“Everything degenerates in the hands of man.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile, ou de l’Education177
“Led astray by ambition, men trample upon naïveté… Lovely child! It is only at your side that I regain the simplicity of the Golden Age.”
Louis François Jauffret, Les Charmes de l’enfance178
Charles Baudelaire once declared that “genius is simply childhood recovered at will.”179 Such a gentle and deft uncovering of the memories, experiences, and perceptions of yesteryear, both on a personal and collective level, like the careful exposure of the yellowing pages of a dusty, attic-dwelling book to the bright daylight beyond, goes some way to describe the way in which childhood as a state and concept was being rediscovered and reconsidered in French culture and society from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. Whilst debate concerning what
constitutes and defines a child and the state of childhood has existed in some capacity for centuries, and pervades much of the discourse in Chapter One, it was the cataclysmic clash between Enlightenment doctrine and Romantic thought which is generally considered to have marked a shift in not only concepts of children and childhood, but in the degree of interest and importance afforded to them: “the child
177 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile, or on Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 37.
178 Louis François Jauffret, Les Charmes de l’enfance, et les Plaisirs de l’amour maternel, Volume 1 (Paris : 1801), 2-8. (Translations for this text are all derived from Adriana S. Benzaquén, “Childhood, Identity and Human Science in the Enlightenment”, History Workshop Journal, No. 57 (2004): 34-57).
179 Charles Baudelaire quoted in John House, “Curiosité” in Impressions of French Modernity: Art and Literature in France 1850-1900, ed. Richard Hobbs, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 33.
86 as an object of scientific knowledge […] emerged just as the Romantics were
discovering in the child the key to adult identity.”180
Prior to this, not only were children relegated to the sub-category of man on a smaller scale, bereft of personhood and socio-cultural significance, but their mistreatment was intensified by their damning characterisation at the hands of the almighty establishment of the Church. The extremeness of religious belief in this period, that is to say, the years encompassing the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, prescribed popular assertions stating that “children were not only conceived in sin, but born in utter corruption.”181 Accordingly, early childhood became the designated
“period when the child’s innate evilness had to be pushed out of his being” through a harsh regime typified by stern moral instruction and threats of Hellish suffering for the disobedient.182183 Such was the distaste for children and childhood before the shift of the eighteenth century, that nostalgia, or anything resembling persistent sentimentality for one’s years gone by, was declared by seventeenth-century Swiss doctor Johannes Hoffer to be a physical disease treatable with leeches, purges, and opium.184 This proves testament to both this era’s reticence to matters of the mind and emotional sphere, incidentally that which is often considered synonymous with the child’s world, as well as the extent to which Enlightenment teaching and the subsequent Romantic rebuke marked a dramatic shift in both intellectual and popular thought.
180 Adriana S. Benzaquén, “Childhood, Identity and Human Science in the Enlightenment”, History Workshop Journal, No. 57 (2004), 53.
181 Gary K. Clabaugh, “Perspectives on Childhood”, Educational Horizons, Vol. 70, No. 1 (1991), 7.
182 Bette P. Goldstone, “Views of Childhood in Children’s Literature Over Time”, Language Arts, Vol. 63, No. 8 (1986), 793.
183 Humphrey Carpenter, Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children’s Literature (Allen
& Unwin: Crows Nest, 1985), 2.
184 Dennis Walder, “Remembering Rousseau: Nostalgia and the Responsibilities of the Self”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2005), 424.
87 Discourse on the newly considered significance of children and childhood in the Enlightenment period can be described as something of an entanglement of intertwining, overlapping, and clashing ideas and theories. Inspired by writing from as early as René Descartes’ 1637 treatise Discours de la Méthode (Discourse on Method), French pedagogic scholarship of this epoch was heavily punctuated by some half a dozen key thinkers and influences from France and beyond, often concurrently producing works which both challenged and consolidated the findings and theories of their fellow academics. Prominent French physician and writer Alphonse-Louis Leroy (1742-1816) adopted a retrospective consideration of the period of the Enlightenment and its role in contemporary understandings of childhood, culminating in his desire to assemble “a science of childhood.”185
In her 2004 article ‘Childhood, Identity and Human Science in the
Enlightenment’, Adriana Benzaquén deemed the Enlightenment to have been largely overlooked in terms of the significance of its scholarship on the study of childhood.
