The solvency of metaphysics: The debate over racial science and moral philosophy in France, 1890-1919

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Volumn 90, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 1-24

  Hecht, Jennifer Michael ^a  

^a NASSAU COMMUNITY COLLEGE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0041332147     PISSN: 00211753     EISSN: 15456994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/384239     Document Type: Review

References (113)

1. Harry Paul, "The Debate over the Bankruptcy of Science in 1895," French Historical Studies, 1968, 3:299-327.
2. Ferdinand Brunetière, "Après une visite au Vatican," Revue des Deux Mondes, 1895, 127:97-118, on p. 104.
3. Lapouge's dismissal of good and evil is quite similar to Nietzsche's, though neither seems to have read the other's work. The chief difference between them is that, ultimately, Nietzsche called for the individual to strive, inwardly, to become the "Ubermann," while Lapouge called for a dismissal of individuality in pursuit of racial group progress. At times Nietzsche seems to be advocating very Lapougian constructs, but while the philosopher's work is punctuated with brilliant insights that explode his otherwise racialist ideas, the anthroposociologist's work is punctuated with very clever wit that merely serves to further his racialist convictions.
4. See Stephen J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, 1981);
5. Robert Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France: The Medical Conception of National Decline (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984);
6. Linda Clark, Social Darwinism in France (University: Univ. Alabama Press, 1984);
7. J. Edward Chamberlin and Sander Gilman, eds., Degeneration: The Darker Side of Progress (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1985);
8. Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c. 1848-c. 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989);
9. William Schneider, Quality and Quantity: The Quest for Biological Regeneration (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990).
10. See, e.g., Léon Winiarski, "L'anthropo-sociologie," Devenir Social, 1898, 4(3):193-232;
11. Charles Fages, "L'evolution du Darwinisme sociologique," Humanité Nouvelle, 1898, 2:28-42.
12. See Lapouge's extensive collection of correspondence, "Fonds Vacher de Lapouge," housed in the Paul Valéry Library of the University of Montpellier; his government personnel files, located in the Archives Nationales de Paris, especially BB/6(II)419 and F/17/22640; and the Archives of the Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, located at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris.
13. In many of his books, Günther cited Lapouge more frequently than any other author and there were many more general borrowings. See, e.g., Hans Günther, Kleine Rassenkunde Europas (Munich, 1925);
14. Günther, Rassenkunde des Deutschen Volkes (Munich, 1923);
15. Günther, Racial Elements of European History (London, 1927). For their correspondence see Lapouge/Günther and Lapouge/A. F. DuPont (DuPont often wrote to Lapouge on Günther's behalf). Fonds Vacher de Lapouge. On Lapouge's trip to the White House see Lapouge to Madame Albertine de Lapouge, no. 068-50, 23 Sept. 1921, and [no number] 28 Sept. 1921, Fonds Vacher de Lapouge.
16. On the institute see Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy et les juifs (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1981), pp. 395, 413, 416.
17. Laval's commission is discussed in Hubert Thomas-Chevalier, Le racisme française (Nancy: Thomas, 1943), pp. xi, xix,
18. cited in George L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (Madison: Univ. Wisconsin Press, 1978), pp. 58-62.
19. Georges Vacher de Lapouge, Les sélections sociales (Paris, 1896);
20. Lapouge, L'Aryen, son role social (Paris, 1899).
21. On the history of the cephalic index see Claude Blanckaert, "L'indice céphalique et l'ethnogénie européenne: A. Retzius, P. Broca, F. Pruner-Bey (1840-1870)," Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, 1989, 1(3-4): 165-202.
22. Lapouge had many zealous disciples, but he also got help from some unexpected quarters. The poet Paul Valéry, for instance, joined Lapouge in his laboratory, helping him to measure six hundred skulls taken from an old cemetery. The young poet frequented Lapouge's anthroposociology lectures while studying law at Montpellier. Valéry later commented that he did not learn anything useful but that, "among all the things that I learned that were never useful to me, those pointless measurements were not more pointless than the others." Paul Valéry to Henri Bégouen, 1936, quoted in Henri Bégouen, "Vacher de Lapouge - Père de l'Aryenisme," Journal des Débats Politiques et Littéraires, 22 Aug. 1936, p. 3.
