on Poulain’s theology are less easy to disentangle. He adopts Descartes’s view that all human persons are endowed with free will and the capacity to attain the good. Such an optimistic appraisal of the human condition entails a tacit disavowal of the doctrines of original sin and predetermined grace. Poulain’s critique of certain aspects of theology also displays some influence of Hobbes and

Spinoza, although he cannot be labeled a Hobbesian or a Spinozist. From Hobbes he takes a profound skepticism about all claims to know the real nature of God. He has in common with Spinoza both his approach to biblical criticism and the quest for a “rational faith,” a philosophical religion purged of all supernaturalism. Such a rationalistic approach to religion is consistent with Poulain’s entire worldview. ‘Irue

faith, he declares over and over again, has to be the result of a conscious, rational choice on the part of the believer. Such a view is based on the Cartesian imperative of the transparency of the self as opposed to the Jansenist insistence on the opacity of the self.’ The present chapter is for the most part consecrated to an examination of the theological ideas in Poulain’s three feminist treatises. In the final section I discuss his unpleasant experiences as a village priest, about which we have, unfortunately, no letters or other documents by Poulain himself. The motives for his conversion to Calvinism and his

214 The Road to Geneva decision to seek refuge in Geneva must be inferred from contextual evidence and from what he wrote much later in Geneva.

A Feminist Reading of Genesis Anyone seeking to establish the equality of women with men had to confront the story of Eve. The usual reading was that God’s creation of Eve out of Adam’s rib somehow proved masculine superiority because Adam was created first and Eve was fashioned out of a part of him. With some qualifications, both Augustine and Thomas Aquinas endorsed this opinion. In different ways, both argued that Genesis 1:27, which says that God created human beings in his image, “male and female created he them,” referred to a “potentiality” or primary quality, whereas the story of the actual, material creation was told in Genesis 2:18-25. The latter passage was taken to mean that Adam was created directly in God’s image while Eve represented a “derived” and therefore less perfect image of God. Both Augustine and Aquinas accepted the spiritual equality of the sexes but both also affirmed the secondary, “inferior” nature of actual women, given that men and women did not exist as pure mind but were (and would be again after the resurrection) unities of body and soul.’ In his long preface to the Excellence des hommes Poulain undertakes a

detailed refutation of male-supremacist interpretations of the Bible. Generally, he seeks to refute or explain away those passages that lend themselves to a patriarchal interpretation, while he endorses other passages that suggest a spiritual equality of the sexes. He mentions several passages in works by the church fathers that support a gender-neutral reading, such as Saint Ambrosius’ mention of “the soul that receives no sex”; Saint Gregory of Nyssa’s reference to the divine element in hu-

man beings “that is capable of intelligence and reason, and does not partake in sexual difference”; Saint Clement of Alexandria’s statement that “men and women are of the same nature”; and Saint Basil’s declaration that the “advantages of nature” are the same in both sexes.* In fact the church fathers also upheld the subjection of women in society, but Poulain simply disregards these opinions. Like many Christian feminists before and after him, he short-circuits the distinction between the spiritual and the worldly realm that the church fathers so carefully maintained.

The Road to Geneva 215 Next Poulain offers a feminist reading of Genesis. He points to the egalitarian implications of Genesis 1:27, but his main attack is directed against the patriarchal interpretations of the story of Adam’s rib. The first argument he tackles is that Adam was created first, “directly” in the image of God, and therefore ranks above Eve. Poulain objects that “if women are not images of God, because the first woman came from the man, then only Adam was the image of God, because all other men came from women.” According to the same logic, he goes on to say, all later men are “less noble” than women, because they are born from women. All this makes no sense, Poulain concludes, because it is the nature of women and men, not the method of procreation, that makes them into images of God. ‘The argument that precedence in time demonstrates Adam’s superiority, he further argues, is in any case ridiculous, for surely the animals were created before Adam. Generally, the preference for the older over the younger has no other foundation than

“custom.” Good Christians, Poulain concludes, should not project their prejudices into scripture.’

Next there is the question of the material out of which Adam and Eve were fashioned. Eve was made out of Adam’s rib, and Adam out of mud and slime: those who maintain that Eve is inferior because she was made out of a part of Adam should pause to consider the definitely less

noble material God used to create Adam, says Poulain. In a sarcastic aside, he adds that the story of the rib is anyway confined to the case of Eve: all subsequent women were not born from parts of men, it appears to be rather the other way around. Further, Eve is called Adam’s helpmate. This was commonly taken to mean that she was subordinated to Adam, but Poulain immediately retorts that a helpmate (“aide”) is not the same thing as a servant. He recalls that princes are frequently called the “aides” of their subjects, as subjects are of their princes. Generally speaking, all men and women in society are each other’s helpmates, so that “the quality of helpmate does not imply either dependency or in-

equality.” In this connection, Poulain also mentions the biblical passages where God bestows dominion over nonhuman nature on Adam and Eve, thus making men and women equal partners in the mastery of nature. Finally, the assertion of the theologians that all women are subordinated to men is contradicted by the historical record, for unmarried women and, importantly, queens are in fact not subject to any man.°

216 The Road to Geneva Many of these arguments were not new. [he patriarchal readings of Genesis had been questioned in numerous medieval texts, and the six or seven standard medieval arguments for Eve’s excellence, or even superiority, reappear frequently in the literature of the guerelle des femmes.’ French seventeenth-century feminists knew such arguments and used them often. In 1664, for example, Elisabeth Marie Clement declared that Eve was fashioned out of Adam’s rib, “not out of his foot nor out of his head, and that was to declare that she would be neither the mistress nor the slave of the man; but she was made of his rib, so that she would be his companion, his equal, and his helpmate.”* Interestingly, this argument ultimately stems from Augustine, whose egalitarian utterances on women seem to have been forgotten by many later Christian thinkers (including Poulain).? Other inversions of Genesis are found in the Apologie de la science des dames (1662), in Jacquette Guillaume’s Dames illustres (1665), and in numerous feminist tracts from the preceding century.!° In England Margaret Fell advanced simi-

lar arguments, including women’s right to speak in the church, in Women’s Speaking Fustified (1667)."!

After the Creation comes the Fall. According to the received interpretation, Eve, by heeding the serpent’s evil counsels, bore the primary responsibility for the first sin: she was the first woman as well as the first “fallen woman.” The text of Genesis 3:16, it was generally supposed, literally sanctioned her subjection to her husband. Not so, says Poulain; it is only the Vulgate Bible that speaks of Eve’s subordination as a consequence of the Fall, but there is no such affirmation in the Hebrew text, nor in the translations made directly from the Hebrew such as the Polyglot Bible and the Vatable Bible, which are nowadays “ac-

cepted by all the learned.” Poulain is referring respectively to the Polyglot edition published in Paris in 1645 and to the Latin Bible of Robert Estienne (1545). According to Madeleine Alcover, the expression “dominabitur tibi,” contrary to Poulain’s assertion, is found in both these translations, but it has a sexual connotation (“your desire will be to the man and he will dominate you”), so that it cannot, indeed,

be used to justify a generalized social and political subjection of women. Poulain’s critique of the Vulgate Bible, though, is correct, for the Vulgate text omits the reference to sexual desire and thereby gives the element of domination a greater scope.’ Apart from the question at issue, Poulain’s distrust of the Vulgate is symptomatic of his attitude to-

The Road to Geneva 217 ward Catholic doctrine. ‘The Vulgate was, after all, the text officially authorized by the Catholic church. However, Poulain is not content with disputing the validity of the translation of Genesis 3:16. He also offers his own feminist reading of the passage. We know from history, he says, that women are kept in subjection by the laws men have made for their own advantage. When God tells Eve that she will be “under the sway of her husband,” he actually warns her that Adam is so perverted by the sinful act in which he has taken part “that he will no longer respect the equality that formerly reigned between them, but that he will instead seek to bring her under his despotic rule.” Soon afterward Poulain explains that the story of the Fall is mainly about the human condition. God foretells that Eve shall bear children in painful labor and Adam shall have to toil in the sweat of his brow: that is, God announces that humanity is condemned to forsake the world of abundance (paradise) and is about to enter the universe of scarcity (history).'* Here he seems to be moving toward another, basically allegorical mode of interpretation. Finally, he marshals yet another argument against a patriarchal read-

ing of the story of the Fall. He thinks it highly implausible. Considering that Adam has just committed a grave sin it seems illogical that God will grant him a new privilege, that of ruling Eve, who has thus far been his equal, instead of meting out a just punishment. Furthermore,

Poulain observes, the Bible nowhere affirms that Eve is despoiled of her original right of domination over nonhuman nature. In the Bible, he contends, only four types of domination can be found: that of God

over all of creation, that of man over the animal kingdom, that of princes over their subjects, and finally, the domination of lords over slaves, servants, and vassals. On a second thought, he adds the domina-

tion of fathers and mothers over their children. ‘The relationship between husband and wife fits none of these cases.! He further explains that God is the only real sovereign lord, so that no human being can be naturally subjected to another human being, an argument that comes extremely close to the Calvinist insistence on God’s exclusive majesty.!° Men and women are both rational persons, Poulain goes on to say: the woman should obey her husband when reason speaks through his mouth, and he must likewise follow her commands when reason is on her side. ‘There is scriptural support for this maxim in Genesis 21:12, where God exhorts Abraham to listen to

218 The Road to Geneva Sarah and to comply with her demand to expel Hagar and Ishmael. In the same vein, Poulain reads Saint Paul: it is true that the apostle says that the woman is “out of the man,” but we should not forget, he warns, that he also declares that the man is out of the woman, and everything is from God (1 Corinthians 11:12).!’ In the final analysis, however, Poulain doubts the validity of any argument for male dominion based on the story of Genesis. In line with the Cartesian critique of narrative history he asserts that the particular history of Adam and Eve cannot establish any general prescription for women at all. Commenting on Saint Paul’s First Letter to ‘Timothy (2:13—14), in which the apostle justifies female subordination on the grounds of Adam’s prior creation and Eve’s seduction, Poulain declares:

The arguments the apostle employs to comply with custom are not at all essential reasons, but rather simple conventions taken from a story of long ago [une histoire eloignée| and a personal circumstance [fait personnel] that might equally well be used against the men. For if the first man had been created after the woman, and for the benefit of the woman, and if he had been directly seduced, something that is in no way impossible, and if from that time onward men had been under the domination of women .. . then they would have been told, likewise, that they ought not to lord it over their wives ... When thoroughly examined, this kind of reasoning proves nothing at all.'*

Here Poulain is taking great liberties with one of the key texts of the Old ‘Testament. If one felt free to invert the roles of Adam and Eve in the story of the Fall, what else might one not turn upside down? But the really decisive step in the argument is that Eve’s seduction is relegated to the status of a historically contingent event. An unsympathetic reader, searching for heretical statements, might have accused Poulain of reducing the Fall to “une histoire eloignée” and “un fait personnel,” all the more so because Poulain nowhere in his writings demonstrates any trace of sympathy for the doctrine of original sin.

Explaining (Away) Biblical Prescriptions In the “avertissement” printed at the end of the Egalité des deux sexes, Poulain asserts that his views are in no way contrary to scripture. In the

The Road to Geneva 219 first place, he declares, the Bible is concerned only to impart the idea of justice to mankind, and it leaves everyone at liberty “to judge the natural and true state of affairs according to his lights.” Second, a careful reading shows that “all the objections derived from scripture are only sophistic arguments of prejudice, by which some passages are understood as if they applied to all women when they refer only to some particular individuals, or something is attributed to nature which springs only from education and custom, and from what the sacred authors say about the conventions of their time.”!? The last formulation suggests the method of biblical interpretation Poulain is going to employ. It is

the doctrine of accommodation. In his critique of Saint Paul he explains that the apostle’s patriarchal reading of Genesis is really meant to “accommodate” the customs of his time.

The rules of exegesis Poulain invokes are very old: like so much else they can be traced back to Augustine. In his dispute with the Manichaeans, Augustine employed several principles of interpretation,

two of which Poulain is using here: first, the principle that the holy scripture was not a textbook of natural science but was concerned primarily with salvation and God’s moral commands to attain it. In particular, Augustine asserted that when the literal reading of a biblical passage was at odds with the demonstrable truths of natural philosophy, the passage in question should be interpreted in a figurative or allegorical way.

Second, Augustine explained that the text of scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit, was adapted to the mental capacities of the ordinary folk it was intended for: that is, the Bible would discuss natural phenomena as they appeared to most men. This was the principle of accommodation. Both of Augustine’s principles imposed obvious limitations on a literal reading of scripture.”? In the medieval church, the validity of several layers of interpretation of the Bible—literal, moral, allegorical, eschatological—became standard doctrine, laid down in the famous principle of the “fourfold reading,” in which the different interpretations were always supposed to complement, and never to contradict, each other.?! After the Reformation the Catholic church became allergic, not to any particular doctrine of interpretation itself, but to its use by laypersons interpreting the Bible according to their own lights, a practice the church tended, not unreasonably, to associate with Protestantism.”* ‘The church still accepted the principle that literalism had to

yield to the manifest truths of natural philosophy, but it affirmed the

220 The Road to Geneva primacy of the plain biblical text in those cases where natural philosophy had not (yet) attained absolute certainty. Moreover, the church reserved to itself the right to decide whether such was in fact the case. The real issue was thus not the legitimacy of nonliteral readings, but in what cases such readings were warranted and who was authorized to discuss such matters. In the seventeenth century, these questions became highly controversial in the polemics about the new heliocentric astronomy, culmi-

nating in the two condemnations of Galileo. Both Galileo and Descartes argued that the accounts of astronomical phenomena in the Bible should not be taken literally, because they represented the divinely inspired authors’ attempts to adapt to their uneducated readers. According to Descartes, all the biblical utterances contrary to the movement of the Earth had to be interpreted in this light.” In these astronomical disputes the church was confronted by an independent source of truth, the new natural science, which it could not control. That was one thing; but what of human science? The Bible contained numerous stories, parables, and prescriptions about individual and social behavior. ‘Iraditionally, Christian exegesis affirmed that some of the specific commands in the Old ‘Testament, such as the dietary laws, applied only to the historical people of Israel and did not possess universal validity. However, a radical application of the principle of accommodation might call into question much more. In the end it became possible, though dangerous, to argue that the literal sense of many, if not all, biblical passages was nothing more than a “story” about the ideas and customs of the not-so-very-enlightened Jewish and other nations of antiquity, therewith entirely discounting their truth-value. That was, of course, precisely the step Spinoza took, and which earned him the reputation of an atheist.”4 That Poulain was well aware of the theological background of his interpretative strategy is demonstrated by his explication of the doctrine of accommodation in the Education des dames:

It is apparent from all of scripture that God has always shown such condescension to men, that he has revealed himself to them only by allegories, symbols, and riddles, to accommodate the feebleness

of their mind, which was unable to understand almost anything except by crude and corporeal images; and he has permitted them

The Road to Geneva 221 to give him hands, ears, and even passions to render his conduct more intelligible to the people. And although it is probable, as some competent men believe, that the creation of the world was accomplished in a single moment, it was necessary to turn it into a history of several days to expound it to the people.” The findings of the new astronomy were obviously of great interest to Poulain. In the Egalité des deux sexes he mentions the immobility of the

Earth as the very first example of a popular prejudice, and he also affirms, in a critical aside on astrology, that the stars are bodies several millions of miles distant from the Earth.” Poulain’s remarks on accommodation show that he completely discounts the biblical pronouncements on natural phenomena. In the Excellence des hommes he makes this clear in an indirect way as well. In the

second part of the Excellence, he says that “sacred history is the only source of our knowledge of events at the beginning of the world.”?’ That statement sounds beautifully orthodox, but these words are put in the mouth of Poulain’s sexist straw man, a fairly stupid character (much like Galileo’s Simplicio) who is to be knocked down in the third and final part of the book. It is against this background that we must now look at Poulain’s handling of the scriptural affirmations of female subordination. He begins by endorsing Saint Paul’s well-known declarations that in Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Gentile, slave nor master. On the other hand, he cannot simply conjure away the passages in which the apostle exhorts women to remain silent in the church, to cover their heads during divine service, and generally to accept the authority of their husbands. Poulain employs various interpretive tactics to under-

mine the authority of these Pauline texts. For example, when Paul compares the rule of the husband in marriage to the lordship of Christ over his “bride,” the church, Poulain objects that mortal men cannot be “lords” in the likeness of Christ, for their domination over their wives is tainted by interest, passion, and presumption. Moreover, he adds, Christ’s leadership of the church is purely spiritual; it is not an “empire” of this world (an argument that, to some, might smack of Protestantism).?°

Commenting on the biblical restrictions on female clothing and behavior in the divine service, Poulain asserts that Saint Paul ought not to

222 The Road to Geneva be interpreted so as to elevate the particular status of women in the early church in the Greek world to a general precept for all mankind. When the apostle seeks to buttress his case by the affirmation that long hair is “natural” for women (1 Corinthians 11:14—-15), he is unceremoniously corrected: “It is obvious,” Poulain says, “that he has confused a long-established custom with nature.””? There is a sacred order of things, Poulain further declares, in which human beings offer them-

selves to God, and in which they are simultaneously “priests” and “kings.” He considers it “certain” that women take part on an equal footing with men in this sacred order where merit is more important than gender. Once again, Poulain’s argument shows an affinity with Protestantism, in this case with Luther’s well-known doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, including women. Elsewhere, however, he passes well beyond Protestantism, contending that “apart from custom” there is no reason why women should not officiate as pastors or ministers in the church.*° The numerous biblical texts in which women are excluded from the priesthood are thus sum-

marily relegated to the status of adaptations to popular prejudices. Poulain admits that in the actual functioning of society most public functions are fulfilled by men, but that is only because the specific division of labor in society is indifferent to God, who permits human customs as long as they are not contrary to his will. He further points out that different parts of the Bible recommend different customs. For example, Moses and Jesaiah, who are educated at the court, follow other codes of behavior than Jeremiah, who grew up in the countryside.®*! From such variety no absolute standards can be inferred.

That is not all. Poulain goes on to formulate the principle that the misogyny in the biblical texts is only an expression of historically specific customs in more general terms. Speaking about the Jewish laws in the Old ‘Testament, he declares that these were “for the most part national, that is, founded on the specific culture [geze] and the customs of the people for which they were made.” He subjects the Pauline prescriptions in the New Testament to the same critique:

Like all the Orientals as well as the Romans, the Jews were extremely jealous of their authority, and as they were the masters of their women, it is no wonder that the apostle, pursuing his altogether Christian policy of accommodating everyone, counseled

The Road to Geneva 223 submission and silence to the women, for the sake of peace in the family, enjoining them to wear a veil, and even maintaining that it would be a shame and an ignominy against nature to do otherwise.

It is true, Poulain admits, that scripture censures women’s failings in more severe language than men’s, but it is by now clear that this is so only because the sacred authors uncritically followed the prejudices of the poets and the orators among “the Greeks, and the Asian peoples to which the Jews used to belong.” Poulain stops just short of saying that the entire Bible is impregnated with the customs and prejudices of the “Orient.” Poulain’s biblical criticism is strikingly akin to Spinoza’s approach in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, published only five years before. Just like Spinoza, Poulain characterizes the Jewish laws as historically specific and refuses to attribute any universal validity to the social and cultural teachings of the Bible.** Poulain’s use of the principle of accommodation stretches it far beyond the limits envisaged by Augustine, or even Galileo. His yardstick is not the manifest truth of observed natu-

ral phenomena, but the far more contestable principle of the equality of the sexes. He simply discounts most of the moral and social teachings of the Bible because they are at variance with his egalitarian, Cartesian theory of human nature. The social teachings of scripture are discarded on the sole authority of Cartesian reason. The only thing that remains, it would seem, are the universal moral teachings of the Bible, such as charity and justice. Poulain does not tell us much about the sources of his ideas, but he

was certainly aware of the controversies over biblical interpretation then raging in France and Europe, both among Catholics and among Catholics and Protestants. Biblical criticism was very much “in the air.” Poulain’s criticisms of the moral prescriptions of the Old ‘Testament

have something in common with the Saumurian position in the Protestant camp, but they are more uncompromisingly rationalist: reason alone, and not the New lestament, is invoked to “correct” the Old ‘Tes-

tament, and Poulain also criticizes the New Testament wherever it contradicts the rational standard of equality. The secular, nontheological inspiration of Poulain’s critique also marks it off from Saumurian Protestantism, which, at least in theory, acknowledged the superiority of scripture over reason.*4

224 The Road to Geneva Nowhere in Poulain’s work is Revelation consulted as an independent source of truth. The idea of justice is found in the teachings of Christ, but it can equally well be discovered by human reason, for it

is founded on “the order of nature, which makes all human beings equals.”’5 ‘This assertion echoes Grotius’ position on the autonomous truth of natural law, but Grotius also explicitly recognized the autonomous significance of Revelation in such matters as the Old ‘lestament prophecies and the veridical power of miracles.*° Poulain is silent about those matters, and he is generally unsympathetic to miracles, prophecies, mysteries, and other manifestations of the supernatural. Poulain’s method of employing biblical criticism to combat deeply ingrained prejudices indicates that he may have been inspired by Richard Simon’s first publication, an anonymous pamphlet of 1670 in defense of the Jews of Metz, who were accused of the ritual murder of a Christian child. Simon criticized an anachronistic interpretation of an Old ‘Testament text in order to refute anti-Jewish prejudices.*” Poulain may well have heard of this notorious case, in which an innocent Jew

was burnt at the stake and the Parliament of Metz censured by the king.?* Poulain’s approach also has something in common with that of his fellow Cartesian Nicholas Malebranche, who likewise contended that the language of scripture was accommodated to popular usage in order to explain (away) the passages of the Bible that contradicted his philosophical views.*? Malebranche, however, was chiefly interested in natural science and epistemology, and did not dispute the validity of the moral prescriptions of the Bible; nor did Richard Simon, who, for all his historical criticism of the biblical texts, had a profound respect for the teachings of scripture.” In the final analysis, the uncompromisingly rationalist tone of Poulain’s biblical criticism is closer to Hobbes and Spinoza than to anyone

else. ‘That Poulain was influenced by Hobbes is apparent from his treatment of the political contract, discussed in Chapter 5. It is, however, far less clear how he got wind of Spinoza’s opinions, for in the early 1670s only a few men in France were conversant with Spinoza’s philosophy. Nonetheless, it seems probable that Poulain had at least some acquaintance with Spinozist ideas, also in view of his opinions on the nature of God, discussed in the next section. This shows that the early dissemination of Spinoza’s ideas may have gone beyond the extremely restricted circles mentioned in Paul Vernicre’s classic study of the reception of Spinoza in France.!

The Road to Geneva 225 The Nature and Existence of God Like the Greek church fathers before him, Augustine declared that the anthropomorphic images of God in the Bible were merely adaptations to the limited capacities of the human intellect, and did not reflect the

true nature of the deity. The real essence of God, the church fathers believed, was not accessible to the mind of Fallen Man. Nonetheless, the church routinely referred to God the Father, the masculine personal pronouns were used exclusively, and painters portrayed him as an awe-inspiring, bearded figure.

For Poulain, the gendered representation of God is simply another instance of imagining God in human terms. Men, he says, unthinkingly call God a king, lord, or father, but never a queen, lady, or mother. In so doing they imagine God as masculine, just like the painters who depict him as an old man.” Poulain resolutely rejects all such anthropomorphic images. God, he declares, cannot be represented by any human likeness.** Nor is God to be found in any particular place. Of course, explains Poulain, Jesus Christ knew perfectly well that God is in fact everywhere, but he addressed the people in their language, declaring that God resided in heaven, because the common people believe that the heavens, being situated high above the dwellings of mortal men, are the most fitting abode for the divine majesty.“ According to Poulain, even the most modern philosophers have not entirely freed themselves from anthropomorphic notions:

What philosophers have thought about the divine nature is founded on what they have known about the nature of the mind. For we observe that those who believe that the mind is corporeal, only of a more subtle nature than the other bodies, also believe that the divinity is an extremely subtle body whose agency is dif-

fused through all matter to impart movement to it. And those who, on the contrary, uphold the opinion that our soul is a noncorporeal entity, likewise contend that God is of the same nature: however, the former as well as the latter agree in judging the conduct of God according to their own nature, taking away what they

believe to be not perfect. It is obvious that the second group of philosophers are the Cartesians. The first option, God as an “extremely subtle body” that pervades the

226 The Road to Geneva universe, is less easy to pin down. It looks like a garbled version of Hobbes’s materialism and Spinoza’s theology, interpreting Spinoza’s conception of God in materialist terms and expressing his notion of immanence in the Cartesian terminology of “subtle matter.”* It seems clear that Poulain is conflating Hobbesian and Spinozist ideas. His own

position appears to be that we cannot have any sort of substantial knowledge about the nature of God, an opinion famously defended by Hobbes in his criticism of Descartes’s Méditations as well as in De Cive.*’ In the Education des dames Poulain recommends Descartes’s Méditations

as the basic textbook of metaphysics, but in the passage under discussion he asserts that in the final analysis Descartes’s idea of God is dependent on his view of mind as the essence of human nature. Perhaps Poulain’s criticism developed out of the inner tension in Descartes’s conviction that we can understand the idea of God but cannot grasp his true essence.** Poulain seems to opt for one side of the dilemma, and so

reduces the Cartesian concept of the deity to yet another, albeit extremely subtle, form of anthropomorphism. In this, he comes very close to Hobbes’s argument that we can conceive of an image of God only by analogy with human experience, and that there is no clearly defined innate “idea” of God in our mind.*” Poulain’s demonstration of the existence of God is no faithful copy

of Descartes’s proof. As we have seen, he follows a more empiricist track, reasoning directly from the Cogito to the body. ‘The existence of the self, as body and mind, Poulain thinks, is an intuitive truth we know from everything we do and experience (Locke will later use precisely the same argument).°° Only after having established the reality of sense experience Poulain arrives at the certainty that there must exist another

mind that is infinite and the creator (“Autheur”) of the entire natural universe.°! His demonstration of the existence of God follows the argu-

ment from design: the order of the world, the intricate and well-adjusted arrangement of nature, cannot be explained as the product of chance.’ ‘The most stupendous and admirable workmanship in all of creation, Poulain explains, is the constitution of human beings, the subtle fabric of the human body and its perfect union with the mind.°* The argument from design was, of course, a perfectly orthodox one: it closely followed the fifth, “teleological” demonstration in Scholasticism, and it was also crucial to Gassendi’s Christianized Epicureanism.** It is of some significance that Poulain follows Aquinas and, espe-

The Road to Geneva 227 cially, Gassendi on a crucial issue about which Descartes and Gassendi had exchanged such acrimonious polemics.* ‘This is yet another illus-

tration of Poulain’s propensity to slide (perhaps unwittingly) from a strictly Cartesian epistemology to a more empiricist, “proto-Lockean” conception of knowledge. In the end, it is hard to see what remains of God in Poulain’s critical

theology, except for the rather abstract notion of God as the First Cause and the Creator. We cannot have any specific knowledge about the divine nature, and neither can we know God from his direct interventions in human affairs, because there are no such interventions. Poulain is no friend of miracles and apparitions. On the subject of the Trinity he is about as loquacious as a Carthusian monk. He usually refers to Christ as “our Savior” or “our Lord,” but he very seldom uses the expression “the Son,” and he never mentions the divine nature of Christ. The only definite information we can glean from Poulain’s writings is that God is a sort of superior “Spirit” or “Mind.” Beyond that, there is only the recurrent identification of God’s will with reason, truth, charity, and justice, in particular the duty to treat other human beings as equals. Poulain continually stresses the cardinal virtue of charity in the evangelical message of Christ: “We are in this world not to do evil but to do good; we are here not to hate but to love.”°* Charity is thus not only a personal but also a social virtue. Poulain’s version of charity comes close to Descartes’s view of generosity as the most perfect virtue.

The Disappearance of Original Sin Original sin is the great absence from Poulain’s theology. We have seen

that he designates the Fall of Adam and Eve as a “personal circumstance” and a “story of long ago” from which no universal truths can be inferred. His conception of human nature is fundamentally eudaemonist, in line with his Enlightenment belief in human improvement. Con-

trary to Jansenism, Poulain’s theology is premised on the conviction that the good can be attained by human beings following the teachings of right reason. Following Descartes, he posits the freedom of the will. It follows that human beings, possessing free will and reason, can take their fate into their own hands. As we saw in Chapter 3, Descartes affirmed an absolute freedom of

228 The Road to Geneva the will, to the extent of equating man’s freedom of choice with that of God. This laid him open to the charge of the Pelagian heresy.*’ Descartes always denied that his ideas were Pelagian, professing only to speak about natural reason, leaving aside the issue of eternal salvation, which “depends on Grace.” At one point he even feigned to ignore the opinions of Pelagius—not a very credible position for somebody with a Jesuit education.** That he wished to steer clear of this dangerous theological ground is evident from his response to Hobbes, who had maliciously remarked that the freedom of the will was not really demonstrated in the Meditations, “although this assumption is contradicted by the opinion of the Calvinists.” Descartes’s reply was terse and evasive: Perhaps there are several men who, taking into account God’s pre-

ordination, cannot understand how our freedom can subsist and remain in accordance with it; nonetheless, everyone who takes the trouble to examine himself senses and experiences that will and freedom are one and the same thing, or rather that there is no difference whatsoever between what is voluntary and what is free. And this is not the place to discuss the opinion of the Calvinists.°?

Replying to the theological objection that he privileged natural reason over God’s grace, Descartes recalled that he had expressly stated that the “supernatural light . . . disposes the interior of our thought to will, without however diminishing its liberty.”® Divine grace, he seemed to be saying, worked through reason. If that was not sufficient, he could retreat to the positions offered in the “Synopsis,” which prefaced the Meditations. ‘Vhere he had anticipated the accusation of Pelagianism, declaring that his affirmation of the power of the free will informed

by natural reason did not cover the issue of sin (“nullo modo agi de peccato vel errore”).°! Indeed, Descartes had inserted that statement in

response to the objections of the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld.? Such precautions did not prevent the Dutch theologian Jacob Revius from accusing Descartes of placing free will on God’s throne: “This exceeds all forms of Pelagianism,” the outraged Revius angrily exclaimed.* He may well have been right. Descartes had been educated by the Jesuits, who always left room for free agency, and who kept aloof from the exaggerated stress on predestination they associated with the Calvinist heresy. His protestations of orthodoxy often sound disingenuous, and

The Road to Geneva 229 his entire philosophical habitus is informed by the ideal of the autono-

mous person whose virtue is based on the everlasting quest for the truth. Whatever Descartes may say, his faith has all the marks of a philosopher’s religion. While Descartes’s position is open to different interpretations, Poulain’s faith is unquestionably a philosopher’s creed. He feels no need for the sort of defensive protestations of orthodoxy we encounter so often

in Descartes. ‘The master had asserted “that one must believe what God has revealed, even when it is beyond our understanding,” mentioning the examples of the ‘Trinity and the Incarnation.® Poulain never says anything remotely like that. His warning against presumptu-

ous curiosity conveys precisely the opposite message. One ought to refrain from speculating about questions like “What is the extent of God’s power?” or “Can it create another world than this one, or annihilate a created being, and enable a stone to behold God?” Such questions are useless, because no reasonable answer can be imagined. On the equally unfathomable mysteries of orthodoxy, such as the ‘Trinity and the Incarnation, Poulain maintains a prudent silence. When he discusses the Bible, it is always in terms of revelation corrected by reason, never the other way around.

According to Poulain, the imperfections of the human capacity to know are elementary and mundane. ‘The fourth conversation of the Education des dames closes with a lengthy dialogue on the limitations of the human mind. How can it be, Eulalie wants to know, that the capacity of

the mind is limited, given its universality? Stasimaque submits three reasons: human life is too short to examine everything, the business of daily life distracts us from the pursuit of knowledge, and our minds are bogged down and exhausted by the continuous weight of prejudice. ‘Timandre then names a fourth reason: the mind is dependent on the body, and memory, being a corporeal function, is subject to erosion.” Unlike numerous other seventeenth-century authors, Poulain does not say that the passions necessarily distort the operations of the intellect. Here he follows Descartes, who also believed that the free will could turn itself toward the truth, and could even use the passions as beacons to interpret the surrounding world. Again unlike many others, and in accordance with Descartes, Poulain does not invoke the Fall as an important cause of the weakness of human reason and will.® Instead of discussing original sin, Poulain dwells at length on the pernicious influ-

230 The Road to Geneva ence of the belief in supernatural influences, such as astrology and necromancy. He further criticizes “simple” people who attribute all sorts of particular events to God’s providence or to the machinations of the

devil, instead of explaining them in terms of the “general order God has established in the world.” Nothing is more common, he continues, “than to attribute to grace what are really natural effects.” “And so we may conclude,” Stasimaque/Poulain says at the end of the fourth conversation, “that as long as we do not know who we are, we will remain ignorant about everything; and that we will know every-

thing, when we come to understand ourselves.”” Unlike Descartes, Poulain offers no caveat about revealed truths inaccessible to our finite reason. When we know what is true and what is good, he believes, we can act on that knowledge. Nowhere in Poulain’s writings is there any trace of the notion of a perverted will. His view of the human condition, though not overly optimistic, prefigures the eighteenth-century legitimation of the rational, moderate pursuit of happiness.”!

The Rationality of Religious Belief Poulain’s religion is a rationalist’s creed. Not only are its contents by definition in accordance with right reason; the way the believer relates to his own faith has to be rational as well. Religious truth, like any other truth, cannot be enforced. It must be freely assented to lest it de-

generate into mere opinion. In other words: truth can flourish only when it is based on liberty. In the first conversation of the Education des dames, Eulalie wants

to know the meaning of the “liberty of the mind” advocated by Stasimaque/Poulain. “I do not mean,” replies the latter, “a blind and impudent liberty, which is characteristic of those who are called libertines; but a judicious and enlightened liberty, based on the love of the truth, without being restricted or constrained by prevention, error, ignorance, and fastidiousness.” Later, however, Stasimaque admonishes Eulalie not to be afraid of the catchword esprit fort, because it is used against all those who refuse to submit to vulgar opinion.” In seventeenth-century France, the terms esprit fort and /ibertin were associated

with freethinking and atheism, and Poulain would have been well aware of that. His remarks indicate a middle course: he does not wish to advertise himself as a libertine, let alone an atheist, but he also knows

The Road to Geneva 231 that his opinions are far from orthodox, and so he wishes to discredit the fairly common practice of associating all heterodox opinions with atheism. Apart from that, libertinage was frequently associated with debauchery and a licentious, usually aristocratic lifestyle, both of which Poulain intensely disliked.’ Many champions of Catholic orthodoxy associated the very principle of Cartesian radical doubt with atheism, for why would people who feel

free to put everything in doubt stop short of questioning the truths of religion? In the third conversation of the Education des dames, Eulalie gives voice to this apprehension: “Do you believe that one may and should doubt everything, for example, whether we exist, whether we have a body, if there is a Sun, if there is a God, and whether the Christian Religion is true?” In his answer Stasimaque first sets forth the Cogito, and next his own, proto-Lockean intuition about the existence of the body. Eulalie says that she understands those arguments and is satisfied with them, but she keeps pressing Stasimaque on the question of the existence of God: Can you really doubt that as well? Stasimaque explains that it is permitted to doubt in the manner of the theologians, who examine all sorts of refutations of the existence of God to overturn

them by means of solid demonstrations. We, too, he continues, must carefully examine the different proofs of the existence of God, to see if there are any weaknesses in them, to select the best, or to look for better ones if we feel compelled to do so.” Next Stasimaque raises the question of the truth of Christianity. ‘Io begin with, he reminds Eulalie that this is a subject they have agreed to avoid in their conversations. However, he continues, I will not leave matters there: Since Christianity “possesses all the marks of a true Religion, and as the testimony of men by which we receive it is unanimous, we must without doubt remain in it, because we have had the good for-

tune to be brought up in it.” Stasimaque immediately goes on, however, to explain that being Christian “does not invalidate our liberty to examine it methodically ... in order to distinguish between popular opinion and the true sentiments of Jesus Christ and the church, so that we shall be able to give a reasonable account of the truths we must know.”” On the thorny issue of the authority of scripture as such, Poulain is ambiguous. In the Egalité des deux sexes he asserts “that the books of scripture are no less authentic than any other books we have” and re-

232 The Road to Geneva fers in a somewhat offhand way to “what was at all times believed by the entire church.””° Elsewhere he says that the “assent of all the ages” demonstrates the truth of the Bible; but in Poulain’s discussion of patriarchal discourse it is precisely this type of reasoning that is singled out for a devastating critique. Io infer the truth of scripture from universal consent would have seemed absurd to Descartes, who had emphasized

the cultural variability of religious doctrines in the Discours de la méthode. Indeed, Poulain himself at one point declares that such an argument cannot work, for “half of the world” follows the teachings of Mohammed.” It seems, then, that Poulain’s observations on universal consent must be understood ironically, and all that remains of his “defense” of the authority of scripture is the affirmation of its authenticity. Poulain’s affirmations of the truth of Christianity present a somewhat puzzling mixture of arguments. What he says about the demonstrations of the existence of God can be read as a perfectly orthodox, Scholastic argument, were it not that Scholasticism is dismissed as so much empty talk in the bulk of Poulain’s argument. Poulain’s qualification that one must examine “le fort & le foible” of every proof, to select the best ones or to look for superior demonstrations, could easily lead to endless discussion about God’s existence instead of the solid cer-

tainty professed by Scholasticism. Some contemporary critics even feared that school exercises in Scholastic philosophy might lure students into atheism, because such disputations involved a training in arguments against God’s existence.” Finally, the Scholastics had traditionally held that the demonstrations of God’s existence were a prelude to the faith that rested on the

revelation of Christ in the New ‘Testament. Poulain is utterly silent about that part of the argument, and without actually saying so he gives the impression that he thinks the rational demonstration the more im-

portant of the two. His observations on the truth of Christianity do nothing to soften that impression. First, there is the feigned reluctance

to discuss the subject at all. The argument he then offers is not very convincing from an orthodox perspective. The “marks” of truth and the “testimony of men” are rather vague expressions. ‘Traditionally, they referred to miracles and revelation respectively, but Poulain does not explicitly say so. Just like his assertion that the authenticity of the Bible is demonstrated by “the assent of all the ages,” the recourse to “the testimony of men” represents an anomaly in his discourse. In all

The Road to Geneva 233 other cases he rejects it as a criterion of truth, and his opinion of miracles is very critical, to say the least. An unsympathetic reader might wonder why Poulain does not offer a straightforward reference to the Bible, and why he refrains from invoking the divinity of Christ. Finally, the injunction to remain in the religion one has been born in, which is also found in Descartes’s provisional morality and Montaigne’s Essais, was a standard maxim of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century skeptics, as both Poulain and his readers would have known full well.” In the fourth conversation, Stasimaque/Poulain once more takes up the question of the truth of Christianity. This time, however, he presents his companions with a quite different argument: The Christian religion taken in its pure state possesses the two intrinsic marks of the true religion, one of which is to prescribe us a pure and spiritual divine service, worthy of the God we adore, and the other to teach us maxims for our conduct that are most suitable to reasonable nature and to the necessity to live in society.*°

The first of these intrinsic marks of truth would, in the eyes of most Catholics, have smacked heavily of Protestantism. After all, the Protes-

tants had always preached a return to the original, “pure” and “spiritual” divine service, centered on the Word of God. One of their standard arguments against the Catholic service was precisely that it was not pure and spiritual.*!

Poulain’s second mark of truth actually contains two arguments: first, that Christianity is reasonable; and second, that it promotes peace in society. ‘Io a traditional Catholic theologian, both arguments would have appeared highly suspect. ‘The first seems to imply that Christianity is true because it is reasonable, a standpoint usually attributed to the Socinians or, even worse, to the “deists.” Pierre Bayle would later remark that “in France all those are called Socinians who are thought to be incredulous about the mysteries of the Gospel.”*? The second argument amounts to a justification of religion in terms of its beneficial political effects, a theory found in several Greek and Roman authors and, ominously, in Machiavelli. By itself, the thesis that religion was essential to the preservation of the civil order was not controversial (at least not until Bayle introduced his “virtuous atheists” in the 1680s), but the assertion that the political utility of religion was an intrinsic mark of its

234 The Road to Geneva truth was widely believed to be a “Machiavellian” and potentially atheistical proposition.® Let us recall that in the Egalité des deux sexes, Pou-

lain had offered an account of the historical origins of religion that came extremely close to the “Machiavellian” theory. Christianity was, of course, not expressis verbis included in that explanation, but neither was it excluded.*

Liberty of Conscience The impression that for Poulain religious truth is not only affirmed by reason but is actually based on it is reinforced by his vindication of religious liberty. Again and again, he condemns coercion in matters of conscience in the strongest terms. The most pernicious sort of men, Poulain tells his readers, are those who employ “insults, threats, torture and the stake [/e fer et /e feu] to force others to assent to their opinions.” Their actions are not only cruel and inhuman, but fundamentally mistaken as well, for no one can be forced to believe the truth: the only path to the truth is the royal road of reason. If you seek to convince others of the truth of Christianity you must proceed in an entirely different manner: How could one convince an idolater or a Muslim of the falsity of their religion and the truth of ours, if one does not reason with

them, to show them that the one is contrary to reason and the other agrees with it. It is therefore necessary that the idolater has within himself a sovereign reason, which, when awakened by the exhortations of a Christian, places itself so to speak in the middle between the two religions, and decides which of the two has the better claims.