Whilst acknowledging the difficulties inherent to pedagogic research, for “given that adults do not recall the origin of their ideas and knowledge, nor can they directly observe the contents of children’s minds, [we must consider] to what extent the scientific study of children [is/was] empirically possible”, Benzaquén nevertheless draws attention to what can be understood as the coinciding of the arrival of the child as a focus of scientific study and the emergence of ground-breaking notions of selfhood and identity: “Childhood is entangled with the adult’s present identity because the interiorised self, the sense of a self within, is perceived as internalised
185 Alphonse-Louis Leroy quoted in Benzaquén, “Childhood”, 35.
88 memory of the past, the outcome of a personal history.”186 In this sense, this era’s apparent ‘discovery of childhood’ is perhaps as much a reference to “the child who waited to be discovered within each adult as an aspect of self […] fully
consummated with the introspective work of memory in the age of Enlightenment”
as it was a realignment of what it meant to be a child in real time based upon
observation and representation in situ.187 Accordingly, this gives credence to Leroy’s assertion in 1803 that “it is therefore the child who teaches man to know himself.”188
This chapter comprises an exploration of this particular notion, analysing the emerging discovery of childhood from out of the shadows, as a simultaneous
embodiment of self and ‘other’, as ultimately a means to self-discovery, against the backdrop of the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. In the first instance, this begins with an investigation into the scholarship of various prominent academics of the eighteenth century, excavating from their literature the sometimes extensive though often forgotten or overshadowed study of children and childhood. The bulk of the chapter is then dedicated to reviewing its relationship alongside the work of the most widely-recognised French scholar of pedagogy of the Enlightenment era, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), analysing his complex and often contradictory philosophy, chiefly that found in his seminal work Émile, ou De l’éducation (Emile, or On Education) (1762), considering the origins behind, effects of, and reaction to his extensive contribution to concepts and practices relating to children and
childhood.
186 Benzaquén, “Childhood”, 36-38.
187 Larry Wolff, “When I Imagine a Child: The Idea of Childhood and the Philosophy of Memory in the Enlightenment”, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4 (1998), 381.
188 Alphonse-Louis Leroy, Médicine Maternelle, ou l’art d’élever et de conserver les enfants (Paris, 1803), xxii.
89 With much Enlightenment philosophy arguably stemming from Cartesian seeds, it is interesting to note Descartes' inherent regret towards the period of childhood, remarking that because “we were all of us children before we were men, for a long time governed by our appetites and our tutors, who often contradicted each another, [our judgements could never be] as pure or as firm as they would have been if we had had the full use of our reason from the moment we were born.”189 Whilst such views are reflected, if not regurgitated, by some of Descartes’
contemporaries (Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, for example), it is more his advocacy of unyielding rationalism, his unrelenting method of doubt, and his development of the dualistic doctrine, more broadly defined by an overall scepticism, which proved especially influential to his academic descendants.
John Locke’s (1632-1704) stringent spearheading of empiricism was in the first instance inspired by Cartesian rationalism, and in turn counselled his rejection of the notion of harbouring innate truths, in favour of embellishing the mind with observations, lessons, experiences, and perceptions. In his works An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) and Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), this was most famously denoted by his concept of the child’s mind as a blank sheet, or tabula rasa, void of character and ideas, to which we gradually add, through learning and guidance, “the inscriptions of experience.”190 In turn, Locke considered an observation thereof supportive of his claims on the superiority of empirical practices, for the study of children would open the doorway to a rationalist and evidence-based understanding of the mind overall: “Follow a child from birth and observe the alteration that time makes, and you shall find, as the
189 René Descartes, Discours de la méthode, ed. J.M. Fataud (Paris: Dessain et Tolra, 1984), 64.
190 Wolff, “Imagine a Child”, 383.
90 mind by the senses comes more and more to be furnished with ideas, it comes to be more and more awake; thinks more, the more it has matter to think on.”191 In his Treatise of Human Nature (1739), David Hume (1711-1776) expanded on strands of Locke’s work, drawing upon his assertions that memory had to be bound in past perceptions to buttress his own conclusions that personal identity was “fictitious”, based upon perceptions, experiences, and the influence of others, as opposed to originating as an innate human substance; in other words, like Locke’s tabula rasa, identity as much as knowledge remains empty or non-existent without the epitaphs of education, experience, and influence.192
Condillac’s (1714-1780) reflections are somewhat more sombre, rooted in his Cartesian belief that childhood was an impediment to rational human knowledge.