23. Georges Vacher de Lapouge, "Préface," in Ernst Haeckel, Le monisme, lien entre la religion et la science, trans. Lapouge (Paris, 1897), pp. 1-8.
24. Lapouge claimed to have performed the first "telegenesis," mailing a dose of human sperm from one town to another and there attaining a successful conception: Lapouge, Sélections sociales (cit. n. 7), pp. 472-473.
25. Georges Vacher de Lapouge, "L'anthropologie et la science politique," Revue d'Anthropologie, 1887, 16:136-157, on pp. 151, 142, 151.
26. Georges Vacher de Lapouge, "Souvenirs," in Georges Vacher de Lapouge: Essai de bibliographie, ed. Henri de La Haye Josselin (Paris, 1986), pp. 9-16, on p. 15.
27. On Lapouge see Guy Thuillier, "Un anarchiste positive: Georges Vacher de Lapouge," in L'idée de race dans la pensée politique française contemporaine, ed. Pierre Guiral and Emile Témime (Paris: CNRS, 1977), pp. 48-65;
28. Pierre-André Taguieff, "L'introduction de l'eugénisme en France: Du mot à l'idée," Mots, 1991, 26:23-45.
29. For an article that exhibits a decided sympathy for Lapouge and his ideas see Jean Boissel, "Georges Vacher de Lapouge: Un socialiste revolutionnaire Darwinien," Nouvelle École, 1982, 38:59-84.
30. Insofar as these essays discuss the life of Lapouge, they largely draw on two articles written at the time of his death: Bégouen, "Vacher de Lapouge" (cit. n. 8);
31. Etienne Patte, "Georges Vacher de Lapouge," Revue Générale du Centre-Ouest de la France, 1937, 46:769-789.
32. For works in English see Clark, Social Darwinism in France (cit. n. 4), pp. 143-154;
33. Schneider, Quality and Quantity (cit. n. 4), pp. 56-63;
34. Jennifer Michael Hecht, "Anthropological Utopias and Republican Morality: Political Atheism and the Mind/Body Problem in France, 1880-1914" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia Univ., 1995), Chs. 5, 6.
35. In one instance, Lapouge apparently took advantage of the fact that a revolutionary law forbidding ecclesiastic dress had never been officially revoked and arrested the first priest he saw passing in the street outside his window; see Bégouen, "Vacher de Lapouge." Lapouge's youthful republicanism is best illustrated in the supervisor's reports written about him during his period in the magistrature: Archives Nationales de Paris, BB/ 6(II)419 and F/17/22640. Indications can also be found in the personal correspondence in Fonds Vacher de Lapouge.
36. For a history of Lapouge that traces his leftist, republican origins see Hecht, "Anthropological Utopias," Ch. 5.
37. The freethinking anthropologist Brunetière quoted is André Lefèvre. It is worth repeating his extreme statement: "Religions are the purified residues of superstition. The value of a civilization is in inverse proportion to its religious fervor. All intellectual progress corresponds to a diminution of the supernatural in the world. The future is science." André Lefèvre, La religion (Paris: Reinwald, 1892), pp. 572-573,
38. cited in Brunetière, "Après une visite au Vatican" (cit. n. 2), p. 98.
39. On the anthropologists see Hecht, "Anthropological Utopias";
40. Elizabeth Williams, "The Science of Man" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana Univ., 1983);
41. Joy Harvey, "Races Specified, Evolution Transformed" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard Univ., 1983);
42. Michael Hammond, "Anthropology as a Weapon of Social Combat," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1980, 16:118-132.
43. For their antiphilosophical stance see, e.g., Lefèvre, "La philosophie devant l'anthropologie," Homme, 1884, 1:577-584;
44. René Fauvelle, "Il faut en finir avec la philosophie," Homme, ibid., 1885, 2:139-146.
45. For more on the anthropologists' programs and their role as replacements for religion see Jennifer Michael Hecht, "French Scientific Materialism and the Liturgy of Death: The Invention of a Secular Version of Catholic Last Rites (1876-1914)," French Hist. Stud., 1997, 20:703-735.
46. Lapouge, L'Aryen (cit. n. 7), pp. 509, 514. Unlike most French eugenists, who tended toward Lamarckianism, Lapouge believed that educating individuals had no place in an evolutionary program because it would have no real effect on their offspring.