In the discussion leading up to this statement, Stasimaque has explained that the art of correct judgment consists in weighing the arguments of both sides in a dispute so that one is elevated above both of them. Only then can a reasonable choice be made. Yes, Sophie eagerly interrupts; that is what men should do when they choose “a way of life,

a place in society, a custom, an opinion, a religion; otherwise they would behave like animals and fools.” Stasimaque wholeheartedly agrees and declares that God himself wants us to follow the path of reason, also with respect to himself (“a son égard”).*

The Road to Geneva 235 ‘To make the choice of one’s religion a matter of rational selection was by no means a self-evident principle in the seventeenth century. Richard Simon, himself no slavish follower of tradition, associated it with Arminianism and, beyond that, with Socinianism. In a letter to Francois Dirois in the fall of 1670, he voiced his misgivings about Isaac d’Huisseau, one of the professors of the Protestant Academy at Saumur:

This professor has for some years been showing a great liking for the Arminians or Remonstrants, and I have even heard from one

of my friends that he is always looking for the books of the Socinians. Following their master, several of his pupils maintain that a competent man should examine all religions without prejudice and without any passion, in order to judge for himself, independently of any authority, which is the best. . . . He discusses matters of religion in a purely philosophical manner, and not at all like a theologian; he wishes that one puts everything in doubt before making a final decision.*

Simon relates that Huisseau had published a book advocating the reunion of all Christians, a book that was, however, banned by the Calvinists (he is referring to the Réunion du Christianisme, 1669). In September 1670 a Protestant Synod convened at Saumur, its ostensible aim being the condemnation of Huisseau, but actually to intimidate many other Protestant ministers who held similar views. Several of the most accomplished Calvinist theologians, Simon explains, seemed to have openly professed their Arminian or even Socinian opinions (by an

irony of history, Simon would himself be accused of Socinianism by Bishop Bossuet only a few years later). ‘The upshot of the meeting was that all concerned would keep their opinions to themselves and discuss them only with trusted friends. We may conjecture that Simon’s judgment of Poulain’s theological opinions would have been hardly more favorable. It is of some interest,

however, that Simon mentions the project of a reconciliation of all Christians in this context, for we shall see in the next chapter that Poulain, in his Genevan period, came to embrace the very same idea. It is likewise significant that such ideas were associated with Socinianism, for we will see that Poulain had to face the same accusation in Geneva. The ideal of a reunion of all Christians was linked to Arminian iren-

236 The Road to Geneva icism, but it was also voiced, in a far more rationalist version, by Spinoza.*’ In France, Bossuet had for a time felt sympathy for irenicism, but he resolutely condemned a rationalist and individualist ap-

proach to the faith. In 1679 he declared in a letter to the marquis d’Allemans: “I see ... the preparations of a great attack on the church in the guise of the Cartesian philosophy ... Under the pretext that one must only accept what one clearly understands . . . everyone will arrogate to himself the liberty to say: I understand this and I do not understand that; and for that sole reason they will approve and reject whatever they wish.”®*

Poulain’s theological opinions were thus to a certain extent in the air, even though Bossuet’s apprehension about a great Cartesian onslaught on the church was, even in 1679, somewhat premature. As C. J. Betts has shown in his study of early deism in France, rationalist philosophies of religion remained quite marginal until the last decade of the seventeenth century.*? In the 1670s the new state censorship was very tight,

and the censors were particularly keen to control publications in French that would be accessible to a wide readership outside the church and the university establishment.” Poulain’s publications were probably approved by the censors without difficulty because his theological opinions were wrapped up in his feminist argument. We may conjecture that treatises on the equality of the sexes or the education of women were not examined as carefully as books with religion or theology as their main subject. One of the few things we know about Poulain’s activities in the second half of the 1670s is relevant in this connection. For a time he acted as a reader for Jean-Patrocle Parisot, a member of the noblesse de robe who was working on a treatise titled La Foi dévoilée par la raison.°' If we are to believe what Pierre Bayle reports about him, Parisot’s opinions were in some respects fairly close to those of Poulain. In a pamphlet

published at his own expense he had reproached the doctors of the Sorbonne that they failed to understand the Bible correctly. It was no wonder, he asserted, that they were unable to interpret the parables of scripture, for they had no inkling of the principles of nature, “to wit, that admirable philosophy which provides knowledge of God, nature, and religion instead of that false philosophy taught in the schools and

which spoils the minds of the students.” Parisot does not mean the philosophy of Descartes, of which he also disapproved, but his diatribe

The Road to Geneva 237 against Scholasticism recalls Poulain’s bitter remarks about his experiences at the Sorbonne. In his book Parisot declared, among other things, that it was wrong to enforce religious belief by coercion, that faith consisted in belief in God, and reason in knowledge of God, that small minds were governed by miracles and great minds by reason, and that what belonged to reason did not belong to faith. Bayle relates that Parisot was forced to give up a lucrative position in consequence of the publication of his opinions.”* Although Parisot was no Cartesian, several of his theological opinions bear a striking resemblance to Poulain’s. The difference is that Parisot attacked the theologians head-on, whereas Poulain took a far more cautious line, packaging his theology in feminist wrappings. That probably explains why Parisot got in trouble and Poulain did not. If, however, some overzealous censor had been willing to do so, an accusation of covert Socinianism or some related charge could certainly have been made against Poulain.

Becoming a Village Priest After the publication of his feminist books, Poulain’s life took an unex-

pected turn. He took holy orders and became curé of a village in the bishopric of Laon, close to the border of the Spanish Netherlands. How should we explain this decision? Given his theological opinions, it seems a highly unlikely move. Nor does the move from Paris to a remote village appear as a logical or desirable one for an enterprising

intellectual such as Poulain, for it would have spelled the end of all hope for an intellectual career. The only remaining plausible explanation is the sheer necessity to make a living. Of his three feminist treatises, two carry no dedication. ‘The Education des dames is dedicated to the Grande Mademoiselle. Poulain may have hoped for some reward, but as far as we know he did not obtain any sort of protection from her or anyone else. We must therefore conclude that Poulain was unable to make a liv-

ing as an author. Marie-Louise Stock has located one other source of income: for a time, he received some money for his readership for Jean-Patrocle Parisot.** He may also have received some money from relatives, but such an arrangement is rather unlikely; after all, he was the black sheep of the family. As we have no definite information about

238 The Road to Geneva other sources of income in the 1670s, the most likely hypothesis is that he slowly ran out of funds. At the end of the decade Poulain was living at the Collége de Portet, near the Sorbonne, so he probably still maintained some contacts with the university milieu. Stock thinks it probable that he made some money by tutoring junior students, but there are no sources to confirm this. Apart from his books, Poulain’s only asset was his bachelor’s degree in theology. Stock, who has examined the sporadic sources on this part of Poulain’s life, thinks it unlikely that he opted for the priesthood solely because of lack of money. She finds it

difficult to imagine that he was swayed by material considerations, given his “apparent distaste for luxury, wealth, and position” and his “exaltation of the humble.” She also points to his love of simplicity, love, and charity, and she quotes Louis Moréri’s Grand Dictionnaire historique in support of her interpretation.” Poulain’s praise of modesty and simplicity can, however, equally well be understood as a part of his social critique. Moréri is no help, for he simply imputes such a motivation to Poulain, and his statement that Poulain “limited his aspirations”

to an “honnéte bénéfice” can equally well mean that the priesthood was, at most, a second-best option. Two other considerations speak against Stock’s interpretation. In the first place, Poulain himself unambiguously declares that he went to the Sorbonne “because he was sent there,” and that he gave up his theological studies because they were useful only “to gain a livelihood in a profession that I did not want to enter.”® He never retracted this opinion,

and everything he says about the church confirms it. Moreover, developments in the French church were hardly congenial to Poulain’s irenic temper: the administrative harassment of the Huguenots, the cruel prelude to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, was well under way in the 1670s, and it is hard to see how a curé of the Catholic church could have avoided involvement in the persecution of the Calvinist minority.”’ The second consideration concerns Poulain’s projects for further intellectual work. We know from his writings that he envisaged

more publications, one on the education of children and another on the French language.” ‘Taking holy orders and leaving Paris implied the abandonment of these plans. It is difficult to see why Poulain would have taken such a step for any other reason than the necessity to secure a living.

Stock further relates that Gabriel de Flexelles, a doctor of theology

The Road to Geneva 239 at the Sorbonne, and possibly a relative of Poulain, bestowed an annuity of 150 livres on him, to enable him to take up his new position.” This may have been some sort of reward for returning to the fold of the church, for Poulain was consecrated as a priest by the archbishop of Paris on 4 February 1679, and Flexelles granted him the annuity on 5 May of the same year.! Poulain obtained a living in 1680. He became curé of La Flamengrie, a medium-sized village some sixty kilometers north of Laon, where the archbishop resided. Most of the inhabitants were poor and illiterate.!°! He was then thirty-three; his books and his dreams of an intellectual career were behind him, an uncertain future before him. When Poulain arrived in La Flamengrie, the archbishop was Gabriel d’Estrées, a liberal and generous man who was known to be sympathetic to Cartesianism. Unfortunately for Poulain, this favorable situation did not last long. D’Estreés had served the king on several missions to the Vatican, and he was again sent to Rome in 1681. His seat in Laon went to his nephew, Jean d’Estrées, an orthodox hard-liner. The new archbishop immediately tightened ecclesiastical discipline.

He personally carried out inspections of the entire diocese in 1682, 1683, and again in 1686.'° Jean d’Estrées also showed great application in stamping out Protestantism.!” ‘The climate of suspicion and intolerance introduced by the new archbishop was hardly suited to make life easier for a man of Poulain’s temper and opinions. ‘The region he was

posted in, the Thiérache, had a sizable Protestant population. We know that there were Protestants in La Flamengrie, a tiny community that did not even have a minister of its own; after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes the possessions of four Protestant families from the village were confiscated. ‘The harassment of the Huguenots began well before the Revocation. In the early 1680s, when Poulain was at his post in La Flamengrie, the authorities ordered the demolition of the Protestant churches in several localities.!™

The Catholic majority was always pestering the Protestants. ‘The authorities ruled that the Huguenots had to “respect” the Catholic sacraments, a decision reconfirmed by the royal commissioners in Picardy in

1663. That decision implied, for example, that they had to uncover their heads and kneel when a priest carrying the Host was on his way to a sick man or woman. ‘Io ensure that his passage would not go unnoticed, the priest was on such occasions accompanied by choirboys ring-

240 The Road to Geneva ing a bell and carrying a candle. Protestants did not, of course, want to

pay their respects to the Eucharist, which they considered a form of idolatry. So they made themselves scarce or simply pretended not to notice the little cortege. But such actions could land them in serious trouble. In May 1683 the Protestant Siméon Fleury, an ironmonger

from Grandrieux in the Thiérache, crossed the village square of Brunehamel on horseback, passing close by the local curé with his following of choirboys. He did not uncover his head. ‘The local Catholics saw this and filed a complaint. Fleury flatly denied having seen the pastor. He was subjected to a prolonged interrogation and finally thrown into prison.!®% All this happened some twenty miles from Poulain’s village.

Sometime between 15 April and 25 October 1685 Poulain was removed from his charge at La Flamengrie to the parish of Saint JeanBaptiste de Versigny, a tiny village, little more than a hamlet. We may interpret this transfer as a disciplinary measure: Versigny was a less important position, and easier to control because it was only twenty kilo-

meters from Laon. In those years several pastors were demoted to minor villages on suspicion of Cartesian or Jansenist leanings.!° In Poulain’s case there are no extant sources to confirm the motive, but even a cursory reading of his feminist books would have sufficed to reveal his Cartesian sympathies. Still another reason for Poulain’s demotion may have been the prox-

imity of La Flamengrie to the border with the Spanish Netherlands. In the years following the Revocation, many Protestants left the country illegally. Groups of Protestants managed to escape from forty-four townships and villages in the Thiérache, thirty of which were situated less than fifteen miles from La Flamengrie. One of the principal smuggling rings was located in the village of Boué, less than ten miles from La Flamengrie. It was headed by the innkeeper and, of all people, the local curé (who was caught and sent to the galleys in 1686).!°” Poulain’s first entry in the parish register in Versigny is in October 1685.!° His removal from La Flamengrie must therefore have been decided upon

shortly before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (17 October 1685). It seems highly probable that the archbishop, preparing for trouble, did not trust Poulain in such a critical spot and sent him to a “safer” place.

The next few years were marked by state terror against the Calvin-

The Road to Geneva 241 ists. Poulain’s hawkish bishop persecuted the Protestants even beyond the grave, as is shown by his handling of the case of Robert d’Ully, viscount of Nouvion, a small town eight miles from La Flamengrie. ‘The viscount was an old man of seventy-eight who had served the state in several capacities. He had been a Calvinist but had abjured under pressure in 1685. In June 1686 he fell ill, but he refused to receive the sacraments. The bishop tried to intimidate the old man, threatening to have

his remains dragged through the mud if he did not give in. The viscount, however, persisted in his refusal. Thereupon the monks of a neighboring village seized the mortally ill man, took him to their convent, waited for his death, and finally threw his body into the sewer of the local prison. The judge finished the job, sentencing the cadaver to

be dragged through the mud and prohibiting its burial on pain of death.!” For Poulain it must have been an awful experience to watch the state terror that was going on all around him. He, a man who deeply loathed fanaticism and intolerance, now found himself a member of an organization practicing religious coercion on a grand scale. Priests who refused to cooperate or, worse, who were caught helping Huguenots to escape were severely punished. Moréri reports that Poulain comported himself “avec une grande sagesse de conduite,” but it is not clear what

that claim means. Poulain must have felt deeply unhappy. He now found himself in precisely the sort of confrontation with unreasonable fanatics that his mouthpiece Stasimaque had always counseled his conversation partners to avoid. It was a dismaying and potentially dangerous situation. ‘Troubles or danger signs there must have been, for in the spring of 1688 Poulain left his charge. His last entry in the parish record is dated 20 April 1688, the next entry, dated 17 May, is signed by a man named Liénart, presumably his successor.!!° Why he left Versigny is not docu-

mented. The only direct testimony about the episode delivered by Poulain himself is in his application in 1716 for membership in the bour-

geoisie of Geneva. ‘There he states only that he left Versigny because he became involved in “nasty affairs” that exposed him to danger “at the height of the persecution.”!!! The 1733 Basle edition of Moréri relates that Poulain’s ideas about “the interpretation of holy scripture, the right and liberty of inquiry . . . [and] the sacrament of the Eucharist” had aroused the suspicion of colleagues and, above all, of his bishop.

242 The Road to Geneva Because bishops could issue J/ettres de cachet, and because Poulain was threatened with imprisonment, he left for Paris.!!? Moréri’s description

of Poulain’s heterodox opinions is a partial paraphrase of the title of Poulain’s 1720 Genevan book, and therefore not necessarily a reliable account of what Poulain actually believed more than thirty years before. Nonetheless, some of the subjects he mentions had already been covered in Poulain’s feminist writings, and the salience of the Eucharist, not mentioned in those earlier writings, is confirmed by later, semiautobiographical utterances. The most common accusation against Cartesians concerned the Eucharist, for according to the Jesuits Descartes’s concept of matter contradicted the doctrine of transubstantiation. It seems likely that Poulain got into trouble over the Eucharist, for later, in Geneva, he asserted that many honest priests of the Catholic church, especially those with some intellectual training, were plagued by doubts about the Eucharist. There were even priests, he contended, who had totally discarded the dogma of transubstantiation but continued to celebrate the Mass."3 ‘That was probably a fair diagnosis of Poulain’s own plight in the 1680s. Apart from the Eucharist, Poulain may have run into trouble by assisting persecuted Protestants in some way; but we cannot know that with certainty.

From Versigny to Geneva From Versigny Poulain went to Paris. ‘There he took the most momentous decision of his life: he converted to Calvinism, and thus became a defected Catholic and, what was even more serious, an apostate priest. In doing so he took great risks; sentences meted out to apostate Catholics could range from banishment to the Antilles to the death penalty.

The precise circumstances of Poulain’s conversion are unknown. Stock has established that Paul Cardel, an undercover Calvinist pastor who was arrested in Paris late in 1688 or early in 1689, may have been in touch with Poulain. At Cardel’s arrest he carried a list of appointments, one of which was with a Monsieur Delabarre. ‘This may have

been Poulain, who called himself Delabarre when he registered in Geneva, and it is possible that Cardel received him into the Calvinist

faith.''* The only fact that can be firmly established is that Poulain went over to Calvinism before he entered Geneva, for if he had been

The Road to Geneva 243 converted after his arrival his conversion would be listed in the Register of the Consistory, which is not the case. Given the perilous position in which he found himself, it is hardly

surprising that Poulain left France soon after his conversion. He arrived in Geneva late in 1689. Among the few possessions he carried with him were two documents: the Sorbonne certificate of his bachelor’s degree in theology, and the record of his ordination as a Catholic priest.!!5 He was not, however, destitute, for his name does not appear on the lists of refugees who received financial support from the Bourse Frangaise.!!© On 14 December 1689 Poulain was registered in the Livre des habitants under the name Francois Delabarre.!!’ The status of hbabi-

tant gave him economic rights, notably the right to live, to acquire property, to work, and to marry in the city, but no political rights. ‘The rights of a babitant remained at all times revocable, but their children automatically acquired the status of natifs, which bestowed the right of permanent settlement in the city.!!® By no means all refugees were granted this status: in the first four years after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes only 197 Frenchmen and 25 others were received as habitants, of a total of some 3,000 refugees. At that time the entire population of Geneva was about 16,000.!!° Poulain must have already had connections in Geneva, for shortly after his arrival he married into a prominent patrician family. The most likely connection to have facilitated Poulain’s access to Genevan elite society was the Perdriau family. In his Essai des remarques particuliéres sur la langue francoise pour la ville de Genéve, published two years after his arrival, Poulain declares “that I will never forget that your house was the first I addressed myself to when I arrived in Geneva, and from which I have ever since received more kindness and help than from any other.””° Poulain’s future wife, Marie Ravier, was the daughter of a former member of the Conseil d’Etat, the governing body of the city. Marie Ravier brought him a fairly large dowry, so that Poulain, perhaps for the first time in his life, enjoyed a measure of affluence and financial security. However, his position was perhaps not yet entirely secure. Stock mentions an interesting clause in Poulain’s marriage contract: he was obliged to depose a considerable sum of money to “insure” the future of his wife.'7! Apparently the Raviers did not fully trust him, or at least they doubted his ability to make a living for his family. After all, Poulain was not a rich man, and he had no permanent employment.

244 The Road to Geneva Officially Poulain was now a believing and practicing Calvinist, and certain aspects of Genevan Calvinism, such as the simplicity of the divine service and the emphasis on the moral teachings of Christ, were surely very congenial to him. On the other hand, it seems highly unlikely that he wholeheartedly embraced the orthodox faith then still officially prescribed in Geneva. In the 1690s the city still adhered to the famous Helvetian formula consensus, which obliged the faithful to believe, among other things, that they bore a direct, personal responsibility for Adam’s sin. The theology and the theory of human nature we have encountered in Poulain’s writings are almost the opposite of such a profoundly pessimistic view of the human condition. However, not all Genevans really subscribed to this somber Calvinism, and certainly not the great patrician families. The Perdriaus, with whom Poulain was on such good terms, were noted for their luxurious and cheerful life-

style, and at one point they were explicitly criticized from the pulpit.!2? We may thus safely assume that Poulain found congenial com-

pany in some of the more liberal families of the city, and that the conversational tone in those circles was more “philosophical” than orthodox-Calvinist. Poulain felt compelled to leave the Catholic church in an age when a respectable person could at the utmost abandon one faith for another. To belong to no church at all was almost unthinkable, and moreover extremely dangerous. Io become an unbeliever was anyhow unconceivable for a man like Poulain, who sincerely believed in God. Our provisional conclusion, then, must be that when he arrived in Geneva Poulain had become a Protestant in his own highly idiosyncratic and rationalist manner. But by no stretch of the imagination can he be portrayed as an orthodox Calvinist. In the next chapter we will see what happened to the religion of Poulain, and what difficulties he had to face in Geneva, in the last thirty years of his life.

Rational Christianity

“THE NATURAL LIGHT is the first revelation, and the judge of any other.”! The quotation is taken from the Pensées ou theses philosophiques of Poulain’s son, Jean Jacques, brought out in 1715 by the pres-

tigious Genevan publisher Fabri & Barrillot. Jean Jacques de la Barre was then nineteen years old; his philosophical theses were an expanded French-language version of the Cogitationes Philosophicae he had defended a year before to obtain a doctorate of philosophy at the Geneva Academy. Like his father, Jean Jacques was a rationalist in theology. His

assertion that reason is the ultimate judge of revelation expresses the spirit of Poulain’s philosophical theology, although the latter had never formulated it so aggressively.

Two years later Jean Jacques graduated in theology as well. The Cogitationes Theologicae he presented on that occasion conveyed the same basic message.’ They left some autonomous space for theology, but then declared that a proper theologian should possess a thorough grounding in philosophy as well. ‘The ideal theologian, Poulain’s son asserted, was the theologo-philosophus, who submitted to the teachings of

Jesus Christ “by faith illuminated by right reason” (“per Fidem rectae Rationis lumine directam”). This formulation marked him off from the theologus non philosophus, who relied on memory rather than on judgment, and on authority rather than on understanding. ‘The religion of the nonphilosophical theologian was comparable to the religion of the 245

246 Rational Christianity vulgar, who “believe only that they believe.” Such blind faith was unworthy of enlightened men: “Alia Philosophorum, alia Vulgi Religio.”? Poulain’s son, while acknowledging the role of revelation, advocated

a rational Christianity from which everything that was repugnant to right reason must be eliminated. ‘There were numerous similarities between the religious ideas of father and son. Jean Jacques had obviously paid as much attention to the lessons of his father as to the lectures of his Genevan professors. However, two differences stand out: first, Jean Jacques attacks doctrinal orthodoxy in a more outspoken, less cautious

language than his father; and second, his opinions are set forth in philosophical and theological theses defended in the Academy of the Calvinist Republic of Geneva, whereas Poulain, as we have seen, had “hidden” his theological views in his feminist treatises. Apparently the intellectual climate in Geneva in the 1710s was more congenial to such frankness than in France in the 1670s. A few years later Poulain himself, now over seventy and approaching his death, at last published a full-length theological treatise. The time to speak out fully and freely on a subject that had caused him so much worry and adversity throughout his life had finally come. But that was in 1720, more than thirty years after his arrival in the Calvinist Republic. In between

lay three decades of silence. There were perhaps good reasons for that silence. Life was not easy for Poulain during his first ten years in Geneva: he had no permanent employment, and his position as a habitant was precarious. Moreover, he now had a wife and children to provide for. rue, he had married into a prominent and wealthy family, but we have also seen that his wife’s relatives did not entirely trust him. He had still to demonstrate his solidity as a husband and father. Moreover, the intellectual atmosphere in Geneva at the end of the seventeenth century was not as tolerant as it would be in the 1710s. In 1696, seven years after his arrival, the distance between Poulain’s variety of rational Christianity and the religious climate in Calvin’s city was brought home to him in a most unpleasant, and potentially dangerous, way.

The Socinian Affair In the late 1680s, when Poulain settled in Geneva, the religious and in-

tellectual situation in the city was in flux. Cartesian philosophy had

Rational Christianity 247 been introduced in the Academy by Jean-Robert Chouet, who had previously taught at the French Protestant Academy at Saumur. However, Chouet was a very prudent man who took good care to stay away from theological polemics. Even in philosophy itself he moved with great circumspection, presenting his most advanced ideas outside the walls of the Academy.* Nonetheless, the new philosophy found its way into the

Academy, and around the turn of the century Descartes and Locke gradually supplanted the Aristotelian canon in the philosophy curriculum.°

Innovations in theology met with greater resistance. he Geneva Academy had long been a bulwark of orthodoxy, resisting the “liberal,” rationalistic, and Arminian leanings of the Saumurian School in France. In the 1690s this orthodoxy began to soften, but the new trend

was highly controversial, and to the old generation the new ideas reeked of heresy. In 1679 Geneva had subscribed to the severely orthodox formula consensus, the Helvetian confession that obliged the faithful, among other things, to believe in the personal imputation of original sin to all Christians. ‘This was a severe and somber creed: “Man is thus, since Original Sin, subjected to the wrath and the malediction of God; and it is so from the first moment of his birth, and before he has committed any factual sin.”’ The formula consensus, which all pastors and professors in Geneva had to sign, was equally strict on other subjects, notably biblical exegesis and predestination. Its deeply pessimistic view of the human condition was in many ways at odds with the moderate, forward-looking mood that was making headway in the Genevan intellectual elite, and it was certainly not attractive to a man of Poulain’s temper and intellectual convictions. The decision of the Genevan church to subscribe to the Helvetian

formula was controversial from the start. It took the Genevans four years to assent to a formulary that had been signed by all of Switzerland’s Protestant cantons in 1675. The antirationalist and gloomy spirit of the formula never commanded undivided allegiance in the Academy and the pastorate, to say nothing of the patrician elite; but the opponents of orthodoxy had to thread their way carefully lest they be denounced as heretics. The most common accusation in those days was

Socinianism (what was later called Unitarianism): that was the line one was not permitted to cross. The final decades of the seventeenth century were the years, not only in Geneva but all over Europe, of

248 Rational Christianity the great “Socinian scare”: anyone professing rationalistic theological opinions might be suspected of denying the divinity of Christ, and thus of aiding and abetting the “Racovian heresy.”® In England, John Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity came under fire. Locke took the charge seriously enough to devote two full-length treatises to refuting it.? Likewise, Socinianism marked the limit of per-

missible religious opinion in the tolerant Dutch republic, even though

the publication of Socinian tracts was never completely stopped there.!° Opponents of toleration frequently averred that its chief consequence would be the unleashing of Socinians, deists, and “Spinozists.”!! In the 1670s the Genevan Consistory was notified that some students at the Academy had copies of Spinoza’s Tractatus, although sale of the book was forbidden in the city.” In 1678 Francois Dechamps, a student at the Academy, was expelled from the city on the charge of denying the divinity of Christ and the necessity of revelation. In the 1680s the government of Bern urged the Geneva city council to act with greater severity against the selling and reading of Spinoza, Hobbes, and Descartes.!> In 1682 the pastors noted with dismay that some people were reading forbidden authors, such as Spinoza and Richard Simon. Despite new admonitions from Bern not much was actually done, possibly

because printers and booksellers in Geneva exerted pressure on the council.!* The orthodox party tended to associate Socinianism with various other mauvaises doctrines, notably deism, Hobbesianism, Spinozism, and atheism. To avoid being branded a Socinian it was particularly important to draw a clear line between philosophy and theology. When the formula consensus was drafted in Zurich in 1675, the hard-liners wanted to in-

clude a formal condemnation of Cartesianism in it. Bern had already outlawed the teaching of Cartesian philosophy in 1668. At the 1675 meeting, however, the proposal was rejected by the majority.!° The formula thus stopped short of stifling philosophical liberty, but the other side of the coin was that the philosophers should keep their hands off

theology. And the most sensitive spot in theology was precisely the doctrine of the Trinity, the chief Calvinist doctrine for which there was no indisputable textual evidence in scripture. In such a case the best strategy was silence. In a letter of 1680 Jean-Robert Chouet had expressed what was probably the standard attitude of the cautious philosopher: “As a philosopher I never reason about the ‘Trinity; I regard it as

Rational Christianity 249 a mystery that is totally incomprehensible to the human mind, and as a Christian I keep exactly to the teachings of God’s word.”!” Chouet’s prudent avoidance of all “philosophical” discussion of theological issues was one response to the enduring power of the orthodox party. Emigration was another. Jean Le Clerc, another prominent philosophical theologian, opted for exile: in 1683 he left Geneva for Amsterdam. Yet not all those who remained in Geneva were ardent champions of

orthodoxy. When the main spokesman of the orthodox party in the Academy, professor of theology Francois Turrettini, died in 1687, not a

few students and even some of his colleagues privately expressed a sense of relief.!* Turrettini’s death heralded the beginning of a thaw. By an irony of history it fell to his son, Jean-Alphonse ‘Turrettini, to break the mold of orthodoxy in the church and the Academy. Jean-Alphonse, an outspoken rationalistic Arminian, who had traveled extensively in France, Holland, and England, was appointed to the ministry in 1693, and to the new chair of ecclesiastical history in 1697. ‘Turrettini’s appointment was a sign of changes to come, but in the 1690s the orthodox party still wielded substantial power in the city. As so often in times of transition, there was a heightened sensitivity to transgression, a nervous tension, a feeling that somewhere a line had to be drawn. In this climate anyone who took too bold a rationalistic approach to

theology might be suspected of being a closet Socinian. Poulain became involved in just such a case. The affair actually started in 1693 with a letter from Zurich to the Vénerable Compagnie des Pasteurs in Geneva. On 16 June Jean-Alphonse ‘Turrettini reported in a meeting of the Compagnie that the Zurich pastors had informed him about the ac-

tivities of a certain De Lorme (or De Lormes) who was spreading “Socinian teachings.” In August the matter came up again, and it was resolved to gather additional information.'? During the next two years nothing happened, but the affair resurfaced in 1696. On 16 January the

Consistory took up the matter: De Lorme was found guilty of Socinianism and was to be banished; his case was referred to the Petit Conseil of the city. This time, however, De Lorme was not the only suspect, for the Consistory had by now learned that Monsieur de la Barre harbored “the same opinions.”*? We do not know why Poulain became suspected of Socinianism. He may have talked a bit too freely to the wrong people, or somebody may have scrutinized his books. A few years before, the Egulité des deux sexes and the Excellence des hommes

250 Rational Christianity had been reissued in pirated editions by Genevan booksellers (it is not clear whether Poulain was involved in these reprints).7! In the meantime, De Lorme had received the order to leave the city, but on | February the syndics accorded him a month’s respite because of the state of the roads, which were still covered by the winter snows.

De Lorme asked for more time, but his request was refused by the Consistory.”” In February the Consistory further investigated Poulain’s

case. On 20 February it reported that Monsieur de la Barre had been “quite thoroughly interrogated” by the professors ‘Ironchin and Calendrin. De la Barre, they related, had declared that he did not share De Lorme’s Socinian opinions, and he had expressed his readiness to sign the confession of faith: that is, the notorious formula consensus.” This declaration of orthodoxy apparently satisfied the committee, for no further steps were taken. Poulain’s profession of Calvinist orthodoxy was almost certainly a dissimulation. Going by what we know of his theological ideas, the accusation of Socinianism was probably not so far off the mark. Poulain must have lived through some anguished weeks, for the decision to expel De Lorme was taken on 16 January, and Poulain was interrogated

in mid-February. The same fate might be in store for him. During those weeks he must have been thoroughly frightened, for he stood to lose much.”* He had a five-year-old daughter to care for, and his wife was pregnant. The patrician stature of his wife’s family afforded him some protection, but his status as a babitant was still precarious. All in all, it was a sobering experience. Poulain emerged from it unscathed, but we can safely assume that he was a more prudent man than ever.

The Genevan Theological Enlightenment After the turn of the century the intellectual climate in Geneva underwent a profound change. Calvinist orthodoxy gradually relaxed, and from 1706 new pastors no longer had to sign the formula consensus, but were only “exhorted” orally not to teach anything contrary to it.”° JeanAlphonse Turrettini worked hard for a religious peace among the main Protestant churches, and it was at his behest that in 1707 the Lutherans in Geneva obtained permission to celebrate their cult.?° Not that there now existed full religious liberty: in that same year the vineyard-owner André-Robert Vaudenet was expelled from the city for holding deist

Rational Christianity 251 opinions, in particular doubts about the divinity of Christ and the truth of the Bible. However, in his case political factors accounted for the severity of the sentence (political tensions were particularly acute in 1706-07). During the trial, Vaudenet defended himself with the assertion that deist and atheist ideas, though not fit for public debate, were discreetly discussed in certain circles in Geneva.’ Between 1706 and 1725, when the formula consensus was abrogated altogether, a rationalistic Protestantism got the upper hand. Its chief representative was, again, Jean-Alphonse ‘Turrettini, the only Genevan theologian of those days to enjoy a European reputation.”® ‘Turrettini’s theology drew on Hugo Grotius and John Locke, but his view of Christ was above all indebted to John Tillotson, who had carved out a middle way between a “virtuous,” “wise,” humanized Christ, and the stern and forbidding figure of orthodox Calvinist Christology.” ‘Io many men of the generation of his father, Jean-Alphonse ‘Turrettini was altogether too much engrossed in learning and philosophy, at the expense of true

Christian piety. In 1704 Elie Merlat, a professor of theology at the Academy of Lausanne and by then in his seventies, reproached ‘Turrettini for relying too much on “the Scaligers, the Causaubons, and the Grotius” and not enough on the mysteries revealed in the Bible. ‘Turrettini’s reply was characteristic of the changing temper of Genevan theology. He admitted that much of human knowledge was indeed empty and useless, but then turned this maxim to his own advantage: “Among the principal discoveries of the new philosophy I count . . . that today we know better how little we actually know. ‘That being said,

it must be admitted that the human sciences are also of some utility, and however much you decry them, I am sure you would not desire us to revert to the barbarity of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, which has been so detrimental to religion.”*° A few years later ‘Turrettini was among the few who demanded total abrogation of the formula consensus, arguing that even the requirement of an oral promise not to teach anything contrary to it amounted to “a very odious kind of inquisition. ”>!

Turrettini advocated a nondogmatic theology. He sought to distil a

limited number of “fundamental articles of the faith” on which all right-thinking Protestants would be able to agree.** His final goal was a

reunion of the Protestant churches. ‘Io that end, a spirit of dialogue and toleration was the necessary means, but to [urrettini it was also de-

252 Rational Christianity sirable in itself, and in accordance with the true spirit of Christian charity and humility. Generally, the moral teachings of the gospel were at the center of his theology.*? But he always kept the Socinians at arm’s

length. The latter had argued that only those tenets that were clearly and explicitly laid out in the Bible could count as “fundamental.” ‘This criterion excluded the ‘Trinity, which was mentioned only in the notorious Johannine Comma, which had been suspected from Erasmus onward of being a later interpolation.** ‘Io question the ‘Irinity, however,

was unthinkable for ‘Turrettini. Here we encounter the limits of his theological rationalism: doctrines like the ‘Irinity and the Incarnation were in the final analysis “biblical mysteries,” which believers had to accept even if they could not rationally understand them.** Likewise,

Turrettini acknowledged, indeed underlined, the role of the biblical miracles as signs of the truth of Christianity.* We must thus be careful not to overestimate the rationalism of ‘Turrettini and his colleagues. As Linda Kirk writes, commenting on Jean d’Alembert’s famous statement in the Encyclopédie that the Genevan

pastors had adopted “a perfect Socianism”: “The greater part of the Genevan clergy were ministers of the gospel by calling and conviction and only tentative in their enlightenment; whatever the shifts in tone which may be remarked in the catechisms and the liturgy, what was taught remained worlds away from a cult of reason or a supreme being.”’” Kirk is referring to the state of affairs around 1760, but we will shortly see that her observations apply with even more force to the first two decades of the eighteenth century. Kirk further points to indications of a secularization of public and private life, such as card-playing,

theater performances, the opening of cafés and bars, and changing dress codes. ‘The syndics attempted again and again to put a stop to licentious behavior, and to impose limits on luxury.** ‘The most con-

spicuous changes occurred after 1730, so that we can conclude that Genevan life in the period 1700-1720 was still to a large extent imbued

with the austere morality of orthodox Calvinism. However, a more worldly culture was making headway in the private space of the homes of some of the great patrician families of the city. The Perdriaus, with whom Poulain was on such good terms, sometimes organized private entertainments that went far beyond the limits of what was allowed in public space. In 1681, long before Poulain made their acquaintance, they had given a large party that included a theater performance of Le

Rational Christianity 253 Cid, attended by three hundred people. ‘The pastors had censured them

from the pulpit.*? ‘The Perdriaus were probably not the only family with such a worldly lifestyle. Genevan culture in the early eighteenth century was, then, no longer fully Calvinist. But neither was it unabashedly secular. ‘The Genevans found themselves, in Michael Heyd’s apt formulation, “between ortho-

doxy and the Enlightenment.” ‘Io be “enlightened” was to be broadminded and tolerant. ‘The trend was discernible in doctrine and opin-

ion, but perhaps even more in mood and sensibility: among the Genevan patriciate fanatical orthodoxy was quite simply no longer bon ton. (hat is not to say that all the Genevan pastors, teachers, and pro-

fessors had suddenly become unwavering rationalists. The crucial point is that many of them were now willing to listen to such opinions and to tolerate them in their midst. The limits of legitimate public debate were significantly pushed forward.

Poulain Father and Son The new climate of opinion was certainly congenial to Poulain. In 1708 he finally obtained a permanent job as a teacher of rhetoric, dialectic, and history from Latin and Greek authors in the second class of

the collége, where the pupils were groomed for the Academy.” The years of a precarious existence were finally over. Stock relates that Poulain was exempted from the rigorous examination to which teachers were normally subjected. He had, however, to undergo the socalled grabeau, a thorough review of the applicant’s conduct and private life. Apparently the committee did not find any incriminating facts, for

Poulain was appointed without further discussion.*! His exemption from the exam shows that the Genevan authorities held his learning in high esteem (perhaps a bachelor’s degree from the Sorbonne still counted for something, even in Calvinist Geneva). What is more significant is that he passed the gvabeau without any difficulty. In their re-

view of Poulain’s conduct in Geneva, the committee was bound to come across the Socinian affair, but apparently it was no longer held against him, or it was now judged with greater leniency (although it may explain why it took him so long to obtain a tenured position). As a college teacher Poulain received a good income and a house and garden paid for by the city. Added to his wife’s assets it made them a

254 Rational Christianity moderately wealthy family. They were also a well-connected family: Poulain’s wife was the daughter of Antoine Ravier, a former member of the Petit Conseil, and as we have seen he was on good terms with another patrician family, the Perdriaus. His son’s graduate studies were supervised by Jean-Antoine Gautier and Jean-Alphonse Turrettini, the major representatives respectively of Cartesian philosophy and Arminian theology in the city. Moreover, Jean Jacques de la Barre’s doctoral theses carry dedications to Jean-Robert Chouet, who had introduced Cartesianism in Geneva and was now first syndic of the city; to Pierre Gautier, a former first syndic; as well as to members of the prominent Tremblay and Chapeaurouge families. The French translation of Jean Jacques’s philosophical theses was financed by André Saladin, another representative of a patrician family.” The Poulains, we can safely conclude, enjoyed good relations with some major patrician families, as

well as with Geneva’s intellectual vanguard, as represented by the Chouet-Gautier- Turrettini group.*? Poulain was now a settled burgher of Geneva. Some years later, his

position and connections gave him the confidence to apply for the bourgeoisie of the city for himself and his son. A bourgeois enjoyed full

economic rights and limited political rights; to obtain this status was especially important for the future career of Jean Jacques. Poulain filed

his request in May 1716. The application was approved on 16 May by the procureur géneral, Louis Le Fort. Both Le Fort’s report and Poulain’s application tell us something about Poulain’s life, opinions, and sense of identity in Geneva. Le Fort speaks with great estimation about Poulain, and in particular recalls “that his ardent persuasion of the truth and the Reformed faith . . . have induced him to reject with contempt the advantageous proposals made to him by prominent persons from another party.” He is probably referring to the activities of French residents in Geneva who apparently had attempted to win back Poulain to the Catholic church.*° Le Fort further praises Poulain for his “prudent and respectful conduct toward the authorities” since his arrival in the city. This sounds rather commonplace, but it shows that Poulain had not visibly sympathized with the democratic opposition

that had brought Geneva to the brink of civil war in 1707 and had ended with the execution of its leader, Olivier Fatio.*° Coming to Poulain’s son, Le Fort approvingly mentions the public demonstration of learning delivered by the young Jean Jacques.

Rational Christianity 255 Let us now turn to Poulain’s own presentation of his case. In his application for the bourgeoisie he gives a brief account of his religious de-

velopment.” ‘The story, told in the third person, is curious in more than one respect. He begins by explaining why he converted to Calvinism: “Forty years ago, after having taken the first degree in theology at the Sorbonne, the study of letters and good philosophy brought him to that of the holy scripture, and those two sources of enlightenment led him to recognize the truth and the foundations of the Reformation.” On second thought, however, Poulain changed the wording: he deleted the words “and those two sources of enlightenment led him” and added a few other words, so that the passage now read: “the study of letters and good philosophy led him to that of the holy scripture and thereby

to the recognition of the truth and the foundations of the Reformation.” ‘The passage now says that he went from philosophy to scripture,

and thence to the truth of the Reformed religion. Philosophy and the Bible are no longer situated on the same level as “two sources of enlightenment.” Poulain goes on to relate that he then felt induced to support the truth of the Reformation, and that he did so at first in Paris, his place of birth, “by means of some published writings.” Again, he had changed the wording: at first he had written: “by means of some philosophical writings that ...,” but then he apparently decided that it was preferable not to go into details. In the same sentence Poulain then recounts his experiences as a village priest; he writes that he next supported the Ref-

ormation “in two important parishes in Picardy by means of pastoral teaching [zmstructions pastorales|”; again, a passage has been deleted, this

time the words “in the exercise of his functions as a pastor,” so that the text does not clearly say in what capacity Poulain was serving the truth of the Reformation. The account concludes with his flight from Versigny:

“But finally his zeal and conduct in these matters brought him into great difficulties and exposed him to danger at the height of the persecution, and thus, having decided to leave his employment and his country, God’s Providence favored his design and auspiciously conducted him to this city.” Poulain’s first modification of the text shows that he was well aware of the difference between Socinianism and a rationalistic Calvinism. It can be interpreted as an attempt to make sure that his position could not be construed as Socinian in any way. He had not forgotten the 1696

256 Rational Christianity affair, and, when requesting a favor from the powerful men on the Petit Conseil, it was obviously better to stay on the safe side. However, the

rest of the story goes a bit further than that. An unsuspecting reader might conclude that Poulain had embraced Calvinism as early as 1676, had then published some books in defense of the Reformed faith, and

subsequently gone to northern France to instruct Protestants in the true faith. From this, no one who was not familiar with Poulain’s biography would suspect that he had actually officiated as a Catholic priest from 1680 to 1688. Nor would such a reader have any inkling of the nature of the books Poulain had published in the 1670s (although two of his books were reissued in Geneva in the early 1690s). It is of course possible that Poulain had by now seriously come to believe that the religious opinions expressed in his feminist treatises supported the truth of the Reformation, but it seems highly improbable that he ignored the

difference between his rational Christianity and the doctrines of the Genevan church. The careful wording of the first part of his application shows that he was well aware of that difference. Perhaps Poulain believed his own story, or he may have embellished it a bit to make a good impression on the syndics. However that may be, the story was no faithful account of his life. “Io a reader who had no firsthand knowledge of Poulain’s French past, it made him look far more Protestant, and far less Cartesian, than he really was. Procureur Le Fort apparently swallowed the story whole. Thus Poulain and his son became bourgeois of Geneva. Jean Jacques had to pay the usual sum of 1,500 florins (one and a half time Poulain’s annual salary), but Poulain himself was admitted free “in view of his /umieres, good conduct, and long service.”*

Jean Jacques de la Barre and Genevan ‘Theology Let us now take a closer look at the religious and theological views of Poulain’s son. ‘They are important for our discussion in at least two respects. In the first place, there are such close textual parallels between his and his father’s writings that we are justified in concluding that his theses are the product of a close intellectual collaboration. In the second place, Jean Jacques got his degree in theology under none other than Jean-Alphonse ‘Turrettini. His theses therefore give us a chance to

Rational Christianity 257 compare his theological ideas (and indirectly those of his father) with those of ‘Turrettini, as well as with those put forward by other students. In Jean Jacques’s philosophical theses we encounter numerous opin-

ions that seem to come straight from Poulain’s feminist treatises: the conviction that the philosopher must speak like the multitude in his public conduct, that doubt is a necessary prelude to knowledge of the truth, that the antipode of the philosopher is the “vulgar,” that it is not low rank which makes someone “vulgar” but rather “a certain mentality which is found in all stations of society,” that the vulgar are wont to believe that all doctors are truly learned men, that truth establishes itself by persuasion rather than by coercion, that education accounts for

the greater part of the differences among people, and so on.*? In his study of Cartesianism in the Geneva Academy, Michael Heyd singles out de la Barre’s theses as an arresting example of the application of Cartesian doubt to moral and social matters, underlining his fiery denunciations of “prejudice” in all fields.6° Heyd, however, seems to be unaware of the identity of Jean Jacques’s father, and therefore does not notice the significance of Pensée no. 128: “Sexual difference does not entail a difference of the mind.”*!