Deeming its emptiness as not only a sign of its uselessness but also evidence of its inaccessibility, Condillac was frustrated by the very existence of childhood and the infuriating obtuseness he understood it to pose in his quest for rational answers and knowledge: “We do not know how to recall the ignorance in which we were born; it is a state which leaves no traces.”193 Condillac extended Locke’s theory on the inexistence of innate ideas to the lack of innate abilities, drawing upon the symbol of the statue to denote the physical being of man thus far unanimated by senses, which could similarly be attributed to the child, a person only in shape, who simply waits for time to tick by until he can awaken to the experience of mental engagement that will only arrive, according to Condillac, in adulthood. Accordingly, in contrast to the advice of Locke and Hume, and indeed others, on the advantages of returning to and
191 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. John Yolton (London: J.M. Dent, 1993), 56.
192 David Hume quoted in Wolff, “Imagine a Child”, 379.
193 Étienne Bonnot Abbé de Condillac, Treatise on the Sensations, quoted in Wolff, “Imagine a Child”, 386.
91 observing childhood in order to locate the origins of knowledge, Condillac instead adopted a bitter “philosophical repudiation of childhood, towards the envisioning of a world altogether without children.”194
This contrasts quite dramatically with the standpoint of naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), and indeed his contemporary, educator Louis-François Jauffret (1770-1840), both of whose proximity to the burgeoning Romantic Movement (having produced scholarship in the latter decades of the eighteenth century and beyond) offers some explanation of their tendency towards a more sentimental approach. Buffon dedicated some forty years of his life to his thirty-six-volume encyclopaedic masterpiece of scientific, anthropological, and pedagogic study entitled Histoire Naturelle (Natural History) (1749-1788), which he endeavoured to make accessible to both the learned and the simply curious,
including children. Whilst Buffon’s expertise was drawn from his position as intendant of the Jardin du Roi (Royal Botanical Gardens) in Paris, a significant portion of his research was dedicated to the anatomical, physiological, and
psychological study of the child, culminating in his conclusion that children are born fragile and weak, and require constant care from parents and educators. Buffon advocated simple, country rearing in an affectionate and supportive atmosphere, remarking that the parent-child union should be strengthened, not diminished, for after all, it “is natural, because it is necessary.”195
Buffon’s favour for this “medico-pedagogic intervention” was largely supported by his establishment in his fourteenth volume, Nomenclature des Singes
194 Wolff, “Imagine a Child”, 379.
195 Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon, Histoire Naturelle (Vol. 7: Discours sur la nature des animaux), (Paris, 1753), 29.
92 (Nomenclature of Apes) (1766), of his dualistic theory of education.196 In basic terms, Buffon posited that there are two types of education in existence; individual education (common to both man and animal) and species education (unique to man).
Individual education is much slower for children than it is for animals, for the latter must learn very quickly how to be able to do most everything in order to survive, whereas human young are far less advanced at an early age and need the help of adults. In turn, such slowness in individual education allows for the gradual process of species education, affording the child time to become cultivated in a fashion inaccessible to animals. It is through such assertions that Buffon refuted the claims of Rousseau, for example, pointing out that if a child was born as wise and strong as Rousseau suggested, their individual education would be far too quick as to facilitate the species education required in order to awaken their minds.197
Significantly, Buffon’s reference here to what can be summarised as an innate animal or material principle in contrast to a decidedly spiritual and human one awakened and developed through education is as much about his moralistic outlook as it is his scientific one. Not only was he unconvinced by the staunch rationalism of Locke’s loyalty to empirical observation, firm instead in the impossibility of purely didactic research into childhood – “Have we not forgotten everything that happened in the darkness of our childhood? Do not enquiries of this nature imply presumption and temerity?” – but Buffon’s focus on the inherent weakness of the child and their consequential reliance upon care from adults pointed to a greater issue about the importance of sociability and empathy as key elements of human nature on a more general scale: “Buffon’s child is not an internalised