47. Lapouge, L'Aryen Ibid., p. 514;
48. R. F. [no full name given], "Les sélections sociales," Revue des Revues, 1896, 23(135):375-377, on pp. 376, 377.
49. Lapouge, L'Aryen, p. 513.
50. For jokes at Lapouge's expense see, e.g., J. Rochette, "Compte rendu - Les sélections sociales," Études Religeuses, July 1897, pp. 279-281.
51. The disciple, Henri Muffang, sent all of his reviews to Lapouge for "correction" before submitting them to Durkheim. See Henri Muffang to Georges Vacher de Lapouge, A067-1 through A067-91, Fonds Vacher de Lapouge. Durkheim explains his decision to include anthroposociology when introducing the section in its first appearance: Emile Durkheim, Année Sociologique, 1896-1897, 1:519.
52. This admittedly abbreviated account of a complicated phenomenon does not address the question of how numbers came to be seen as objective and authoritative. One answer is that the Newtonian description of the world in numerical ratios was so astoundingly powerful (allowing one to predict, explain, and manipulate the physical universe) that it made quantification attractive. Another, related answer is that the complex, unsettling transition to modernity led to a desire to extend the pure truths of mathematics into the world of subjects and objects. Also, historians of statistics have described relationships between the rise of modern states and the rise of the authority of quantitative methodologies; see, e.g., Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990).
53. Theodore M. Porter's recent work, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1995), offers a new, persuasive interpretation, suggesting that the rise of quantification had to do in part with the need to share knowledge at a distance. In private or local situations knowledge of the speaker certifies the information, whereas the modern global community requires a system of detailed universal standards.
54. Léonce Manouvrier, "L'indice céphalique et la pseudo-sociologie," Revue de l'École d'Anthropologie, 1899, 9:233-259.
55. On Manouvrier's critique of Lapouge and other anthropological excesses see Jennifer Michael Hecht, "A Vigilant Anthropologist: Léonce Manouvrier and the Disappearing Numbers," J. Hist. Behav. Sci., 1997, 33(3):221-240.
56. For the two reviews see "Compte rendu - L'indice céphalique et la pseudo-sociologie," Ann. Sociol., 1899-1900, 4:143-145;
57. "Compte rendu - L'Aryen, son role social," Ann. Sociol., ibid., pp. 145-146.
58. For another approving citation of Manouvrier's essay see Gustave Rouanet, "Les théories aristocratiques devant la science," Petite Republique, 2 Jan. 1900, p. 1.
59. The relationship between Fouillée's philosophy and Bourgeois's political career has been well established. See J. E. S. Hayward, "Solidarity: The Social History of an Idea in Nineteenth-Century France," International Review of Social History, 1959, 4:261-284;
60. John A. Scott, Republican Ideas and the Liberal Tradition in France, 1870-1914 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1951);
61. Clark, Social Darwinism in France (cit. n. 4), pp. 54-57, 157-186.
62. For a discussion of Solidarism see Hayward, "The Official Philosophy of the French Third Republic: Léon Bourgeois and Solidarism," Int. Rev. Soc. Hist., 1961, 9:22-25;
63. Hayward, "Solidarity";
64. Célestin Bouglé, Le solidarism (Paris, 1907).
65. William Logue, "Sociologie et politique: Le libéralisme de Célestin Bouglé," Revue Française de Sociologie, 1979, 20:141-161;
66. Hayward, "Official Philosophy of the French Third Republic," p. 33.
67. Several studies have demonstrated that French scientists (and in some cases the English as well) held on to Lamarckianism long after Darwinian theory had replaced it elsewhere. See Yvette Conry, L'introduction du Darwinisme en France au XIXe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1974);
68. Thomas F. Glick, ed., The Comparative Reception of Darwinism (Austin: Univ. Texas Press, 1974);
69. Robert Nye, "Heredity or Milieu: The Foundations of Modern European Criminological Theory," Isis, 1976, 67:335-355;
70. Peter Bowler, Theories of Human Evolution: A Century of Debate, 1844-1944 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1986). As for the Darwinian orientation of political figures and social theorists, the works examined in this study all consistently ignore Lamarck (though in some cases he would have aided their arguments) and use the terms "Darwinism," "Darwinian," or "struggle for life" ("lutte pour la vie," "lutte pour l'existence") in their references to evolution.