Poulain’s proto-Lockean epistemology also reappears in the theses of his son: “Experiences,” Jean Jacques contends, “are the sensors of our investigations . . . and they are far more certain than reasoning.”» Again like his father, he praises modern natural science, superior to

that of the ancients, and also stresses that it is Descartes’s method one should follow, not necessarily his system. ‘The Cartesian vortices

are rejected as a “less convenient” idea (but there is no mention of Newtonianism).*? Natural science, de la Barre observes, “delivers our mind from several superstitious beliefs, and it continually enriches society by its discoveries.” He further states that the Earth “seems to be located at the center of the universe without actually being there,” add-

ing that it demonstrates great vanity to maintain that the universe is solely made for the Earth and for man. Eclipses and comets only terrify

the vulgar, astrology is nonsensical, and “monsters” merely show us “that nature has strayed from its path because it has met with an obstacle created by its own laws.” About the Cartesian mind-body conun-

drum Jean Jacques professes two contradictory opinions. At first he declares that the union of the soul and the body is “a divine and incom-

258 Rational Christianity prehensible work,” but a few pages later he thinks that it can be explained by the concept of motion: “Motion . . . brings about the commerce and the connection between the mind and the body.” Just like Descartes and his father, he wavers between a spiritualist and a materialist explanation of the interaction of body and mind. De la Barre takes a squarely rationalist view of what it means to believe: “To believe without a philosophical investigation of the matter ...1s not really to believe . . . it is, so to speak, to believe that you believe.” ‘Io seek the truth, he declares, is to seek God; and to take away the liberty of thought is a violation of natural right. Even God himself is bound by this maxim: “It would be repugnant if God himself commanded us to believe the contrary of what we know with certainty.” Here, one gets the impression that human reason is elevated to a divine status: not even God can stand against it. This impression is strength-

ened by the absence of any reference to sin, original or otherwise. Speaking about morality, “the most important science,” Jean Jacques declares: “Ignorance, prejudice, error, and the passions are the four sources of all corruption of morality.”* In this connection, it is of some significance that Jean Jacques de la Barre advocates “l’amour-propre bien reglé” as an appropriate yardstick of virtue and vice: “One calls just all duties that, being pleasing to God and therefore useful to men, are prescribed by right reason, as vicar of God [comme tenant la place de Dieu—Dei Vicaria|.” His definitions of the good and the just come very close to a downright utilitarian standpoint: “Everything that is really useful to us is good and permissible.” Instead of advocating Christian humility, he asserts, echoing Descartes’s definition of generosity, that “by underrating oneself, one sins no less against justice than by overestimating oneself.”** In the second part of the book, the Pensées philosophiques et littéraires, which was not part of the original Latin doctoral theses, de la Barre spells out his utilitarian assumptions as well as their philosophical provenance: “By seek-

ing the good, in any way whatsoever, all men seek pleasure, just like Epicurus. Pleasure is the end of our undertakings, the sensor of wisdom, the exercise and the fruit of virtue, the softening of evils, the essence of friendship, and the bond of civil society.”*’ ‘The positive valua-

tion of self-interest was not unusual in the early eighteenth century.

The Christian apology of moderate, enlightened self-love can be traced back to seventeenth-century Protestant theologians like Jean La

Rational Christianity 259 Placette and Jacques Abbadie and, on the Catholic side, to Pierre Nicole. In a slightly different guise, it was also found in the philosophy of modern natural law. It was not uncommon in Geneva either. We find it in Turrettini’s theology and, somewhat later, in the natural-law philosophy of Jean Barbeyrac and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui.** However, all these authors rejected an undiluted utilitarian view of self-interest, which they not unreasonably associated with Hobbes, Lucretius, and Epicurus. What is therefore striking in Jean Jacques de la Barre’s formulation of self-interest is the explicit mention of Epicurus along with the absence of any anti-Hobbesian or antiutilitarian statements. ‘This is especially remarkable because such antiutilitarian assertions were fairly

common in other doctoral theses in philosophy defended at the Geneva Academy in this period. Out of a sample of thirty-two philosophical dissertations defended between 1698 and 1733, ten contained antiutilitarian theses; seven of those passed in the period 1712-1721, under the Cartesian professors Jean-Antoine Gautier and Etienne Jallabert.*°

In 1712 Pierre Chambier declared that “God’s will and not utility” constituted the foundation of justice. The next year Amadeus Lullin praised Grotius, Pufendorf, and Locke, but expressed his dissent from Hobbes “and from all those who hold with him that whatever is useful is just.”*! The corollary, “Utilitas propria non est fundamentum justitiae,”

is found in the theses of Pierre Coste (1714) and Jean-Pierre Prades (1716).° Also in 1716, Louis Tronchin asserted that utilitarianism implied a denial of the Last Judgment.® In 1721 Alexandre Dury, in a dissertation about the movement of the Earth, again affirmed that utility was not the foundation of justice. Antiutilitarian theses are also found

in some theological dissertations defended in those years. One of the younger professors of philosophy, Stephane Jallabert, appended an

antiutilitarian thesis to his inaugural lecture in 1714. Some of Jallabert’s students who included antiutilitarian theses were undoubtedly influenced by their professor. However, not all students did this, but neither did they defend any explicitly utilitarian opinions. Against this background, Jean Jacques de la Barre stands out as the only graduate student in philosophy who advanced a utilitarian theorization of selfinterest. In de la Barre’s theological theses, we encounter a similar situation. Assuredly he has a lot in common with the rest of Jean-Alphonse ‘Tur-

260 Rational Christianity rettini’s students. All of them subscribed to a more or less rationalistic theology, and most of them criticized intolerance and credulity, stands

that were only to be expected given the opinions of their professor. Moreover, in many cases the bulk of the text of these theses was actually drafted by Turrettini himself. When the defendant himself had written the thesis, he was mentioned as “author et respondens.” Poulain’s son was among this minority.’ A closer look at these dissertations reveals some interesting patterns. Between 1710 and 1730, thirty-one students graduated under ‘Turrettini’s supervision. In the dissertations of twenty-two of them apologetic arguments are prominent, and sixteen contain attacks on atheism and incredulity. An explicit defense of miracles is found in four cases, and attacks on deism in two.® A few examples will suffice to capture the

atmosphere. In 1711 Paul La Fargue asserted that revelation taught many things that natural reason could not discover, but nothing that was contrary to reason.” Samuel ‘Turrettin1’s dissertation, defended the same year, contained six theses against atheism and four on the necessity of revelation; he also observed that many of God’s commands could be discovered by natural reason, but not all of them; finally he defended

the doctrine of accommodation in matters of biblical interpretation, but warned that “all religious certainty would be dissolved if it were permitted to turn every subject treated in scripture into allegories and prophecies.”’° Gabriel Rilliet declared in 1713 that religion was more valuable than philosophy.’! ‘Two years later Jean Saracéne, censuring the “deists and other adversaries of revelation,” stated that natural theology was not sufficient. If the knowledge of God depended solely on reason, he warned, everything would be called into doubt, for different

people usually held different opinions of the truth.” In 1721 Louis Tronchin asserted that miracles were proof of the truth of Christianity,

arguing against Spinoza, “that atheist of the most recent time.”” In 1726 Jean Alphonse Fatio explained that Moses’ miracles were real while those of the Egyptian priests were spurious. In support of the latter opinion he referred to Fontenelle’s critique of ancient mythology.’ As late as 1729, Jean Louis Lullin argued that excellent philoso-

phers could not be atheists. He also rejected the stories about entire nations—referring to the ubiquitous Brazilian ‘Tupinambu—who had never heard of any God.” Some other students were closer to the undiluted rationalism of Jean

Rational Christianity 261 Jacques de la Barre. In 1713, for example, Amadeus de la Rive declared “that everything which was contrary to common sense ought to be re-

moved from religion.””° Three years later Jacques Le Clerc asserted that God could reveal things that human reason was unable to understand entirely, but that revelation could not contain anything that was contrary to reason: God was the author of revelation as well as of nature, and he could not contradict himself.”’ The theme of the concurrence of reason and revelation recurs in several other dissertations of those years. One student, Francois de Roches, even allowed that “an honest deist, if such a man could be found, would be easily brought to Christianity.” ‘This statement, however, came after a lengthy refutation of atheism and deism.”®

By contrast, Jean Jacques de la Barre’s theses contain no diatribes against incredulity or refutations of atheism. Among his more than 250 theological propositions, only two concern the misfortune of the unbeliever. Elsewhere he remarks that there are far more credulous people than unbelievers.”? Generally, he is much more concerned about credulity, fanaticism, and intolerance than about unbelief. At only one point does he voice a clear-cut critique of materialism: “Let those who pre-

tend, with Epicurus, that the world came into existence by blind chance, explain the formation of the tiniest fly.”®° De la Barre is no ma-

terialist, that much is evident; but the refutation of materialism is not his first priority. As we have seen, his philosophical theses peremptorily declare that reason is the first revelation, and the judge of any other. Such a formulation, which in fact places reason above revelation, cannot

be found in any of the sample of philosophical and theological theses

discussed above. Neither can it be found in the writings of JeanAlphonse ‘Turrettini. This is in accordance with the findings of MariaCristina Pitassi and Martin Klauber that apologetics and the critique of unbelief occupy a prominent place in ‘Turrettini’s theology.*! The rationalist temper of Genevan theology in the early decades of the eighteenth century should thus not be overdrawn. Apologetic arguments as well as strictures against atheism and an overly critical spirit were plentiful. A good case is Jean-Frédéric Ostervald, whose biblical commentary (1720) was printed in all editions of the Genevan Bible from 1724 onward.” Ostervald warns his readers that they must trust the Bible even in those places where they cannot rationally understand

its message: “God has spoken, and that is sufficient.”*? Likewise,

262 Rational Christianity Jacques Basnage, whose four-volume history of the Old and New ‘Testaments was published in Geneva in 1712, exhorts his readers to trust the words of Moses literally: Moses himself wrote the entire Law and announced the coming of Christ. The “critics” who say otherwise are untrustworthy.*+ Ezéchiel Gallatin, a Genevan pastor, is more rationalist in tone, but nonetheless stresses the great significance of miracles and warns against “philosophizing for its own sake.”* One of ‘Turrettini’s students who also wrote in defense of miracles referred approvingly to John Locke’s Dissertatio Posthuma de Miraculis.*° The Basel pro-

fessor of theology Samuel Werenfels, the third member of the “Swiss triumvirate of progressive theology” (the other two were Turrettini and Ostervald), advocated a “reasonable cult” and rejected doctrinal intolerance, but he also stressed the vital importance of the miracle of Christ’s resurrection, and complained that not enough was done to win back unbelievers and “hommes mondains” to the true Christian faith.*’ Jean-Alphonse ‘Turrettini himself admired John Locke, but dissented from the latter’s opinion that it was sufficient to believe that Christ was the Messiah.**

Rather than characterizing Genevan theology in this period as “rationalist” across the board, we should see it as a tension-ridden field in which rationalist and revelationist discourses overlapped, intersected with, and confronted each other. Some theologians stressed the rationalist side of the equation while others put more emphasis on revelation. Some argued that God never went against reason, while others asserted that the biblical miracles were essential to faith. ‘Turrettini and his followers were waging an intellectual war on two fronts: against credulity and dogmatic orthodoxy on one side, and against Socinianism, deism, and atheism on the other side. ‘Theology was, moreover, part of a larger intellectual field in which it had to compete with philosophy, notably Cartesianism, and with natural science as well. Let us re-

call that the Academy had created a chair in mathematics in 1703, partly at the behest of the Chamber of Fortifications, which judged science from a utilitarian standpoint. The decision symbolized the growing influence of a new lay intelligentsia in the Geneva Academy. ‘Theology was still the queen of the sciences, but it had lost its monopoly.*” Jean Jacques de la Barre is clearly situated at the extreme rationalist end of the spectrum of Genevan intellectual life. He privileges reason over revelation, and his theological critique is targeted almost exclu-

Rational Christianity 263 sively at orthodoxy; he seems to take no interest at all in the other battlefront, the one against deism and atheism. Besides, he is obviously interested in natural science, his view of morality is protoutilitarian, and his thoughts on the mind-body problem hover on the edge of materialism. But natural science is not his primary interest. In the end he remains true to the belief of his father that “the science of morality,” that is, human science, is the most important of all.

How to Read the Bible Three years after his son’s graduation in theology, Poulain, now an old

man of seventy, published a large volume on biblical criticism with Geneva’s principal academic publisher, Fabri & Barrillot. The title of the book is almost a program in itself:

The doctrine of the Protestants about the liberty to read Holy Scripture, the Divine Service in the vernacular, the Invocation of the Saints, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, Justified by the Roman Missal and by Reflections upon each subject With A Philosophical Commentary on the Words of Jesus Christ “This is my body, this is my blood,” Matth. XXVI, V, 26.

Poulain seeks to justify the Protestants on the four counts mentioned in the title: the liberty to read the Bible, the divine service in the vernacular, the rejection of the cult of the saints, and the critique of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. Given the size of the book and his duties as a teacher, he must have started working on it for two or three years before publication. In a certain sense, therefore, it represents a continuation of the discussions with his son at the time of the latter’s graduation in theology. Like Jean Jacques’s theses, Poulain’s last book is set against the background of the shifts and tensions in Genevan theology. But not exclusively so, for the Doctrine des Protestans

can also be regarded as Poulain’s settling of accounts with himself, his “theological autobiography.” It moves in two temporal frames: the early eighteenth-century Genevan milieu, and Poulain’s French experiences in the period 1660-1688.

264 Rational Christianity Poulain’s repeated affirmations that hatred and persecution are wrong in themselves surely echo the opinions of ‘Turrettini, which were

in turn indebted to earlier Protestant polemics, above all to Pierre Bayle.” However, we should also read them as a commentary on Poulain’s own sad experiences as a village priest at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and, finally, as a restatement of arguments found in his early feminist writings. Likewise, Poulain’s lengthy critique of transubstantiation was obviously indebted to a long tradition of Protestant polemics, but it also reflected the anguished conscience of the Catholic pastor who had to say Mass but could not bring himself to believe the eucharistic doctrine of his own church.?! Right at the beginning of the book, Poulain professes his overriding

desire for religious peace. In particular, he hopes to contribute to a better understanding between sincere, nonprejudiced Catholics and broad-minded Protestants.” His irenicism is thus even more inclusive than ‘Lurrettini’s. That position accounts for his attempt to justify the four Protestant beliefs mentioned in the title of his book by going back to the original text of the Roman Missal. He seeks to show that both the Protestant condemnation of the Mass and the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation are based on a misreading of the foundational Catholic text on the Mass, the Roman Missal, which Poulain attributes to Pope Zachary (741-752).°> What the Protestants do not know and the Catholics have forgotten, Poulain asserts, is that Zachary’s teachings actually confirm Protestant doctrine. ‘To ground his argument, he enlists the Protestant commonplace of the simplicity of the early church in a counterscholastic reading of the Catholic tradition. Originally, he asserts, the Mass was “a memorial of the divine service,” in which the word of God was read and explained to the believers. All prayers were addressed solely to God, the martyrs

who had suffered for the faith were mentioned as examples but not idolized, and bread and wine were consumed together. ‘The entire service was “very simple” and was conducted in the vernacular. According to Poulain, Pope Zachary’s original treatise documenting the nature of the Mass, one of the most ancient, authentic, and venerable documents of the Roman church, confirms Protestant doctrine on the four issues mentioned above. The difficulties and “subtleties” that disfigure the present Catholic cult were brought in only much later, chiefly by the

Rational Christianity 265 Scholastic theologians. ‘The complicated doctrine of transubstantiation was put together bit by bit, in a long and largely unnoticed evolution of Catholic theology. Finally, Poulain ironically observes that by resting his case on the original text of the Missal, he follows “the method of the Catholic theologians, who are so fond of antiquity, tradition, and custom.” According to Poulain this is, of course, not a good argument at

all.

Viewed against this background, the prevailing Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist is historically illegitimate. Because it also goes against common sense, it cannot be upheld by other means than persecution and naked power, a consideration that leads Poulain to the sad contemplation that “more Christians have perished at the hands of Christians

than by the hands of the heathen and infidels.” The inevitable outcome of these obnoxious practices is the dogma of papal infallibility, which is the summit of absurdity and has no secure foundation in history. Poulain sarcastically remarks: “The Bishop of Rome should demonstrate [that he is infallible] by means of the texts of the New ‘Testament, just as clearly and distinctly as one sees today in the acts of the Parliament of Great Britain that the succession of the crown belongs to the Protestant lineage of the illustrious House of Hanover.”” ‘The critique of Roman authoritarianism broadens into a more general observation on the nature of religion, as distinct from politics. Poulain distinguishes the two as follows:*”

Religion Politics Inner man External subjection Conscience The common good

Reason Authority

It follows that majority rule is the correct procedure for political decisions, pertaining to “the civil and temporal interests of several persons” (this republican conception of political decisionmaking was absent from Poulain’s writings of 1673-1675, published under the royal censorship). However, in religious matters, which solely regard God and the conscience of every particular person, the plurality of votes has no role to play, because it does not enlighten the mind. Moreover, Poulain argues, the Catholic church is not only authoritarian but also wasteful.

266 Rational Christianity The vast wealth of the Roman church could have been better spent in the interest of civil society, to care for the poor, or simply by the persons who donated it.” Just as he did in his feminist writings, Poulain insists on a conscious, rational understanding of one’s religious faith. In their childhood, he warns, most people swallow everything that is offered as truth; such people “acquire their religion by chance and preconception rather than by inquiry and choice.” Poulain enjoins his readers to take the Bible in their hands and to study it with great care, and in particular to read the text as if nobody before them had ever read or understood it. ‘Io be able to do that, they should first “unlearn” what their childhood tutors have told them about the meaning of the text. Clearing the mind of preconceptions is also of vital importance, Poulain observes in passing, for a peaceful understanding among all Christians, for the Bible lessons to children are frequently prejudiced, and “that is how every sect enlists the Bible in its own ranks.”” Only then, Poulain explains, will people be able to discover the clear and distinct meaning of scripture. The Bible, in other words, has to be subjected to the demanding Cartesian standards of intelligible discourse. That this is indeed what Poulain has in mind becomes even clearer in the second part of the book. Before engaging in his dissection of the alleged scriptural basis of the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, he offers a detailed discussion of biblical interpretation. One of the greatest faults of the Catholic priests, he explains, is precisely their neglect of this indispensable discipline. Instead, they put all their energy

into the ceremony of the Mass; they have become “sacrificateurs” rather than servants of the Word.! To demonstrate that a careful reading of scripture supports the Protestant doctrine of the Eucharist, Poulain establishes several rules of interpretation. Io begin with, he naturally rejects any reading that relies on an institutional tradition. Instead, he advocates a method of “rational interpretation” in which scripture is interpreted by means of sound reason, good philosophy, and critical reading. Poulain carefully explicates what he means by “la critique”: “The reasonable and genuine critique is the art, the capacity to examine any discourse whatsoever, to discover its meaning, and judge it correctly. The critical method draws on cognitive skills acquired by the study of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, history, etc.”!°! It follows that we should read the holy scripture “at

Rational Christianity 267 least in the same spirit, with the same disposition, and following the same rules we employ in reading all good books.” ‘The critical method, Poulain declares, is in fact the on/y way to arrive at a reasonable meaning of the holy scripture:

If, in reading the holy scripture, it were not allowed to reject as false any interpretation that is contrary to the rules of sound reason, and to concentrate, after a sufficient inquiry, on what one finds to conform to it, there would be no falsity, no absurdity, no contradiction that might not be found in Scripture. Generally, Poulain submits, we should not rely on isolated passages but

always interpret sentences in their proper context. Furthermore, we must pay attention to the historical context. In the case of the Eucharist, we should thus take into account the “prejudices and customs of the Jews as well as the Gentiles to which the New Testament frequently refers.” In this connection, it is of great importance to avoid an anachronistic reading: earlier texts ought not to be interpreted in the light of later ones. The fathers of the church, and the Catholic tradition gener-

ally, should therefore be discarded in interpreting scripture. We will shortly see that Poulain draws on the Old ‘Testament to read the New, and rejects the reading of the Hebrew Bible as a “prefiguration” of the coming of Christ. This rule of interpretation is crucial to his explanation of Christ’s words at the Last Supper.!™ Finally, Poulain introduces the most important rule of all, the imper-

ative necessity to distinguish properly between the literal and the figurative meaning of a text: “One takes a discourse [. . .] to be figurative, 1. when, taking its terms, expressions literally, the resultant meaning is repugnant to sound reason ... 2. when we obtain a clear and natural meaning by putting as if or so to speak before a word or an expression.” Poulain then applies these rules to Christ’s words “This is my body, this is my blood,” addressed to the apostles at the Last Supper. Now we should realize, he explains, that the Last Supper took place at the date of the Jewish Passover, the meal established to commemorate the deliverance of the Jews from the Egyptian captivity. On that occasion “the Jews were accustomed to eat the “bitter herbs,’ and during the meal the family father would say: behold the herbs our Fathers ate in the Desert, in order to say, behold how were, or, like that were the herbs our Fathers ate in

268 Rational Christianity the Desert.” In the institution of the Lord’s Supper, Poulain further explains, Christ made constant allusions to Jewish custom. What he therefore meant to say was quite simple and referred to his imminent crucifixion. This is my body: that is, this bread is broken as my body shall be broken; this my blood: that is, this wine is spilled as my blood shall shortly be spilled.!° Poulain buttresses his reading with an Old ‘Testament example, the passage where Ezekiel points to his cut-off hair and says, “Behold Jerusalem,” referring to the siege and destruction of the city 77 the future. It follows that Christ’s words spoken by the later Christians celebrating the Eucharist must be taken as referring to the past: “Such was the body of our Lord Jesus Christ; his body was broken, like the bread we consume; and his blood was spilled, like the wine we drink, and that for our redemption and our salvation.” Christ himself has ordained it so, saying, “Do this in memory of me.”!% The Eucharist, then, is a memorial service instituted by Christ. ‘The really important thing about it is the inner, spiritual union of the par-

ticipants with Christ as they engage in the collective ritual of commemoration. This was certainly not the Calvinist interpretation, in which the Holy Spirit was supposed to produce Christ’s spiritual presence during the celebration of the Eucharist. It comes close to Zwinglian teaching, but it was also frequently associated with Socinianism.!% In the context of Poulain’s entire treatise it looks more like Socinianism (the Zwinglian interpretation is anyway improbable, because Poulain never had any contact with Zwinglianism). As I noted earlier, Poulain frequently refers to our Lord or Savior but almost never uses the expression “the Son.” About the Trinity he guards a prudent silence. Perhaps we might characterize Poulain’s stance as Socinianism by omis-

sion: the upshot of his discussion of the Eucharist is that Christ’s message is directly inspired by God, that Christ has died on the cross

for the redemption of humanity, and that the Eucharist is the commemoration of Christ’s sacrifice. The issue of transubstantiation logically leads to the issue of mira-

cles. According to Poulain, the Catholics have turned the Eucharist into a spurious miracle, for miracles, he maintains, cannot be contrary to reason and experience: “impossible and unbelievable things are not the objects of faith.”!°° God, Poulain observes, is good and benevolent, and therefore does not perform miracles that are “contrary to the cer-

Rational Christianity 269 tainty of our ideas,” because in that case he would take from us the use of our reason, without which we could not know him in the works of creation nor benefit from the lights (“Lumieéres”) of revelation. Poulain is not really enthusiastic about miracles. A metonymic use of terms like “mysterious,” “miraculous,” “imaginings,” “credulity,” “superstitious,” “absurdities,” “ignorance,” and “prejudice” recurs throughout the text. When Christ has performed miracles, he says, these are clearly indicated as such in the Bible. But he never dwells on Christ’s miracles or on any of the Old ‘Testament miracles. ‘That eloquent silence finds its natural counterpart in Poulain’s general rule that “miracles should certainly not be multiplied without necessity.”!” The method of biblical criticism advocated by Poulain stands somewhere between Locke and ‘Turrettini on the one hand and John ‘Toland on the other. He is definitely less radical than ‘Toland, who asserted “that Revelation is not a necessitating Motive of Assent, but a Means of information.” In practice, however, Poulain’s treatment of supernaturalism and revelation comes extremely close to Toland’s dictum that “whoever reveals anything . . . his Words must be intelligible, and the Matter possible.” But Toland’s additional comment, “This Ru/e holds good, let God or Man be the Revealer,” would probably have been too drastic for Poulain.!°* Likewise, ‘Ioland’s argument about the impossi-

bility of nonrational miracles is more elaborate and thorough than Poulain’s.!°° On the other hand, Poulain’s treatment of miracles is a good deal more critical than that of Locke, who emphatically affirmed

the crucial role of miracles as proofs of the truth of Christianity.!!° Likewise, Poulain’s approach is more rationalist than Jean-Alphonse Turrettini’s. His standard formula is “reason and the gospel,” but reason is always used to correct scripture, never the other way around. Here, his position is clearly Socinian (as Poulain himself, having been accused of Socinian leanings, would have understood). Poulain ends the Doctrine des Protestans with the sarcastic observation that in the eyes of the heathens, the Jews, and the Muslims the Christians, or at least the Catholics, appear as “Déophages,” God-eaters, and according to many “they can no longer have a God, having consumed

him so many times and for so long.”!"! Poulain’s treatment of transubstantiation recapitulates most previous Protestant arguments: the Romish doctrine was unknown to the early church; it is scandalous, contrary to common sense as well as to right reason, and underpinned

270 Rational Christianity by an erroneous exegesis. However, his explanation of the institution of

the Last Supper in terms of a Christian appropriation of the Jewish Passover ceremony is definitely lees commonplace: it rests on a purely historical-critical reading of the Bible that harks back to the Cartesian-

feminist critique of scripture in his early writings. Poulain’s critical method comes close to Spinoza’s, but it is even closer to that developed by Jean Le Clerc from the 1680s onward.!!” It is perhaps not entirely accidental that Le Clerc, reviewing Poulain’s book in faraway Amsterdam, praised it abundantly for its solid reasoning as well as for its irenic message.'!°

On the Threshold of Deism Religion, Poulain says again and again, must be understood rationally,

lest it degenerate into credulity and blind submission to authority. That being said, it is also apparent that religion has a profound emotional value for him; it goes to the very heart of his personality. In his last will, drafted in October 1721, Poulain describes himself as “a Christian philosopher: that is, a peaceful man, content with an honest living, who prefers the tranquility of the soul and the repose of conscience, truth, religion, and peace above all worldly greatness.” Poulain admonishes his children “to consider religion always as their main business and their most important duty, to live in charity and concord with everyone.”!'4

If we had to summarize Poulain’s faith in a single word, that word would be “charity.” In the preface of his last book, he writes: “Charity is

the end and the summary of the Law and the prophets; the end of the ministry of Jesus Christ, of his miracles, his teaching, his life, and his death . . . Because God is charity and Jesus Christ is also charity, they demand nothing but charity . . . Charity is the soul of faith, the source of good works, the perfection of all the virtues.”!!> From everything Poulain says about charity (and he says a lot) it is clear that charity is for him not only a spiritual sentiment but also, and perhaps primarily, a social virtue. Charity is constituted, he declares, by “feelings of sincerity, equity, moderation, gentleness, patience, goodness, benevolence”; it is the opposite of hate and oppression.!!© Although the combative egali-

tarianism of his early feminist writings is gone, Poulain still criticizes worldly grandeur and oppression. In his will he admonishes his children

Rational Christianity 271 to be good and obedient citizens, but nonetheless there is a critical edge to his incessant praise of modesty and honesty.

However, he was in no way connected to the Genevan democratic opposition, which had turned the idea of equality into a politically subversive slogan. In the early eighteenth-century Genevan Republic

equality was a far more dangerous ideal than in absolutist France (where liberty was the chief subversive idea). ‘This, and the fact that he was now a settled bourgeois de Geneve, may explain why Poulain never returned to his old egalitarian philosophy. Charity, reason, justice, and truth are, then, Poulain’s real God. Every time he has to explain the essence of faith, he comes back to them. They are coupled to a firm belief in the possibility of human improve-

ment. The emphasis on sin and suffering in traditional Calvinism is supplanted by the sacred duty to improve the human condition. Charity stands for all the virtues and, in particular, for the social virtues that make for a peaceful and just society. In the end, God, Christ, charity, and truth are almost interchangeable in Poulain’s discourse, and the Trinity is silently dropped. His faith stands on the threshold of deism. However, he did not find the words, nor perhaps the resolve, to take the last step toward an explicitly deist position. After all, he was now an old man, and he would not have wished to endanger the career of his son. Already in his early French writings, Poulain had warned that the wise should be cautious and speak their mind only to the wise. What he said in private conversations we may suspect, but cannot know. Poulain’s theological trajectory is probably representative of many who lived through the transition from the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth century. Like others of his generation he stood unresolved in the twilight zone between rational Christianity and deism.

Conclusion: Inventing the Enlightenment

THE QUESTION OF IDENTITY—What is Enlightenment?>—was not raised until the second half of the eighteenth century, when Europeans began to reflect on the epochal significance of the intellectual transition of the preceding century. The notion of an “age of

Enlightenment” is implicit in the rhetorical strategy of d’Alembert’s “Discours préliminaire” to the Encyclopédie, and it is fully elaborated in Kant’s famous 1784 essay on the nature of Enlightenment. “Let us al-

ways respect Descartes,” d’Alembert exclaimed in 1751, “but let us readily abandon opinions which he himself would have combatted a century later.” The progress of knowledge over the past century war-

ranted an expectation of even greater achievements in the future. While drafting the Discours, d’Alembert confided to Madame Deffand, “T had posterity before my eyes.”! Enlightenment, then, is both an accomplishment and a promise. It is

a past with a future. Kant makes the same point in a more rigorously conceptual mode. Enlightenment, he asserts, depends on the autonomy of reason. Men must dare to think for themselves, instead of lingering in indolence and timidity. Kant defines Enlightenment as a departure from a state of mental subjection, a process of intellectual liberation that must be accomplished by individuals as well as societies.’ A few years before, in the preface to the first edition of the C7vitique of Pure Reason, he had called his own time “the true age of cri272

Conclusion 273 ticism” (“das eigentliche Zeitalter der Kritik”).» ‘Io Kant, as to d’Alembert, Enlightenment represents an intellectual accomplishment, a moral duty, and a historical future.* His awakening call to individual reason is supported by the firm conviction that his age, though not yet enlightened, is nonetheless an “age of Enlightenment.” Looking back on the intellectual trajectory of Poulain and his generation we should perhaps not ask “What is Enlightenment?” but rather “What was Enlightenment?” What did it mean to the men and women who made the arduous and painful transition from the aftermath of the

Wars of Religion to the more relaxed mental landscape of the early eighteenth century? What was Enlightenment to those who could not take it for granted as a historical accomplishment, but who had to invent it—to those who frequently put their careers, and sometimes their lives, at risk for it? Poulain’s definition of Enlightenment, voiced by Stasimaque in the Education des dames, seems at first sight close to Kant’s famous answer in the opening lines of Was ist Aufkiadrung: “You are endowed with reason; use it, and do not sacrifice it blindly to anyone” (Poulain);> “Enlightenment is mankind’s exit from its self-incurred nonage” (Kant). Poulain’s

statement sounds just as apodictic and confident as Kant’s, and both underline the personal responsibility of each person for his (Kant) or her (Poulain) Enlightenment.° On closer inspection, however, the two answers are less alike than they seem. Poulain’s writings are suffused with a sense of personal urgency and indignation that is absent from Kant’s serene prose. ‘Io the

Prussian philosopher the question of Enlightenment concerns the characterization of a historical period. For Poulain, as for most of his contemporaries, it is in the first place about personal identity. A few lines by Poulain, written during his final years in Geneva, exemplify his ideal of “being enlightened.” Reflecting on the best way to attain the truth, he declares: “[we should be] always ready to share our enlightenment with others; but still more to be instructed by theirs, to whatever

estate or party they may belong.”’ Here Enlightenment is defined primarily as an intellectual and moral attitude, a way of thinking and acting. In Poulain’s judgments of his age, prejudice, oppression, and perse-

cution loom larger than Enlightenment. Unlike Kant, Poulain is not making a confident statement about the course of history. More likely

274 Conclusion he is looking back on his own life. By the time he was drafting the Doctrine des Protestans he knew that the intellectual endeavors of his life had

not brought him the successes he had hoped for in his youth. His dreams of an intellectual career had been nipped in the bud, and during the rest of his life he had witnessed far more hatred and persecution than enlightenment. Only his last fifteen years or so in Geneva were marked by peace and a modest measure of prosperity. In his lifetime, his ideas found a favorable response in France and England, but his authorship was seldom acknowledged. Neither the feminist treatises of his youth nor the theological work of his old age won him lasting fame. Like many “enlightened” men and women of his generation, Poulain may have wondered what all his struggles had been for. And so must we. At the end of this book we must address the question of the historical significance of Poulain’s work. Was he really a

“minority of one” or did he represent a broader current of opinion? How does his intellectual radicalism fit into the story of the Enlightenment? Did his egalitarian feminism have a significant impact on eighteenth-century thought on gender and sexual difference? And, finally, what does the success and failure of his philosophical project tell us

about the relation between feminism and Enlightenment, about the place of the idea of equality in Enlightenment thought, and, more generally, about the making of the Enlightenment?

The Radical ‘Iemper of the Early Enlightenment ‘To begin with, we can regard Poulain’s work as a window on the world of the early Enlightenment. Both the person he was and the books he wrote exemplify the intellectual mutations of an age that was no longer the age of Descartes and Spinoza, and not yet that of Montesquieu and Diderot.

Like others of his generation, such as Bayle, Locke, Toland, and Le Clerc, to name only a few, Poulain was a self-consciously serious man. Like theirs, his style is direct, earnest, often ironic but never witty or frivolous. Like several of them, he experienced persecution and reli-

gious fanaticism at first hand, and not merely as an object lesson in political theory. Like theirs, his life was marked by ruptures, risky episodes, and emigration (only for Locke was a happy end in store). ‘Io all of them the ideal of “Enlightenment” was closely tied to morally

Conclusion 275 charged notions of virtue, charity, justice, and truth. It denoted an ideal of selfhood, a duty to serve “reason,” as well as a distinct notion of sociability. The model of reasonable and open-minded conversation in a select company put forward in the Education des dames may look suspiciously elitist to today’s democratic sensibility, but to Poulain and his

generation it represented the only way to carve out some space for “Enlightenment” in a hostile and often dangerous environment. It is this sense of belonging to a beleaguered minority that explains the uncompromising, radical nature of their thinking. I take “radical” here in its literal meaning of getting to the root of things. It often has, of course, political and religious implications, and I do not for a mo-

ment want to belittle the importance of those. But in the men and women of the early Enlightenment it denotes before all else an intellectual attitude, a willingness to pursue an argument to its logical conclusion without being afraid of the consequences of one’s own reasoning. These people could think radically precisely because they knew that they could not hope to convince more than a small company of “reasonable” men and women.

That the Catholic church sought to stamp them out went without saying, but most Protestant churches equally despised and feared them. The governing elites of some states and cities tolerated them, but no-

where, not even in the Dutch republic, did they enjoy an unfettered liberty of opinion and publication. Whatever the precise issues at stake, the relationship between these radical intellectuals and the political au-

thorities always remained fraught with tensions and mutual distrust. Some early Enlightenment thinkers were republicans, others advocated a constitutional monarchy, while still others supported some variety of enlightened absolutism. Not all of them were political radicals, let alone revolutionaries. But whatever their favorite political regime,

they were all convinced that it had to be rationally justified to be acceptable to an enlightened person. None of them advocated a blind obedience to authority. The prominence of natural-rights philosophy and republicanism in textbook histories of political thought must not make us forget that traditional and divinely sanctioned rights represented by far the most powerful vehicle of legitimacy under the Ancien Régime. The merciless onslaught on the authority of custom and tradition by the thinkers of the early Enlightenment was thus no innocent philosophical pas-

276 Conclusion time. The obsessive recurrence of the highly loaded term “prejudice”

in their writings signified a disrespect for customary authority that could easily overflow into politics. We have seen this in Poulain’s political views. He was neither a revolutionary nor a republican or a democrat, but his rejection of the authority of “mere custom” as well as his

egalitarianism precluded an uncritical endorsement of the prevailing political regime. He was, we might say, a “republican of the mind.” However, the core of the radicalism of the thinkers of the early En-

lightenment was not political in the narrow sense of the term, but rather intellectual and theological. Their theological views varied across a wide range, from the fideism often attributed to Bayle to the rational religion championed by ‘Toland and Poulain. ‘The most common positions seem to be rational Christianity and deism, while unabashed atheism and materialism remained rather exceptional. However, involuntary slippages toward materialism could easily occur, and unsympathetic clerical and conservative censors were always eager to decry the champions of deism and rational Christianity as closet atheists. None of the radical thinkers unquestioningly accepted the authority of priests and synods in matters of religion. As John ‘Toland drily remarked: “You may reason your self . . . into what Religion you please; but, pray, what Religion will permit you to reason your self out of it?”®

They were deeply convinced that it was the duty of an unprejudiced, enlightened person to treat religion “philosophically”: that is, to make it into an object of critical thought. All of them advocated toleration and detested religious persecution. Given the close imbrication of religious and political authority, this intellectual attitude had potentially radical political implications. Criticism of the established religion, most rulers believed, sapped the moral foundations of the state and had to be dealt with accordingly. Poulain’s trajectory makes this abundantly clear. Despite all his attempts to steer a prudent and moderate course, he found himself on a collision course with the Catholic church. Likewise, the Socinian affair

might have put an untimely end to his career in Geneva. Only in the liberal climate of the second decade of the eighteenth century could he speak his mind without having to fear the consequences. Even then, he may well have softened his true opinions to safeguard the career of his son. Caution imposed itself in politics as much as in theology. The idea

of equality was far more explosive in the early eighteenth-century

Conclusion 277 Genevan republic than in absolutist France. Poulain had seen the city on the brink of a civil war between the democratic and the aristocratic party in 1707: another reason for authorial prudence, we may assume.

None of the thinkers of the early Enlightenment cared much for mainstream opinion. The “vulgar,” they declared, anxiously clung to tradition and custom, but for a philosopher this was an unworthy mentality. The incapacity of most people to think for themselves was frequently likened to slavery. “A slave in Tunis,” Poulain declared, taking up a Stoic maxim, “is enslaved only in the body, and he has to obey only one master.” Such a slave still dreams of escaping, but a person who is enslaved to custom and opinion has many masters, and works only to fasten his own chains ever more tightly.’ There is thus no point in giving in to the opinion of the majority for the sake of winning them over to one’s views. If one’s argument logically leads to unpopular conclusions, one must go it alone. Poulain’s feminism is a perfect example of

such a stubborn defense of the autonomy of reason. He might have made his feminist case along moderate lines, attuned to the type of feminist sympathies found in parts of the Parisian robe milieu. But he did precisely the opposite, pursuing the logic of his Cartesian egalitarianism and feminism to its most extreme consequences. There is no question that Cartesian doubt was the mainspring of this radical esprit de critique, but Poulain’s generation added a psychological element, a deeply felt aversion to oppression and injustice. ‘That is what Locke’s hatred of absolutism, Poulain’s detestation of pedantry, religious fanaticism, and masculine tyranny, and Bayle’s and ‘Ioland’s hostility to religious coercion have in common. Their devotion to reason was no cold or “abstract” rationalism; it was suffused with a passionate love of justice. It was this mixture of Cartesian doubt and social and political passion, combined with their marginal position in society, that gave their thought its radical edge.

