The Journal d’instruction sociale is a prospectus and opening address for a weekly periodical of the French Revolution, written by Condorcet together with Sieyès and Duhamel. Published in Paris in 1793, it sets out a plan for instructing citizens in their rights, duties, and interests at the very moment when all of them were being called to discuss and defend those things. What survives as its opening is less a treatise than a program: a declaration of what a journal of public instruction should be, whom it should serve, and what it must fight against.
Three Sciences of the Social Order
The prospectus begins from a distinction. Men stand in certain relations to one another simply as men, and in others as members of a political society; from these relations their duties arise. A single science has for its object the knowledge of the rights, duties, and interests of man in the state of society, but the authors divide it into three branches, which they name natural right, political right, and public economy.
Each science, they argue, has its practical side. From each flows an art whose rules follow from the science’s principles, an art that combines and chooses the means of executing surely what the principles have shown to be true, just, and useful. Morality, the art of conducting oneself well, derives from natural right; the social art derives from political right; and the art of administering rests on the science of public economy.
The Quarrel with Words
The journal’s stated purpose is to give every citizen precise notions, or at least just ones, and true theories. Its editors locate a principal cause of the slow progress of moral and political science in the imperfection of the language those sciences employ. They are built out of words taken from common usage, words with a vague and uncertain sense, and it is hard to bring men to give them the fixed meaning they ought to have—while inventing technical terms for simple and common ideas seems barbarous.
Hence the emphasis on analysis. The editors promise an analysis of words, not definitions. A definition, where it is possible at all, is only the result of an analysis that it presupposes and recalls; before a word can be attached to a complex idea, that idea must be developed and circumscribed, and only analysis can do this. The analysis of political language therefore becomes one of the journal’s chief objects, joined to the development of the principles of the three sciences and to the means derived from them for guiding conduct and for organizing or administering a society.
Instruction for Every Mind
The journal does not confine itself to an absolutely methodical order. A complete treatise presented serially would forfeit the advantage of a periodical—that of occupying readers with the subjects each moment makes most urgent, and of enlightening them on what they most need to know. So the editors will also discuss unsettled questions, if only to inspire a salutary doubt and prevent precipitate decisions, and they will expose and combat opinions that carry general influence or threaten to acquire a dangerous importance. Duhamel takes charge of the language of the moral and political sciences, of views on the method of teaching them and on the art of discussion; Condorcet and Sieyès develop the principles of natural and political right and of social economy. The editors expect to disagree among themselves on some points, and they treat this as a virtue rather than a flaw: the journal exists to enlighten, not to teach what one believes to be false.
This section on instructing others and on self-instruction, the authors argue, suits all men and lies within reach of all minds. It will serve in education and will help expose the difference of language which, among men called to equal rights, produces a real inequality. Elsewhere, when developing principles, the editors will go high enough to make themselves understood, binding themselves to supply whatever knowledge the discussions require. The journal is thus destined for anyone with some habit of reflecting and exercising reason: within reach of a child of twelve whose instruction has not been neglected, and of the least enlightened men, provided they can give the necessary attention. It spares readers preliminary studies they lack the time and leisure to undertake, and it presents important questions freed from the embarrassments of old and new passions.
Simple men, the text observes, generally have just minds; their good sense grasps or disentangles the truth, but habit has given them prejudices harder to uproot the narrower their ideas. They are easily carried away by artful sophisms and cannot easily find answers, or even guess that a sophism exists. Combating the prejudices that corrupt the reason of part of the people, and forearming them against the sophisms of their hypocritical protectors, prevents their aberrations and the evils that follow. Philosophical works, the editors add, aim either at the progress or at the propagation of enlightenment; the first are written for the already instructed, while the second must be brought within reach of the greatest number—labor whose difficulty is real and whose glory is small. Happily, in matters that touch public happiness, the pleasure of having been useful outweighs glory. When errors could corrupt the whole mass of a great people and expose it to treasons, all personal considerations must disappear before those great interests. Truth does good only by doing the good of all.