71. See also Léon Bourgeois, Essai d'une philosophie de la solidarity: Conférences et discussions (Paris, 1902). This conference was attended by twenty-one prominent French philosophers, academics, lawyers, and politicians. In the discussions no one brought up Lamarck or his "inheritance of acquired characteristics." This is not to say that they discussed Darwinism in detail, either, or that they never assumed a gradual human progress that might be construed as a sort of Lamarckian improvement. My point is that the French wrote copiously about the meaning and consequences of Darwinian evolution. Our discovery of the French romance with Lamarck should not blind us to their obsession with the Darwinian "struggle."
72. Hayward, "Official Philosophy of the French Third Republic" (cit. n. 21), p. 27.
73. Alfred Fouillée, "La psychologie des peuples et l'anthropologie," Rev. Deux Mondes, 1895, 128:365-396, on p. 365. Fouillée quotes Lapouge's warning of "copious exterminations" - without attribution - on the first page of this piece. His reference to Manouvrier predated the latter's specific critique of Lapouge. Fouillée's concerns with the relationship of biology and politics were later combined with analyses of the works of the philosopher Marie-Jean Guyau, who became Fouillée's son-in-law when Fouillée married Augustine Guyau. Her work may have been the best known of the three: under the pseudonym Bruno, she was the author of the famous Le tour de France par deux enfants, which sold 7.4 million copies between its publication in 1877 and 1914. Subtitled "Devoir et patrie," it was a primer for civic and moral virtue.
74. On Guyau the philosopher see Geoffrey C. Fidler, "On Jean-Man Guyau, Immoraliste," Journal of the History of Ideas, 1994, 55(1):75-97.
75. They even exported this imagined criticism. See, e.g., Alfred Fouillée, "As Others See Us," Living Age, 1899, no. 212, pp. 67-72.
76. Alfred Fouillée, Psychologie du peuple français (Paris, 1898), pp. 281, 281-282. For the correspondence see Muffang to Lapouge; A 91-6, n.d.; and Alfred Fouillée to Lapouge, A 42-1 through A 42-3, Fonds Vacher de Lapouge.
77. Alfred Fouillée, Esquisse psychologique des peuples (Paris, 1903), pp. 529-530.
78. Célestin Bouglé, "Anthropologie et démocratie," Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1897, 5:443-461, on p. 461. Bouglé correctly named Otto Ammon as Lapouge's German counterpart and referred to other authors as "their disciples" (p. 443 and throughout).
79. Célestin Bouglé, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, Ibid., p. 457.
80. Alphonse Darlu, "Réflexions d'un philosophie sur les questions du jour: Science, morale et religion," Rev. Métaphys. Morale, 1895, 3:239-251, on pp. 249, 248.
81. On the reasons for the journal's founding see "Introduction," Rev. Métaphys. Morale, ibid., 1893, 1:1-6; see pp. 2-4 for the quotations.
82. Célestin Bouglé to Ferdinand Brunetière, n.d., Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, Manuscrit, 25033, fols. 79-80 NAF. There is a sustained discussion of "anthroposociology" in the chapter on race in Célestin Bouglé, Essais sur le régime des castes (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1908), pp. 129-156. Of Bouglé's study the historian of sociology Don Martindale writes: "More than any other single study, this essay laid the basis for the modern theory of caste."
83. Don Martindale, The Nature and Types of Sociological Theory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), p. 265.
84. Célestin Bouglé, La démocratie devant la science (Paris, 1904), pp. 18, 288, 301.
85. Célestin Bouglé, La démocratie devant la science Ibid., pp. 302, 303.
86. Célestin Bouglé, La démocratie devant la science Ibid., p. 288.
87. René Worms, "Jean Finot, sociologue," Revue Mondiale, 1922, pp. 228-232, on p. 229. The only figure Worms mentions here is Gobineau, but he speaks at length about Finot's attack on the cephalic index. La Revue des Revues was later called La Revue and then La Revue Mondiale. Finot wrote many of the journal's articles.
88. According to his son, in the few years before he became a French citizen he used ten different pseudonyms in order to write freely: Jean-Louis Finot, "Mon père," Rev. Mond., 1922, pp. 143-150. For Finot's correspondence with these figures see Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, Manuscrit, 24494 (1) doc. 264, microfilm 2278/NAF 24519, fols. 174-180, NAF 24530, fols. 380-382, NAF 25038, fols. 292-293.