Reception and Influence of Poulain’s Feminist Writings What do we know about the dissemination and reception of Poulain’s writings and ideas? De l’égalité des deux sexes was first published in Paris

in 1673 by Jean du Puis.!° Further Parisian editions were published in 1676 and 1679 (the latter by du Puis’s successor Dezallier, a reissue rather than a true new edition). ‘There was a pirated edition in Lyon in

278 Conclusion 1673, and again in 1676. Another pirated edition was published in Geneva in 1690, shortly after Poulain’s arrival there (reissued in 1692). The Education des dames was published in Paris in 1674 and 1679; the 1679 edition was also published in a pirated edition by the Amsterdam bookseller Theodoor Boom.!! Of Poulain’s third book, the Excellence des hommes, there are only three editions: the original Paris one (1675, reissued in 1676), and two pirated printings, published in Lyon in 1675

and in Geneva in 1690 (reissued in 1692). Information about print runs is scarce: Madeleine Alcover has established that the print run of the Excellence was over 1,200, and that of the second printing of the Egalité 800 or more. She observes that these are quite high figures. At

the time, Claude Barbin, one of the most successful booksellers in Paris, thought 1,500 a good sale. But we cannot know how many copies were actually sold.¥ We further know that Boom took the Amsterdam edition of the Education des dames to the German book fairs in 1679, for it figures in the catalogue of the Frankfurter Buchmesse for the fall of 1679.!* Apparently it was not one of Boom’s successful titles, for it does not reappear in the catalogues for the next twenty years. Finally, Poulain’s first book was translated into English. It was published in London in 1677, under the title The Woman as Good as the Man: or, The Equality of Both Sexes."

Poulain’s books may have found a fair number of readers, but they were definitely not outstanding literary successes. After the 1690s none

of them was ever reprinted. Poulain introduces the Excellence des hommes with the observation that several men had intimated to him that they were going to refute the Ega/ité; but no one published a single word against it.!° One person did intend to write against Poulain, but the projected book did not get beyond the manuscript stage.'’ Poulain further remarks that when the Egalité des deux sexes appeared only the précieuses really appreciated it, while most readers thought it a paradoxical piece of gallantry.'* In 1687 Decrues likewise observed that most people considered the famous question of the two sexes as a “matter of gallantry,” while the lovers of novelty dismissed it as “old hat.”!” The few, invariably very brief, reviews of Poulain’s feminist books confirm the picture of a moderate success. The Journal des Scavans pub-

lished a short notice on the Education, as it did with most reviewed books. ‘The tone of the review is quite positive.”° The review of the Excellence published the next year gives the impression that the reviewer

Conclusion 279 was not reading Poulain’s books very carefully, for he presents it as a “pleasurable” exposition of the arguments for and against the equality of the sexes, without paying any attention to the concluding section of the book.?! ‘The Giornale de’ Letterati, an early Enlightenment periodical based in Rome, relied on the Journal des Scavans for its information on Poulain. The Italian reading public thus got no more than abstracts of Poulain’s books, based on the reviews in the French periodical.’? Reviewing Poulain in 1685, Pierre Bayle was less careful than usual: he ascribed the Egalité des deux sexes to “Frelin,” a mistake he corrected only

much later, in the entry on the Italian feminist Lucrezia Marinella in the Dictionnaire historique et critique. Bayle offered only a very brief summary of Poulain’s ideas.?> Readers of Basnage de Beauval’s Histozre

des ouvrages des scavans, published in the Dutch republic but read all

over Europe, were better served. The issue of September 1691 contained a lengthy account of the Excellence, with particular attention to Poulain’s treatment of the origins and corruption of modern civilization in the final part of the book.” Several other publications referred to Poulain’s work but seldom discussed it in any detail. In 1678 the Mercure Galant, an influential literary periodical that catered to a female elite public and was read all over France, published a report of a session at the University of Padua in which Elena-Lucrezia Cornara was awarded the doctorate of philosophy. “The Equality of the two Sexes,” the Mercure declared, “will today be demonstrated in practice, as it has recently been demonstrated by solid reasoning.””?> ‘This is almost certainly a reference to Poulain’s books published only a few years before. However, some other contemporary references to Poulain are confused, to say the least. In addition to the Frelin-Poulain error in Bayle’s Nouvelles the littérateur

Charles Guyonnet de Vertron mentioned both “Monsieur Poulain” and “Monsieur de la Barre” in his list of “famous authors” who had written about “the excellence of the sexes.””6

Poulain’s influence on later theorizing about gender is difficult to establish with precision because early-modern authors seldom provided careful references to their sources. Nonetheless, it is possible to trace the reception of Poulain’s major ideas in the eighteenth-century femi-

nist literature. One difficulty is that although many authors may well have taken the expression “the mind has no sex” from Poulain, this expression and its twin “the soul has no sex” were well known in France

280 Conclusion and in other European countries in Poulain’s time. ‘The same is true of several other of Poulain’s arguments. ‘This circumstance makes it more

difficult to demonstrate his direct influence, but at the same time it shows that his feminism was part of a broader current of opinion. What distinguishes Poulain’s work from almost all other seventeenth-century feminist treatises, however, is the systematic philosophical framework of his feminism. Later writers found in his work, more than elsewhere, the rigorous theoretical arguments they needed to refute their masculinist opponents.

The principal contemporary feminist author who studied and used Poulain’s arguments was Gabrielle Suchon. In her Traité de la morale et de la politique, an egalitarian treatise published in Lyon in 1693, she frequently cites “the author of the Equality of the Sexes,” but she seems to

ignore his name.’’? Suchon also borrows from Poulain in her second book, Du célibat volontaire (1700), a eulogy of “neutralism,” an indepen-

dent female condition that avoids both marriage and the cloister.’* Others used some of Poulain’s arguments for their own purposes without really engaging with his philosophy. Bernard Magné has shown that Morvan de Bellegarde borrowed abundantly from Poulain in his Lettres curteuses de littérature et de morale (1702).’? In his turn, Bellegarde

was an important source for the feminist argument in the Teatro critico de errores comunes (1725) of the influential Spanish rationalist Benito Jeronimo Feijoo, who, for his part, did not know that Bellegarde was plagiarizing Poulain.*® Claude Buffier’s Examen des prejugez vulgaires

(1704) displays some remarkable similarities with Poulain, and we know that he was a friend of Madame de Lambert, who had read Poulain.*! According to Stock, Poulain’s influence is also discernible in C. M. D. Noél’s Les Avantages du sexe, ou le triomphe des dames (1698).

Gerald MacLean has established that the English translator of the Egalité was almost certainly Archibald Lovell, a somewhat shadowy ra-

tionalist writer who translated several other French books and later penned a refutation of Thomas Burnet’s Theory of the Earth. Lovell’s translation, however, at first met with little response.** In 1693 the Gentleman’s fournal plagiarized part of the review of the Excellence in the Histoire des ouvrages des scavans, without mentioning the author and the title of the book. The next year the editor, a French Protestant who had fled to England in 1685, pillaged the Egalté, again without naming either the book or its author.*+ These publications may have stimulated

Conclusion 281 interest in Poulain among English feminists. According to Hilda Smith, William Walsh’s A Dialogue Concerning Women (1691) borrowed

much from Poulain, and she also sees striking resemblances between Poulain’s writings and the anonymous Essay in Defence of the Female Sex “written by a lady” (1696).*> Given the Essay’s arguments on the sexless-

ness of the soul, the nonsexed fabric of the brain, and in particular the conjectural history of the origins of women’s oppression, it cannot be doubted that its author (Judith Drake) had seen Poulain’s first book, probably in its English translation. ‘The Essay was quite successful; it had gone through five editions by 1750.* Ruth Perry has shown that Mary Astell’s feminism was based partly on Cartesian dualism. She believes that Astell was influenced by Poulain, but cites no direct evidence.*’ Astell’s Serious Proposal to the Ladies

(1694) advocates the study of Descartes and Malebranche, argues that the male and the female understanding are equal, and laments the “irrational choices” people daily make under the sway of “Tyrant Custom.”?8 In his Letters to Serena (1704) John ‘Toland likewise affirms the equal intellectual capabilities of both sexes. His argument about “the Parity of the Intellectual Organs in both Sexes” recalls Poulain’s observations on the equality of the male and female brain.*? Neither Astell nor Toland quotes Poulain, but some of their arguments are strikingly similar to his. According to Estelle Cohen, Bernard Mandeville clearly

followed Poulain in The Virgin Unmasked, published in London in 1709, encouraging women to acquire anatomical knowledge and affirming that the science of anatomy was not more difficult than an intricate piece of filigree work. Iwo years later, Joseph Addison asserted

that there may be “a kind of Sex in the very Soul,” reacting to John Dunton’s endorsement, in the Athenian Mercury, of Poulain’s thesis that the mind has no sex.! The Cartesian principle of radical doubt inspired

most feminist literature in this period.” Feminism seems to have been relatively weak, at least in France, in the early years of the century, but it reasserted itself after 1720. In her Réflexions nouvelles sur les femmes (1727), Anne- Thérése de Lambert de-

clared that men had usurped authority over women “rather by violence than by natural right,” recalling Poulain’s critique of the philosophers of modern natural law; moreover, we know that Lambert had read the Egalité.+ According to Magné, some authors in this period were heavily indebted to Poulain. He mentions Mademoiselle Archambault’s Dasser-

282 Conclusion tation (1750) in which she sought to defend the proficiency, intelligence, and virtue of women. His next example is Florent de Puisieux, who in Le Femme n’est pas inférieure a Vhomme (1750) copied page after page of Poulain’s Ega/ité without mentioning his source; this was, however, actually a translation of the English treatise Woman Not Inferior to

Man by “Sophia,” which was, in turn, based on Poulain (see below).* Another publication relying on Poulain was La Défense du beau sexe (1753), by Dom Philippe Joseph Caffiaux.** Boudier de Villemert’s L’Ami des femmes ou la philosophie du beau sexe (1758) was fairly tradi-

tional in its argumentation, but it echoed Poulain’s claim that “the mind has no sex.”*”

In the same period Poulain’s arguments were again taken up in England, in two egalitarian-feminist treatises written by “Sophia, a person

of quality.” The title of the first tract, published in 1739, shows its affinity with Poulain: Woman Not Inferior to Man: A Short and Modest Vindication of the Natural Right of the Fair-Sex to a Perfect Equality of Power, Dignity, and Esteem, with the Men. Both in this and in a reply to a

critic published the next year, the author literally copied Poulain in many passages, but without mentioning his name or his writings.* Estelle Cohen relates that “Sophia’s” treatises were reprinted in 1743 and 1750 and continued to appear under various titles up to 1780. As we have seen, they “came back” to France in 1750 and 1751. Another treatise, Hemale Rights Vindicated, or, The Equality of the Sexes Morally and Physically Proved, published in London in 1751 and again in 1758,

closely followed Poulain’s arguments (even part of the title is taken from Poulain).* After 1760 references to Poulain are less frequent. Antoine-Léonard Thomas’s Essai sur le caractére, les moeurs et Pesprit des femmes dans les

différens siécles (1772) cites Poulain once, but ‘Thomas appears not to have read him.*? Magné mentions seven feminist treatises published

between 1753 and 1766 that contain no reference to Poulain or his ideas.*! Yet he was not entirely forgotten. There are entries on him in several dictionaries and encyclopedias that were regularly republished in the eighteenth century, such as Louis Moréri’s Grand Dictionnaire historique and Jocher’s Allgemeines Gelehrten Lexicon.** At the end of the

century, when feminism was launched on a new career by Olympe de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, and many others in the age of the democratic revolutions, Poulain’s works were still known. There is a short

Conclusion 283 reference to Poulain in the Recherches sur les prérogatives des dames chez les Gaulois, published by Rolland, a member of the Academy of Amiens,

in 1787.° What is of far greater significance is that Poulain’s work was also known to at least some of the women who agitated for women’s rights

during the French Revolution.*t “We too are citizens”: with these words Marie Madeleine Jodin challenged the National Assembly in 1790. She proceeded to outline a legislative project enshrining women’s rights. In her egalitarian argument she draws directly on Poulain: Gentlemen; we are on this earth not of another species than you: the mind has no sex whatsoever, and neither do the virtues.>° Jodin’s depiction of the origin of the subjection of women also follows Poulain. The textual parallels are too close to be coincidental.** Jodin

was the daughter of a Genevan watchmaker who contributed to Diderot’s Encyclopédie.’ Her near-quotations from Poulain demonstrate that his books and his ideas were taken up by some of the participants in the battle for women’s rights in 1790. His Cartesian arguments for equality were apparently still significant to feminist political actors in the first phase of the Grande Révolution.**

Poulain’s Possible Influence on Major Enlightenment ‘Thinkers There have been several speculations about Poulain’s influence on some of the major figures of the Enlightenment, notably Montesquieu and Rousseau. The parallels between some of Poulain’s arguments and these thinkers, as well as John Locke and Louis de Jaucourt, are fascinating. There are reverberations of feminist criticism in the early development of Rousseau and in all of Montesquieu’s works. Even if we cannot establish evidence of direct influence, the potential links be-

tween these authors and Poulain deserve to be more widely known. The fact that Montesquieu had read the Egalité des deux sexes is almost

never mentioned, and the young Rousseau’s feminist utterances are also rarely remembered. Finally, no historian, to my knowledge, has noticed that Jaucourt, the most important contributor to Diderot’s Encyclopédie, was in his school days for a full year a pupil of Poulain.

284 Conclusion The only case in which we have some direct evidence is Montesquieu. Marie-Louise Stock and Bernard Magné discovered that one copy of the Egalité contains annotations by Francois Louis Jamet. Jamet was a private book collector known for his “vast and curious eru-

dition.” Part of his library of over four hundred volumes eventually ended up in the Bibliotheque Nationale.*? On the title page of the Egalité he noted: “I have heard the illustrious author of L’Esprit des lois speak highly about this work and esteem it as really philosophical. ‘The

abbé Lebeuf, of the Académie des Belles Lettres, gave it to me on 15 August 1751. The name of the author is Poulain. See Bayle, art. Marinella. An anonymous author responded to it in De excellence des hommes contre Pégalité des sexes.”® ‘The last remark demonstrates that Jamet was not really familiar with Poulain’s writings. Even so, his anno-

tation proves that Montesquieu had read the Egalité, although it is not clear when.

The latter point is important, because Bernard Magné and Ellen MacNiven Hine have sought to show that Poulain influenced Montesquieu far earlier than the publication of L’Esprit des Jois. In particular, they maintain that Poulain might very well be the “very gallant philosopher” mentioned in the Lettres persanes who declares that the empire of men over women is not based in nature.°! However, the textual parallels between Poulain and the Persian Letters seem too general to prove this claim conclusively. Montesquieu may well have been aware of the egalitarian arguments of seventeenth-century feminists without relying specifically on Poulain. Moreover, he associates the feminist argument with gallantry, and he has his Persian conclude that it is an “extraordinary opinion” entertained by the French, who love to “turn everything into a paradox,” precisely the sort of ironical approach Poulain was at pains to avoid.” On the other hand, Montesquieu reaffirms the opinion that the subordination of women is not natural in the concluding Persian letter by Roxane, and also in many places in L’Esprit des lois. Apart from that, his discussions of the influence of climate, geography, and customs show some resemblance to Poulain’s treatment of the same subjects. Thus the hypothesis that Poulain influenced Montesquieu is not implausible, even if it cannot be directly demonstrated in the text.

Another major Enlightenment thinker who may have been influenced by Poulain is John Locke, but in his case all the evidence is indi-

rect. Locke’s exegesis of the presumed institution of men’s rule over women in Genesis 3:16 shows a striking similarity to Poulain’s discus-

Conclusion 285 sion of the same passage. In the First Treatise of Government, Locke recalls that both Eve and Adam had gravely sinned against God’s express

commands. He concludes that it is extremely improbable that God would confer a new power upon Adam at this particular moment: “we cannot suppose that this was the time, wherein God was granting Adam Prerogatives and Privileges, investing him with Dignity and Authority, Elevating him to Dominion and Monarchy.” Poulain draws the same conclusion in the Excellence: if God had granted Adam authority over Eve, he argues, Adam would not have been punished for his sin, “but, as it were, rewarded for his disobedience . . . And it is hardly probable that God would have given him an advantage the use of which required much wisdom and reason, just at the moment he had so disgracefully sinned against both.”® ‘This argument does not occur, to my knowledge, in the previous feminist literature. The Excellence was published in 1675, and Locke stayed in France from 1675 to 1679. According to Peter Laslett, Locke started working on the two treatises in 1679.% It was also during his stay in France that Locke began to rethink the relation between politics and theology.®’ His intention to refute Sir Robert Filmer’s patriarchal political theory may well have stimulated his interest in feminist arguments. However, Poulain’s works are not mentioned in the historiography of Locke’s reading and intellectual contacts in

France. The case of Louis de Jaucourt is especially interesting. As is well known, this industrious man was Diderot’s workhorse. Jaucourt wrote innumerable articles for the Encyclopédie, the total amounting to more than a quarter of that massive work.” One of these many articles was the second part of the entry “Femme,” which deals with the subject from the standpoint of natural right (“droit naturel”). ‘This is precisely the most egalitarian part of the entry. Jaucourt flatly denies that the subjection of women is sanctioned by nature. He also denies that men are always abler in body and mind than women, although he admits that men “usually” govern their private affairs better than women. Finally, he asserts that the biblical commands to women to respect male authority represent only a “positive right” applicable to definite times and places, and thus have no absolute validity.” ‘The similarities to Poulain’s philosophical and theological arguments are obvious, even though the latter would not have accepted the opinion that men usually governed their affairs better than women.

In themselves these parallels are not sufficient to link Jaucourt to

286 Conclusion Poulain. But there is more. Jaucourt was born in 1704 into a Huguenot family, and his parents sent him to study in Geneva, where he stayed with his mother’s sister, Catherine de Monginot, who was married to

César Caze, himself the son of a French Calvinist who had fled to Geneva in 1685. ‘Io avoid detection by the French authorities, Jaucourt adopted an alias, Louis de Neufville. He arrived in Geneva in 1712. He entered the col/ége, and thereafter the Academy, where he was enrolled

on 15 May 1719.7 It follows that he attended the seconde, the one but highest class of the col/ége, during the 1717-18 school year, when Poulain was still régent de seconde. For a full year, Poulain taught the

young Louis history, rhetoric, and dialectics from Latin and Greek authors. Moreover, Jaucourt, like Poulain and his son, moved in the better circles of the city, and his close acquaintances, such as Jean Caze

and Francois ‘Ironchin, were markedly liberal in their philosophical and theological views.” ‘Io sum up, Jaucourt and the Poulains moved in the enlightened part of the Genevan patriciate, a quite select company

of some ten or twenty major families who lived within walking distance. Poulain was his teacher for a year. It seems reasonable to assume

that they met on various occasions. It is thus certainly possible that Jaucourt was influenced by Poulain’s ideas.

Did Poulain Influence Rousseau? Finally we come to the most intriguing case of all, that of Rousseau. Here the evidence is mostly textual, but there is circumstantial evidence as well. As I pointed out in Chapter 6, Poulain’s conjectural history of inequality in some respects prefigures Rousseau’s depiction of the corruption of civilization and the origins of inequality in his two Discourses.”> A second linkage between Poulain and Rousseau is to be found in the very idea of the equality of the sexes. Rousseau strongly affirmed the equality of the sexes early in his career, between 1732 and 1739, when he was living with Madame de Warens in Chambéry, and

again between 1746 and 1748. There is no doubt that he was influenced by the powerful feminist currents of opinion of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. What is more, Rousseau’s hypothesis on the origin of male supremacy, voiced in his essay “Sur les femmes,” is strikingly similar to Poulain’s “historical conjecture” in the first part of the Egalite.

Conclusion 287 In this essay we encounter a youthful feminist Rousseau who emphasizes the great accomplishments of women, in particular female writers, throughout history. He asserts that women could equal men in almost all walks of life if they were only given a fair chance. And finally he challenges male supremacy as follows:

Considerons d’abord les femmes privées de leur liberté par la tirannie des hommes, et ceux-ci maitres de toutes choses, car les couronnes, les charges, les emplois, le commandment des armées, tout est entre leurs mains, ils s’en sont emparez des les premiers tems par je ne sais quel droit naturel que je n’ai jamais bien pu comprendre et qui pourroit bien n’avoir d’autre fondement que la force majeure.”

Let us first consider women deprived of their liberty by the tyranny of men, who are masters of everything, for crowns, offices, occupations, and trades, the command of armies, all is in their hands; and they have appropriated them in the earliest age of history by what natural right I know not, which I have never been able to understand, and which might well have no other foundation than naked power.” This comes extremely close to a concise summary of Poulain’s more

detailed argument in the Egalité. The impression is reinforced by Rousseau’s assertion that men are so bemused by grandeur and majesty that they are unable to appreciate the great and admirable exploits “of the downtrodden and oppressed women.” ‘This echoes one of Poulain’s cherished arguments: time and again he asserts that men are so prejudiced that they are unable to appreciate the real merits of people with a low social status, such as peasants, artisans, and women. Finally, Rous-

seau concludes his short essay with another observation that comes very close to one of Poulain’s key arguments: the affirmation that women would have accomplished great things “if [they] had participated as much as we in the conduct of affairs and the government of states.” Women, Rousseau emphatically declares, would have given the world even more examples of magnanimity and love of virtue than men

“if our injustice had not deprived them of their liberty, and consequently of all opportunities to show their abilities to the world.””

288 Conclusion “Sur les femmes” is remarkable for its feminism as well as for its egalitarianism. The latter aspect is significant in the light of Rousseau’s

Genevan background. Helena Rosenblatt has recently shown that Rousseau’s grandfather David was an active member of the 1707 demo-

cratic opposition, a cause his father Isaac in all likelihood supported as well. Rosenblatt underlines that the unjust treatment his father, a watchmaker, had to endure from an arrogant aristocrat made an indelible impression on Jean-Jacques.”” The young Rousseau spent two years with the pastor Lambercier at Bossey (who was succeeded by Poulain’s son in 1738). Lambercier must at least have known who Poulain was, for as a member of the Compagnie des Pasteurs he was on the commit-

tee that appointed Poulain to his teaching post in 1707.7° We further know that Rousseau was friendly with the bookseller Jacques Barrillot,

“one of the worthiest men he had ever known” and who used to call Jean-Jacques “his grandson.””? And Barrillot was the publisher of Poulain’s last book. The story does not end here. Rousseau may have become acquainted with Poulain’s work in 1746-1748, when he was employed as a secre-

tary by Louise-Marie-Madeleine Dupin, who projected a great work on the defense of the female sex. The excerpts of innumerable books Rousseau made for her total almost three thousand manuscript pages.*° Unfortunately, these papers have since been dispersed to several libraries and numerous private collectors. Anicet Sénéchal, the last to have

seen the entire collection, does not mention any of Poulain’s works among the books consulted by Madame Dupin and Rousseau.*! However, Madeleine Alcover, who has seen the papers that ended up at the University of ‘Texas Library in Austin, has established that Madame Dupin read and made some notes on the Egalité des deux sexes, although she did not know the name of its author. Still, this is not sufficient to be certain that Rousseau saw the Egalité or, for that matter, any other book by Poulain.” ‘There is, however, another indication that Rousseau had read the Egalité. When he was employed by Madame Dupin, Rousseau drafted an essay on education that focused on the education of women. Its centerpiece is a severe critique of Fénelon’s project for female edu-

cation (discussed in Chapter 4). Rousseau condemns Fénelon’s restricted curriculum for women and proposes instead to found colleges in which girls will receive “absolutely” the same instruction as boys. He further declares that Fénelon’s assertions about the defects of women

Conclusion 289 are illogical: “he attributes to women in general defects that are only found in some of them.”* ‘This sentence might have been taken almost verbatim from Poulain’s critique of the learned in the Egalité des deux sexes: “they attribute to all women in general what they have only observed in some of them.”** The parallels between the two formulations are so striking that I feel justified in concluding that Rousseau had read Poulain’s book. This survey allows us to conclude that Poulain was read, studied, and copied by a considerable number of authors and that a few of the major figures of the Enlightenment knew his work. ‘The diffusion of his work demonstrates that Poulain was not a marginal figure, although he was not among the major, highly influential authors either. Future research may well uncover more borrowings from Poulain. He represents an inbetween case: a moderately influential author, whose impact is largely explained by the novelty and thoroughness of his egalitarian philosophy. Poulain’s ideas were taken up again and again by eighteenth-century authors. ‘They played a role in the controversies over the meaning and normative consequences of sex and gender that persisted through the century. Finally, we have seen that Poulain’s ideas and writings were still known to some of the feminist militants in the French Revolution.

The Destabilization of Gender in Enlightenment ‘Thought In the general historiography of the Enlightenment, feminism has long been ignored. Until quite recently, most historians of the Enlightenment had not studied the historiography of the guerelle des femmes and seventeenth-century feminism. Consequently, they tended either to ignore the subject of gender or to depict as eighteenth-century innovations what are in fact continuations of seventeenth-century arguments. Fortunately, this is now beginning to change. Jonathan Israel, for example, discusses women’s emancipation in his recent massive book on the Radical Enlightenment.* Likewise, Roy Porter included a chapter on feminist thought in his fascinating survey of the British Enlightenment, showing some of the connections between seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century lines of argument.” In both Israel and Porter, however, the subject of sex and gender stands somewhat apart from the main narrative. In Dorinda Outram’s and Margaret Jacob’s recent introductory surveys of the Enlightenment questions of gender are more

290 Conclusion integrated with the rest of their subject matter, albeit in very different ways.*’ However, there is still no overall history of the Enlightenment “science of man” that fully integrates gender and feminism.** In this section I bring together some of the arguments made in this book to formulate some provisional suggestions for a history of gender and feminism in the Enlightenment. In the first place, the issues of sex, gender, and feminism deserve a more central position in the historiography of the Enlightenment. At

the present time it is difficult to judge their importance because so much research remains to be done. In her history of European feminisms from the late seventeenth to the mid-twentieth century, Karen Offen emphasizes that feminist publications in the eighteenth century are far more numerous than was believed until quite recently.*? The survey above of the reception of Poulain’s works confirms this claim. The criticisms of male supremacy we find in Poulain are voiced again and again in France and elsewhere. A full quantitative investigation of feminist publishing in the Enlightenment is badly needed. In the meantime we should be careful not to underestimate its spread and influence.

A second reason to reconsider the impact of feminism on the Enlightenment is the emergence of new biological and psychological theories of sexual difference. In his pathbreaking work on the history of the category of “sex,” Thomas Laqueur has summarized this trend as

the transition from “gender” to “sex,” arguing that the seventeenthcentury deconstruction of the cultural discourses of “gender” was the precondition of the eighteenth-century ascendancy of the biological discourse of “sex.” However, Laqueur tends to play down the biological grounding of the Galenic and Hippocratic theorizations of sex in terms of the bodily humors. His transition model depends on the occultation of biological theories of “sex” before the Enlightenment, coupled with

an overestimation of their importance in the Enlightenment. But that is not all. As I have shown in Chapter 3, Laqueur does not acknowledge that Cartesian biology presents an egalitarian approach on the biological front as well. So we have two problems: the relative importance of theorizations of biological sex within the larger field of Enlightenment human science, and the dialectic of pro- and antiegalitarian readings of the biological evidence.

Let us take the latter issue first. Although Laqueur brilliantly de-

Conclusion 291 constructs the sexist assumptions in biologistic theories of sex and gender, he seems to take it almost for granted that such theories must lead to antiegalitarian discourses of gender (I say “almost” because Laqueur

acknowledges the possibility of a deconstruction from within of biologistic doctrines; moreover, his theoretical model itself is not deterministic: it highlights, if anything, the malleability and cultural overdetermination of the category of “sex”).%° Cartesian biology and physiology demonstrate that there is no necessary connection between biology and an antiegalitarian theorization of gender. Estelle Cohen has recently argued that “attempts to ground social differences between the sexes on presumed anatomical differences were in fact widely

contested during the century after 1660.”*! She points to various authors who sought to base their egalitarian views on the findings of the new scientific biology. In 1717, for example, James Drake published his Anthropologia Nova; or, A New System of Anatomy, in which he made fun

of authors who projected their short-sighted opinions about women into biology. Emilie du Chatelet, the famous natural scientist and companion of Voltaire, stated, like Poulain, that “all the researches of anatomy have not yet been able to show the least difference [apart from reproductive organs] between Men and Women.”*? Cohen further relates that “seventeenth-century accounts of the differences between male and female sexual anatomy—by Reinier de Graaf, a Dutch physician, Jane Sharp, an English midwife, and Pierre Dionis, a French surgeon-

accoucheur, for example—clearly did not conclude that their views provided grounds for social and cultural arguments about female inferiority.”” ‘Che new biological “evidence,” Cohen concludes, could be interpreted in contradictory ways. The same conclusion is drawn by Jeffrey Merrick in his study of Enlightenment reactions to the discovery that the king of the bees was really a queen, and by Londa Schiebinger in her examination of theories of the constructions of gender in human beings, other animals, and plants.” In her brilliant survey of the development of theories of sexual difference between 1750 and 1850, Claudia Honegger takes a slightly different approach. She analyzes the rise of inegalitarian biological theories of sexual difference as part of a broader conceptual shift from the open historical and political thought of the eighteenth century to the physical anthropology of the nineteenth century. In her opinion, the replacement of Cartesian dualism by a monist (materialist) science of

292 Conclusion man led to a new, “scientific” grounding of the concepts of “race” and “sex-gender.” Honegger calls this “the scientific appropriation of “difference” (“Die Verwissenschaftlichung der ‘Differenz’”).%> Both Cohen and Honegger emphasize that the new scientistic legitimations of sexual and racial difference do not logically follow from the “biological evidence.” They regard the onslaught against Cartesian dualism as central to an overall reconceptualization of the nature and boundaries of the physical, the mental, and the social, a challenge that is tied to a cultural and political reaction against the egalitarian ideas of an earlier phase of the Enlightenment. Laqueur’s theory of a linear transition from gender to sex has also been criticized for not paying enough attention to the history of Enlightenment thought about gender outside the field of biology. Sylvana

Tomaselli has pointed out that the grand Enlightenment project of conjectural or “philosophical” history almost inevitably called forth a parallel effort to produce a conjectural history of the female condition: that is, a conjectural history of gender.” “Tomaselli sees this mainly as an eighteenth-century innovation, but the intellectual origins of conjectural history can in fact be traced back to the previous century. As I have shown in Chapter 2, seventeenth-century feminist criticism irrevocably destabilized the concept of gender, opening it up for an environmentalist and, ultimately, historical theorization. Poulain, as we saw in Chapter 6, was among the first to suggest the idea of a “conjecture historique” about the origins of masculine power: that is, the revolutionary idea that gender has a history. The variability of gender between cultures and periods, between Europe and the Orient, the far North, and America, was also a seventeenth-century intellectual invention, as we saw in Chapter 6. We have traced its emergence in such diverse thinkers as Francois Bernier, Pierre Petit, and Bernard de Fontenelle. In due course, conjectural history and, more generally, an evolutionary view of society became almost commonplace in the Enlightenment. Several thinkers declared that the liberation of women was of necessity tied up with the progress of human society from the agrarian to the commercial stage. “It is only among the nations where civilization has reached the stage of politeness,” Buffon states in his anthropology, “that women have attained that equality of condition which is yet so natural and so necessary to the comfort [douceur| of society.”*’ Buffon’s views were shared by many

Conclusion 293 others. The conviction that the equality of the sexes was a component of “European progress” was also linked to the image of “gender backwardness” in the Orientalist discourse found in innumerable travelogues and geographical treatises.

Conjectural history made the variability of the female condition across space and time one of its central tenets. A radical application of its methodology might have led to a complete historicization of femi-

ninity and masculinity. That did not happen, at any rate not in the eighteenth century. Even so, conjectural history presented an approach to gender that was at odds with all doctrines that posited a fixed and immutable “female nature.” Not all authors agreed on these matters, to put it mildly. Rousseau’s mature views are obviously miles away from those of Buffon or Con-

dorcet. Broadly speaking, two extreme positions can be delineated. The first position, found in Poulain, Condorcet, and most other feminist authors, weds an egalitarian view of gender to a theorization of the cultural and historical variability of human nature and an environmentalist psychology and pedagogy. ‘The second position, memorably argued by Rousseau, seeks to conceptualize, perhaps even to “invent,” a modern female nature as an antidote to the corruption of society by the very same historical trends highlighted by the “progressivist” theorists of conjectural history. This second approach does not represent a perpetuation of traditional misogyny, but rather tends to glorify woman’s status as a timeless repository of morality. Cut loose from its feminist moorings, the seventeenth-century eulogy of the “feminine virtues” is now called upon to rescue civilization from the threatening advance of modernity.” This strand of Enlightenment social and political thought, however, was also shot through with a profound distrust, bordering on fear and loathing, of women as they actually were. Its spokesmen portrayed “really existing women” as fickle beings, given to luxury, intrigue, and superstition. Whereas the first group of thinkers stressed the intellectual and political capacities of women, the second foregrounded their moral and psychological “nature.” Both groups acknowledged equality and difference. The champions of equality did not advocate total “sameness” (as is evident from Poulain’s treatment of femininity), although their adversaries certainly liked to attribute such a stand to them. Neither did the theorists of women’s special nature refuse them an equal dignity.

294 Conclusion Both groups valued women’s contribution to society, but in starkly different, often mutually exclusive, ways. Both pointed to the danger to society of the moral corruption of “its” women, but the first group saw

reason and personal autonomy as the best antidote, while the second regarded them as part of the problem. It goes without saying that many Enlightenment thinkers situated themselves somewhere in between the two polar views, combining elements from both in various, often contradictory, ways. The essential point is that gender had become a subject of public debates and, often, fierce polemics. ‘There is no single standard Enlight-

enment view of the nature of men and women. No one can read the major philosophes of the eighteenth century without noticing that gender had become problematic to them in a way it never was to the major seventeenth-century philosophers of the generation of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza.” With the exception of Condorcet, few of them were convinced feminists. On the other hand, with the notable exception of Rousseau few were convinced antifeminists. In the eighteenthcentury Enlightenment, gender had become an essentially contested concept, not only in the texts of the philosophers, but also in a broader field of elite opinions on marriage and the many spaces of sociability.!” In retrospect Poulain’s social philosophy represents the precise historical moment in which the questioning of gender is fully articulated in terms of the “new philosophy”: that is, in the categories of Enlightenment discourse. I would therefore suggest that we allow for a more complicated picture of the “gender wars” in the Enlightenment. Egalitarian and antiegalitarian arguments confronted each other both in the realm of social philosophy (“gender”) and in the new discursive space of natural science (“sex”). An analytic framework that can accommodate this four-

cornered discursive terrain will provide a better vantage point from which to unravel the intermeshing discourses of sex and gender in such diverse areas as political thought, educational philosophy, human physiology, anthropology, and racial classification. ‘The last subject is of par-

ticular significance in this connection, for Enlightenment theorizing about Europe and its various “others” is played out in the same fourcornered discursive space. ‘he new theories of racial classification used

the language of natural history, but biological “facts” could serve equally well to demonstrate the unity of the entire human species.

Conclusion 295 Likewise, natural-rights philosophy and Cartesian dualism underscored the notion of the equality of all men and women, regardless of religion and “race.” Conjectural history, on the other hand, led easily to a discourse of European progress, demonstrating its superiority over the rest of the world. These tensions are still being played out in the historiography of the Enlightenment: depending on which sources are privileged, highly disparate characterizations of “the” Enlightenment are offered. As both natural-rights and conjectural history were at the center of Enlightenment discourse, the result was an unstable mixture (as in the Abbé Raynal’s Histoire des deux Indes).'!°' Discourses of gender partook

fully in this fundamental tension at the heart of Enlightenment human science, a tension that was nowhere more acute than in the conflation of morality, politics, the human body, and the physical world in that most pivotal and most ambiguous of all Enlightenment concepts: ature.°2 Once more, Poulain’s contribution is seminal, for he was the

first to demand that those who justify the subjection of women as “natural” explain in clear and distinct language what they meant by “nature.”

The Invention of Modern Equality Poulain was the first thinker to make equality a foundational concept of his social philosophy. ‘The philosophers of modern natural law posited a “natural equality” in the prepolitical or presocial condition of mankind, but their normative political theories usually sought to produce a theoretical legitimation of various types of inequality, in particular the inequality generated by the institution of private property.'” As a rule, they also sought to justify the patriarchal family. As we saw in Chapter 5, Poulain criticized their arguments, employing the notion of “natural equality” to question the legitimacy of the main types of inequality in contemporary society, notably gender, rank, and the superiority of Europeans over “others.” We have seen that his understanding of equality drew on natural-rights philosophy as well as on the strong egalitarian

elements in Cartesianism. However, he transcended both by making equality a critical sociopolitical concept. Such a polemical use of the idea of equality is also found in the Levellers in the English Revolution of the 1640s, but the concept of equal-

296 Conclusion ity in the Leveller tracts and speeches is less universal than Poulain’s. The Levellers used the language of natural equality in a political discourse that was grafted onto a preexisting body politic, the community of freeborn Englishmen.!% ‘The Dutch Radical Franciscus van den Enden, one of Spinoza’s teachers, comes closer to Poulain in his Vrye Politijke Stellingen (Free Political Sentiments, 1665). He insists that all citizens, male and female, should profit from the commonwealth, and he recommends basic schooling for all, including women. However, he excludes women from political citizenship.!% Spinoza also excludes women from his democratic republic.! The historical significance of Poulain is that he formulates a systematic egalitarian philosophy in which, for the first time, the idea of the natural equality of a// reason-possessing human beings is applied to a// types of social relations. Poulain is thus perhaps the only seventeenth-

century thinker to have formulated a truly universalist concept of equality.

It is noteworthy that Poulain draws on all the major languages of equality available to the men and women of letters in early-modern Europe: the concept of “a natural condition of humanity” in naturalrights philosophy that abstracted from all social attributes; the Christian idea of the precedence of the inner, spiritual person over the external manifestations of rank and splendor, radicalized in Protestantism and used with polite irony by moralists such as Montaigne and Pascal; the idea of spiritual equality found in the long tradition of literary feminism; the nascent environmentalist psychology articulated by feminist authors and educational reformers alike; the cultural relativism illustrated and explicated in countless travelogues, but also by the moralists’ critique of custom and authority; and finally the Cartesian affirmation of the equality of reason, as well as the equality of all human beings as biological “machines.” Poulain’s concept of equality brings together all the main components of modern thought. By incorporating all of these

contexts, it abstracts from all of them. It is socially undetermined, “negative” in the sense of unrelated to definite social or political practices, and, precisely for that reason, applicable to a// social and political practices. As Joan Scott perceptively observes, the undetermined, abstract nature of such concepts creates a space for imagination and fantasy.10

Poulain’s theorization of equality, then, represents the first formulation of a fully universalist concept of equality in European history. His

Conclusion 297 theorization of equality is not formulated in terms of rights within a political or social corporation. It precedes and transcends the politically and socially constituted bodies. By analogy to Benjamin Constant’s famous comparison of modern and ancient liberty, I propose to call it modern equality.'

Inventing the Enlightenment In this book we have seen that the components that went into the making of Poulain’s philosophy were many and varied. What Poulain did was quite simple and yet revolutionary: he combined elements from a number of disparate contemporary discourses into a systematic framework, with feminism and Cartesianism as the major organizing principles. The religious foundation of the critique of inequality and oppression was provided by his version of rational Christianity. Finally, his hatred of oppression and intolerance gave his entire philosophy a radical, potentially political, thrust. ‘(The same combination of theoretical,

religious, and emotional elements, with the significant exception of feminism, can be found in many other representatives of the first gen-

eration of the Enlightenment. Looking back from a post-Enlightenment culture, this combination may appear “logical” or “evident” because it denotes—again with the exception of feminism—the standard image of Enlightenment philosophy with which we have long been familiar. It takes an imaginary reversal of the historical perspective to realize the novelty and the audacity of such a theoretical position in the 1670s.

It is, of course, always hazardous to assign a “beginning” to such a grand and multifarious phenomenon as the Enlightenment. ‘There are no clear-cut “beginnings” in history. ‘Io Poulain and his contemporaries, “Enlightenment” did not denote a historical age but rather a critical and open-minded attitude. That is not to say, however, that they were not conscious of living through a period of profound and unsettling intellectual change. The querelle des anciens et des modernes reverberates in Poulain’s work as it does in that of his contemporaries. It be-

speaks a historically verifiable consciousness of epochal change. By identifying themselves as moderns, the protagonists of the “new philosophy,” another significant term, were coining the modern meaning of the term “modern.” Moreover, they sought to organize their criticisms of the traditional canon of European thought into an internally

298 Conclusion consistent countercanon that they hoped might one day supplant the obsolete “old” philosophy. “Those principles that people call new,” the

Cartesian Jacques Rohault proudly declared in 1671, “have already been published all over Europe for more than twenty-five years.”! The conviction that a new authoritative corpus of learning was in the

making gained ground in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, culminating in Diderot’s Encyclopédie, which was precisely an

attempt to codify the new canon. Compared to Diderot’s mighty project, Poulain’s outline of a new curriculum in the Education des dames was extremely modest. In Poulain’s time, Enlightenment had not yet solidified into a new canon. Poulain and his contemporaries possessed neither the means nor the self-confidence to produce a really effective and integral canon of the new philosophy. And yet they were groping toward it. Many of the ideas they first formulated became pivotal elements of eighteenth-century Enlightenment thought, and the tensions, ambiguities, and unresolved contradictions in their writings resurfaced in later thinkers. Poulain’s generation knew what it was leaving behind, but it did not, of course, precisely know where it was going. This generation was marked by the dawning sense of a new beginning, an urge to innovate. They were trying out new avenues of thought, sometimes in a quite consistent way, sometimes in a roughly ad-hoc fashion. Poulain himself is a perfect example of this: a dropout student of theology who took it upon himself to put together an entirely new social philosophy. ‘Io a certain extent he succeeded in his enterprise, but in this book we have also seen that many contradictions and unsettled problems remained. The late seventeenth century represents a moment of openness in intellectual history. The “enlightened” thinkers of that period were laying the groundwork for a future they could not foresee. Poulain’s thought exemplifies the radical moment in the transition to modernity when, during one or two generations, there was no canon. The metaphor of “invention” is well suited to capture this historical moment, for the inventor is somebody who does not yet know what shape the invention will take. Invention is an open-ended process. It has no predetermined end, but neither is it entirely random. Armed with many questions and some certainties, Poulain and his generation advanced into an uncharted future. Later generations would find a name for that future. They called it the Age of Enlightenment.