196 Benzaquén, “Childhood”, 53.
197 Buffon, Histoire Naturelle (Vol. 14: Nomenclature des Singes), (Paris, 1766), 33-34.
93 distillation of the adult’s past but a separate being located outside. By ‘exteriorising’
the child, Buffon emphasised the centrality of childhood from a biological or evolutionary perspective, [and] also created a moral argument based on the belief that to care for the weak and vulnerable other is what comes to define a human being.”198199 Drawing upon moralistic influences and theories relating to evolution, the biogenetic law, and even colonial issues, Buffon, befitting of his encyclopaedic roots and tendencies, establishes connections beyond the scientific sphere between the study of childhood and that of mankind and human nature as a whole.200
It is perhaps the figure of Louis-François Jauffret who best represents the growing disharmony at the turn of the nineteenth century between what was now a well-established Enlightenment following and the emerging influence of Romantic opposition thereof. This poet and educator’s life and career was characterised by a constant tension between his interest in clinical studies, and his inherent draw to sentimental writing for children. It was during the years following the Revolution that Jauffret established his affinity with the natural world, retreating to a quiet existence in the countryside where he happily observed the innocent play of seemingly care-free children. It was in this period that he wrote his four-volume collection of fables Les charmes de l’enfance, et les plaisirs de l’amour maternel (The charms of childhood and the pleasures of maternal love) (1791), whose
introduction comprised a series of ‘idylls’, defined by Jauffret as “the description of
198 Buffon, Histoire Naturelle (Vol. 3: Description du cabinet du Roi), (Paris, 1749), 363.
199 Benzaquén, “Childhood”, 43.
200 In brief terms, the biogenetic law refers to a hypothesis which posits that the development of a specific organism from embryo to birth (ontogeny) resembles the process by which the same animal’s remote ancestors evolved (photogeny). As discussed later in the chapter, this theory was developed and linked with other fields of study, such as anthropology, education, and psychology. By extension, anthropological strands of this theory were harnessed to support some race ideologies proffered by supporters of colonialism.
94 a landscape animated by the expression of a feeling.”201 These idylls, “unvarying, embodying an overriding sentiment (and sentimentality)” are typical of the extent to which “Jauffret’s literary universe was structured around the opposition between the simple innocence of childhood and the deceitful passions of men”, adopting what resonates to contemporary scholars as something of a ‘Rousseauian’ outlook, projecting “childhood, nature, sensibility and domesticity as antidotes to the turmoil of the cities and the confusing violence unleashed by revolution.”202
Continuing this theme, Jauffret organised his annual promenades à la
campagne from 1801 onwards, consisting of walks and lectures through nature spots in Paris, designed to function in tandem with his engaging youth literature to
provoke for children “the happiness that may result for man from the study of himself and the contemplation of nature.”203 These educational walks in many ways
“represented Jauffret’s most successful attempt to strike a balance between sentiment and science”, as for the most part, his literary reputation as ‘Friend of Children’ was in constant battle against his desire for scientific discovery as a founding member of the Society of Observers of Man in 1800.204 Jauffret’s science did not remove him from the realm of childhood; quite the reverse, in fact, for the motto of the Observers, ‘know thyself’, was a nod to the belief that “the study of the child was the foundation of the knowledge of man.”205 Rather, Jauffret felt divided
201 Louis-François Jauffret, Les Charmes de l’enfance, et les plaisirs de l’amour maternel, (Vol. 1) (Paris, 1801), xxx.
202 Benzaquén, “Childhood”, 45-46.
203 Robert-Marie Reboul, Louis-Françoise Jauffret: Sa Vie et ses Œuvres (Paris, 1869), 41-42. Some of the earliest books geared towards children (e.g. Orbis Pictus, 1659, the first children’s picture book, and John Newbury’s Pretty Little Pocketbook, 1744, a behavioural manual) offered stern moral and educational lessons, whereas Jauffret’s copious publications succeeded in presenting a unique balance between learning, entertaining and inspiring, thereby engaging with a young audience in a way that acknowledges their mental capacity more positively.
204 Benzaquén, “Childhood”, 51.
205 Ibid., 48.
95 by his reticence to subject children to clinical scrutiny in the pursuit of scientific answers for which he nevertheless yearned. Jauffret aborted or neglected a good many scientific projects, which could be construed as evidence of the moral
dilemma he faced between sentimentally advocating loving family relations, whilst simultaneously sanctioning the potential subordination of children’s psychological well-being in favour of the epistemological advancement of man.206 Jauffret’s frequent distractions from his clinical studies was made permanent, perhaps rather conveniently, when the Observers society continued to struggle without positive results and effectively collapsed under Napoleon’s reconstruction of the National Institute in 1803. For Jauffret, the retreat to children’s literature that this facilitated marked a relinquishment of the guilt he associated with empirical endeavours, and a return to a soft and rosy world of romanticised storybooks.
However, the persistence of the cultural mainstay that “all children’s books
However, the persistence of the cultural mainstay that “all children’s books