89. Jean Finot, Les préjugé des races (Paris, 1905), p. 103;
90. Finot, Préjugés et problème des sexes (Paris: Alcan, 1912).
91. Jean Finot, Race Prejudice, trans. Florence Wade-Evans (New York, 1906), p. vi.
92. Finot, Préjugé des races (cit. n. 37), pp. 505, 27, 356-357.
93. Finot, Préjugé des races Ibid., pp. 491, 312, 501, 109, 489-490, 345.
94. Henri Bergson, "Rapport sur 'Progrès et bonheur' de J. Finot," in Bergson, Mélanges, ed. André Robinet (Paris: Presses Univ. France, 1972), pp. 1090-1094, on p. 1093;
95. Jean Finot, The Science of Happiness, trans. Mary Stafford (New York: Putnams, 1914), pp. 20-21. According to Finot's son, this book was translated into fifteen languages.
96. Finot, Science of Happiness, trans. Stafford, pp: 234-240, 242, 244, 242, 246, 248, 257, 331-333.
97. Lapouge to Madison Grant, A 068-80, 23 Mar. 1919, Fonds Vacher de Lapouge. For the books see Georges Vacher de Lapouge, Race et milieu social (Paris: Rivière, 1909), pp. xi, xx;
98. Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (New York: Scribners, 1916).
99. George Sarton, "Paul, Jules, and Marie Tannery (with a note on Grégoire Wyrouboff)," Isis, 1947, 38:33-51;
100. for more on Tannery see René Taton, "Paul Tannery," in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulston Gillispie, Vol. 13 (New York: Scribners, 1976), pp. 251-256.
101. Paul, "Debate over the Bankruptcy of Science" (cit. n. 1), pp. 325-326;
102. see also Paul's study of the origins of twentieth-century history of science through an analysis of the Collège de France chair: Harry Paul, "Scholarship and Ideology: The Chair of the General History of Science at the Collège de France, 1892-1913," Isis, 1976, 67:376-387. There are several recent contributions to the history of the science and religion debates in the Third Republic.
103. Fritz Ringer has explored the question in terms of educational practice and ideology; see Fields of Knowledge: French Academic Culture in Comparative Perspective, 1890-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), esp. pp. 207-225.
104. Also important is Herman Lebovics, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900-1945 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1992). Chapter 1 considers the anthropologist and politician Louis Marin in a study of the activity and eventual decline of the "old right" vision of France in the twentieth century (pp. 12-50).
105. Chaumié was part of the extremely anticlerical Combes government of 1902-1905. See Sarton, "Paul, Jules, and Marie Tannery";
106. Paul, "Debate over the Bankruptcy of Science," pp. 325-327;
107. Pierre Duhem, Paul Tannery (Montligen, 1905), p. 14.
108. On the Catholic Scientific Society of Brussels see Paul, "Debate over the Bankruptcy of Science," p. 322;
109. Antonin Eymieu, La part des croyants dans les progrès de la science au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1910).
110. Sarton, "Paul, Jules, and Marie Tannery," p. 40.
111. Paul, "Debate over the Bankruptcy of Science," corrects Sarton's exaggerated claim that only Tannery was suited for the chair. Still, it is widely agreed that Tannery was much better qualified than Wyrouboff. In 1867 Wyrouboff founded Philosophie Positive with Émile Littré, and for seventeen years he edited and wrote for this journal. His scientific work was in the field of crystallography and physicochemistry.
112. Manouvrier twice applied for posts at the Collège de France - the first application was for the chair in philosophy. His first essay of application is in the Collège de France Archives, G.IV.f - 45F (1899), "Considèrations présentées par M. L. Manouvrier à l'appui de sa candidature." The quotations are from this application. For his second effort see G.IV.g - 13Q (1903), "Considèrations présentées par M. L. Manouvrier à l'appui de sa candidature pour la Chaire d'Histoire générale des Sciences." Paul sees Manouvrier as a Comtian positivist and argues that the professors rejected him for the permanent position because of this; see the subsection "Wyrouboff and Manouvrier: A Triumph for Positivism and Science," pp. 384-390, in "Debate over the Bankruptcy of Science." Though Paul takes Manouvrier at his word regarding his work in debunking anthropological racism, sexism, etc., he does not seem to be aware of the grand scale of Manouvrier's war against bad science.
113. See Hecht, "Vigilant Anthropologist" (cit. n. 19).