Acknowledgments

Notes Index

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Acknowledgments

IN A SENSE, my work on Poulain de la Barre started in 1984, when Selma Leydesdorff brought me a copy of Fayard’s reprint of the Egalité des deux sexes from Paris. I was immediately fascinated, and I included Poulain in my course on the history of political thought, where he found a comfortable place between the Levellers and Locke.

In the early 1990s, when, having spent a lot of my time with nineteenth-century Liberals, I was looking for a new subject, I finally decided to pursue my fascination with Poulain. ‘logether with Tyitske Akkerman I organized a conference called “Six Feminist Waves,” from Christine de Pizan to Simone de Beauvoir. The intellectual collabora-

tion with Tjitske was essential for getting the Poulain project under way. In 1996 Phyllis Mack invited me to participate in the research program “Varieties of Religious Experience” that she directed at Rutgers University. Phyllis made me feel at home at Rutgers’ Center for Historical Analysis, and it was there that I laid the groundwork for the chapters dealing with Poulain’s religious trajectory. In 1998 Barbara ‘Taylor invited me to join the international “Feminism and Enlightenment” research project she was undertaking with

a grant from the Leverhulme ‘Trust. That was really a godsend: the brainstorming sessions of the project provided good companionship as well as an ideal intellectual environment for my work on Poulain. On 301

302 Acknowledgments top of that, Barbara, while finishing her own book on Mary Wollstonecraft, read most of my draft chapters. I also want to express my gratitude to all the other research associates for sharing ideas and saving me from some errors. The final stages of writing took place in 2001, when I was a visiting scholar in the History Department at the University of California (Los Angeles). The department’s weekly seminar on European History and Culture offered an extremely stimulating environment: the discussion of one of my key chapters was especially helpful. Iam immensely grateful to Margaret Jacob and Lynn Hunt for their friendship and hospitality. Margaret is an old friend; she is also a walking encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, especially the Radical Enlightenment, for which she has a contagious enthusiasm. She read most of my chapters, and her

comments were invaluable. I further want to thank Lynn, as well as Anne Mellor and Felicity Nussbaum, for inviting me to a colloquium on early modern feminism and religion at the Clark Library in Los Angeles.

Another indispensable reader was Karen Offen. I have known her since 1994, when she participated in our “Six Feminist Waves” conference. Her comments on the first draft, accompanied by countless read-

ing suggestions, have made this book a better one than it otherwise would have been. Karen’s insistence on recovering the feminist voices

in the Enlightenment has been an important inspiration to me. The same is true of the comments of my Rotterdam colleague Maria Grever. Like Karen, Maria combines enthusiasm for “writing gender back into history” with a broad knowledge of modern history. My stay at UCLA was made possible by a leave of absence from the Faculty of History and Art Studies at Erasmus University (Rotterdam),

financed by a grant from the Humanities Department of the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). The production of this book at a reasonable price was made possible by a generous grant from the ‘Trust Fund of Erasmus University and by a contribution from my own Faculty of History at Erasmus: I am deeply grateful to both institutions for their support.

Some parts of Chapter 2 are adapted from my article on seventeenth-century feminism in Tyitske Akkerman and Siep Stuurman, eds., Perspectives on Feminist Political Thought in European History (Rout-

ledge, 1998), 67-84; I thank Routledge for permission to use it here.

Acknowledgments 303 Finally, there was—and, fortunately, is—Selma Leydesdorff. In addi-

tion to bringing me Poulain’s book in 1984, she has read and commented on all my draft chapters while working on a book of her own. I thank Selma for that and for much more. Life is, aprés tout, not only about books.

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Notes

Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Sources WORKS BY FRANGOIS POULAIN DE LA BARRE

Doctrine La doctrine des Protestans sur la hiberté de lire PEcriture Sainte, le service Divin en Langue entendué, Pinvocation des Saints, le Sacrement de PEucharistie, Fustifies par le Missel Romain et par des Réflexions sur chaque Point, avec Un commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Fésus-Christ, ‘Ceci est mon Corps; cect est mon Sang’, Mathh. chap. XXVI, V, 26, par F: P. de la

Barre (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1720)

Rapports Les rapports de la langue latine avec la francoise pour traduire élégamment et sans peine (Paris: C. Thibout, 1672)

Education De P’éducation des dames pour la condutte de Pesprit dans les sciences et dans les moeurs. Entretiens (Paris: Jean Dupuis,

1674). “POULAIN?” is printed below the dedication to the Grande Mademoiselle.

Egalité De Pégalité des deux sexes. Discours physique et moral, ot l'on voit Pimportance de se défaire des préjugez (1673; facsimile ed.,

Paris: Fayard, 1984). The “Avertissement,” which was at the end of the original edition, precedes the preface in the facsimile. Essai des remarques — Essai des remarques particuliéres sur la langue Frangotse, pour la Ville de Genéve (Geneva: n.p., 1691)

Excellence De Pexcellence des hommes contre V’égalité des sexes (Paris: Jean Dupuis, 1675) 305

306 Notes to Pages vii-x OTHER SOURCES

AT Ocuvres de Descartes publiées par Charles Adam & Paul Tannery, 11 vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1996)

Richesource La premiere partie des conferences académiques et oratoires sur I-II, WI, 1V toutes sortes de sujets problématiques, utiles et agréables, accompagnees de leur décision ott ’on voit Pusage des plus belles maximes de la philosophie et les plus beaux preceptes de [’éloquence,

par I. D. S. Escuyer, Sieur de Richesource, moderateur de Pacadémie, & La seconde partie etc., in one vol. (Paris: chez PAutheur, a l’Académie des Orateurs, Place Dauphine, 1661); La troisieme partie etc. (1665); La quatrieme partie etc. (1665)

Preface 1. Marie Louise Stock, “Poullain de la Barre: A Seventeenth-Century Feminist” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1961), 1-90; Madeleine Alcover, Poullain de la Barre: Une aventure philosophique (Paris: Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 1981), 9-20. 2. Excellence, 3-4. Unless specified otherwise, all translations of Poulain’s works are my own. 3. See Siep Stuurman, “The Canon of the History of Political Thought: Its Critique and a Proposed Alternative,” History and Theory, 39 (2000), 147-166. 4. For recent discussions (apart from Stock, Magné, and Alcover), see Michael A. Seidel, “Poulain de la Barre’s The Woman as Good as the Man,” fournal of the History of Ideas, 35 (1974), 499-508; Desmond M. Clarke, “Introduction,” in Fran-

cois Poulain de la Barre, The Equality of the Sexes, ed. and trans. Desmond M. Clarke (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 1-39; Geneviéve Fraisse, La Raison des femmes (Paris: Plon, 1992), 29-45; Margit Hauser, Gesellschaftsbild und Frauenrolle in der Aufklarung: Zur Herausbildung des egalitaren und komplementaren Geschlechtsrollenkonzept bet Poullain de la Barre und Rousseau (Vienna: Passagenverlag, 1992); Irmgard Hierdies, “Die Gleichheit der Geschlechter” und “Die Erziehung der Frauen” bei Poullain de la Barre: Zur Modernitdt eines Vergessenen (Frankfurt

am Main: Peter Lang, 1993), 11-84 (the rest of the book contains translations of the Egalité and the Education); Ginevra Conti Odorisio, Poullain de la Barre e la teoria del’uguaglianza (Milan: Unicopli, 1996), 9-55 (followed by a translation of the Fgalité); Maria Corona Corrias, Alle origini del femminismo moderno: Il pensiero politico di Poullain de la Barre (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1996). Of these, Corrias’ study is the only book-length discussion; Corrias situates Poulain in the history of feminism and political thought, but she offers no full contextual treatment of Poulain’s

place in the origins of the Enlightenment. None of these recent studies fully integrates the development of Poulain’s feminism with his theological trajectory, and none discusses Poulain’s Genevan context in any detail. 5. After a first spate of articles on Poulain in 1902-1914 not much was added until Stock’s and Magné’s dissertations. See Henri Piéron, “De l’influence sociale des principes cartésiens. Un précurseur inconnu de féminisme et de la révolution: Poulain de la Barre,” Revue de Synthése Historique, 5 (1902), 153-185, 270-282; Georges Ascoli, “Essai sur l’histoire des idées féministes en France du XVIe siécle a

Notes to Pages 1-5 307 la Révolution,” Revue de Synthese Historique, 13 (1906), 25-57, 161-184; Henri Grappin, “Notes sur un féministe oublié: Le cartésien Poullain de la Barre,” Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France, 20 (1913), 852-867; idem, “A propos du féministe Poullain de la Barre,” ibid., 21 (1914), 387-389; G. Lefevre, “Poullain de la Barre et le féminisme au XVIle siecle,” Revue Pédagogique, 64 (1914), 101-113; S. A. Richards, Feminist Writers of the XVIIth Century, with Special Reference to Francots Poulain de la Barre (London: David Nutt, 1914); Bernard Magné, “Le Féminisme de Poullain de la Barre” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toulouse, 1964).

Introduction Epigraph: Francois Poulain de la Barre, De P’égalité des deux sexes (1673). 1. Paul Hazard, La Crise de la conscience européenne, 1680-1715 (Paris: Fayard,

1961); see also Jean Mesnard, “La Crise de la conscience européenne: Un demisiécle aprés Paul Hazard,” in De la mort de Colbert a la révocation de l’édit de Nantes: Un monde nouveau? ed. Louise Godard de Donville (Marseille: Centre Méridional

de Recontres sur le XVIe Siécle, 1984), 185-198; Margaret C. Jacob, “The Crisis of the European Mind: Hazard Revisited,” in Politics and Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Phyllis Mack and Margaret C. Jacob (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 251-271. Precise periodizations have varied with the interests of historians: J. S. Spink, French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire (London: Ath-

lone, 1960), begins his story with Gassendi’s critique of Aristotelianism in the 1620s; J. H. Brumfit, The French Enlightenment (London: Macmillan, 1972), begins with Descartes, Locke, Bayle, and Fontenelle; Theodore K. Rabb, The Strugele for Stability in Early Modern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), regards the resolution of the midcentury political crises in England and France as the precondition to Hazard’s intellectual “crisis”; Ira O. Wade, The Structure and Form of the French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), vol. 1, traces the roots of the Enlightenment as far back as the sixteenth century, but sees Fontenelle’s work in the 1680s as marking a crucial transition; Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 2 vols. (London: Wildwood House, 1973), 1: 17, also points to early intellectual roots, but has the “real” Enlightenment commence with the generation of Montesquieu; Alan Charles Kors and Paul J. Korshin, eds., Anticipations of the Enlightenment in England, France, and Germany (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), regard the “late seventeenth century” as the period of the “anticipations.” Margaret C. Jacob, The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford and St. Martins, 2001), begins her survey of the Enlightenment in the 1680s; so does Vincenzo Ferrone, The Intellectual Roots of the Italian Enlightenment (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995); Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), focuses on Cartesianism and Spinozism, and accordingly starts his narrative in the 1650s. 2. Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 93, n. 71. 3. Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans (London: Allen and Unwin, 1981).

4. See Siep Stuurman, “The Canon of the History of Political Thought: Its Critique and a Proposed Alternative,” History and Theory, 39 (2000), 147-166. 5. Gay, Enlightenment, 1: xiii; see also 2: 125.

308 Notes to Pages 5-15 6. See, for example, Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), chap. 3; Jacob, Enlightenment: A Brief History, 1620, 41-43; Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter, eds., Toleration in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1-2; Daniel Roche, La France des lumieres (Paris: Fayard, 1993), 532-538. 7. See Henri-Jean Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société a Paris au XVIIe sieécle (Geneva: Droz, 1969), 336, n. 20. 8. Based on forty-one Du Puis titles (1658-1678) mentioned in the catalogue of the Bibliothéque Nationale. 9. Madeleine Alcover, Poullain de la Barre: Une aventure philosophique (Paris: Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 1981), 31. 10. See Karen Often, European Femunisms: A Political History, 1750-1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 19-26; idem, “Feminism,” in Encyclopedia of Social History, ed. Peter N. Stearns (New York: Garland, 1994), 271-272; Nancy Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 4-5; for a further elaboration of the argument presented here, see ‘Tjitske Akkerman and Siep Stuurman, “Introduction: Feminism in European History,” in Perspectives on Feminist Political Thought in European History: From the Middle Ages to

the Present, ed. Akkerman and Stuurman (London: Routledge, 1998), 1-33. 11. See Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). 12. Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy (London: Methuen, 1984), 49-50. 13. See Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Trevor McClaughlin, “Was ‘There an Empirical Movement in

Mid-Seventeenth-Century France? Experiments in Jacques Rohault’s Traité de Physique,” Revue d’Histotre des Sciences, 49 (1996), 459-481.

14. Henri Piéron, “De Vinfluence sociale des principes cartésiens. Un précurseur inconnu du féminisme et de la révolution: Poulain de la Barre,” Revue de Synthese Historique, 5 (1902), 153-154.

15. See Ira O. Wade, The Intellectual Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 32-35. 16. Ibid., 37. 17. Hazard, Crise, ix. 18. Ira O. Wade, The Clandestine Organization and Diffusion of Philosophic Ideas in France from 1700 to 1750 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1938). 19. Wade, Intellectual Origins, 659. 20. Georges Minois, Censure et culture sous PAncien Régime (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 128-129. 21. Wade, Intellectual Origins, 240, 265-266. 22. Ibid., 627, 630-631. 23. Ibid., 427-428, on Malebranche’s critique of the ancients in 1678; this is not so astonishing as Wade thinks. 24. See Wade, Structure and Form, 1: 26-34. 25. See Joan DeJean, Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siecle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 39-40. 26. Erica Harth, Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), chap. 3, esp. 136-139.

Notes to Pages 15-25 309 27. For the first aspect, see Margaret C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976); for the second, idem, Radical Enlightenment, chap. 1. 28. See Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, 43-45; see also idem, “Crisis of the European Mind.” 29. Israel, Radical Enlightenment; see my review essay, “Pathways to the Enlightenment: From Paul Hazard to Jonathan Israel,” History Workshop Fournal, 54 (2002), 233-242. 30. See Richard H. Popkin, “Cartesianism and Biblical Criticism,” in Problems of Cartesianism, ed. Thomas M. Lennon, John M. Nicolas, and John W. Davis (Kingston: McGill—Queen’s University Press, 1982), 61-81. 31. See Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Fighteenth-Century Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 32. Cited in Wade, Clandestine Organization, 1. 33. Rabb, Struggle for Stability, 116-117; Gay, Enlightenment, 2: 3-12, uses the notion of a “recovery of nerve,” but he applies it to the early eighteenth century. 34. See Daniel Gordon, Citizens without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670-1789 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 4-5. 35. Ibid., 35. 36. Francois Furet, La Révolution, 1770-1880 (Paris: Hachette, 1988), 23. 37. See Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Saint Simon ou le systeme de la Cour (Paris: Fayard, 1997), chap. 1. 38. See Lionel Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV: The Political and Social Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965). 39. Offen, European Feminisms, chap. 2. 40. See Harth, Cartesian Women; DeJean, Ancients against Moderns; DeJean, Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). 41. See Tyitske Akkerman, Women’s Vices, Public Benefits: Women and Commerce in the French Enlightenment (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1992). 42. See Jonathan Dewald, Avristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Cul-

ture: France, 1570-1715 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), chaps. 4, 6.

43. Jean de La Bruyére, Les Caractéres, ed. R. Garapon (Paris: Bordas, 1990), 479-480. 44. Excellence, 274.

45. See Dirk van der Cruysse, Louis XIV et le Siam (Paris: Fayard, 1991), 359360.

46. A similar argument is made by Silvia Berti, “At the Roots of Unbelief,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 56 (1995), 563.

1. The Making of a Philosopher 1. See Marie Louise Stock, “Poullain de la Barre: A Seventeenth-Century Feminist” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1961), 1. 2. Leon Bernhard, The Emerging City: Paris in the Age of Louis XIV (Durham: Duke University Press, 1970), 133-134. 3. Michel Pernot, La Fronde (Paris: Fallois, 1994), 122; Robert Mandrou, La

310 Notes to Pages 25-31 France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siécles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993), 126-132. 4. Bernhard, Emerging City, 134. 5. Andrew Trout, City on the Seine: Paris in the Time of Richelieu and Louis XIV, 1614-1715 (London: MacMillan, 1996), 8. 6. Joél Cornette, Chronique du régne de Louis XIV (Paris: Sedes, 1997), 102. 7. See Madeleine Alcover, Poullain de la Barre: Une aventure philosophique (Paris: Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 1981), 10-13. 8. A. Lloyd Moote, The Revolt of the fudges: The Parliament of Paris and the Fronde, 1643-1652 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 202, stresses the royalism of the échevins, except for Fournier; Orest Ranum, The Fronde: A French Revolution (New York: Norton, 1993), 186, states that they were divided; Michel

Pernot, La Fronde (Paris: Fallois, 1994), 103-106, mentions Fournier only as a frondeur.

9. Robert Muchembled, La Société policée: Politique et politesse en France du XVIe au XXe siécle (Paris: Seuil, 1998), 114. 10. See Emmanuel Bury, Littérature et politesse: Linvention de Phonnéte homme,

1580-1750 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996). 11. Cited in Muchembled, Société policée, 115. 12. Ibid., chap. 3; Alain Viala, Nazssance de P’écrivain: Sociologie de la littérature a Page classique (Paris: Minuit, 1985), 145-147.

13. Martine Acerra, “Les Avocats du Parlement de Paris, 1661-1715,” Histoire, Economie et Société, 1 (1982), 223.

14. Joan DeJean, Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). 15. See Ian Maclean, Woman Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature, 16101652 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 143-148. 16. Carolyn C. Lougee, Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Strati-

fication in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 41. 17. Francoise Hildesheimer, Le Fansénisme (Paris: Publisud, 1991), 92-93. Af-

ter 1660 Cartesianism quickly gained ground in Paris; see, e.g., Henry Phillips, Church and Culture in Seventeenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 171-176. 18. Education, 333. 19. Philippe Ariés, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Knopf, 1962), 211-222; L. W. B. Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 55. 20. Brockliss, Higher Education, 68. 21. Ibid., 111-181. 22. Jean de Viguerie, L’Institution des enfants: L’éducation en France, XVIeXVIIlTe siécle (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1978), 164-181. 23. Alcover, Poullain de la Barre, 12. 24. Certificate, Archives de Familles, le série: Poullain de la Barre, Archives d’Etat, Geneva. 25. Brockliss, Higher Education, 179-180. 26. Phillips, Church and Culture, 85. 27. Alan Charles Kors, Atheism in France, 1650-1729, vol. 1: The Orthodox Sources of Disbelief (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

Notes to Pages 31-38 311 28. See Neal Wood, Cicero’s Social and Political Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 148. 29. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis, trans. Walter Miller (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 57, 59-61.

30. “Act of the Long Parliament abolishing the office of King, 17 March 1649,” in The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625-1660, ed. Samuel Rawson Gardiner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 387.

31. See Trevor McClaughlin, “Censorship and Defenders of the Cartesian Faith in Mid-Seventeenth Century France,” fournal of the History of Ideas, 40 (1979), 565.

32. Louis ‘Irenard, “Censure,” in Dictionnaire du Grand Siécle, ed. Francois Bluche (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 288-289. 33. See Henri-Jean Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société a Paris au XVIIe siecle, 1598-1715 (Geneva: Droz, 1969), 690-698; Anne Sauvy, Livres saisis a Paris entre 1678 et 1701 (The Hague: Niyhoff, 1972), 5. 34. See Francisque Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie cartésienne, vol. 1 (Paris: Delagrave, 1868), 468; Roger Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 174.

35. Bouillier, Histoire, 436-46. 36. Viguerie, Institution des enfants, 203-204, 213.

37. Ibid., 203-204. 38. Education, 87-88. 39. Ibid., 332, 333. 40. Francoise Wacquet, paper on “intellectual conversions” delivered at the conference of the International Society for Intellectual History, Chicago, 21-23 September 2000. 41. See Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société, 801. 42. Brockliss, Higher Education, 270. 43. Hildesheimer, Jansénisme, 83. 44. Phillips, Church and Culture, 17. 45. Alexander Sedgwick, The Travails of Conscience: The Arnauld Family and the Ancien Régime (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 131.

46. Ibid., 143, 185. 47. On Jansenism and absolutism, see Dale K. van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 58-72. 48. See Henri Gouhier, Cartésianisme et Augustinisme au XVIIe siécle (Paris: Vrin, 1978); Tad M. Schmaltz, “What Has Cartesianism to Do with Jansenism>” Journal of the History of Ideas, 60 (1999), 37-56. 49. Phillips, Church and Culture, 197. 50. Blaise Pascal, Oeuvres completes, ed. Louis Lafuma (Paris: Seuil, 1963), 377. 51. Samuel Mours, Le Protestantisme en France au dix-septieme siecle (Paris: Libr.

Protestante, 1967), 62. 52. Daniel Ligou, Le Protestantisme en France de 1598 a 1715 (Paris: Sedes, 1968), 197-198; Mandrou et al., Histoire des protestants en France (Toulouse: Privat, 1997), 125-126; Mours, Protestantisme, 53. 53. Mandrou et al., Histoire des protestants, 132. 54. Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société, 603-604, 798-800. 55. See Philip Benedict, The Faith and Fortunes of France’s Huguenots, 1600-85 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 232-247. 56. Phillips, Church and Culture, 208.

312 Notes to Pages 38-49 57. Pascal, Oeuvres, 376. 58. Excellence, 320-321.

59. Poulain refers to the Académie des Orateurs as an institution the utility of which he knew “from his own experience”; Essai des remarques, pretace. 60. See Ch. J. Revillout, Un Maitre de conferences au milieu du XVIIe siécle:

Jean de Soudier de Richesource (Montpellier: Académie des Sciences et Lettres, 1881), 49-52. 61. See ‘advis de l’Académie’ in Richesource I-II. 62. Howard M. Solomon, Public Welfare, Science, and Propaganda in Seventeenth-Century France: The Innovations of Théophraste Renaudot (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 66, 84n., 72-82; see also Geoftrey V. Sutton, Science for a Polite Society: Gender, Culture, and the Demonstration of Enlightenment (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 21-41.

63. Richesource I-II, 384, 389. This might be Louis Le Barbier; see Acerra, “Les Avocats,” 217.

64. Richesource I-II, 392. 65. Ibid., 412. 66. Richesource IV, 111-113. 67. Acerra, “Les Avocats,” 224. 68. Education, 334. 69. See Bouillier, Histoire, 444-445.

70. Other Cartesians favorably mentioned by Poulain are Géraud de Cordemoy and Louis de la Forge. De la Forge lectured mainly in Saumur, and he died in the summer of 1666, when Poulain was still preparing for his bachelor’s degree. Cordemoy gave almost no public lectures. ‘This leaves us with Rohault, who lectured regularly throughout the 1660s. 71. Education, 306-307. 72. Francois Bernier, Abrégé de la philosophie de M. Gassendi (Paris: J. Langlois, 1674).

73. Education, 95-98, 208. 74. Both works are included in the reading list in ibid., 306-307. 75. Louis de la Forge, Traité de Pesprit de Vhomme, de ses facultez et fonctions, et de son union avec le corps, suivant les principes de René Descartes (Paris: M. Robin, N. le

Gras & Th. Girard, 1666), 453. 76. McClaughlin, “Censorship,” 565-566. 77. Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, Dissertation sur la Foconde—Arrest burlesque— Traité du sublime (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1942), 31-33. 78. Cited in Corpus: Revue de Philosophie, nr. 20-21: Bernier et les Gassendistes, ed. Sylvia Murr (Paris, 1992): 233-236. 79. See André Mansau, “Burlesque,” in Bluche, Dictionnaire, 251-252. 80. Bouillier, Histozre, 471-485; Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société, 878-880. 81. Education, 99. 82. Ibid., 328-329, 330-331. 83. Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics, 163.

84. Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, La Logique ou Part de penser (1662) (Paris: Flammarion, 1970), 55. 85. Education, 160, 184. 86. Egalitée, 30-31.

Notes to Pages 50-55 313 87. Ibid., 11. 88. Rapports, 58. 89. Bernier, Abrégeé, 3. 90. See Ira O. Wade, The Structure and Form of the French Enlightenment, vol. 1:

Esprit Philosophique (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 3-25; Jochen Schlobach, “Philosophe,” in Dictionnaire européen des lumiéres, ed. Michel Delon (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997), 851-854. 91. Education, 191.

2. The Feminist Impulse 1. See Maité Albistur and Daniel Armogathe, Histoire du feminisme francais (Paris: Des Femmes, 1978); Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot, eds., A History of Women in the West, vol. 3: Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes, ed. Natalie Zemon Davis and Arlette Farge (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993); Ian Maclean, Woman Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature, 1610-1652 (Oxtord: Clarendon Press, 1977); Joan Kelly, “Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes,” Signs, 8 (1982), 4-28; Constance Jordan, Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); Evelyne Berriot-Salvadore, Les Femmes dans la société frangaise de la Rénaissance (Geneva: Droz, 1990); Joan DeJean, Lender Geographies: Women and the

Origins of the Novel in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); Danielle Haase-Dubosq and Eliane Viennot, eds., Femmes et pouvoirs sous PAncien Régime (Paris: Rivages, 1991); Erica Harth, Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992);

Anette Hofer and Annette Keilhauer, “Femme,” in Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe in Frankreich, 1680-1820, vols. 16-18, ed. Rolf Reichardt and HansJiirgen Liisebrink (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996), 11-83; Tjitske Akkerman and Siep Stuurman, eds., Perspectives on Feminist Political Thought in European History: From the Middle Ages to the Present (London: Routledge, 1998); of the older literature, Gustave Reynier, La Femme au XVIIe siecle: Ses ennemuis et ses défenseurs (Paris: ‘Tallandier, 1929), is still quite useful. 2. Kelly, “Early Feminist Theory,” 7. 3. Quoted in Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. Earl Jeffrey Richards (New York: Persea Books, 1982), xxxii. 4. See Alcuin Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). 5. Pizan, City of Ladies, 31, 43-47. 6. Ibid., 16, 12. 7. See Susan Groag Bell, “Christine de Pizan (1364-1430): Humanism and the Problem of a Studious Woman,” Feminist Studies, 3 (1976), 173-184. 8. Jordan, Renaissance Feminism, 2, 9-10. 9. Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. George Bull (London: Penguin, 1976), 210-255. 10. See Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 48-52. 11. See Karen Offen, European Feminisms, 1700-1950: A Political History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), xiv—xv.

314 Notes to Pages 56-60 12. See Marjorie H. Ilsley, A Daughter of the Renaissance: Marie le Fars de Gournay: Her Life and Works (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1963).

13. Patricia Francis Cholakian, “The Economics of Friendship: Gournay’s Apologie pour celle qui escrit,” fournal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 25 (1995),

407-417. 14. See Giovanni Dotoli, “Montaigne et les libertins via Mlle de Gournay,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 25 (1995), 381-405. 15. See also Constant Venesoen, Etudes sur la littérature féminine au XVIIe siécle

(Birmingham, Ala.: Summa, 1990), 25; Gisele Mathieu-Catellani, “La Quenouille ou la lyre: Marie de Gournay et la cause des femmes,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 25 (1995), 457. 16. Marie de Gournay, FEgalité des hommes et des femmes, in La Fille dalliance de

Montaigne: Marie de Gournay, ed. Mario Schiff (Paris: Champion, 1910), 62. 17. Ibid., 61.

18. This is also noted by Ginevra Conti Odorisio, “Montaigne e Marie de Gournay,” Pensiero Politico, 22 (1989), 234.

19. This may come from Montaigne: Gournay loved the passage in Montaigne’s Essais in which he says: “Je dis que les masles et femelles sont jettez en mesme meule; sauf l’institution et usage, la difference n’y est pas grande.” However, it has also been argued that this statement in fact reflects Gournay’s influence on Montaigne; but there is no conclusive evidence for that: see Maryanne Cline Horowitz, “Marie de Gournay, Editor of the Essais of Michel de Montaigne,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 17 (1986), 284, n. 34. 20. Gournay, Egalité, 65, 70. 21. Ibid., 75. 22. Ibid., 73.

23. See Brita Rang, “‘Een sonderlingen geest’: De Geleerde Anna Maria van Schurman,” in Anna Maria van Schurman, ed. Mirjam de Baar, Machteld Lowensteyn, Marit Monteiro, and Agnes Sneller (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1992), 29-47; Caroline van Eck, “Het Eerste Nederlandse Feministische ‘Iraktaat? Anna Maria van Schurmans verhandeling over de geschiktheid van vrouwen voor de wetenschapsbeoefening,” ibid., 49-60. 24. Question celébre s’il est necessaire, ou non, que les Filles soient scavantes, agité de

part & autre, par Mlle Anne Marie de Schurman, Holandoise, & le Sr. André Rivet, Poitevin (Paris: Rolet le Duc, 1646), 9, 14-15.

25. Ibid., 51-52, 58-59, 71-74. 26. See Giinther Miihlpfordt, “Johan Herbin: Der erste Frauenrechtler der Deutschen Aufklarung,” Zeitschrift fiir Geschichtswissenschaft, 31 (1983), 325-338.

27. Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Female Pre-eminence (1670 English ed.), reprinted as The Feminist Controversy of the Renaissance, ed. Diane Bornstein (Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 1980), 1-2.

28. Quoted in Monica Bolufer, Mujeres e illustracion: La construccion de la feminidad en la Espana del siglo XVIII (Valencia: Estudios Universitarios, 1998), 34. 29. See Lucrezia Marinella, The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defence

and Vices of Men, trans. and ed. Anne Dunhill (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 55. 30. Arcangela ‘Tarabotti, Che le Donne Siano della Spezie degli Uomini, ed. Letizia Panizza (London: Institute of Romance Studies, 1994), 84.

Notes to Pages 60-62 315 31. See Ginevra Conti Odorisio, Donna e Societa nel Seicento (Roma: Bulzoni, 1979), 79-111. 32. Jeannette Geftriaud Rosso, Etudes sur la féeminité aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siécles (Pisa: Libreria Goliardica, 1984), 189-211; her list is limited to works she considered relevant and available in the Bibliothéque Nationale. 33. Maclean, Woman Triumphant, 79, 151-152. 34. Apologie de la science des dames (Lyon: B. Coral, 1662). 35. Jacques Dubosaq, L’Honneste Femme (Paris: N. Trabouillet, 1662). Dubosq’s

work went through numerous editions. Maclean, Woman Triumphant, 278-279, gives the first edition in 1632, a second in 1633, and supplements in 1634 and 1636; a third edition, not mentioned by Maclean, was published in 1640 (Bibliotheque de

PArsenal 4 Sc. A 582); I have used the fourth edition of 1662 (Bibliotheque de PArsenal 8 S 2083). 36. Jean de la Forge, Le Cercle des femmes savantes (Paris: Jean-Baptiste Loyson, 1663). This was a “reply” to Samuel Chappuzeau’s first play, the Cercle des femmes (Lyon, 1656), reissued in Paris in 1663. De la Forge’s Cercle was reprinted in 1667; see Samuel Chappuzeau, Le Cercle des femmes et l’Académie des femmes, ed. Joan Crow (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1983), xv—xvi, xxvi; see also Pierre Clair, Louis de la Forge: Oeuvres philosophiques avec une étude bio-bibliographique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974), 63, n. 1. 37. Elisabeth Marie Clément, Dialogue de la princesse scavante et de la dame de famille (Paris: Loyson, 1664). 38. Jacquette Guillaume, Les Dames illustres ou par bonnes et fortes raisons il se prouve que le sexe feminin surpasse en toutes sortes de genre le sexe masculin (Paris: Thomas Iolly, 1665). 39. Paris; the text is identical with the 1662 edition. 40. Louis Lesclache, Les Avantages que les femmes peuvent recevoir de la philosophie (Paris: Laurent Rondet, 1667). 41. Marguerite Buffet, Nouvelles Observations sur la langue frangoise avec les éloges des illustres scavantes tant anciennes que modernes (Paris: Jean Cusson, 1668). 42. Rosso’s bibliography (Etudes, 197-199) mentions some more publications,

but these are of a moralistic genre and not openly feminist. She does not mention Clément and the Apologie de la science des dames of 1662. Nor are these two referred to in the studies by Maclean, DeJean, and Harth cited above.

43. DeJean, Tender Geographies, 46-50; Maclean, Woman Triumphant, 268, likewise identifies two type-figures, the fevzme cavalier and the femme docteur; the first was eclipsed after the Fronde, but the second continued to flourish. See also Sylvie Steinberg, “Le Mythe des Amazones et son utilisation politique de la Renaissance a la Fronde,” in Royaume de fémynie, ed. Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier and Eliane Viennot (Paris: Hon. Champion, 1999), 261-273. 44. See Brita Rang, “A ‘Learned Wave’: Women of Letters and Science from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment,” in Akkerman and Stuurman, Perspectives, 50-66. 45. Berriot-Salvadore, Les Femmes dans la société francaise, 355. 46. De la Forge, Cercle, 16 ff. 47. Buffet, Nouvelles Observations, 264.

48. Claude-Charles Guyonnet de Vertron, Seconde Partie de la Pandore ou la suite des femmes illustres du siécle de Louis le Grand (Paris: C. Mazuel, 1698), 470 ff.

316 Notes to Pages 62-71 49. Carolyn C. Lougee, Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Strati-

fication in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 215-224. 50. Maclean, Woman Triumphant, 151-152. 51. Pierre Bayle, Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, August 1685, in Oeuvres diverses, vol. 1 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964), 364. 52. On this transition, see Jonathan Dewald, Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture: France, 1570-1715 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 53. Apologie, +7.

54. Ibid., 81-82. 55. Ibid., 85, 102. 56. Clément, Dialogue, 2-4. 57. Paraphrase of ibid., 77-118. 58. Ibid., 126-134. 59. Ibid., 145-156. 60. Ibid., 160-161. 61. See DeJean, Lender Geographies, 234-235, n. 52. 62. Buftet, Nouvelles Observations, 200. 63. Recueil général des questions traitées es conferences du Bureau d’Adresse, sur toutes sortes de matieres. Par les plus beaux esprits de ce temps, vol. 3 (Paris, 1666), 5962. 64. See Lesclache, Avantages, 17-18. 65. Richesource I-II, 29 July 1660, 410; III, 26, 31.

66. Richesource III, 35-36. 67. Mémoires de Fléchier sur les Grands-fours d’Auvergne (Paris: Mercure de France, 1984), 100-101. 68. Gustave Reynier, Les Femmes savantes de Moliere: Etude et analyse (Paris: Mellottée, 1948), 32. 69. See Eileen O’Neill, “Women Cartesians, ‘Feminine Philosophy,’ and Historical Exclusion,” in Feminist Interpretations of René Descartes, ed. Susan Bordo (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 232-257, esp. 233-234; see also Harth, Cartesian Women. 70. Reynier, La Femme au XVIlIe siécle, 165. 71. Admittedly there was an element of frivolity and aristocratic divertissement to all of this, but that applied to the male audience as well; see Geoffrey V. Sutton, Science for a Polite Society: Gender, Culture, and the Demonstration of Enlightenment (Boulder: Westview, 1995). 72. Lougee, Paradis des Femmes, 22-25; and DeJean, Tender Geographies, 148-

156, see these feminist ideas partly as a response to the harsher enforcement of marriage law as the state increasingly supplanted ecclesiastical jurisdiction. See also

Sarah Hanley, “The Monarchic State in Early Modern France: Marital Regime Government and Male Right,” in Politics, Ideology, and the Law in Early Modern Eu-

rope, ed. Adrianna E. Bakos (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 1994), 107126; idem, “Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France,” French Historical Studies, 16 (1989), 4-27; Danielle HaaseDubosc, “Les Femmes, le droit, et la jurisprudence dans la premiére moitié du XVIle siécle,” in Wilson-Chevalier and Viennot, Royaume de fémynie, 51-60.

Notes to Pages 71-73 317 73. Quoted in Francis Baumal, Le Féminisme au temps de Moliére (Paris, n.d.), 27.

74. Quoted in Bernard Magné, “Le Féminisme de Poullain de la Barre” (Ph.D. diss., University of ‘Toulouse, 1964), 94.

75. On the term prétieuse, see Domna C. Stanton, “The Fiction of Préciosité and the Fear of Women,” Yale French Studies, 62 (1981), 107-134. It remains unclear whether de Pure wrote as a prowoman apologist or as an ironic critic; cf. the conflicting interpretations in Lougee, Paradis des Femmes, 18, 23; and Stanton, “Fiction of Préciosité,” 113. In his recent exhaustive treatment of the literary polemics about the précieuses, Roger Duchéne, Les Précieuses, ou comment lesprit vint au femmes (Paris: Fayard, 2001), 52, asserts that until Moliére’s 1659 play the term was ambiguous but nonetheless frequently laudatory. 76. Lougee, Paradis des Femmes, 215-228, 113-170. 77. Duchéne, Précieuses, 257-259, contends that the term is a purely literary invention with no counterpart in social reality. ‘This seems a somewhat rash judgment, especially since Duchéne appears to be unaware of Carolyn Lougee’s and Joan DeJean’s work. While agreeing with Duchéne that the précieuses did not represent a clearly defined “movement,” the most plausible interpretation seems that they were a heterogeneous group of a few hundred upper-class women who sought to carve out a “room of their own” in French elite society. Duchéne is, of course, right in saying that de Pure, Somaize, and Moliére portrayed this group as more homogeneous and unified than it really was, but he is a little too eager to discount their existence and influence entirely. 78. Nicole Aronson, Mademoiselle de Scudéry, ou le voyage au pays de tendre (Paris: Fayard, 1986), 382-385. 79. See Harth, Cartesian Women, 80-89. 80. Quoted by Duchéne, Précieuses, 73. 81. See Madeleine Alcover, “The Indecency of Knowledge,” Rice University Studies, 64 (1978), 25-39.

82. Anette Hofer and Rolf Reichardt, “Honnéte Homme, honnéteté, honnétes gens,” in Handbuch Politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe in Frankreich, 1680-1820,

vol. 7, ed. Rolf Reichardt and Eberhard Schmitt (Miinchen: Oldenbourg, 1986), 15-16. 83. Quoted in Mademoiselle de Scudéry: Sa vie et sa correspondance, par MM Rathery et Boutron (Paris, 1873), 87. 84. Although Moliére was definitely not a feminist, neither was he an old-style misogynist. The topic of the arranged marriage was part of the plot of twenty-eight

of his plays, and he upheld the new ideal of the right of a girl to choose her own partner; see Jean-Francois Couvelaire, “Les Thémes du mariage forcé et du mariage contrarié dans le théatre de Moliére,” in Thématique de Moliére: Six études suivies d’un inventaire des themes de son théatre (Paris: Société d’Edition d’Enseignement Supérieur, 1985), 118-123. Moreover, in three of his plays following the attack on the précieuses, Moliére ridiculed the traditional sort of men who wanted

women to be dumb slaves; see Suzanne Rossat-Mignod, “L’7Emancipation des femmes: De Meélite (1629) a L’Ecole des femmes (1662),” Europa. Revue Mensuelle,

May-June 1961, 115-122. 85. Reynier, femmes savantes, 186, 222-224. 86. Ibid., 243-244.

318 Notes to Pages 73—76 87. “Far from being a downtrodden slave of a man’s decrees, / Give yourself in marriage, my sister, to philosophy, / Which elevates us above all of humankind, / And confers sovereign authority on reason”; Moliére, Les Femmes savantes, ed. Michel Lagier (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1986), 21. 88. Ibid., 84. 89. “But we establish a type of love / That must be purified as the daystar: / The thinking substance will be admitted to it, / But we shall banish the extended substance from it”; ibid., 108. 90. See Jean Molino, “Moliére: Esquisse d’un modeéle d’interprétation,” Dixseptieme Siécle, 184 (1994), 479-490; idem, “‘Les Noeuds de la matiére’: L-unité des Femmes savantes,” ibid., 113 (1976), 23-47. 91. Moliére, Femmes savantes, 68. 92. “And I do not like learned women at all. / I accept that a woman is conversant with all sorts of knowledge: / But I absolutely disallow her the outrageous de-

sire / Io pursue learning for its own sake;/... / Finally I want her to hide her learning, / And to possess knowledge without seeking to display it, / Without citing authors, without using high-brow language”; ibid., 27-28. 93. Aronson, Scudeéry, 33-36; for a slightly different view, see Chantal MorletChantalat, “Parler du savoir, savoir pour parler: Madeleine de Scudéry et la vulgarisation galante,” in Femmes savantes, savoirs des femmes, ed. Colette Nativel (Geneva: Droz, 1999), 177-195. 94. Paul Bénichou, Morales du grand siécle (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 264-265, generally plays down Moliére’s antifeminist stance but admits that he was a “conservative” on the matter of female intellectual aspirations. Gustave Reynier likewise concludes that, apart from the antibourgeois bias in Moliére’s plays, there is a real and independent antifeminist argument; Femmes savantes de Moliére, 233-245. It has also been maintained that Moliére allows for knowledge in women; this claim is usually defended by citing one sentence from Les Femmes savantes (and always the same one). However, the real point here is the matter of context, plot, and tone. In Moliére’s plays, female intellectual aspirations are from the very beginning caught in a discursive web that turns on irony, sarcasm, and thinly veiled contempt. Roger Duchéne, Moliére (Paris: Fayard, 1998), 627, underlines the rhetorical effect of Moliére’s attack on pedantic savantes: all women who cared for knowledge were, at least indirectly, stigmatized, quite apart from Moliére’s precise intentions (which are unclear, to say the least). See also the comment by Robert McBride, The Sceptical Vision of Moliere (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 199: “For if Clitandre’s ideal woman ought to feign ignorance by not conversing about matters familiar to her, then there is no apparent reason why she should study at all, since the degree of education which Clitandre is prepared to concede to her is bound not to make the slightest difference in practice.” 95. Harth, Cartesian Women, 28, calls the tone of Chappuzeau’s plays “unsettled.” 96. “Such is our misfortune! Accursed obedience! / And what unjust power men wield over us! / Farewell Plutarch, farewell Seneca, farewell Plato, / Farewell Campanella, Descartes, Casaubon. / Let us return because it must be, let us return into slavery; / All too brief was your season, sweet widowhood”; Chappuzeau, Cercle et Academie, 112.

