thousand articles that he wrote for the Encyclopédie in the few years of collaboration allotted to him before his untimely death included large numbers on commerce (five hundred or so, mostly compilations
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from earlier reference works) and even more on theology and religion, where his erudition was more fruitful. His views are difficult to summarize. He affirmed the existence of Hell, sided with the Jesuits against the Jansenists over the bull Unigenitus (in an article suppressed by Malesherbes, the book trade director), and defended the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV (in an unpublished draft of the article PACIFICATION). On the other hand, he denied rational proof of eternal punishment, opposed the Sorbonne’s condemnation of the controversial thesis by abbé de Prades (which precipitated the first government censorship of the Encyclopédie), and won the trust of d’Alembert, whose eulogy in volume 6 depicts him as a fine scholar, a mild and modest man, and an “enemy of persecution.”
FRANÇOIS QUESNAY, 1694–1774 (3 articles). The founder of the Physiocratic school of economists, Quesnay was born into a farming family in Normandy. Marrying a grocer’s daughter in 1717, he practiced as a master surgeon in Mantes from 1718 to 1734, where he became a civic leader. The Duke of Villeroy and the first surgeon to the king, La Peyronie, learned about him and brought him to Paris, making him Villeroy’s personal surgeon and heaping honors and offices on him. He became an active participant in the surgeons’ continuing attempt to enhance their status relative to the physicians. One of his patients, the Countess d’Estrades, recommended him to Madame de Pompadour, who made him a resident royal physician in 1749. From there, he became a trusted confidant at court as well as a helpful agent for Diderot, Voltaire, Marmontel, and other men of letters in their dealings with the government.
His chief importance lay in his development of the school of theory that came to be known as Physiocracy. From 1758 until about 1770, he was the acknowledged master of this school, combining the most robust free-market theorizing of the period with a resolutely non-Montesquieuan political model the school called “legal despotism.” The Physiocrats were supported by the vigorous and concerted writing and journalistic efforts of such talented figures as Pierre-Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, Pierre-Paul Le Mercier de La Rivière, abbé Nicolas Baudeau, and the Marquis de Mirabeau. Diderot himself generally supported the school through the 1760s,
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when the leading agenda item was complete freedom for the grain trade, a proposal partially adopted by the French government in 1763 and 1764. By the time of abbé Galiani’s stinging parody of the rigid dogmatism and universalism of the school in his Dialogues on the grain trade (1770), with its appeal for a more Montesquieuan flexibility in treating the different liberty-interests of different regimes, Diderot, like many others, had had second thoughts about the Physiocrats.
For the Encyclopédie, Quesnay wrote an important anonymous article, EVIDENCE, as well as two lengthy entries on economic topics, CEREALS and FERMIERS (Farmers), which were early precursors of his Physiocratic doctrine, appearing as they did a few years before the formation of the school. By the time of the government crackdown in 1759, Quesnay, who had always been cautious about his association with the Encyclopedists because of his court position, was asking d’Alembert to withdraw his manuscripts for HOMMES (Men), IMPÔTS (Taxes), and INTÉRÉT DE L’ARGENT (Interest Rates), and his collaboration ceased. But many of the articles that appeared on economic topics in the Encyclopédie bore the imprint of his influence, including Damilaville’s FIVE PERCENT TAX.
JEAN-FRANÇOIS, MARQUIS DE SAINT-LAMBERT, 1716–1803 (17 articles). The future poet was born in Nancy into a poor and obscure noble family. After a Jesuit education, he served in the infantry and for the king of Poland. Stationed at Lunéville, he became acquainted with Voltaire, fell in love with the latter’s mistress Emilie du Châtelet, and fathered a child with her. When she died in childbirth (1749), he gained notoriety and moved to Paris, where his poetry began to attract attention. Voltaire described his now-obscure Les Saisons, an idyll to rural life that urged noblemen to return to their country estates and revitalize the countryside, as “the only work in our age that will make it into posterity.” In the Seven Years’ War, he became a colonel in the French army, though an attack of paralysis led him to leave the military for good in 1758 and instead pursue a life of letters.
He was friendly with the Encyclopédie circle, including Diderot, Mme. Geoffrin, d’Holbach, Grimm, Mme. d’Epinay, and, especially, Mme. d’Houdetot, with whom he had an affair celebrated for its dignity and fidelity until his death nearly half a century later. His association with the
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Encyclopédie project began in 1756 with volume 6, and he wrote at least sixteen articles, all anonymous, most on political and philosophical subjects. His essay LUXURY, which was published as a separate tract immediately after its appearance in Diderot’s dictionary (1765), became one of the most influential statements on that popular theme before the Revolution.6
His plays and especially his highly scientific and philosophic poetry led to his selection by the Académie Française in 1770, where he became a force. His Catéchisme universel, a lengthy work on the origins and nature of human morality, won the grand prize for morale at the Institut de France in 1810. Saint-Lambert died in 1803.
ANNE-ROBERT-JACQUES TURGOT, Baron of Aulne, 1727–81 (5 articles). Turgot hailed from one of France’s oldest and most prestigious families. Born in Paris, he distinguished himself at the Sorbonne and became one of the leading protegés of the liberal controller-general Vincent de Gournay. His first publication, a translation of part of the Englishman Josiah Tucker’s Reflections on the expediency of a law for the naturalization of foreign Protestants (1755), grew out of that association. In the early 1750s he drafted a number of highly original works on the historical evolution of the human mind and on economic development among other topics, and soon acquired the reputation as a polymath genius. By 1755 he was collaborating with the Encyclopédie.
His articles, all anonymous, were few but important. His essay ETYMOLOGY is a sophisticated application of recent epistemology to the question of the origins and history of language. EXISTENCE is a searching critique of Cartesian metaphysics, and EXPANSIBILITY is a precursor of Lavoisier’s work on the chemical properties of air. He also wrote FOIRE (Fairs), on the marketplaces of old Europe. He dissociated himself from Diderot’s project in the aftermath of the controversy of 1758 that led to its temporary suppression, perhaps for a variety of reasons: a prudent regard for his government position, a concern that the enterprise was becoming dogmatic,
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and the defection of d’Alembert, who had been his main friend and contact there.
In 1761, he became provincial intendant for Limousin, where he remained for thirteen years, developing a reputation for reformist vigor and effectiveness in an undynamic province. During that period, he became the leading exponent of free trade in grain, though his relations with the Physiocratic school usually associated with that policy were cool. He also found time for some writing, including his Reflections on the formation and distribution of wealth (1766), a short tract that was one of the most far-reaching works in economic theory before Adam Smith.7 Smith himself knew and greatly respected Turgot’s work.
In 1774 he was elevated to controller-general of France, where he attempted to implement on a national scale the reforms he had reflected on, described, and attempted locally for many years. His far-reaching changes such as the abolition of the guilds and of corvée (compulsory labor) on public roads met with a backlash, and he was disgraced and forced from office nineteen months later in early 1776, after which he mainly ceased both his writing and his government service. One exception is a long 1778 letter he wrote to the English philosopher Richard Price in which he praised the new American republic as “the hope of