Charlatans in Politics
The address that follows turns to the enemy. Only one kind of foe need be fought here: the charlatan in politics. Such men are not Caesars or Cromwells; in this genre a mediocre talent, and often mere audacity, suffices to do great harm. They all follow the same course—each wishes to be the people’s favorite in order to become its tyrant. They slander virtue, even to making it appear persecuted; they discourage talents that will not debase themselves in their service; they want enlightenment held back, because they can conquer only by fighting in darkness. Showing the people the snares set for them is therefore one of the first duties of writers devoted to truth and the fatherland. Tyranny, the text insists, has never been established or maintained except by error, and by the lack of means or courage among the friends of liberty to undeceive the people.
The writers refuse credit for embracing or avoiding metaphysics, for esteeming or disdaining philosophy. Reason is one and has only one language; it may take different names according to the objects it is applied to, but it changes neither its nature nor its method. The journal’s goal is not to give opinions but to put readers in a position to form their own. The editors do not ask that men think as they do; they want them to learn to think for themselves. What they teach is not a political catechism but discussions submitted to the judgment of those they concern.
The Enterprise and Its Purpose
The practical arrangements are plain: two sheets in octavo, appearing from the first of June and then every Saturday; ten livres a year in Paris, twelve livres ten sols in the departments, postage paid; subscriptions by the half-year or the year, taken at Citizen Metoyen’s office in the rue du Petit-Musc and at booksellers and post offices throughout the departments.
The entrepreneur of the journal then addresses his fellow citizens directly. The profit of the enterprise is destined to maintain at the National Institution of the Deaf-Mutes a greater number of pupils than the hundredth part of those the Republic contains, the limit set by the establishment’s foundation. Benevolence is not the only motive; love of the public good has been at least as powerful. The authors, distinguishing themselves from the charlatan, have confined themselves to the pure and simple exposition of their plans and views. Fixing the uncertain meaning of words in moral and political science forms a just spirit and shelters men from the humor and fanaticism that make men wretched and destroy social order. Giving men the means to discuss useful questions returns to the true public interest citizens whom ignorance and incapacity would otherwise deliver to those who wish to seduce them. A method for directing reflection toward necessary knowledge gives the means to perfect reason and to discover the true sources of industry. The principles of natural right, the basis of morals and of civil and penal law, will form men capable of serving as jurors; the principles of political right, on which citizens’ rights rest and which teach duties toward society, are the foundation of public morals and the school of civic virtues. Public economy—population, the products of the soil, contributions, arts, and commerce—brings the science of government within reach and secures liberty and equality by making citizens capable of watching over the general interest and filling public functions. Here, the address concludes, is true social instruction, which the fanaticism or indifference of legislators has refused for three years—reason enough for a good citizen to run the risks of such an enterprise, even setting aside the authors’ talents.
Reason, Equality, and the Fight Against Error
The ideas that hold the prospectus together are few and tightly linked. First, that moral and political science is one science, divided for convenience into natural right, political right, and public economy, and that each branch generates an art of practice. Second, that the chief obstacle to this science is linguistic: vague words breed vague thought, and only analysis—not definition—can fix meaning. Third, that instruction is a matter of equality. The difference of language among men called to equal rights produces a real inequality, and a journal written plainly enough for a child of twelve is an instrument of political justice. Fourth, that error is the foundation of tyranny. The charlatan rules by darkness, and the writer’s task is to show the people the snares, not to hand them a catechism. The journal’s refusal to dictate opinions, its willingness to print its own editors’ disagreements, follows from this: reason is one, and its authority cannot be borrowed.
A Program for Public Instruction
The Journal d’instruction sociale belongs to the short, intense period when the French Revolution was trying to educate the citizens it had created. Its prospectus is a compact statement of Condorcet’s confidence that reason, once given a plain and exact language, can be placed within reach of everyone, and that a free society depends on citizens able to judge for themselves rather than follow those who flatter them. The plan for a weekly paper never became the sustained publication its authors imagined, but the prospectus preserves the design intact: three sciences, one method of analysis, an audience of all minds, and an unyielding opposition to the charlatans who prosper in the dark.