97. See Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes et réflexions diverses, ed.

Notes to Pages 77-90 319 Jacques ‘Truchet (Paris: Flammarion, 1977), 125-127, also 75 (no. 340), 85 (no. 474); Jean de La Bruyeére, Les Caractéres, ed. Robert Garapon (Paris: Bordas, 1990),

112-136, professes to admire learning irrespective of gender, but then argues that learned women are a useless rarity, comparable to ornamental arms. See also Jacques Morel, “La Place de la femme dans Les Caractéres de La Bruyére,” in Onze Etudes sur Pimage de la femme dans la littérature francaise du dix-septieme siecle, ed.

Wolfgang Leiner (Tubingen: Gunther Narr and Jean Michel Place, 1978), 131146.

98. Buffet, Nouvelles Observations, letter to the reader. 99. Egalité, 9, 11. 100. Ibid., 12, 98; see also 74.

101. See Marcelle Maistre Welch, “La Réponse de Poullain de la Barre aux Femmes savantes de Moliére,” in Ordre et contestation au temps des classiques, ed. Roger

Duchéne and Pierre Ronzeaud, vol. 1 (Paris: Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 1992), 183-191. 102. Education, 25. 103. Egalité, 12.

104. Ibid., 17. 105. Ibid., 16. 106. Ibid., 18. 107. Ibid., 20-21. 108. Ibid., 21. 109. Ibid., 21-23. 110. Ibid., 26-27. 111. Ibid., 28. 112. Ibid., 29, 34. On the civilizing influence of women, see also Excellence, 291292. 113. Egalité, 36-37.

114. Ibid., 37-38. 115. Ibid., 43.

3. Cartesian Equality 1. Descartes’s source is probably Montaigne; see Geneviéve Rodis-Lewis, L’Anthropologie cartésienne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990), 170. 2. René Descartes, Discours de la méthode, AT, 6: 2, 7. 3. See Jean Lanher, “Dialectes et patois,” in Dictionnaire du Grand Siecle, ed. Francois Bluche (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 473-474. 4. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, AT, 6: 16.

5. Montaigne, Fssazs, vol. 1 (Paris: GF-Flammarion, 1969), 251-263, 158; see also Zachary Sayre Schiffman, On the Threshold of Modernity: Relativism in the French Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). 6. Descartes, Les Passions de Pame, AT, 11: 445-447. 7. John Marshall, Descartes’s Moral Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

1998), 152, 156; see also Sarah H. Marquardt, “The Freedom, Equality, and Dignity of Human Reason: A Reconsideration of Cartesian Dualism” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2001). 8. “Descartes to Mersenne, 27 April 16372” AT, 1: 366. The meaning of this

320 Notes to Pages 90-97 passage is, however, not entirely clear. A strong reading would be that sexual difference is irrelevant to sound judgment, but Descartes may also mean that the powers of the mind and sexual difference are separate subjects. 9. Descartes also intended women to read the Discours de la méthode, but his language reveals a rather dim opinion of the female intellect: The Discours is char-

acterized as “un livre, ot i’ay voulu que les femmes mesmes pussent entendre quelque chose”; Descartes to Vatier, 22 February 1638, AT, 1: 560. 10. See Pierre Clair, ed., Louis de la Forge (1632-1666): Oeuvres philosophiques, avec une étude bio-bibliographique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974). 11. Louis de la Forge, Traité de Pesprit de Phomme, de ses facultez et fonctions, et de son union avec le corps, suivant les principes de René Descartes (Paris: Robin, Le Gras et

Girard, 1666), letter to the reader, 354. 12. They are also the subject of Montaigne’s “Sur les Cannibales”; see Frank Lestringant, Le Cannibale: Grandeur et décadence (Paris: Perrin, 1994), 99-104. 13. Jacques Rohault, Traité de physique, 2 vols. (Paris: Denys Thierry, 1671), preface. The comparison between the peasant and the philosopher is also made in idem, Entretiens sur la philosophie (Paris: Michel le Petit, 1671), preface. 14. Nicolas Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité, ed. Genevieve RodisLewis, 3 vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1962-64), 1: 266-267; 2: 137; 3: 166. 15. Egalité, 27, 38. 16. Excellence, 323. 17. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, AT, 6: 2.

18. On the egalitarian elements in Stoicism, see Maryanne Cline Horowitz, Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). 19. Ibid., 25. 20. See Andrew Erskine, The Hellenistic Stoa (London: Duckworth, 1990), 44— 46. 21. Descartes, Méditations, AT, 9: 45-46; for the Latin text, AT, 7: 57. 22. “Descartes to Mersenne, March 1642,” AT, 3: 544; see also Theo Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy, 1637-1650 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 42-45. 23. Descartes, Méditations, AT, 9: 21. 24. ‘Tom Sorell, Descartes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 78.

25. Descartes forcefully restates the principle of the autonomy of the mind/ soul in the Sixth Meditation, Méditations, AT, 9: 62. 26. Egalité, 59.

27. Ibid. 28. Excellence, 8. 29. Education, 118.

30. Egalité, 72. 31. Descartes, Passions, AT, 11: 437. 32. Egalité, 73. 33. Descartes, Meditations, AT, 9: 64. 34. Descartes employs a similar literary trick in his theory of the formation of the fixed stars, the solar system, and the Earth in Les Principes de la philosophie, presenting it as a “false” hypothesis that is nonetheless useful, and actually indispensable, for a correct explanation of the real phenomena; see AT, 9: part 2: 123, 201. 35. Descartes, Jraité de Phomme, AT, 11: 202.

Notes to Pages 97-100 321 36. Idem, Passions, AT) 11: 351, 352-353. 37. Ibid., 355, 332. 38. See Stephen Voss, “Simplicity and the Seat of the Soul,” in Essays on the Philosophy and Science of René Descartes, ed. Voss (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 128-141.

39. Some seventeenth-century materialists held the view that thought is motion, but Descartes was not very concerned to refute them; see Marleen Rozemond, “The Role of the Intellect in Descartes’s Case for the Incorporeity of the Mind,” in Voss, Essays, 103; Stephen I. Wagner, “Mind-Body Interactions in Descartes,” ibid., 115-127, seeks to provide a solution in Cartesian terms, but his reasoning depends wholly on a vague and metaphorical use of the notions of power and motion. He argues that in Descartes’s metaphysics God continually “upholds” the existence of everything, including motion. In my opinion this only demonstrates that Descartes’s two languages, metaphysics and mechanicism, are present at every level of his thought, including his ontology. In the end, such a view leads to some variety of occasionalism. Descartes’s strict dualism made it also impossible for him to accept Harvey’s partly vitalistic explanation of the movement of the blood and the heart; see Geoftrey Gorham, “Mind-Body Dualism and the Harvey-Descartes Controversy,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 55 (1994), 211-234. 40. De la Forge, Traité de esprit de Phomme, 309. 41. See Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxtord: Clarendon Press, 1995), 393. 42. De la Forge, Traité de esprit de Phomme, 304, 341. 43. See Paul Mouy, Le Développement de la physique cartésienne (Paris: Vrin, 1934), 107.

44. That Descartes’s biology has materialist implications is also the opinion of Jacques Roger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 121-123; see also John Cottingham, “Cartesian Dualism: Theology, Metaphysics, and Science,” in The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 236257, esp. 251-253. My interpretation has affinities with Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, “Cartesian Passions and the Union of Mind and Body,” in Essays on Descartes’ Meditations, ed. Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 513534, esp. 530, where she argues that there are both dualist and monist solutions to Descartes’s problem. 45. Quoted in Clair, Louis de la Forge, 50. 46. Modern attempts to arrive at a consistent account of the Cartesian union of the body and the mind typically do so without any regard for Descartes’s biology and physiology; see, e.g., Daniel Garber, “Understanding Interaction: What Descartes Should Have ‘Told Elisabeth,” in René Descartes, ed. Vere Chappell (New York: Garland, 1992), part 1: 323-340. 47. For diverging attempts to reconstruct the relation between metaphysics and natural science in Descartes, see Gaukroger, Descartes; Norman Kemp Smith, New Studies in the Philosophy of Descartes (London: Macmillan, 1963); Richard B. Carter, Descartes’ Medical Philosophy: The Organic Solution to the Mind-Body Problem

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); Michio Kobayashi, La Philosophie naturelle de Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1993); Dennis Des Chene, Spirits and Clocks: Machine and Organism in Descartes Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); in the

322 Notes to Pages 100-110 older literature, see Alan Gewirtz, “Experience and the Non-Mathematical in the Cartesian Method,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 2 (1941), 183-210. 48. Doctrine, 349. 49. Egalité, 60. 50. Father Dubosq, L’Honneste Femme, 4th ed. (Paris: N. Trabouillet, 1662), 118.

51. Richesource II], 26. 52. See Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), chap. 3. 53. See E. T. Hamy, “Les Débuts de l’anthropologie et de l’anatomie humaine au Jardin des Plantes,” L’Anthropologie, 5 (1894), 257-275. Cureau’s work was an eclectic mixture of Aristotelian, Galenic, Paracelsian, and more recent ideas; see Albert Darmon, Les Corps immateériels: Esprits et images dans oeuvre de Marin Cureau de la Chambre (Paris: Vrin, 1985). On Cureau’s view of sexual difference, see Paul Hoffmann, La Femme dans la pensée des lumieéres (Paris: Ophrys, 1977), 61-67. 54. See Susan James, Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 2-6.

55. L’Art de connoistre les hommes went through four French editions: 1659, 1662, 1663, 1667; two Dutch French-language editions: 1660, 1669; two English translations: 1665, 1670; see Darmon, Corps immateriels, 14. 56. [Marin Cureau] de la Chambre, L’Art de connoistre les hommes (Amsterdam: Jacques le Jeune, 1660), 18, 21, 29, 31-32. 57. Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 109. 58. See Laurence Brockliss and Colin Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 108. 59. Maclean, Renaissance Notion of Woman, 33, 44. 60. Brockliss and Jones, Medical World, 108-109.

61. Ibid., 110. 62. Descartes, Description du corps humain, AT, 11: 253, 277. 63. Descartes, Prima cogitationes circa generationem animalium, AT, 11: 515-516; translated in Des Chene, Spirits and Clocks, 47. 64. Descartes, Prima cogitationes circa generationem animalium, AT, 11: 516; see the comments on this passage by Des Chene, Spirits and Clocks, 48-49; Des Chene

accepts the “rising pure seed” argument as a mechanical one, but provides no detailed explanation. 65. Egalité, 17, 108, 75. 66. Ibid., 91, 93. 67. Ibid., 90. 68. “Des oeuts qui se trouvent dans les femmes,” Supplement du Journal des Scavans, 15 and 22 March 1672; on the ovist controversy, see Roger, Life Sciences, 205-227. 69. Egalité, 61. 70. Excellence, 139-148, 277, 284-285. See also his criticism of physicians in Fgalité, 31, 36, 94. 71. Laqueur, Making Sex, 155. 72. Ibid., 156. 73. Descartes, Passions, AT, 11: 426, 395-396, 404.

Notes to Pages 111-123 323 74. Richesource J-II, 384-392. 75. Egalité, 61, 62. 76. Education, 234-235, 229, 274-275. 77. Ibid., 245-246; Descartes, Passions, AT, 11: 380. 78. Education, 246, 281. 79. Descartes, Passions, AT, 11: 358, 407. 80. Ibid., 361-363, 378, 482, 461, 429. 81. Gary Hatfield also notes that De ’bomme “does not develop the account of learning it promises”; see “Descartes’ Physiology and Its Relation to His Psychology,” in Cottingham, Cambridge Companion to Descartes, 347. 82. Education, 281-282, 284-285. 83. Egalité, 96, 99.

84. Ibid., 94, 97-98. 85. Ibid., 99-100. 86. Education, 45. 87. Egalité, 88-89. 88. Jonathan Dewald, Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture: France, 1570-1715 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 138. 89. Descartes, Passions, AT, 11: 370.

90. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, “Descartes on Thinking with the Body,” in Cottingham, Cambridge Companion to Descartes, 391, n. 9. 91. Egalité, 58.

92. See Margaret C. Jacob, Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 93. Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy (London: Methuen, 1984), 46, 49-50. 94. Susan Bordo, “Introduction,” in Feminist Interpretations of René Descartes, ed. Bordo (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 11. 95. Erica Harth, Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992). 96. See Daniel C. Dennet, Consciousness Explained (London: Penguin, 1993). 97. In this connection, Susan Bordo’s psychological reading of Cartesian philosophy as a “flight from the feminine” is unconvincing. Descartes is not exorcising the passions: he teaches men and women alike to live with them. Moreover, Bordo can only typify Cartesianism as “masculine” and “cold” by situating it against the

background of a presumably “feminine” and prowoman holist view of nature in premodern culture and philosophy. This interpretation is completely unhistorical (or even simply untrue). Bordo cannot explain why this “feminine” holism consistently produced a misogynist literature and philosophy, while the much-maligned philosophy of Descartes affirms the equal dignity and intelligence of women. See Susan Bordo, The Flight to Olyectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987), 101-112.

98. Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes habités, in Oeuvres Completes, 7 vols. (Paris: Fayard, 1991-1996), 2: 9-130. 99. On the dissemination of the Mercure Galant, see Siep Stuurman, “Literary Feminism in Southern France: The Case of Antoinette de Salvan de Saliez,” JFournal of Modern History, 71 (1999), 26-27.

100. See the contrasting treatments of Fontenelle in Harth, Cartesian Women,

324 Notes to Pages 123-125 123-149; and Nina Rattner Gelbart in her introduction to the English translation of the Entretiens, Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, trans. H. A. Hargreaves

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), xxvi-xxvii. My judgment of Fontenelle is situated in between; I think Gelbart locates him too close to a feminist argument, while Harth (in a very subtle discussion to which I can do no justice in this brief compass) dismisses his egalitarianism perhaps a bit too rashly. See also the discussions in Aileen Douglas, “Popular Science and the Representation of Women: Fontenelle and After,” Eighteenth-Century Life, 18 (1994), 1-14; Mary Terrall, “Gendered Spaces, Gendered Audiences: Inside and outside the Paris Academy of Sciences,” Configurations, 2 (1995), 207-232; Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-

vard University Press, 1991), 38-39. 101. Bernier admits “some equality” between husband and wife, but warns that it should not be pushed too far. About women’s learning he does not speak at all. See Francois Bernier, Abrégé de la philosophie de Gassendi (Lyon, 1684), 7 vols. (Paris:

Fayard, 1992), 7: 221-222.

4. The Power of Education 1. Jonathan Dewald, Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture: France, 1570-1715 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 81-83. 2. [Antoinette de Salvan de Saliez], “Projet pour une nouvelle secte de philosophes, en faveur des dames,” Mercure Galant, July 1681, 22-39. On the traditional

aversion to book knowledge among “gentlemen,” see Georges Snyders, La Pédagogie en France aux XVIle et XVIIIe siécles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965), 57-58. 3. Jean-Pierre Poussou, “Alphabétisation,” in Dictionnaire du Grand Siecle, ed. Francois Bluche (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 62; Robert Muchembled, Société, cultures, et mentalités dans la France moderne, XVIe—XVIIle siécle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1994), 141, gives 75 percent for Paris “sous Louis XIV,” but this figure probably refers to

the latter part of the reign; for detailed figures on the departments, see Francois Furet and Jacques Ozouf, Lire et écrire: L’alphabétisation des Frangais de Calvin a Fules Ferry (Paris: Minuit, 1977).

4. See Harvey Chisick, “French Charity Schools in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries—With Special Reference to the Case of Amiens,” Histoire Sociale—Social History, 16 (1983), 241-277.

5. Furet and Ozouf, Lire et écrire, 75-81. 6. See Jean de Viguerie, L’Institution des enfants: L’éducation en France, XVIeXVIIle siecle (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1978), 71-76.

7. Figures in Etienne Broglin, “Collége,” in Bluche, Dictionnaire, 348-350. Around 1700 there were some sixty major towns (with more than 10,000 inhabitants) in France. 8. Viguerte, /nstitution, 119. 9, See George Huppert, The Style of Paris: Renaissance Origins of the French Enlightenment (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

10. Francoise Hildesheimer, cited in Joél Cornette, “Le Grand Siécle absolutiste: Etat sacré, Etat de raison,” in La France de la monarchie absolue, 1610-1715, ed. Cornette (Paris: Seuil, 1997), 17-18.

Notes to Pages 125-130 325 11. Charles Frostin, “L’Eveil scientifique de la France,” in Cornette, La France de la monarchie absolue, 325-339. 12. Alain Viala, Naissance de Pécrivain: Sociologie de la littérature a Vage classique

(Paris: Minuit, 1985), 20. 13. Henri-Jean Martin, The French Book: Religion, Absolutism, and Readership, 1585-1715 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 55. 14. Muchembled, Société, cultures, et mentalité, 140. 15. See Elizabeth Rapley, “Fénelon Revisited: A Review of Girls’ Education in Seventeenth Century France,” Histoire Soctale—Social History, 20 (1987), 299-318. 16. See Jean Perrel, “Les Filles 4 l’école avant la révolution,” Revue d’Auvergne, 94 (1980), 298. 17. Viguerie, Institution, 126.

18. See Elfrieda I. Dubois, “The Education of Women in Seventeenth-Century France,” French Studies, 32 (1978), 1-19. 19. See Viguerie, Institution, 137-140; Rapley, “Fénelon Revisited,” 310-317;

Perrel, “Les Filles a lPécole,” 305; Marcel Bernos, “La Culture religieuse des femmes au XVIle siécle,” in Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, ed.

Wolfgang Leiner, vol. 22, no. 43 (Tubingen: Biblio, 1995), 379-393; Bernard Magné, “Le Féminisme de Poullain de la Barre” (Ph.D. diss., University of ‘Toulouse, 1964), 100-106; Magné bases himself on the curriculum of the Port Royal

primary school; see also his remark in Magné, “Education des femmes et féminisme chez Poullain de la Barre,” Supplement de la Revue Marseille, 88 (1972), 127, n. 2. 20. Mémoires de Fléchier sur les Grands-fours d’Auvergne, ed. Yves-Marie Bercé (Paris: Mercure de France, 1984), 101. 21. See also Wendy Gibson, Women in Seventeenth-Century France (London: Macmillan, 1989), chap. 2, esp. 34-39. 22. Richesource III, 26. 23. Apologie de la science des dames (Lyon: B. Coral, 1662), 9. 24. See Gabriel Compayré, Histoire critique des doctrines de l’éducation en France depuis le seiziéme siecle (Paris: Hachette, 1880), 366-371.

25. See the “Avis” in Claude Fleury, Traité du choix et de la méthode des études (Paris: J.- Th. Herissant, 1759). 26. See also Georges Viard, “Education,” in Bluche, Dictionnaire, 523-525. 27. On Arnauld’s Cartesianism, see Steven M. Nadler, Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); on Nicole and

other Jansenist Cartesians, see Francisque Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie cartésienne, vol. 1 (Paris: Delagrave, 1868), 432-434; on the complex relations between Cartesianism and Jansenism, see Henri Gouhier, Cartésianisme et augustinisme au XV Ile siécle (Paris: Vrin, 1978); Tad M. Schulz, “What Has Cartesianism to Do with Jansenism?” Journal of the History of Ideas, 60 (1999), 37-56. 28. Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, La Logique ou Part de penser (Paris: Flammarion, 1970), 37. 29. Ibid., 49. 30. See Yves-Charles Zarka, “Logique,” in Bluche, Dictionnaire, 887-888. 31. Arnauld and Nicole, Logique, 308; see Laurence W. B. Brockliss, “Les Atomes et le vide dans les colléges de plein exercice en France de 1640 a 1730,” in Gassendi et Europe, ed. Sylvia Murr (Paris: Vrin, 1997), 175-187.

326 Notes to Pages 130-142 32. Arnauld and Nicole, Logique, 323-353. 33. See Cathérine F. Daniélou, “‘C’est une étrange chose que la science dans une téte de fille’: Pierre Nicole et l’éducation des jeunes filles,” Studi Francesi, 38 (1994), 273-282.

34. See Bouillier, Histoire, 436; Noémi Hepp, “Fleury (Uabbé Claude),” in Bluche, Dictionnaire, 600. 35. Fleury, Traité, 119, 152, 153; see also Compayré, Histoire critique, 375-376. 36. See Compayreé, Histozre critique, 374. 37. Fleury, Traité, 33, 224-225, 142-144.

38. Ibid., 206-207, 220, 229-230, 65. 39. Ibid., 110; see also 145: all men have “bon sens commun.” 40. Ibid., 171, 185-186, 204. 41. Ibid., 265, 269-270. 42. Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, De /’éducation des filles, in Fénelon, De l’éducation des filles / Dialogues des Morts, ed. Emile Faguet (Paris: Nelson, 1916), 24, 28, 31.

43. Ibid., 69. 44. Ibid., 73, 30, 37. 45. Ibid., 18, 92, 96, 102. 46. Carolyn C. Lougee, Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Strati-

fication in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 175, 188-195.

47. Madame [Anne-Thérése] de Lambert, Oeuvres, ed. Robert Granderoute (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1990), 10-11, 17. 48. See Eileen O’Neill, “Women Cartesians, ‘Feminine Philosophy,’ and Historical Exclusion,” in Feminist Interpretations of René Descartes, ed. Susan Bordo (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 233-234. 49, Lambert, Oeuvres, 51, 125, 46, 54, 55, 115. 50. Ibid., 95, 104. 51. Ibid., 110. 52. Egalité, 103: “C’est une connoissance commencée qui nous fait aller plus vite et plus loin dans le chemin de la vérité.” See also Lambert, Oeuvres, 142, n. 67. 53. Lambert, Oeuvres, 111, 113-115. 54. Ibid., 112. 55. See also Snyders, Peédagogie, 154-155. 56. Education, avertissement. 57. Ibid.; see also 42.

58. Ibid., 58. 59. Ibid., 62, 65. 60. Ibid., 70, 71. 61. Ibid., 89, 91-92. 62. Ibid., 124, 133. 63. Ibid., 134-135. 64. Ibid., 147. 65. Ibid., 139-140, 141-142. 66. Supplement du fournal des Scavans, 2 May 1672. 67. Education, 40. 68. Snyders, Pédagogie, 130.

Notes to Pages 142-149 327 69. On Sorel, see Henri-Jean Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et société a Paris au XVIIe siecle (Geneva: Droz, 1969), 625-634. 70. Bibliotheque Francoise de M. C. Sorel, ou le choix et Pexamen des livres francois qui traitent de l’éloquence, de la philosopbie, de la dévotion, et de la conduite des moeurs (Paris: Librairie du Palais, 1664), 56, 67-68. 71. Journal des Scavans, 16 March 1665. 72. Sorel, Bibliotheque, foreword. 73. Education, 22—23.

74. Ibid., 12, 13-14. 75. Ibid., 24, 15-16, 18, 105-106, 27. 76. Ibid., 41-42. 77. Egalité, 79. 78. Education, 307-310. 79. Ibid., 308, 283. 80. Dictionnaire des lettres frangaises: Le XVIle siécle (Paris: Fayard, 1996), 556. 81. Géraud de Cordemoy, Le Discernement du corps de ame en six discours, 2d

ed. (Paris: Michel le Petit, 1671). Parts of this treatise were printed in the 1664 edition of Descartes’s Le Monde; the first independent edition is 1666 (Paris: Florentin

Lambert). On Cordemoy’s atomism, see Pierre Clair and Francois Girbal, eds., Géraud de Cordemoy (1626-1684), Oeuvres Philosophiques, avec une étude bio-biblio-

graphique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 39-46; Paul Mouy, Le Développement de la physique cartésienne, 1646-1712 (Paris: Vrin, 1934), 101-106. 82. L’Homme de René Descartes, et un traité de la formation du foetus du mesme autheur. Avec les remarques de Louys de la Forge, docteur en médecine, demeurant a La Fleche, sur le Traitté de Phomme de René Descartes, et sur les figures par luy inventées

(Paris: Th. Girard, 1664). 83. Education, 309. 84. See Albert Darmon, Les Corps immateriels: Esprits et images dans Poeuvre de Marin Cureau de la Chambre (Paris: Vrin, 1985), 42-4. 85. Education, 309. 86. Ibid., 310. 87. See Henry Phillips, Church and Culture in Seventeenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 35-36. 88. Education, 320-322. 89. Ibid., 310-325. 90. On geometry and logic, see L. W. B. Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Oxtord: Clarendon Press, 1987), 203-205 and n. 59 (on Fabri). Another champion of the pedagogical value of mathematics was Nicolas Malebranche in his Recherche de la vérité (1674-1675), but his overall approach to education was far more traditional than Poulain’s; see Snyders, Pédagogie, 151-153. 91. Egalité, 12. 92. See Abby Wettan Kleinbaum, The War against the Amazons (New York: New Press—McGraw-Hill, 1983), 101-137. 93. Pierre Petit, De Amazonibus Dissertatio qua an vere extiterint, necne, varits utro citroque conjecturis & argumentis disputatur (Paris, 1685).

94. Joan DeJean, Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 53.

328 Notes to Pages 149-161 95. Egalitée, 50, 92, 109, 82.

96. Ibid., 66-67, 81, 82-83. 97. Ibid., 68-70, 80. 98. Education, 28-29. 99. Egalité, 82. 100. See Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxtord: Clarendon Press, 1995), 208, 343, and esp. 408-409. 101. Theo Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy, 1637-1650 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 26. 102. Quoted in Gaukroger, Descartes, 409. 103. Tom Sorell, Descartes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 77. 104. See Alan Gewirtz, “Experience and the Non-Mathematical in the Cartesian Method,” fournal of the History of Ideas, 2 (1941), 183-210. 105. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 50. 106. Ibid., 59. 107. Egalité, 15. 108. Ibid., 57. 109. Ibid., 57-58. 110. Education, 240. 111. Ibid., 114, 115-116, 117. 112. See Richard ‘Tuck, “Hobbes and Descartes,” in Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes, ed. G. A. J. Rogers and Alan Ryan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 36—40. 113. Education, 266-267. 114. See Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), in The Works of John Locke, 10 vols. (1823; reprint, Aalen: Scientia, 1963), 9: 69, 115-118, 142-153, 168170, 194-198. 115. Brita Rang, “An Unidentified Source of John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education,” Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 9 (2001), 254.

116. Poulain cannot have taken it from Rivet’s 1679 book, which Locke owned, but he may have seen the 1654 edition published in French by the renowned publisher Arnout Leers in Rotterdam. 117. Entry “Education,” in Encyclopédie, vol. 5 (Paris, 1755), 397-403 (article by Claude Césardu). 118. Viguerte, /nstitution, 128.

3. Reason and Authority 1. Excellence, 3-4. 2. Education, 183, 184; see also 99. 3. See Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). 4. See Henri Sée, Les Idées politiques en France au XVIIe siecle (1923; reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1978), 183, n. 1. 5. See Nannerl O. Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 258-261; Georges Minois, Censure et culture sous ’Ancien Régime (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 137-141. 6. Richesource J-II, Advis de l’Académie.

Notes to Pages 162-167 329 7. See Pierre-Georges Lorris, La Fronde (Paris: Albin Michel, 1961), 303306, 358-365. 8. Education, letter to the reader. 9. Excellence, 294-295. 10. Education, 193-194. 11. See Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 127-128; see also Alain Viala, “Les Ecrivains du Roi-Soleil,” in La France de la monarchie absolue, ed. Joél Cornette (Paris: Seuil, 1997), 341-355. 12. Neal Wood, Cicero’s Social and Political Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 128. 13. See Sarah Hanley, “Social Sites of Political Practices in France: Lawsuits, Civil Rights, and the Separation of Powers in Domestic and State Government, 1500-1800,” Azmerican Historical Review, 102 (1997), 30; Danielle Haase-Dubosc,

“Les Femmes, le droit, et la jurisprudence dans la premiére moitié du XVIIe siecle,” in Royaume de Fémynie, ed. Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier and Eliane Viennot (Paris: Hon. Champion, 1999), 51-60.

14. See Sarah Hanley, “Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France,” French Historical Studies, 16 (1989), 4-27; idem, “The Monarchic State in Early Modern France: Marital Regime Government and Male Right,” in Politics, Ideology, and the Law in Early Modern Europe, ed. Adrianna E. Bakos (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1994), 107-126; idem, “The

Politics of Identity and Monarchic Governance in France: The Debate over Female Exclusion,” in Women Writers and the Early Modern Political Tradition, ed. Hilda L. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 289-304. 15. Cited in Joan DeJean, Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 112; orginal source

in manuscript, English translation by DeJean; the lawyers were Abraham and Gomont. 16. See Julie Hardwick, “Seeking Separations: Gender, Marriages, and Household Economies in Early Modern France,” French Historical Studies, 21 (1998), 157-180. 17. See Hanley, “Engendering the State,” 14-21. 18. Richesource I-II, 389. 19. See Carolyn C. Lougee, Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 24, 85-93. 20. Education, 6. 21. Egalité, 41-42. 22. Keohane, Philosophy and the State, 304. 23. See the list of translations in Simone Goyard-Fabre, Pufendorf et le droit naturel (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), 254. 24. Hugo de Groot, Inleidinge tot de Hollandsche Rechts-Geleerdheid (Leiden: Universitaire Pers, 1965), 14, 16-23, 46. 25. “Ex consensu ius in personas quod oritur, aut ex consociatione venit, aut ex

subiectione. Consociatio maxime naturalis in coniugio apparet: sed ob sexus differentiam imperium non est commune, sed maritus uxoris caput”; Hugo Grotius, De Iure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres (Leyden: Brill, 1939), 234. To understand Grotius’

330 Notes to Pages 167-174 distinction between “ex consociatione” and “ex subiectione” it is relevant to know that he believed that people could use their fundamental right to self-preservation in extreme ways, such as putting themselves under a tyrannical government or even engaging themselves as slaves; see Knud Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 28; Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 78. 26. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard ‘Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 139 (part 2, chap. 20). 27. Ibid., 139-140. 28. Samuel Pufendorf, On the Law of Nature and Nations (1672), trans. C. H. Oldfather and W. A. Oldfather (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), book 6, chap. 1, no. 9 (853), quoted in Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), 51. 29. Pateman, Sexual Contract, 51. 30. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (New York: Mentor, 1965), 364 (Second ‘Treatise, no. 82). 31. Ibid., 210 (First Treatise, no. 47). 32. See Margaret Gullan-Whur, Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza (London: Jonathan Cape, 1998), 14-16, 180-189, 294-296. 33. Sylvain Régis, Cours entier de philosophie ou systéme général selon les principes

de M. Descartes, 3 vols. (Amsterdam, 1691), 3: 466-68. The first edition is Paris, 1690, without Descartes’s name in the title; the text was mainly written before 1680. 34. Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); Pateman, Sexual Contract; Diana Coole, Women in Political Theory (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993). 35. Egalité, 54; see also Excellence, 44-45. 36. Egalité, 36.

37. Ibid., 39-40. 38. Ibid., 40. 39, Education, 163. 40. Egalité, 89.

41. Michel de Montaigne, Fssais, vol. 1 (Paris: GF-Flammarion, 1969), 311 (book 1, chap. 42). 42. Jonathan Dewald, Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture: France, 1570-1715 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 37-38. 43. Paul Bénichou, Morales du grand siecle (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 128-148. 44. [Pierre Nicole] le Sieur de Chanteresne, De l’éducation d’un prince (Paris: Veuve Ch. Savreux, 1670), 269-272.

45. Ibid., preface; see also Bernard Chedozeau, “Nicole et la grandeur,” in Recherches sur le XVIIe stécle, vol. 2 (Paris: CNRS, 1978), 102-108. 46. La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, ed. Jacques ‘Truchet (Paris: GF-Flammarion, 1977), 59 (no. 166). 47. [Nicole], Education d’un prince, 273-285. 48. Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets (Paris: Ed. de Port Royal, 1670), 293. 49. [Nicole], Education d’un prince, pretace. 50. Blaise Pascal, Oeuvres completes, ed. Louis Lafuma (Paris: Seuil, 1963), 506.

Notes to Pages 174-183 331 See also 367: “In one country the nobles are held in esteem, in another the burghers [roturiers].” 51. Pensées de M. Pascal, 193; Education, 99. 52. Egalité, 27; Pensées de M. Pascal, 185. 53. Excellence, 62, 313-314. 54. See Susan James, Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 100-101. 55. See Yves Charles Zarka, Hobbes et la pensée politique moderne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995), 268-280. 56. Egalité, 72. 57. See Dale K. van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From

Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560-1791 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 22. 58. Excellence, 31-32, 32-33, 42. 59. Egalité, 66; see also Education, 321.

60. See Marcel Thomann, “Les ‘Traductions francaises de Grotius,” Dixseptieme Siécle, 35 (1983), 471-485; Georges Lacour-Gayet, “Les Traductions francaises de Hobbes sous le regne de Louis XIV,” Archiv fiir Geschichte der Philosophie, 12 (1899), 202-207. 61. [Charles Sorel], Bibliotheque Francoise (Paris: Librairie du Palais, 1664), 5962.

62. See Lacour-Gayet, “Traductions.” 63. Hobbes, Leviathan, 87-88. 64. Goyard-Fabre, Pufendorf, 69; Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy, 41-42; Stephen Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 69-77. 65. Egalité, 54. 66. On Hobbes’s theory of property, see Zarka, Hobbes et la pensée politique moderne, 172-196. 67. See van Kley, Religious Origins, 63; Hubert Méthivier, La Fronde (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984), 187. 68. See Martine Pécharman, “Pascal et le politique,” in L’Etat classique, 16521715, ed. Henry Méchoulan and Joél Cornette (Paris: Vrin, 1996), 113-132. 69. See Paul Bénichou, Morales du grand siécle (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 173174.

70. Daniel Gordon, Citizens without Sovereignty: Equality and Soctability in French Thought, 1670-1789 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 60. 71. Cited in Sée, Idées politiques en France, 132. 72. Egalité, 21, 51.

73. Education, 91-92, 94-95. 74. Ibid., 95-97. 75. Ibid., 158-159, 160. 76. Ibid., 167-168. 77. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price, trans. Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 55. 78. See Etienne Thuau, Raison d’état et pensée politique a l’époque de Richelieu (1966; reprint, Paris: Albin Michel, 2000). 79. On Silhon, see Lionel Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV: The Political and

332 Notes to Pages 183-189 Social Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 56-58. 80. Education, 162. 81. Ibid., 352-353. 82. See Albert N. Hamscher, The Parliament of Paris after the Fronde, 16531673 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), 82-154.

83. Francois Bluche, ed., Le Journal secret de Louis XIV (n.p.: Editions de Rocher, 1998), 86. 84. See Orest Ranum, Paris in the Age of Absolutism (New York: Wiley, 1968), 272-280; see also Arlette Lebigre, “Nicolas de La Reynie, premier préfet de police,” in Cornette, La France de la monarchie absolue, 307-320. 85. See Jay M. Smith, The Culture of Merit: Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600-1789 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), chap. 4.

86. The utopian thinkers of this period were caught in a similar ambiguous tension; see Myriam Yardeni, Utopie et révolte sous Louis XIV (Paris: Nizet, 1980), 139-140.

6. Anthropology and History 1. René Descartes, Discours de la méthode, AT, 6: 6.

2. See Peter Burke, “European Views of World History from Giovo to Voltaire,” History of European Ideas, 6 (1985), 237-251; Frank Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World: The Geographical Imagination in the Age of Discovery (Cambridge:

Polity, 1994), 130-131. 3. See Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1960). 4. See Chantal Grell, L’Histoire entre érudition et philosopbie: Etude sur la connaissance historique a lage des lumiéres (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993), 68, 72. 5. Zachary Sayre Schiffman, On the Threshold of Modernity: Relativism in the French Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 130-139, identifies Vico as the “founder” of the new developmental and analytical theorizing of human history, but I think a convincing case can be made for its (partial) emergence in the late seventeenth century, in particular in the work of Fontenelle, and to a lesser extent in Poulain, Bernier, and several others. 6. Calculated from figures in William B. Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks, 1530-1880 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 7. 7. Figures based on H. Ternaux-Compans, Bibliothéque asiatique et africaine, ou catalogue des ouvrages relatifs a PAsie et PAfrique qui ont pary depuis la découverte de

Pimprimerie jusqu’en 1700 (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1841), 204-242; TernauxCompans includes publications in French, English, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Latin. 8. Geoffroy Atkinson, Les Relations de voyages du XVIle siécle et Pévolution des idées (1924; reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1972), 181.

9. See Jean Meyer, Jean ‘Tarrade, Annie Rey-Goldzeiguer, and Jacques Thobie, Histoire de la France coloniale: Des origines a 1914 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1991), 75-85; Joél Cornette, Chronique du regne de Louis XIV (Paris: Sedes, 1997),

Notes to Pages 189-195 333 125-127; Olive Patricia Dickason, The Myth of the Savage and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1984). 10. Cohen, French Encounter with Africans, 39. 11. See Rose Vincent, ed., Pondichéry 1674-1761: Léchec d’un réve d’empire (Paris: Autrement, 1993), 23-27. 12. See Christian-Philippe Chanut, “Jésuites,” in Dictionnaire du Grand Siecle,

ed. Francois Bluche (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 790-791; Dirk van der Cruysse, Louis XIV et le Siam (Paris: Fayard, 1991), 144. 13. See Dickason, Myth of the Savage, part 2. 14. See Virgile Pinot, La Chine et la formation de l’esprit philosophique en France, 1640-1740 (Paris: Geuthner, 1932). 15. See Fatma Miige Gocek, East Encounters West: France and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 9; Paul Butel, “Boissons exotiques,” in Bluche, Dictionnaire, 210-211. 16. Egalité, 16; see also Education, 316; Herodotus, Histories, bk. 3, sec. 38. 17. Education, 98. 18. Chapelain to Bernier, 13 November 1661, Lettres de fean Chapelain, ed. Ph. Tamizey de Larroque, vol. 2 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1883), 169. 19. Excellence, 291.

20. Richesource III, 81-82. 21. See Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe (London: Phoenix, 1994), 284-289; Gocek, East Encounters West, 44-46. 22. Egalité, 19. 23. See Athanasius Kircher, Joonneel van China (Amsterdam, 1668), 140-141; French translation, Amsterdam, 1670. Foot-binding was mentioned in many Euro-

pean accounts of China; see Folkert Reichert, “Pulchritudo mulierum est parvos habere pedes: Ein Beitrag zur Begegnung Europas mit der Chinesischen Welt,” Archiv fiir Kulturgeschichte, 71 (1989), 297-307. 24. [Francois Bernier], Suzte des mémoires du Sieur Bernier sur Pempire du Grand Mogol (La Haye: Arnout Leers, 1671), 140-141. 25. Jean Thévenot, Relation d’un voyage fait au Levant (1664; reprint, Rouen: L. Maurry, 1665), 107.

26. See Siep Stuurman, “Francois Bernier and the Invention of Racial Classification,” History Workshop fournal 50 (2000), 1-21. 27. Excellence, 26. 28. Ibid., 270. 29. Jean-Baptiste du Tertre, Histoire generale des Antilles habitées par les Frangots, 2 vols. (Paris: Th. Jolly, 1667), 2: 373, 383. 30. Dickason, Myth of the Savage, 13-14. 31. Nicolas Villault de Bellefond, Relation des costes d’Afrique, appellées Guinée, avec la description du pays, moeurs & facons de vivre des habitans (Paris: Denys Thierry, 1669), 233. 32. Londa Schiebinger, Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Boston: Beacon, 1993), 156; Schiebinger refers to Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1990). 33. Du Tertre, Histoire des Antilles, 2: 382-383. 34. Villault de Bellefond, Relation des costes d’Afrique, 223-229, 239-240, 244— 253. 35. Egalité, 67.

334 Notes to Pages 195-199 36. See Hippocrates, Airs Waters Places, secs. 1, 12, 23, 24; only one time, in sec. 23, does Hippocrates mention the influence of “institutions” as a secondary cause.

37. On the differences between the Hippocratic and Herodotean approaches to cultural difference, see Rosalind Thomas, Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Sci-

ence and the Art of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), chaps. 3 and 4. 38. Poulain’s departure from a purely climatological determinism anticipates Montesquieu’s equally mixed theory; see Peter Gay, The Enlightenment, vol. 2: The Science of Freedom (London: Wildwood House, 1973), 328-329. 39. Education, 83. 40. See Grell, Histoire, 74-75 (on Locke); and Lisa T. Sarasohn, Gassendi’s Ethics: Freedom in a Mechanistic Universe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 42-50. 41. Education, 84.

42. Egalité, 52. 43. See Hippolyte Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des anciens et des modernes (Paris: Hachette, 1856), chaps. 4-8; Hubert Gillot, La Querelle des anciens et des

modernes en France (1914; reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1968), 370-393; Hans Kortum, Charles Perrault und Nicolas Boileau: Der Antike-Streit im Zeitalter der klassischen Franzosischen Literatur (Berlin: Riitten und Loening, 1966); Paul H. Meyer, “Recent German Studies of the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns in France,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 18 (1984-1985), 383-390. 44. Gabriel Guéret, La Guerre des auteurs anciens et modernes (Paris: Th. Girard, 1671), 2. 45. Richesource III, 227-238. 46. Jacques Rohault, Traité de physique, 2 vols. (Paris: Denys Thierry, 1671), preface. 47. Fournal des Scavans, 4 and 25 January 1666.

48. Ibid., 20 December 1666. 49. Ibid., 10 October 1670. 50. Ibid., 13 June 1672; Supplement du Fournal des Scavans, 1 March 1672. 51. Supplement du Journal des Scavans, 22 March 1672; see also ibid., 1 April 1672 (on vipers) and 10 May 1672 (on menstruation). 52. Richard Simon to the Abbé de Lameth, 1670, Lettres choisies de M. Simon, 4 vols. (Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier, 1730), 2: 32-41. 53. Louis le Laboureur, Les Avantages de la langue frangoise sur la langue latine (Paris: Florentin Lambert, 1667), 6. 54. Le Laboureur, Avantages .. . (Paris: Guillaume de Luyne, 1669), 126.

55. This “prehistory” of the notion of the progress of the human mind is curiously neglected by Jean Dagen, L’Histoire de l’esprit humain: De Fontenelle a Condorcet (Paris: Klincksieck, 1977). 56. fournal des Scavans, 4 January 1666; Gallois was a fervent modern in phi-

losophy and science, but he sided with the ancients in literary matters; see Betty Trebelle Morgan, Histoire du fFournal des Scavans depuis 1665 jusqu’en 1701 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1929), 145-155. In 1674 the editorship was taken over by the Abbé de la Roque, a convinced modern on all counts; see his defense of

the use of French for the inscription on the Triumphal Arch on the Place du Throne: Journal des Scavans, 8 June 1676. 57. Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, La Comparaison de la langue et de la poésie

Notes to Pages 199-203 335 francoise avec la grecque & la latine. Et des poétes grecs, latins & francois (Paris: Th. Jolly, 1670), 7.

58. See Hugh Gaston Hall, Richelieu’s Desmarets and the Century of Louis XIV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 348-355. 59. Egalité, 21. 60. See Hugo Grotius, De lure Belli ac Pacis (Leiden: Brill, 1939), 186; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard ‘Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 89, 459; John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (New York: Mentor, 1965), 338, 343; also Stephen Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 38 (on Grotius). On the somewhat different line of thought of Pufendorf, see Istvan Hont, “The Language of Sociability and Commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the Theoretical Foundations of the ‘Four-Stages Theory,” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 253-276. 61. See Ronald L. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 49-57. 62. See Atkinson, Relations de voyages, 36-4. 63. Publius Cornelius ‘Tacitus, Germania, secs. 19-24. 64. See John Ferguson, Utopias of the Classical World (London: ‘Thames and Hudson, 1975); Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 65. Du lertre, Histoire des Antilles, 2: 356-357, 372-378. 66. Atkinson, Relations de voyages, 75—76, portrays Du ‘Tertre as a typical expo-

nent of the “noble savage” idea, disregarding the ambiguities in his account. 67. Villault de Bellefond, Relation des costes d’Afrique, 58-59, 82-83, 176-179, 216-217. 68. Francois Bernier, Abrégé de la philosophie de Gassendi, 7 vols. (1684; reprint, Paris: Fayard, 1992), 7: 286 (the first, two-volume, edition is Paris, 1674). 69. Ibid., 5: 376; 6: 344; 7: 219-220.

70. [Francois Bernier], “Nouvelle Division de la terre, par les differentes especes ou races d’hommes qui Vhabitent, envoyée par un fameux voyageur a M. l’Abbé de la Chambre, a peu prés en ces termes,” Journal des Scavans, 24 April 1684, 148-155; for the context, see Stuurman, “Francois Bernier.”

71. Bernier’s view only partly accords with his Gassendist-Epicurean background and his heavy reliance on Lucretius, for the Lucretian-Epicurean school of thought, while depicting the earliest stage of human development predominantly in terms of its backwardness, left also some room for the more idyllic forms of “primitivism”; see Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism, 239-242. 72. Pierre Petit, De Amazonibus Dissertatio qua an vere extiterint, necne, varits

utro citroque conjecturis & argumentis disputatur (Amsterdam: J. Wolters & Y. Haring, 1687). This is the second edition; the first is Paris, 1685. Petit warns, however, that climate does not provide an entirely sufficient explanation; 52. 73. Ibid., 103-104; Abby Wettan Kleinbaum, The War against the Amazons (New York: New Press, 1983), 142-145, discusses Petit’s climatogical explanation of the Amazons, but she fails to notice its primitivist aspect. 74. Petit, Amazonibus, 107. 75. Les Six Voyages de fean-Baptiste Tavernier, Ire Partie (Paris: G. Clouzier, 1682), 300, 303.

336 Notes to Pages 203-215 76. See Francois Hartog, Le Miroir d’Herodote: Essai sur la représentation de Pautre (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 33; James S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 47, 70. Much later we will encounter the same picture of the northern tribes in Diderot’s Encyclopédie, where the Eskimos are described as “les sauvages des sauvages”; entry “Eskimaux,” in Encyclopédie, vol. 5 (Paris, 1755), 953 (article by de Jaucourt). 77. Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, De P’origine des fables, in Oeuvres completes, 7 vols (Paris: Fayard, 1989), 3: 197. This essay was published in 1724 but drafted between 1691 and 1699; see Bluche, Dictionnaire, 606. Fontenelle’s comparison would later be elaborated by Joseph-Francois Lafitau: Moeurs des sauvages americains comparees aux moeurs des premiers temps, 1724. 78. Fontenelle, De Porigine des fables, in Oeuvres, 3: 198. 79. Egalité, 38; Excellence, 323.

80. Michel de Montaigne, Fssais, vol. 1 (Paris: GF-Flammarion, 1969), 254; see also 158: “Les barbares ne nous sont de rien plus merveilleux, que nous sommes a eux, ny avec plus d’occasion.” 81. April G. Shelford, “‘Others Laugh, Even the Learned’: An Erudit’s View of Women and Learning in Seventeenth-Century France,” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, vol. 24, ed. Barry Rothaus (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1997), 228. 82. Egalité, 21. 83. Ibid., 23-24. 84. Ibid., 24. 85. Ibid., 25, 26. 86. Excellence, 322-324, 325-326. 87. Ibid., 76. 88. Genevieve Fraisse, La Raison des femmes (Paris: Plon, 1992), 35, does not

pay attention to this second discussion of the division of labor and therefore describes Poulain’s position as somewhat less radical than it really is. 89, Excellence, 268-269. 90. Education, 183. 91. See Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Sur l’histoire (probably drafted ca. 1690, but published only much later), in Oeuvres, 3: 169-185; see also David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers, eds., Geography and Enlightenment (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999), chap. 1.

7. The Road to Geneva 1. For Descartes’s aversion to religious fanaticism and intolerance, see Les Passions de Pame, AT, 11: 472.

2. On the contrast between the Jansenist and Cartesian conceptions of the self, see Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 356-357. 3. See Sister Prudence Allen, R.S.M., The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 B.C.-A.D. 1250 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 219-226, 385— 392.

4. Excellence, 6-12.

5. Ibid., 13, 16-17. 6. Ibid., 19, 17-19, 14-15, 23, 25-26.

Notes to Pages 216-223 337 7. See Alcuin Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (Oxtord: Clarendon Press, 1997), 96-119. 8. Elisabeth Marie Clement, Dialogue de la Princesse Scavante et de la Dame de Famille (Paris: Baptiste Loyson, 1664), 160-161. 9. See The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, ed. Allen C. Meyer et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 358, citing Augustine’s Civitas Dei, XII.23. 10. See Apologie de la science des dames (Lyon: B. Coral, 1662), 98-100; Jacquette Guillaume, Les Dames illustres (Paris: Thomas Jolly, 1665), 202-203; for earlier examples, see Ian Maclean, Woman Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature, 1610-

1652 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 25-26. 11. See Margaret Olofson Thickstun, ““Chis Was a Woman That ‘Taught’: Feminist Scriptural Exegesis in the Seventeenth Century,” Studies in EighteenthCentury Culture, 21 (1991), 149-158. 12. Excellence, 22.

13. See Madeleine Alcover, Poullain de la Barre: Une aventure philosophique (Paris: Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 1981), 83-84. 14. Excellence, 45, 46-47.

15. Ibid., 28, 29-31. 16. See Dale van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 22. 17. Excellence, 35-40, 48-49. 18. Ibid., 73-74. 19. Egalité, 7. 20. See Ernan McMullin, “Galileo on Science and Scripture,” in The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, ed. Peter Machamer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 271-347, esp. 291-299. 21. See Henri de Lubac, S. J., Exégése médiévale: Les quatre sens de Vécriture, 2 vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1959); Stephen Prickett, ed., Reading the Text: Biblical Criticism and Literary Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 3-7. 22. See McMullin, “Galileo on Science and Scripture,” 273-275. 23. See Vincent Carraud, “Descartes et la Bible,” in Le Grand Siécle et la Bible, ed. Jean-Robert Armogathe (Paris: Beauchesne, 1989), 285. 24. See Richard H. Popkin, “Spinoza and Bible Scholarship,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, ed. Don Garret (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 403-404. 25. Education, 168-169. 26. Egalité, 15, 36. 27. Excellence, 214.

28. Ibid., 49, 51-52. 29. Ibid., 57. 30. Egalite, 80. 31. Excellence, 65-67.

32. Ibid., 67, 68-69, 83. 33. Spinoza, Iraité des autorités théologiques et politiques, trans. M. Frances (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 69, 92, 100, 127-133, 199; see also Popkin, “Spinoza and Bible Scholarship,” 396-400, which argues that it was precisely the reduction of Old ‘Testament law to a purely historical phenomenon that distinguished Spinoza from previous critics. 34. See Walter Rex, Essays on Pierre Bayle and Religious Controversy (The

338 Notes to Pages 224-226 Hague: Nijhoff, 1965), 111; Francois Laplanche, “Débats et combats autour de la Bible dans Porthodoxie réformée,” in Armogathe, Le Grand Siecle et la Bible, 117140, esp. 126-135; idem, “La Bible chez les Réformés,” in Le Szécle des Lumieres et la Bible, ed. Yvon Belaval and Dominique Bourel (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986), 459-480. 35. Egalité, 54.

36. See Henning von Reventlow, “LExégése humaniste de Hugo Grotius,” in Armogathe, Le Grand Siécle et la Bible, 142, 151-154. 37. [Richard Simon], Factum servant de réponse au livre intitulé Abrégé du proces fait au Fuifs de Metz (Paris, 1670), reprinted in Joseph Reinach, Raphael Levi: Une erreur judiciaire sous Louis XIV (Paris: Delagrave, 1898), 119-135, esp. 121-122.

The original edition of Simon’s Factum is extremely rare; it was reprinted in De Sainjore, Bibliotheque critique ou recueil de diverses piéces critiques, vol. 1 (Basel: Chr.

Wackerman, 1709), 109-131. 38. See Reinach, Raphael Levi. 39. See Joseph Beaude, “Malebranche et la Bible,” in Armogathe, Le Grand Siecle et la Bible, 735-744.

40. See Henri Margival, Essai sur Richard Simon (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), 125-

130; Paul Auvray, Richard Simon, 1638-1712 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974), 42-44; Marie-Héléne Cotoni, L’Exégéese du Nouveau Testament dans la philosophie francaise du dix-huitiéme siécle (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1984), 26-27; John D. Woodbridge, “Richard Simon: Le ‘pére de la critique biblique,” in Armogathe, Le Grand Siecle et la Bible, 193-206, esp. 203-204. 41. See Paul Verniére, Spinoza et la pensée francaise avant la Révolution, Le partie: Le XVIle siécle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954), 91-111; P. Saverio Mirri, Richard Simon e il metodo storico-critico di B. Spinoza (Florence: Le Monnier, 1972), 54-69; Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 302-307. 42. Excellence, 61-62. 43. Egalité, 31. 44. Education, 170; this argument is also used by John Toland, Letters to Serena (London: B. Lintot, 1704), preface and sec. 12. 45. Education, 270-271.

46. On Spinoza’s conception of God, see Alan Donagan, “Spinoza’s Theology,” in Garret, Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, 343-382, esp. 354.

47. See [Thomas Hobbes], “Troisiémes Objections,” AT, 9: 140; Hobbes, De Cive. The English Version, entitled in the first ed. Philosophical Rudiments Concerning

Government and Society, ed. H. Warrender (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 190191; Richard Tuck, “Hobbes and Descartes,” in Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes, ed. G. A. J. Rogers and Alan Ryan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 11-41, esp. 39-40; Arrigo Pacchi, “Hobbes and the Problem of God,” ibid., 171-187. 48. See Jean-Marie Beyssade, “The Idea of God and the Proofs of His Existence,” in The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 174-199, esp. 187-192. 49. [Hobbes], “Troisiémes Objections,” 140. 50. Education, 115-116; John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 618. 51. Egalité, 65; see also Education, 115-117. 52. Egalité, 31, 87. 53. Education, 250-256.

Notes to Pages 226-229 339 54. See Margaret J. Osler, Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy: Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 51; see also Francois Bernier, Abrégé de la philosopbie de Gassendi, 7 vols. (1684; reprint, Paris: Fayard, 1992), 2: 45. 55. See Osler, Divine Will, 159-167. 56. Excellence, 31, 295. 57. On Pelagianism, see Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 49-50. 58. Descartes to Mersenne, March 1642, AT, 3: 544. 59. Descartes, Meditations (reply to “Troisiémes Objections”), AT, 9: 148. 60. Ibid. (secondes réponses), 116. 61. Descartes, Meditationes (“Synopsis”), AT, 7: 15. 62. Descartes to Mersenne, 18 March 1641, AJ; 3: 334-335. 63. Quoted in Theo Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Car-

tesian Philosophy, 1637-1650 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 42. 64. Henri Gouhier, La Pensée religieuse de Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1972), 237-55, sees Descartes as a skeptic whose loyalty to Catholicism was only de facto; however, Stephen Menn, Descartes and Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1998), chap. 7, argues that Descartes’s doctrine is basically identical with that of Augustine, with the sole difference that Descartes never mentions original sin. “But there is no reason to doubt,” Menn states, “that Descartes, if he had addressed the question of the historical origin of error, and been willing to refer to revelation, would have given Adam the central role in the story” (318, n. 14). In my opinion, there are good reasons for doubt: First, Descartes says a lot about the origins of error but never mentions Adam or Genesis in that context. Second, Descartes says in several places that God’s grace is necessary for eternal salvation, but he never integrates such observations in his philosophy. Why? Third, in drafting the Fourth Meditation, Descartes first “forgot” the exception for “sin,” “theology,” and “the conduct of life”; only after receiving Arnauld’s objections did he insert the relevant caveat in the “Synopsis.” Why is that, if he was a true Augustinian all along? Descartes has a lot in common with Augustine, but instead of original sin he simply holds that human beings are finite and embodied, and therefore capable of error. Perhaps he was sincere when he said that he accepted the neccessity of grace; perhaps not. What we know with certainty, however, is Descartes’s conviction that free persons can attain virtue (“génerosité”) and can improve themselves and their understanding and mastery of nature (perhaps indefinitely). ‘Those are, after all, the subjects he worked on and wrote about most of the time. Compared to that, his widely dispersed “orthodox” theological utterances bear all the marks of occasional comments for the benefit of the ever-suspicious theologians and the ever-attentive censors. 65. Descartes, Principes I, sec. 25, AT, 9: B, 36. 66. Education, 178-179. 67. Education, 299-300.

68. See Peter Harrison, “Reading the Passions: The Fall, the Passions, and Dominion over Nature,” in The Soft Underbelly of Reason: The Passions in the Seven-

teenth Century, ed. Stephen Gaukroger (London: Routledge, 1998), 49-78. Harrison’s reading of Descartes (at 70) is, however, not convincing. Descartes has a less negative opinion of the passions than Harrison ascribes to him. He also depicts

340 Notes to Pages 230-238 Descartes as “not explicitly relying on the narrative of the Fall.” Descartes, however, simply omits all reference to the Fall. Given that Adam’s Fall, as Harrison shows, was customarily included in explanations of the limitations of the will and the intellect, its omission must be a conscious choice on the part of Descartes, who is generally extremely careful in his treatment of sensitive theological issues. 69. Education, 303. 70. Education, 305. 71. See Paul Hazard, European Thought in the Eighteenth Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), chap. 2. 72. Education, 16, 172.

73. On the associative use of “atheism,” see Alan Charles Kors, Atheism in France, 1650-1727, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), chap. 1; on “libertinage” see Henry Phillips, Church and Culture in Seventeenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 232. 74. Education, 110, 117. 75. Ibid., 118. 76. Egalité, 68-69. 77. Excellence, 274.

78. See Phillips, Church and Culture, 249-250. 79. SeeJ.S. Spink, French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire (London: Athlone Press, 1960), 25. 80. Education, 272. 81. See Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250-1550 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 435-436. 82. Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary, trans. and ed. Richard H. Popkin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), 301. 83. See Kors, Atheism, 74-75. 84. Egalité, 24. 85. Education, 343, 143, 136-137. 86. Simon to Dirois, [1670], Lettres choistes de M. Simon, ed. Bruzen la Mar-

tiniére, 4 vols. (Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier, 1730), 3: 14-19. The letter is not dated, but Simon refers to the Synod of Saumur, which was held in September 1670; so the letter must have been written in the last quarter of that year. 87. See C. J. Betts, Early Deism in France (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1984), 76. 88. Quoted in ibid., 77, n. 11. 89. Ibid., 77-78.

90. See Patrick J. Lambe, “Biblical Criticism and Censorship in Ancien Régime France: The Case of Richard Simon,” Harvard Theological Review, 78 (1985), 149-177, esp. 164-165.

91. This information about Poulain was first uncovered by Marie Louise Stock, “Poullain de la Barre: A Seventeenth-Century Feminist” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1961), 44-45. 92. Pierre Bayle, Nouvelles de la République des lettres, October 1685, in Oeuvres diverses, vol. 1 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964), 396. 93. Ibid., 397.

94. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 44-45, quoting Bayle, Nouvelles de la République des lettres, October 1685, 1145-46. 95. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 46, 47-48.

Notes to Pages 238-243 341 96. Education, 328, 332. 97. See Janine Garrisson, L’Edit de Nantes et sa révocation (Paris: Seuil, 1985), chap. 5. 98. Education, avertissement, 42, 283, 308. 99. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 48, 223-224.

100. The certificate of Poulain’s consecration, dated 4 February 1679, is in the Poulain de la Barre papers, Archives de Familles, lére série, Archives d’Etat, Geneva. 101. The following paragraph is based on Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 48-56. 102. Répertoire des visites pastorales de la France, lére Série: Anciennes Dioceses, vol.

2 (Paris: CNRS, 1979), 418. 103. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 49. 104. O. Douen, “La Réforme en Picardie,” Bulletin de la Société de Histoire du Protestantisme Francais, 8 (1859), 457, 524, 458. 105. Garrisson, Edit de Nantes, 133; P. Beuzart, Une Petite Eglise protestante en Picardie pendant quatre siecles, 1524-1924: Parfondeval en Thiérache (Le Puy-enVelay: Imprimerie La Haute Loire, 1926), 23-25. 106. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 55. 107. P. Beuzart, “L’-Emigration protestante en Thiérache aprés la Révocation de ’Edit de Nantes,” La Thiérache. Bulletin de la Société Archéologique de Vervins & de la Thiérache, n.s., 3 (1949), 73-83.

108. Suppl. E-1942 = 5 Microfilm 312-314, Archives Départementales de

Aisne. 109. See O. Douen, “La Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes en Thiérache,” Bulletin FAiistorique et Littéraire de la Société de P' Histoire du Protestantisme Francais, 27 (1878),

295-296.

110. Suppl. E-1942 = 5 Microfilm 312-314, Archives Départementales de PAisne; Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 56; Poulain’s flight is mentioned by Douen, “Réforme en Picardie,” 524, n. 1. 111. Original de la Requéte presentée aux N. S. du Petit Conseil par les Ps de la Barre, Pére et Fils, au fins d’obtenir la Bourgeoisie pour Jean Jacques Fils, 15—5— 1716, Poullain Papers, Archives de Familles, lére série, Archives d’Etat, Geneva. 112. Quoted in Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 57. 113. Doctrine, 137-138. 114. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 61. 115. Both certificates are in the Poulain papers, Archives d’Etat, Geneva. 116. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 64. 117. Livre des habitants de Genéve, 1684-1792 (Geneva: Droz, 1985), 46 (no. 376). Refugees usually registered within a few days of their arrival; oral communication from Genevan archivist. 118. See Gabriella Silvestrini, Alle radice del pensiero politico di Rousseau: Istituzioni en dibattito politico a Ginevra nella prima meta del settecento (Milan: Francoangeli, 1993), 26, n. 18. 119. See Olivier Reverdin et al., eds., Genéve et la Révocation de ’Edit de Nantes (Geneva: Droz—Chamion, 1985), 145, 151. 120. Essai des remarques, letter to the reader. On Poulain’s discussion of the Romany language, see Clara Natsch, Poulain de la Barres Bemerkungen zum GenferFranzosisch (Chur: Buchdruckerei A.-G. Btindner Tagblatt, 1927).

342 Notes to Pages 243-250 121. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 65-66. 122. Ibid., 66.

8. Rational Christianity 1. Jean Jacques de la Barre, Pensées ou theses philosophiques (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1715), nos. 270, 286. 2. The titles and dates of the younger Poulain’s theses in Marie Louise Stock,

“Poullain de la Barre: A Seventeenth-Century Feminist” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia Unversity, 1961), 88, are incorrect. 3. Joh. Jacobus de la Barre, Cogitationes Theologicae (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1717), nos. xxviii, xxxix, lxi.

4. See Marco Marcacci, Histoire de PUniversité de Geneve, 1559-1986 (Geneva: Université de Genéve, 1987), 41. 5. See Michael Heyd, Between Orthodoxy and the Enlightenment: fean-Robert Chouet and the Introduction of Cartesian Science in the Academy of Geneva (The Hague:

Nijhoff, 1982).

6. See Martin I. Klauber, “Reason, Revelation, and Cartesianism: Louis Tronchin and Enlightened Orthodoxy in Late Seventeenth-Century Geneva,” Church History 59 (1990), 326-339; idem, Between Reformed Scholasticism and PanProtestantism: fean-Alphonse Turretin (1671-1737) and Enlightened Orthodoxy at the Academy of Geneva (London: Associated University Presses, 1994); Maria-Cristina Pitassi, De orthodoxie aux lumiéres: Genéve, 1670-1737 (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1992). 7. Quoted in Pitassi, Orthodoxie au lumieéres, 19.

8. See Robert E. Sullivan, John Toland and the Deist Controversy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 82-108. 9. ‘These are the two “Vindications” of the Reasonableness of Christianity; see The Works of John Locke, 10 vols. (London, 1823; reprint, Aalen: Scientia, 1963), 7: 159-424. 10. See Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 910-916. 11. Idem, Radical Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 17. 12. Catherine Santschi, La Censure a Genéve au XVIle siécle (Geneva: Tribune Editions, 1978), 44. 13. Pitassi, Orthodoxte au lumieres, 31, 29. 14. Santschi, Censure, 46, 57-58.

15. Ibid., 44. 16. Pitassi, Orthodoxie au lumieres, 17.

17. Chouet to J. Sarrasin, 1 September 1680, quoted in ibid., 25. 18. Ibid., 21. 19. Registre Compagnie Vénérable des Pasteurs, R 17 (1690-1698), pp. 58, 61, Archives d’Etat, Geneva. 20. Registre Consistoire, R 68 (1693-1698), p. 154, ibid. 21. See Madeleine Alcover, Poullain de la Barre: Une aventure philosophique (Paris: Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 1981), 28, 30.

22. Registre Conseil, 1696 (RC 196), p. 56 (1 February 1696); Registre Consistoire (R 68), p. 160 (6 February 1696), Archives d’Etat, Geneva.

Notes to Pages 250-255 343 23. Registre Consistoire (R 68), p. 161, ibid.

24. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 73, mentions the affair only in passing; Alcover, Poullain de la Barre, 18-19, underscores the gravity of the accusation but does not look into the De Lorme affair. 25. Klauber, Reformed Scholasticism, 143-147.

26. See Paul F. Geisendorf, L’Université de Genéve, 1559-1959 (Geneva: A. Jullien, 1959), 138. 27. Klauber, Reformed Scholasticism, 65-66. 28. See Francois Laplanche, L’Ecriture, le sacre, et Phistoire: Erudits et politiques protestants devant la Bible en France au XVIIe siécle (Amsterdam: Holland University Press, 1986), 623. 29. See Maria-Cristina Pitassi, “L’Apologétique raisonnable de Jean-Alphonse ‘Turrettini,” in Apologétique 1680-1740: Sauvetage ou naufrage de la theologie? (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1991), 109.

30. Quoted in Olivier Fatio, “Grotius remplaga-t-il Calvin 4 Genéve?” in Hugo Grotius, Theologian, ed. Henk J. M. Nellen and E. Rabbie (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 187.

31. Quoted in Linda Kirk, “Eighteenth-Century Geneva and a Changing Calvinism,” in Studies in Church History, no. 18: Religion and National Identity, ed. Stuart Mews (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), 368.

32. See Martin I. Klauber, “The Drive toward Protestant Union in Early Eighteenth-Century Geneva: Jean-Alphonse ‘Turrettini on the ‘Fundamental Articles’ of the Faith,” Church History, 61 (1992-1993), 334-349. 33. See, e.g., Jean-Alphonse Turrettini, Sermon sur la charité (Geneva: De ‘Tournes, 1697). 34. See Joseph Levine, The Autonomy of History: Truth and Method from Erasmus to Gibbon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 25-51, 179-240.

35. See Klauber, “Protestant Union,” 344. 36. Idem, Reformed Scholasticism, 118-121, 125-127. 37. Kirk, “Eighteenth-Century Geneva,” 371-372; in fact the Encyclopédie asserted only that “several pastors of Geneva have no other religion than a perfect Socinianism”; Encyclopédie (Paris, 1751-1772), 15: 966.

38. Kirk, “Eighteenth-Century Geneva,” 373-374. 39. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 66. 40. See Le Collége de Genéve, 1559-1959 (Geneva: A. Jullien, 1959), 24-25. 41. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 75—76. 42. See the dedication on the title page of de la Barre, Pensées. 43. See Heyd, Between Orthodoxy and the Enlightenment, 188.

44. Requétes et Rapports aux Conseils, Bourgeoisie I, 1568-1724, 16 Mai 1716 (Le Fort), Archives d’Etat, Geneva. 45. On the French residents, see Olivier Reverdin et al., Genéve et la Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes (Geneva: Droz; Paris: Champion, 1985), 76-122. 46. See Gabriella Silvestrini, Al/e radici del pensiero di Rousseau: Istituzioni e dibattito politico a Ginevra nella prima meta del settecento (Milano: Francoangeli, 1993).

47. Original de la Requéte presentée aux N. S. du Petit Conseil par les Ps de la Barre Pere et Fils, au fins d’obtenir la Bourgeoisie pour Jean Facques Fils, 15 Mai 1716, Poulain papers, Archives de Familles, lére serie, Archives d’Etat, Geneva;

344 Notes to Pages 256-260 this is Poulain’s draft, which shows where he changed the wording and deleted certain passages. 48. Le Livre des Bourgeois de Pancienne République de Geneve, ed. Alfred L. Covelle (Geneva: n.p., 1897), 404. 49. De la Barre, Pensées, nos. 20, 28, 37, 38, 39, 94, 129. 50. Heyd, Between Orthodoxy and Enlightenment, 197. 51. But see also de la Barre, Pensées, nos. 247, 251, 252, which are considerably less feminist than the ideas of his father. 52. Ibid., no. 147; see also nos. 134, 136. 53. Ibid., no. 71; part 2: nos. 39, 81, 82. 54. Ibid., nos. 146, 162, 164, 167, 182, 183, 185, 121, 179. 55. Ibid., nos. 66, 50, 97, 101, 189. 56. Ibid., nos. 195, 206, 207, 219. 57. Ibid., part 2: nos. 51, 52. 58. On Barbeyrac and Burlamaqui, see Helena Rosenblatt, Rousseau and Geneva (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 13-14, 94-96. 59. The ten theses are the following (in parentheses: the year and the supervising professor): Pierre Chambier (1712, Gautier); Jean Saracenus (1712, Gautier);

Amadeus Lullin (1713, Gautier); Pierre Coste (1714, S. Jallabert); Jean-Pierre Prades (1716, S. Jallabert); Louis Tronchin (1716, S. Jallabert); Alexandre Dury (1721, S. Jallabert); Antoine Maurice (1732, A. de la Rive); Jean Jallabert (1731, A. de la Rive); Guillaume de la Rive (1733, A. de la Rive). 60. Petrus Chambier, Exercitatio Philosophica brevem totius logicae ideam complecteus (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1712). 61. Amadeus Lullin, Ethices Dissertatio de Justo et Injusto (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1713), 21-22. 62. Petrus Coste, Theses Philosophicae totius Physicae Summam includentes (Ge-

neva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1714), corr. vii; Joh. Petrus Prades, Theses ex omnibus Philosopbiae Partibus Desumptae (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1716), thesis ii. 63. Ludovicus Tronchin, Theses Physicae de Aqua (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1716), corr. iv. 64. Alexander Dury, Dussertatio Philosophica de Terrae Motu (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1721), corr. v. 65. See, e.g., André Joli, Disputatio Theologica adversus eos qui statuunt quamcumque religionem profitearis, perinde esse (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1711), corr. 1; Samuel ‘Turrettini, Cogitationes de Variis Theologiae Capitibus (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1711), thes. xxviii. 66. Stephanus Jallabertus, Theses Physicae de Calore et Frigore (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1714), corr. 1. 67. See Henri Heyer, Catalogue des theses de théologie soutenues a Académie de Genéve pendant les XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siécles (Geneva: Georg, 1898), lv—Ixii.

68. The dissertations examined are listed in Heyer, Catalogue, nos. 279, 280, 281, 283, 284, 290, 292, 296, 297, 299, 305, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 315, 316, 321, 322, 323, 325, 328, 331, 332, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 341; I have seen all of these except no. 296. 69. Paul Luc. La Fargue, Dissertatio Theologica de Christo Audiendo (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1711), corr. 5. 70. Samuel ‘Turrettini, Cogitationes, thes. xiv—xix, xxxili—xxxvi, xlvii—xlix, lv1.

Notes to Pages 260-264 345 71. Gabriel Rilliet, Cogitationes de Religione et Theologia (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1713). 72. Joh. Saracenus, Disputatio Theologica de Revelationis Necessitate (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1715), thes. iii, v, viii, xxxi—xxxiii. 73. Louis Tronchin, Disputatio Theologica de Veritate Religionis Christianiae, pars tertia: Qua est de Miraculis (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1721), thes. vi, x. 74. Joh. Alphonsus Fatio, Dissertatio Apologetica pro Veritate Christianae adversus Incredulorum Difficultates, pars quinta (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1726). 75. Joh. Ludovicus Lullin, Theses de Theologia Naturali in Genere (Geneva:

Fabri & Barrillot, 1729), thes. xviii, xix; the Brazilians are also dismissed by Dominique Vial a Bonneval, Dissertatio de Existentia Dei (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1730). 76. Amadeus de la Rive, Cogitationes de Controversiis (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1713), thes. xxviii, xxix. 77. Jac. Th. Le Clerc, Theses Theologicae quibus ad demonstrandum Revelationis Veritatem via sternitur (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1716), thes. xvi, xvii. 78. Franciscus de Roches, Disputatio Apologetica de Veritate Religionis Chrislaniae, pars secunda (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1724), corr. i. 79. De la Barre, Cogitationes, thes. lxiii, cxxxvil. 80. De la Barre, Pensées, part 2: no. 53; the rejection of the Epicurean theory is also found in Saracenus, Disputatio Theologica de Revelationis, thes. xvi; and Jacques Vernet, Disputatio Theologica de Veritate Religionis Christiniae, Pars Quinta (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1722), corr. v.

81. See Klauber, Reformed Scholasticism, 81-99, 105-127; Pitassi, “Apologétique raisonnable,” 99-118, esp. 106, 115-117. At the end of the eighteenth century, Geneva’s literary historian, Jean Senebier, who also was a minister of the church, still referred with noticeable distaste to the deists and atheists; Histozre littéraire de Genéve, 3 vols. (Geneva: Barde, Manget, 1786), 3: 5. 82. Francois Laplanche, “La Bible chez les Réformés,” in Le Szécle des Lumieéres et la Bible, ed. Yvon Belaval and Dominique Bourel (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986), 460.

83. Jean-Frédéric Ostervald, Argumens et réflexions sur les livres et sur les chapitres de la Sainte Bible, le partie (Neufchatel: J. D. Griesser, 1720), preliminary discourse. 84. Jacques Basnage, Histoire du Vieux et du Nouveau ‘Testament, 4 vols. (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1712), 1: 54-59, 70-74; Basnage accepts that the passage on the death of Moses was added later, but he deems it unimportant. 85. Ezéchiel Gallatin, Sermons sur divers textes de PEcriture Sainte (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1720), 1-5, 258, 263-264. 86. Jean Pierre de Cros, Disputatio Apologetica pro Veritate Religionis Christianiae adversus Incredulorum Difficultates (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1725), thes. xxxiv. 87. Samuel Werenfels, Sermons sur des vérités importantes de la religion auquels on

a ajouté des considérations sur la réunion des Protestants (Basle: Jean Louis Konig, 1720), 9-36, 45, 178, 458-465; this book was published in Geneva in the same year. 88. Defense de la Dissertation de Monsieur Turrettini sur les Articles fondamentaux de la religion (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1728), 54. 89. See Marcacci, Histoire de ’Université de Genéve, 42-43; Heyd, Between Orthodoxy and Enlightenment, 241.

90. See, e.g., Turrettini, Sermon sur la charité, 27, 49-51; and, almost forty

346 Notes to Pages 264-273 years later, idem, Sermon sur le Fubilée de la Réformation établie il y a deux-cent ans dans l’Eglise de Genéve (Geneva: Fabri & Barrillot, 1735), 12-13. 91. Doctrine, 137-138. 92. Doctrine, 1v, XXVI-XxVIl.

93. In fact Pope Zachary sent a “special tablet” containing the canon of the Mass to Saint Boniface in 751; Joseph A. Jungmann, S. J., The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development (Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1986), 60, n. 1. 94. Doctrine, xxxii—xxxix, 401-402, xl—xli, xlv, xl, xi—xii.

95. Doctrine, 156. 96. Doctrine, 250. 97. Doctrine, 261-262. 98. Doctrine, 198. 99. Ibid., xvi, 275, 280. 100. Ibid., 149. 101. Ibid., 271. 102. Doctrine, 273-274, 271-272, 275-276, 241-242. 103. Ibid., 276, 282, 287-288. 104. Ibid., 291, 284, 296. 105. On the association with Zwinglianism, see Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 187-190; on the Socinian aspect, see Theologische Realenzyklopadie, ed. G. Krause and G. Mueller (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1976), 116-117. 106. Doctrine, 342-343. 107. Doctrine, 322-324. 108. John Toland, Christianity Not Mysterious (London: Buckley, 1696), 38, 42.

109. Ibidem, 144-146. 110. See John Locke, “A Discourse of Miracles,” in The Works of Fohn Locke, 10 vols. (London, 1823; reprint, Aalen: Scientia, 1963), vol. 9: 256-265, esp. 259-260. 111. Doctrine, 439. 112. See Maria-Cristina Pitassi, Entre Crozre et Savoir. Le probleme de la méthode critique chez fean le Clerc (Leiden: Brill, 1987), 11-19, 51-60. 113. Jean Le Clerc, Bibliotheque Ancienne et Moderne, vol. 15 (Amsterdam: Wetstein, 1721), 214-229.

114. The full text of Poulain’s will is reproduced in Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 231-232. 115. Doctrine, xxili—xxiv. 116. Ibid., xxiv—xxvii.

Conclusion

1. Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, trans. and ed. Richard N. Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 90, 101, ix. 2. Immanuel Kant, Was ist Aufkiarung, in Werke in Zwolf Banden, 12 vols., ed.

Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968), 11: 53. 3. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft: Vorrede zur ersten Auflage, in Werke, 3: 13n.

Notes to Pages 273-278 347 4. See Immanuel Kant, Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbiirgerlicher Absicht, in Werke, 11: 46. 5. Education, 311.

6. Admittedly, Kant mentions the subjection of “the greater part of humanity (including the entire fair sex)” in Was ist Aufklarung, 53; but he never explicitly ad-

vocates the inclusion of women. Quite the contrary, he mocks the aspirations of learned women; see Robin May Scott, “The Gender of Enlightenment,” in What Is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions, ed. James Schmidt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 474-476. Howard Williams, Kant’s Political Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 114-121, seeks to present Kant’s opinions as understandable given the opinions of his time, thereby showing that he is unaware of the feminist currents in the Enlightenment, and in

particular of the defense of the equality of the sexes propounded by Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, who was a close acquaintance of Kant. See Claudia Honegger, Die Ordnung der Geschlechter: Die Wissenschaften vom Menschen und das Weib,

1750-1850 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1991), 78. 7. Doctrine, xii, xvii. 8. John Toland, Letters to Serena (London: B. Lintot, 1704), Letter 1, 11. 9, Education, 127-128; on the Stoic background, see Andrew Erskine, The Hellenistic Stoa (London: Duckworth, 1990), 56. 10. The publishing history of Poulain’s books in France and Geneva was investigated by Madeleine Alcover, Poullain de la Barre: Une aventure philosophique (Paris:

Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 1981), 21-32, on whose data I mainly rely here. 11. The 1679 Amsterdam edition of the Education des dames has a double title page: Paris: A. Dezallier, and Amsterdam: Th. Boom. Alcover, Poullain de la Barre, 25-26, doubts if this is a real Amsterdam edition, but the librarian of the Amsterdam University Library, who examined the book, is convinced that it is an authentic Boom publication. 12. In the 1690 edition, the Dissertation ou discours pour servir de troisiéme partie au Livre de Pégalité des deux sexes, et de réponse aux authoritez de ?Ecriture Sainte, qu’on rapporte dans la seconde partie du Traitté de Excellence des hommes, contre Pégalité des

deux sexes, par le Sr. F. P. de la Barre, is a separate part; this “Dissertation” is in fact the long preface to the earlier editions of the Excellence; in the 1692 edition the Excellence without its preface is followed by the “Dissertation,” bound in one volume. 13. Alcover, Poullain de la Barre, 31. 14. See Katalog der Leipziger Michaelismesse (und Frankfurter Herbstmesse), 1679, Microfiche MESS-CAT, 790. 15. ‘Translated by A. L. (London: N. Brooks, 1677). 16. Excellence, 4.

17. See Francois Moureau, “Autour du mythe de la femme: Une réfutation inconnue de Poullain de la Barre,” Cahiers de Littérature du XVIIe Siécle (University

of ‘Ioulouse-Le Mirail), 2 (1980), 89-94; Marie Louise Stock, “Poullain de la Barre: A Seventeenth-Century Feminist” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1961), 190, mentions the same title, attributing it to a certain Bocquel and dating it 1740. 18. Excellence, 118.

19. D. I. B. Decrues, Les Entretiens de Théandre et d’Isménie sur un ancien et fameux differend (Paris: R. Pepie, 1687), preface.

348 Notes to Pages 278-281 20. Journal des Scavans, 8 April 1675. 21. Fournal des Scavans, 16 March 1676. 22. Giornale de’ Letterati, 8 (1675) and 9 and 10 (1676). See Jean-Michel Gardair, Le “Giornale de’ Letterati” de Rome, 1668-1681 (Florence: Olschki, 1984), 360. 23. Pierre Bayle, Nouvelles de la République des lettres, October 1685, in Oeuvres diverses, vol. 1 (Hildesheim: Georg Olma, 1964), 397; idem, Dictionnaire historique et critique, 5th ed., vol. 3 (Amsterdam: Des Maizeaux, 1740), 344-345, note B (the note is from the Ist, 1697, edition). 24. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 179.

25. Mercure Galant, September 1678, 150-151. See Patricia H. Labalme, “Women’s Roles in Early Modern Venice: An Exceptional Case,” in Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past, ed. Labalme (New York: New York University Press, 1980), 129-152; Bruno Neveu, “Doctrix et Magistra,” in Femmes savantes, savoirs des femmes: Du crépuscule de la Renaissance a Paube des Lumieres, ed.

Colette Nativel (Geneva: Droz, 1999), 27-37. On the dissemination of the Mercure Galant, see Siep Stuurman, “Literary Feminism in Seventeenth-Century Southern France: The Case of Antoinette de Salvan de Saliez,” Journal of Modern History, 71 (1999), 26-27. 26. Charles Guyonnet de Vertron, Seconde Partie de la Pandore ou la suite des femmes illustres du siécle de Louis le Grand (Paris: C. Mazuel, 1698), unpaginated: “Noms de quelques celébres auteurs qui ont traité de l’Excellence des Sexes.” The list contains nineteen names. 27. E.g., [Gabrielle Suchon], Traité de la morale et de la politique, par G. S. Aristophile (Lyon: B. Vignieu, 1693), general preface; part 1: 67, 68, 137; part 3: 103 (this is not a complete list of Suchon’s references to Poulain’s work). 28. Gabrielle Suchon, Du célibat volontaire, ou la vie sans engagement (1700), ed. Séverine Auffret (Paris: Indigo & Coté Femmes, 1994), 92, reworks Poulain’s observations about the “first age of the world” in the Egalité.

29. Bernard Magné, “Le Féminisme de Poullain de la Barre” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Toulouse, 1964), 360-361. 30. See Monica Bolufer, Mujeres e illustracion: La construccion de la feminidad en la Espana del siglo XVIII (Valencia: Estudios Universitarios, 1998), 37.

31. Magné, “Le Féminisme de Poullain,” 361; Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 188; on Lambert, see Chapter 3 above. 32. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 184-185. 33. See Francois Poullain de la Barre, The Woman as Good as the Man, or, The Equality of Both Sexes, translated by A. L., ed. Gerald M. MacLean (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), 14-20, 26-45. 34. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 179-181. 35. Hilda L. Smith, Reason’s Disciples: Seventeenth-Century English Feminists (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 144-145, 192-193. 36. An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, written by a Lady, 4th ed. (London: S.

Butler, 1721), 10-11, 18-20; cited in Marie Mulvey Roberts and ‘Tamae Mizuta, eds., The Pioneers: Early Feminists (London: Routledge- Thoemess, 1993). See Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London: Penguin, 2000), 323. 37. Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 72, 482, n. 36. 38. [Mary Astell], A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of Their

Notes to Pages 281-253 349 True and Greatest Interest, by a Lover of Her Sex, Part I, 4th ed. (London: R. Wilkins, 1701), 27-28, 47-49, 51; cited in Roberts and Mizuta, The Pioneers. 39. Toland, Letters to Serena, preface, sec. 5, unpaginated.

40. See Estelle Cohen, “‘What the Women at All Times Would Laugh Av: Redefining Equality and Difference, circa 1660-1760,” Osiris, 2d ser., 12 (1997), 121-122, n. 2. 41. Porter, Enlightenment, 331. 42. See Ruth Perry, “Radical Doubt and the Liberation of Women,” Fighteenth-Century Studies, 18 (1984-1985), 472-493.

43. See the list of publications in Maité Albistur and Daniel Armogathe, Fiistotre de féminisme francais (Paris: Des Femmes, 1978), 185-186. 44. Anne-Thérése de Lambert, Réflexions nouvelles sur les femmes (1727), ed. Milagros Palma (Paris: Coté Femmes, 1989), 40. 45. See Camille Garnier, “‘La Femme n’est pas inférieure a l’homme’ (1750): Oeuvre de Madeleine Darsant de Puisieux ou simple traduction frang¢aise,” Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France, 87 (1987), 709-713. Puisieux says that she trans-

lated his book from an English original, and the book gives London as place of publication. In 1751 another version was published, with the title Le Triomphe des dames, traduit de ’anglois de Miledi P. (London, 1751).

46. Magné, “Le Féminisme de Poullain,” 366-373. 47. Albistur and Armogathe, Histoire, 186-187. 48. See Woman Not Inferior to Man: A Short and Modest Vindication of the Natural Right of the Fair-Sex to a Perfect Equality of Power, Dignity, and Esteem, with the Men, by Sophia, A Person of Quality (London: John Hawkins, 1739), 13, 23, 42-43, 49-51, 53; Woman’s Superior Excellence over Man, by Sophia, A Person of Quality

(London: John Hawkins, 1740), 12-13, 52-53, 81, 97. Alice Browne, The Eighteenth-Century Feminist Mind (Brighton: Harvester, 1987), 123, judges these tracts

to be not entirely serious because of their light tone; I think, however, that “Sophia’s” rhetorical strategy is quite effective, attacking the male “wits” (whom she nicely dissects as an amphibious species between the learned and the vulgar) with their own literary weapons. 49. See Cohen, “‘What the Women at All Times Would Laugh At,’” 137. 50. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 196. 51. Magné, “Le Féminisme de Poullain,” 373. 52. Louis Moréri, Le Grand Dictionnaire historique (Paris: Libraires Associés, 1759), 526; Chr. Gottlieb J6cher, Allgemeines Gelehrten Lexicon, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1750), 802. 53. Recherches sur les prérogatives des dames chez les Gaulots, sur Les cours d'amour,

par M. le Président de Académie d’Amiens (Paris: Nyon, 1787), 95 ff., n. 1: “Des ouvrages sur l’égalité des deux sexes.”

54. On the political context, see Gary Kates, ““The Powers of Husband and Wife Must Be Equal and Separate’: The Cercle Social and the Rights of Women, 1790-91,” in Women and Politics in the Age of the Democratic Revolution, ed. Harriet

B. Applewhite and Darline G. Levy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 163-180. 55. “Vues législatives pour les femmes: Adressées a l’Assemblée Nationale par Mlle Jodin, fille d’un Citoyen de Genéve,” in 1789: Cahiers de doléances des femmes, ed. Madeleine Rebérioux and Paule-Marie Duhet (Paris: Des Femmes, 1989), 135. 56. “Un sexe impérieux qui se surprenant, au réveil de la nature, plus fort que

350 Notes to Pages 283-285 la compagne qu’elle lui donna dans sa bonté, a pensé que la supériorité lui appertenoit en tout” (“Vues législatives,” 136); “Les hommes remarquant qu’ils estoient les plus robustes, et que dans le rapport du Sexe ils avoient quelqu’avantage de corps, se figurerent qu il leur appartenoit en tout” (Egalité, 21). 57. See Felicia Gordon and P. N. Furbank, Marie Madeleine Fodin, 1741-1790 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001).

58. Gordon and Furbank, Jodin, 162-163, wonder about her combining materialist and dualist arguments for the equality of the sexes; in this, however, she may also have followed Poulain (see Chapter 3 above). 59. “Francois Louis Jamet,” in Dictionnaire de biographie francaise, vol. 104 (Paris: Letouzey & Ané, 1990), 396-397. 60. Magné, “Le Féminisme de Poullain,” 379, gives part of this quotation; the full text is given by Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 202; see also Alcover, Poullain de la Barre, 24.

61. Bernard Magné, “Une source de la lettre persane XX XVII? ‘Légalité des deux sexes’ de Poullain de la Barre,” Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France, 68 (1968), 407-414; Ellen McNiven Hine, “Che Woman Question in EighteenthCentury French Literature: The Influence of Francois Poulain de la Barre,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 116 (1973), 65-79. 62. Montesquieu, Lettres persanes (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), 117 (letter 38). 63. See Pauline Kra, “Montesquieu and Women,” in French Women and the Age

of Enlightenment, ed. Samia I. Spencer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 272-284. 64. John Locke, First Treatise, in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (New York: Mentor Books, 1965), 207-208 (chap. 5, sec. 44). 65. Excellence, 28. 66. Laslett, introduction to Locke, Two Treatises, 64. 67. See Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 123-127.

68. See John Lough, “Locke’s Reading during His Stay in France,” The Library, 5th ser., 8 (1953), 229-258; John Harrison and Peter Laslett, eds., The Library of Fobn Locke (Oxtord: Clarendon Press, 1971); Gabriel Bonno, Les Relations intellectuelles de fobn Locke avec la France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955).

69. See Richard N. Schwab, “The Extent of the Chevalier de Jaucourt’s Contribution to Diderot’s Encyclopédie,” Modern Language Notes, 72 (1957), 507-508. 70. [Louis de Jaucourt], “Femme (Droit nat.),” in Encyclopédie, 3d ed., 36 vols.

(Geneva, 1778-79), 15: 954-956. Jaucourt’s entry “Femme en couche” (ibid., 969-

974) is also quite sympathetic to women. He also drafted the entry on paternal power, where he declares: “Quoique ce mot pouvoir paternel semble constituer tout le pouvoir sur les enfans dans la personne des péres, cependant si nous consultons la raison, nous trouverons que les méres ont un droit & un pouvoir égal a celui des péres”; see “Pouvoir paternel (Droit natur. & civ.),” ibid., 27: 194-195. Elsewhere, however, Jaucourt routinely observes that women are more prone to prejudice than men; see “Préjugé,” ibid., 248-250. Finally, he says nothing about the subjection of women in the entry “Egalité naturelle,” ibid., 11: 963-964. See further ‘Terry Smiley Dock, “The Encyclopedists’ Woman,” in Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History (Lawrence: University

Notes to Pages 286-259 351 of Kansas, 1984), 255-263; Sarah Ellen Procious Malueg, “Women and the Encyclopédie,” in Spencer, French Women and the Age of Enlightenment, 259-271. 71. Jean Haechler, L’Encyclopédie de Diderot et de... Faucourt: Essai biographique

sur le chévalier Louis de Faucourt (Paris: Champion, 1995), 33-38. According to Haechler, 39, at the college Jaucourt “established ties of friendships that would last all his life.” See also Le Livre du recteur de Académie de Genéve (1559-1878), ed. Su-

zanne Stellig-Michaud, vol. 4 (Geneva: Droz, 1975), 146-147.

72. Haechler, Jaucourt, 38-39; see also Richard N. Schwab, “Un Encyclopédiste Huguenot: Le Chévalier de Jaucourt,” Bulletin de la Société de Histoire du Protestantisme Francais, 108 (April-June 1962), 45-75; John Lough, The Encyclopédie

in Eighteenth-Century England and Other Studies (Newcastle: Oriel Press, 1970), chap. 2. 73. Alcover, Poullain de la Barre, 105-106, contends that Poulain’s original state of equality is different from Rousseau’s, and therefore discounts any influence

of the former on the latter. However, the true analogies between Poulain and Rousseau are elsewhere: Poulain, like Rousseau, conceives of greed and ambition as products of the progress of civilization; Poulain, like Rousseau, points to the fact that some men became dependent on others for their sustenance as a consequence of the “confusion” of interests and possessions. The main difference between Poulain and Rousseau is, of course, that by the time he wrote the Discourse on Inequality Rousseau no longer regarded the subjection of women as something that had to be explained. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 207-208, also points to the basic similarities between Rousseau’s and Poulain’s views of the corruption of modern civilization and indicates some textual parallels. 74. Jean Jacques Rousseau, “Sur les femmes,” in Oeuvres completes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymons, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), 1254-55. 75. See the translations of this passage in Joel Schwartz, The Sexual Politics of Fean-Facques Rousseau (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 57; and in Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (London: Virago, 1980), 121. 1

have modified their translations to arrive at a more literal rendering. 76. Rousseau, “Sur les femmes,” 1255. 77. Helena Rosenblatt, Rousseau and Geneva (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 29-34. 78. Stock, “Poullain de la Barre,” 208-209. 79. Rousseau’s Confessions, cited by Rosenblatt, Rousseau and Geneva, 39, n. 130.

80. Raymond ‘Irousson, fean-Jacques Rousseau: La marche a la gloire (Paris: Tallandier, 1988), 225.

81. See Anicet Sénéchal, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau, secrétaire de Madame Dupin, d’aprés des documents inédits, avec un inventaire des papiers Dupin dispersés en 1957 et 1958,” Annales de la Société Fean-facques Rousseau, 36 (1963-1965), 173-290. 82. Alcover, Poullain de la Barre, 106-107.

83. [Jean-Jacques Rousseau], “De l’éducation,” 14r, 17r, 20-page MS from the Dupin collection, acquired in 2002 by the Clark Library, Los Angeles. 84. Egalite, 48. 85. Jonathan IL. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), chap. 4. 86. Porter, Enlightenment, chap. 14: “Did the Mind Have a Sex?”

352 Notes to Pages 290-294 87. Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), chap. 6; Margaret C. Jacob, The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001), 22-27. 88. Some useful suggestions for such a history are found in Sylvana Tomaselli, “Reflections on the History of the Science of Woman,” History of Science, 29 (1991), 185-205; Ludmilla Jordanova, “Sex and Gender,” in Inventing Human Science, ed. Christopher Fox, Roy Porter, and Robert Wokler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 152-183. 89. Karen Often, European Feminisms, 1700-1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 27-30; see further Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex: Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991); Alice Browne, The Eighteenth Century Feminist Mind (Brighton: Harvester, 1987); Spencer, French Women and the Age of Enlightenment; Albistur and Armogathe, Histoire du féminisme francais; Honegger, Ordnung der Geschlechter; Roland Bonnel and Catherine Rubinger, eds., Femmes savantes et femmes d’esprit / Women Intellectuals of the French Eighteenth Century (New York: Peter Lang, 1994); Katherine R. Goodman, Amazons and Apprentices: Women and the German Parnassus

in the Early Enlightenment (Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 1999); Bolufer, MuJeres e illustracion. 90. See Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), chap. 5. 91. Cohen, “‘What the Women at All Times Would Laugh At,” 124. 92. Both examples are quoted in ibid., 125. 93. Ibid., 126-127. 94. See Jeftrey Merrick, “Royal Bees: The Gender Politics of the Beehive in Early Modern Europe,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 18 (1988), 7-37; Londa Schiebinger, Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Boston: Beacon, 1993). 95. Honegger, Ordnung der Geschlechter, 113-117. 96. Sylvana ‘Tomaselli, “Reflections on the History of the Science of Woman,” History of Science, 29 (1991), 185-205, esp. 190 ff. and 203-204, n. 63.

97. Bufton, De ’homme, ed. Michéle Duchet (Paris: Maspero, 1971), 133.

98. This aspect of Enlightenment thought about gender is highlighted by Liselotte Steinbriigge, The Moral Sex: Woman’s Nature in the French Enlightenment

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); see also Dorothée Sturkenboom, “Historicizing the Gender of Emotions: Changing Perceptions in Dutch Enlightenment Thought,” Journal of Social History, 34 (2000-2001), 55-75. 99. See Sarah Ellen Procious Malueg, “Women and the Encyclopédie,” 259271; Kra, “Montesquieu and Women,” 272-284; Gloria M. Russo, “Voltaire and

Women,” 285-295; Blandine L. McLaughlin, “Diderot and Women,” 296-308; and Gita May, “Rousseau’s ‘Antifeminism’ Reconsidered,” 309-317, all in Spencer, French Women and the Age of Enlightenment; Elizabeth J. Gardner, “The Philosophes and Women: Sensationalism and Sentiment,” in Woman and Society in Eighteenth-Century France, ed. Eva Jacobs et al. (London: Athlone, 1979), 19-27; Schwarz, Sexual Politics of Fean-Facques Rousseau; ‘Tyitske Akkerman, Women’s Vices, Public Benefits: Women and Commerce in the French Enlightenment (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1992).

100. On ideas and polemics about marriage in France, see the work of Sarah

Notes to Pages 295-296 353 Hanley: “Social Sites of Political Practices in France: Lawsuits, Civil Rights, and the Separation of Powers in Domestic and State Government, 1500-1800,” American Historical Review, 102 (1997), 27-52; idem, “Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France,” French Historical Studies, 16 (1989), 4-27; idem, “The Monarchic State in Early Modern France: Marital Regime Government and Male Right,” in Politics, Ideology, and the Law in Early Modern Europe, ed. Adrianna E. Bakos (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1994), 107-126; idem, “The Politics of Identity and Monarchic Governance in France: The Debate over Female Exclusion,” in Women Writers and the Early Modern Political Tradition, ed. Hilda L. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 289-304. For England: Jerome Nadelhaft, “The Englishwoman’s Sexual Civil War: Feminist Attitudes towards Men, Women, and Marriage, 16501740,” in Race, Gender, and Rank: Early Modern Ideas of Humanity, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1992), 159-183. On freemasonry, see, e.g., Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment (London: Allen and Unwin, 1981), 206-208; and idem, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), chap. 5. On salon culture, see the contrasting views of Jolanta I. Pekacz, Conservative Tradition in Pre-Revolutionary France: Parisian Salon Women (New York: Peter Lang, 1999); and Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). See also the review of Pekacz’s book by Karen Offen in European Legacy, 7 (2002), 132-134. On writing and getting published, see Elizabeth C. Goldschmidt and Dena Goodman, eds., Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995).

101. Raynal’s massive work is called a polyphonic text by Michéle Duchet, “T? Histoire des deux Indes: Sources et structure d’un texte polyphonique,” in Lectures de Raynal, ed. Hans-Jiirgen Liisebrink and Manfred ‘Tietz (Oxford: Voltaire Foun-

dation, 1991), 9-15. 102. See Outram, The Enlightenment, 83; see also Maurice Bloch and Jean H.

Bloch, “Women and the Dialectics of Nature in Eighteenth-Century French Thought,” in Nature, Culture and Gender, ed. Carol P. MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 25-41; Ludmilla J. Jordanova, “Natural Facts: Perspectives on Science and Sexuality,” ibid., 42-69. 103. See Stephen Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). 104. The Leveller texts are forever oscillating between a universalist naturalrights discourse and various restricted and concrete concepts of citizenship as well as “Ancient Constitution” arguments; see David Wootton, “The Levellers,” in Democracy: The Unfinished Fourney, 508 B.C. to A.D. 1993, ed. John Dunn (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 71-89. There is a similar tension in Locke’s political thought; see Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Gov-

ernment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). 105. See Franciscus van den Enden, Vrije Politijke Stellingen, ed. Wim Klever (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1992), 146, 148, 156, 179-180. 106. See Margaret Gullan-Whur, Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza (London:

Jonathan Cape, 1998), 294-297 (Gullan-Whur mentions Poulain, consistently misspelling his name as Boullain).

354 Notes to Pages 296-298 107. Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, rev. ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 216.

108. See Benjamin Constant, “De la liberté des anciens comparée 4 celle des modernes,” (1819), in Ecrits politiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), 589-619, esp. 593594. Just like Poulain’s concept of equality, Constant’s notion of “individual liberty” is “abstract” in that it presupposes some polity but is not necessarily tied to any specific one; it denotes the unlimited permission to engage in any sort of pursuit, to live where one chooses, to come and go as one pleases; its connection to a given polity is therefore always contingent.

109. Jacques Rohault, Entretiens sur la philosophie (Paris: Michel le Petit, 1671), 8.

Index

Abbadie, Jacques, 259 Bacon, Francis, 128 Absolutism, 16-19, 159-162; and marital Barbeyrac, Jean, 259 law, 165-166; and Poulain’s political Barbier, [Louis] le, 41, 164

thought, 175-186 Barbin, Claude, 278

Académie des orateurs, 39-43, 68-70, 79, Barrillot, Jacques, 288

101, 110, 161, 164, 191, 196-197 Bary, René, 68 Académie Francaise, 14, 37, 67, 88, 102, Basnage, Jacques, 262

191 Basnage de Bauval, Henri, 279

Addison, John, 281 Bayle, Pierre, 1, 62, 233, 236, 237, 274, 276, Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius, 59 277,279, 284 Alcover, Madeleine, 6, 26, 216, 278, 288 Bénichou, Paul, 172 Alembert, Jean le Rond d’, 252, 272 Bernier, Francois, 44, 45-46, 50, 99, 122-

Allemans, Marquis d’, 236 123, 147, 190-192, 202, 204, 292 Amazons, 54-55, 57, 61, 149, 167, 202, 203 Betts, C. J., 236

Anne of Austria, 57, 61 Biblical criticism, 12, 16; Marie de Gournay Anthropology, 187-188, 192-195 on, 57-58; Poulain on, 214-224, 263-

Arc, Jeanne d’, 57, 161 270; Saint Augustine on, 219-220; Galilei Archambault, Mademoiselle, 281—282 on, 220; Descartes on, 220; Spinoza on,

Ariew, Roger, 48 223; Richard Simon on, 224; Poulain

Aristotle/Aristotelianism, 29, 31, 44, 45, 46, (Jean Jacques) on, 245, 261; in Genevan

47, 48, 67, 93, 102, 103, 104, 105, 118, Academy, 260-262 122, 131, 147, 156, 177, 197, 247 Bodily humors, 102-105, 106-108, 111,

Arminianism, 235, 247, 249, 254 290-291

Arnauld, Antoine, 36-37, 38, 48, 128-130, Bodin, Jean, 177

133, 145, 228 Boileau, Nicolas, 45

Aronson, Nicole, 72 Bonneau, Francois, 177

Astell, Mary, 281 Bonnevaut (Bonnevaux), Madame de, 62 Atheism, 21-22, 31, 230, 231, 248, 260, 262, | Boom, Theodoor, 278

276 Bordo, Susan, 120, 323n97

Atkinson, Geoffroy, 189 Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne, 235, 236 355

356 Index Boucot, Genevieve, 26 Clément, Elisabeth Marie, 61, 64-68, 70,

Boudier de Villemert, 282 216

Bouillier, Francisque, 46 Clerc, Jacques Le, 261 Brockliss, Laurence, 30, 104-105 Clerc, Jean Le, 16, 249, 270, 274

Brunetiére, Ferdinand, 11 Clerselier, Claude, 90, 105, 146 Bruyére, Jean de la, 16, 21, 76, 135 Cohen, Estelle, 281, 282, 291

Buffet, Marguerite, 61, 67, 70, 76-77, 94 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 46, 125, 164, 185,

Buffier, Claude, 280 189

Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de, 292,293 = Compayré, Gabriel, 128

Burke, Peter, 55 Condé, Louis II de Bourbon, 161 Burlamaqui, Jean-Jacques, 259 Condorcet, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat Burnet, Thomas, 280 de, 19, 199, 293, 294 Conjectural history, 81-83, 188, 195-208,

Caffiaux, Philippe Joseph, 282 292-293 Calendrin, Bénédict, 250 Conrart, Valentin, 37, 67

Calvinism: Poulain’s conversion to, 242- Constant, Benjamin, 297

244; in Geneva, 247-249, 250-253 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 34

Campanella, Tommaso, 76 Cordemoy, Géraud de, 130, 145-146

Cappel, Louis, 37 Cornara, Elena-Lucrezia, 279

Cardel, Paul, 242 Coste, Pierre, 259 Cartesianism: and feminism, 7—10; in early Cott, Nancy, 8

Enlightenment, 13; significance for Cultural relativism, 41, 89, 187-188, 190Radical Enlightenment, 15; in Poulain’s 195 university education, 33-35; in France Cureau de la Chambre, Marin, 64, 102-103, 1660-1680, 43-49; reception by women 146, 195 and robe milieu, 68-71; egalitarian thrust

of, 87-92; dualism in, 92-100, 120-123; Dacier, Anne, 67 materialist elements in, 100-102; sexual Danechmend Khan (Mogol official), 99 difference in, 105-109; passions in, 110- Dechamps, Francois, 248

117; elitist elements in, 117-120; Decrues, D. I. B., 278 influence on pedagogy, 127-128; and Deffand, Marie de Vichy-Champrond de,

history, 187-188; and theology, 213; 272 introduction in Geneva, 246-247; Deism, 11, 15, 233, 236, 248, 250, 260, 262, condemnation of by Swiss Cantons, 248 270-271, 276

Casaubon, Isaac, 76, 251 DeJean, Joan, 14, 19, 27, 149 Castiglione, Baldassare, 55 Denis, Jean-Baptiste, 46

Cattier, Philippe, 69, 70 Descartes, René: and feminism, 8—10,

Caze, César, 286 323n97; significance for early

Caze, Jean, 286 Enlightenment, 13; “second funeral” of,

Chambier, Pierre, 259 45; studied by women, 62; egalitarianism Chapeaurouge, Jacques de, 254 in, 88-90; on dualism, 92-94, 96-100,

Chapelain, Jean, 99, 191 321nn39,46; on sexual difference, 105— Chappuzeau, Samuel, 75—76 107; on passions, 110, 113; on biblical

Chardin, Jean, 190 criticism, 220; on the nature of God, 226; Charpentier, Gervais, 67 on free will and original sin, 227-229, Chatelet, Emilie de, 291 339nn64,68; materialist elements in, Chouet, Jean-Robert, 247, 248-249, 254 32 1n44 Christina, Queen of Sweden, 146 Deshouliéres, Antoinette, 62, 67 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 29, 31-32, 69, 137, Desmarets de Saint Sorlin, Jean, 198-199

147, 162 Dewald, Jonathan, 20, 116, 171

Class (rank), 27, 88-92, 125, 171-175, 204 Dezallier, Antoine, 277

208 Dickason, Olive, 193

Classicism, 12, 17 Diderot, Denis, 157, 283, 285, 298

Index 357 Dionis, Pierre, 291 Eucharist, 213, 239-240, 242, 266-270. See

Dirois, Francois, 235 also Transubstantiation

Donneau de Visé, Jean, 123 Eve, 41, 66, 111, 121, 214-218, 227 Drake, James, 291

Drake, Judith, 281 Fabri, Honoré, 148

Dubosgq, Jacques, 61, 101 Fargue, Paul La, 260

Dunton, John, 281 Fatio, Jean Alphonse, 260 Dupin, Louise-Marie-Madeleine, 288 Fatio, Olivier, 254

Dury, Alexandre, 259 Feijoo, Benito Jeronimo, 280 Duverney, Guichard, 70 Fell, Margaret, 216 Feminism: and Enlightenment, 3-4, 19-21,

Edict of Nantes, revocation of, 6, 18, 24, 289-295; and Cartesianism, 7—10;

185, 238-241, 243, 264 definition of, 8; in Académie des orateurs, Education: rising status of in seventeenth- 40-41; in early-modern Europe, 52-53, century France, 124-126; of women in 59-60; in Christine de Pizan, 54-55; in seventeenth-century France, 126-127; Renaissance, 55—60; in mid-seventeenthCartesianism and pedagogy, 127-128; century France, 60-68; feminine virtues pleas for reform of pedagogy, 128-138; in, 62-63, 83-86; in public debates, 68Arnauld and Nicole on, 129-130; Fleury 71; backlash against, 71-76; and on, 130-133; Fénelon on, 133-134; education, 127, 158; implications for civil

Madame de Lambert on, 135-138; society, 148-150; and critique of male Poulain on, 138-158; Poulain’s ideal authority, 162-171; and anthropological curriculum, 145-148; and widening of evidence, 191-193; in biblical criticism,

opportunities for women, 148-150; 214-224; in eighteenth century, 280-289; Rousseau’s critique of Fénelon’s ideas in early writings of Rousseau, 286-289.

about the education of women, 288- See also Poulain

289 Fénelon, Francois de la Mothe de Salignac

Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia, 146 de, 18, 126, 129, 140, 147, 152, 157, 158;

Enden, Franciscus van den, 296 on education of women, 133-134; English Revolution (1640), 15, 31, 295 Rousseau’s criticism of, 288-289 Enlightenment: Poulain’s place in, 1-3; Fiesque, Gilonne-Marie-Julie d’Harcourtfeminism in, 3—4, 19-21; origins of, 11- Beuvron de, 61 15; Radical Enlightenment, 15-19, 274— Filmer, Robert, 285

277; and religion, 21-23; meaning of Fléchier, Esprit, 69-70, 127 “philosophe” in, 50; in Genevan theology, Fleury, Claude, 129, 130-133, 135, 147, 157 250-253; d’Alembert, Kant, and Poulain Fleury, Siméon, 240 on, 272-274; discourses of gender in, Flexelles, Gabriel de, 238-239

289-295; invention of, 297-298 Fontenay, de, 70 Epicurus/Epicureanism, 11, 44, 258, 259, Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de, 1, 135,

261 188, 196, 198, 260; significance for early

Equality: centrality in Poulain’s thought, 3- Enlightenment, 14-15, 71, 122-123; on 5, 16, 295-297; of the sexes, 55-68, 80— early history of humanity, 203; on

83, 94-96; and Cartesianism, 88-92; conjectural history, 210, 292 materialist arguments for, 100-102; of Forge, Jean de La, 61 male and female passions, 110-117; Forge, Louis de La, 44, 61, 90, 98, 101, 146

furthered by education, 157-158; in Fort, Louis Le, 254 natural rights philosophy, 175-177; in Foucquet, Nicolas, 28

first stage of history, 199-204; and Freemasonry, 15 theology, 223; concept of “modern Freethinking, 11, 230

equality,” 295-297 French Revolution, 1, 11, 283, 289

Estienne, Robert, 216 Fronde, 12, 16, 18, 24, 26, 32, 62, 116, 160-

Estrées, Gabriel d’, 239 162, 172, 179, 184-186

Estrées, Jean d’, 239 Furet, Francois, 18

358 Index Galen, 95, 102, 104, 122, 290 Jesuits, 24, 125, 190, 228 Galilei, Galileo, 34, 40, 220, 221, 223 Jodin, Marie Madeleine, 283

Gallatin, Ezéchiel, 262 Jones, Colin, 104-105

Gallicanism, 36 Jordan, Constance, 55

Gallois, Jean, 198, 199 Journal des Scavans, 45, 108, 118, 142, 197Gassendi, Pierre, 44, 56, 68, 74, 99, 122, 198, 278

147, 152, 156, 226, 227 Justinian, 147

Gaukroger, Stephen, 10

Gautier, Jean-Antoine, 254, 259 Kant, Immanuel, 151, 272-273

Gautier, Pierre, 254 Kelly, Joan, 52

Gay, Peter, 4 Kerkerin, Theodor, 46

Godonville, de, 69 Kircher, Athanasius, 192 Gordon, Daniel, 17-18, 180 Kirk, Linda, 252 Gouges, Olympe de, 282 Klauber, Martin, 261

Gournay, Marie Le Jars de, 55-59, 69, 70, Kors, Alan Charles, 31 94, 163

Graaf, Reinier de, 291 Laboureur, Louis le, 198, 199 Grotius, Hugo, 37, 166-167, 169, 177, 178, Lallemant, Pierre, 45

200, 224, 251, 259 Lambercier, Jean-Jacques, 288

Guedreville, Madame de, 62 Lambert, Anne-Therése de, 129, 135-138,

Guéret, Gabriel, 196 280, 281

Guillaume, Jacquette, 61, 83, 216 Lambert, Henri-Francois de, 135 Lambert, Monique-Therése de, 135

Hanley, Sarah, 163, 165 Lamoignon, Guillaume de, 46, 70

Harth, Erica, 15, 19, 120 Lancelot, Claude, 145 Hazard, Paul, 1-2, 11-12 Lanson, Gustave, 11 Herbin, Johann, 59 Laqueur, Thomas, 8, 21, 103-105, 109, Herodotus, 41, 89, 191, 195, 203 290-292 Heyd, Michael, 253, 257 Laslett, Peter, 285 Hippocrates, 95, 104, 170, 195, 202, 290 Launay, Gilles de, 70 Hobbes, Thomas, 1, 15, 68, 131, 156, 166, Launoy, Jean de, 48 198, 200, 213, 224, 226, 228, 248, 259, Learned women, 41, 52-53, 54-60, 61-71,

294; on masculine authority, 167-169; 72-77

influence on Poulain, 177-179 Lebeuf, Abbé, 284

Hommecour, Madame d’, 62 Lémery, Nicolas, 70 Honegger, Claudia, 291-292 Lesclache, Louis, 61, 68, 70, 147 Honnéteté, 6, 20, 26-28, 32, 61-63, 72-73, Levellers, 15, 185, 295-296

116, 124, 135, 186 Libertinism, 11, 56, 230-231, 234-237

Huet, Pierre Daniel, 204 Liberty of conscience, 36-37, 51, 95, 183-

Huisseau, Isaac d’, 235 184, 230-231

Huppert, George, 125 Lipsius, Justus, 177

Huygens, Christian, 45-46 Lloyd, Genevieve, 9, 120 Locke, John, 1, 122, 169, 196, 200, 226,

Israel, Jonathan, 3, 4, 15, 289 247, 248, 251, 259, 262, 269, 274, 277; on innate ideas, 150-153; on education, 157;

Jacob, Margaret, 4, 15, 119, 289 on masculine authority, 168; influence of

Jallabert, Etienne, 259 Poulain on, 283, 284-285

Jallabert, Stéphane, 259 Lougee, Carolyn, 27, 62, 72, 134 Jamet, Francois Louis, 284 Louis XIII, 26, 57 Jansenism/Jansenists, 12, 24, 28, 30, 36-37, Louis XIV, 12, 16-19, 28, 29, 32, 125, 160-

48, 129, 146, 172-175, 213, 227, 240 162, 177, 179-180, 184-185, 189, 190 Jaucourt, Louis de: influence of Poulain on, Lovell, Archibald, 280

283, 285-186 Lucretius Carus, Titus, 31, 259

Index 359 Lullin, Amadeus, 259 Offen, Karen, 8, 19, 290

Lullin, Jean Louis, 260 Ogier de Gombaud, Jean, 37

Luther, Martin, 222 Ogilby, John, 200

Okin, Susan Moller, 169

Machiavelli, Niccolo, 131, 177, 183, 233 Oksenberg Rorty, Amélie, 117-118

MacLean, Gerald, 280 Orient/orientalism, 191-193, 292-293 Maclean, Ian, 27, 60, 62, 104 Ostervald, Jean-Frédéric, 261

MacNiven Hine, Ellen, 284 Outram, Dorinda, 289

Maené, Bernard, 280, 281, 282, 284 Outresale, Madame d’, 62 Maintenon, Francoise d’Aubigné de, 134

Malebranche, Nicolas, 91, 98, 101, 156, Parisot, Jean-Patrocle, 236-237

224, 281 Parliament of Paris, 26, 27, 28, 36, 39, 43, Mandeville, Bernard, 281 46, 70, 196 Marinella, Lucrezia, 59, 279, 284 Pascal, Blaise, 7, 37, 38, 110, 130, 135, 296;

Marshall, John, 89-90 on aristocratic rank, 172-174; on political

Martin, Henri-Jean, 125 obligation, 179-180

Materialism, 15, 22, 97, 98, 99, 100-102, Passions, 102-103, 110-117

226, 258, 276 Pateman, Carole, 168

Meek, Ronald, 200 Pelagianism, 36, 93, 228 Ménage, Gilles, 67 Perdriau family (Pierre and Andrienne), Mercure Galant, 123, 279 243, 252-253 Merlat, Elie, 251 Perrault, Charles, 196 Merrick, Jeffrey, 291 Perry, Ruth, 281 Mersenne, Marin, 68, 90, 142 Petit, Pierre, 149, 202, 203, 292 Minois, Georges, 13 Peyrére, Isaac La, 16 Moliére Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 39, 63, Phillips, Henry, 30

68, 72-76, 78, 132 Philosopher/philosophe, 23, 49-51

Molino, Jean, 74 Phra Narai (king of Siam), 22 Monginot, Catherine de, 286 Piéron, Henri, 11

Montaigne, Michel de, 56, 69, 89, 135, 171, Pitassi, Maria-Cristina, 261

187, 203, 204, 233, 296 Pizan, Christine de, 54-55

Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Sécondat Placette, Jean La, 258-259 de la Bréde, 7, 195; influence of Poulain Plato, 44, 76, 92, 131, 177

on, 283-284 Pliny (the elder), 137

Montpensier, Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans Plutarch, 76 de (the Grande Mademoiselle), 61, 161- Political obligation, 175-186; and marital

162, 179, 237 law, 162-169

Moréri, Louis, 238, 241, 242, 282 Popkin, Richard, 16

Morvan de Bellegarde, 280 Porter, Roy, 289

Mothe Le Vayer, Francois de La, 56 Poulain, Nicolas, 26

Muchembled, Robert, 26 Poulain de la Barre, Francois: combines Muslims, 22, 131, 232, 234, 269 feminism and Cartesianism, 3—4; intellectual trajectory, 5—7; contrasted

Natural law, 165-169, 176-179 with Fontenelle, 14-15; and Radical Navarre, Marguerite de, 61 Enlightenment, 16; family background,

Newton, Isaac, 197 25-26; studies theology at the Sorbonne, Newtonianism, 15, 257 28-33; becomes a Cartesian, 34-35, 43— Nicole, Pierre, 48, 110, 128-130, 133, 172- 44, 47-49; frequents Académie des

173,259 orateurs, 39; self-identification as

Noblesse de robe, 26-28, 42-43; feminine philosophe, 49-51; relationship to earlier virtues in, 62; feminism, Cartesianism, feminism, 52, 83, 94-95; enters feminist

and Gassendism in, 70—7 1 debate, 77-86; Cartesian egalitarianism,

Noél, C. M. D., 280 91-92; the mind has no sex, 94-96; male

360 Index Poulain de la Barre, Francois (continued) Prieur, 69 and female brain identical, 100-102; Pufendorf, Samuel, 166, 168-169, 200, 259 minimizes bodily sexual difference, 107- Puis, Jean Du, 6, 277 108; on physiology and the passions, 111- _—_— Puisieux, Florent de, 282

113; social psychology, 113-117; on Pure, Michel de, 71-72 education, 133-143; utility of education Pythagoras, 69 of women, 143-145; advocates non-

gendered curriculum, 145-148; education Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, will enable women to enter all careers, 11, 12, 13-14, 19, 42, 188, 195-199, 210,

148-150; proto-Lockean epistemology, 297 150-157; on absolutism, 161-162, 179- Querelle des femmes, 8, 52-68 186; advocates reform of marital law, 165; | Quintillian, Marcus Fabius, 147 criticizes natural law philosophers, 169-

171; deconstruction of rank, 171-175; on Rabb, Theodore, 16-18 political obligation, 175-177; influenced Radical Enlightenment, 15-19, 274-277 by Hobbes, 177-179; on Europe and the Rambouillet, Catherine de Vivonne de, 62 Orient, 192-195; on quarrel of ancients Rang, Brita, 157 and moderns, 195-199; on conjectural Rational religion, 4-5, 21-23, 213, 230-235, history, 199-208; on social change, 208- 244, 245-271, 276, 297

210; religious trajectory, 212-214; Ravier, Antoine, 254 feminism and biblical criticism, 214-233; Ravier, Marie, 243

influenced by Spinoza, 223-224; on Raynal, Guillaume Thomas Francois, 295 nature of God, 225-226; non-Cartesian Régis, Pierre Sylvain, 169 proof of God’s existence, 226-227; omits Regius, Henricus, 151 original sin, 227-230; rational religion Renaudot, Théophraste, 40, 68 and liberty of conscience, 230-237; as Revius, Jacob, 228 village priest in northern France, 237- Reynie, Nicolas de La, 33, 161, 185 242; leaves his charge after revocation of Reynier, Gustave, 71 Edict of Nantes, 240-242; conversion to Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis de, 26,

Calvinism, 242-243; seeks refuge in 125, 183, 199 Geneva, 243-244; suspected of Richesource, Jean de Soudier de, 39-43, 68, Socinianism, 246-250; obtains tenure at 69, 70, 76, 79, 101, 110, 127, 161, 164, the collége, 253; applies for “bourgeoisie” 191, 196-197 of Geneva, 254-256; philosophical and Rilliet, Gabriel, 260 theological views of his son, 256-263; Rive, Amadeus de La, 261 treatise on biblical criticism, 263-270; Rivet, André, 58, 63 critique of transubstantiation, 267-268; Rivet, Frédéric, 157 last will, 270; defines enlightenment, 273— = Rochefoucauld, Francois de La, 76, 135,

274; reception by later feminist authors, 172, 173 277-283; still read in French Revolution, Roches, Francois de, 261 283; influence on Montesquieu, 284; on Rohault, Jacques, 34, 43, 70, 91, 146, 197,

Locke, 284-285; on Louis de Jaucourt, 298 285-286; on Rousseau, 286-289; and Rolland, 282 invention of modern equality, 295-297 Romer, Olatis, 118 Poulain de la Barre, Jean Jacques: graduates = Rosenblatt, Helena, 288 at the Geneva Academy, 245; on reason Rosso, Jeanette, 60 and revelation, 245-246; influenced by his Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 20, 199, 208, 210,

father, 246, 256; connections with 293, 294; influence of Poulain on, 283, Geneva’s intellectual vanguard, 254; 286-289; feminism in early writings of, philosophical views, 256-259; theological 286-289 views, 259-263

Prades, Jean-Pierre, 259 Sabliére, Marguerite de la, 135 Précieuses, 39, 62, 64, 71-73, 113 Saint Ambrosius, 214

Index 361 Saint Aurelius Augustine, 36, 92, 172, 214, Thévenot, Jean, 190, 192

216, 219, 223, 225 Thomas, Antoine-Léonard, 282

Saint Basil, 214 Tillotson, John, 251

Saint Clement of Alexandria, 214 Toland, John, 1, 16, 269, 274, 276, 277, 281

Saint Gregory of Nyssa, 214 Tomaselli, Sylvana, 292 Saint Paul, 57-58, 218, 219, 221-222 Transubstantiation, 7, 264, 265-270. See also

Saint Thomas Aquinas, 214, 226 Eucharist

Saladin, Jacques André, 254 Travelogues, 12, 89, 189-194 Salvan de Saliez, Antoinette de, 124 Tremblay, M. C., 254

Saracéne, Jean, 260 Tronchin, Francois, 286 Scaliger, Josephus Justus, 251 Tronchin, Louis, 250

Schiebinger, Londa, 291 Tronchin, Louis, Jr., 259, 260 Schurman, Anna Maria van, 58-59, 63, 69, Turkey/Turks, 92, 174, 192

70 ‘Turrettini, Francois, 249

Scientific revolution, 11 Turrettini, Jean-Alphonse, 249, 250, 251-

Scott, Joan, 296 252, 254, 256, 259-262, 264, 269 Scudéry, Madeleine de, 67, 73, 75, 76 Turrettini, Samuel, 260 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 76

Sénéchal, Anicet, 288 Ully, Robert d’, Viscount of Nouvion, 241

Sharp, Jane, 291 Unitarianism. See Socinianism Shelford, April, 204

Silhon, Jean, 183 Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre de, 18 Simon, Richard, 16, 38, 198, 224, 235, 248 Vaudenet, André-Robert, 250

Skepticism, 12 Verniére, Paul, 224

Smith, Hilda, 281 Vertron, Charles Guyonnet de, 62, 279 Socinianism, 7, 15, 233, 235, 247-250, 255, Viala, Alain, 27

262, 268, 269, 276 Vialart, Félix de, 158

Socrates, 88 Viguerie, Jean de, 33, 125

Somaize, Baudeau de, 72 Villault de Bellefond, Nicolas, 193-194, 201

“Sophia” treatises, 282 Voetius, Gisbertus, 151 Sorbiére, Samuel, 68, 198 Voiture, Vincent, 27

Sorbonne, 28-29, 212, 236, 238, 243, 253, Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet), 7

254 Vuischers, Anne de (Anna Roemer

Sorel, Charles, 142-143, 177 Visscher), 62 Sorell, Tom, 94

Spinoza, Baruch de, 1, 3, 5, 7, 16, 168, 213, Wacquet, Francoise, 35

220, 223, 224, 226, 248, 260, 294, 296 Wade, Ira, 12

Stensen, Niels, 46 Walsh, William, 281 Stock, Marie-Louise, 237, 238, 242, 243, Warens, Francoise-Louise de, 286 253, 280, 284 Wars of Religion, 12, 16-18, 56 Stoicism, 31, 92-93, 95, 175, 277 Werenfels, Samuel, 262

Suchon, Gabrielle, 280 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 282 Suleiman Aga (Ottoman envoy), 190 Xenophanes, 89 Tacitus, Publius Cornelius, 201

Tarabotti, Arcangela, 59 Zachary (pope), 264 Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, 190, 202-203 Zayas, Maria de, 59 Tertre, Jean-Baptiste du, 193-194, 201 Zwinglianism, 268