BRIEF PRESENTED TO M. DE MABLY
(1 manuscript)
MEMORY PRESENTED TO M. DE MABLY ON THE EDUCATION OF M. HIS SON
Description
R-49.2. Paper · 38 pp. 27.5 x 18.5 cm December 1740.
Presentation of content
The Memoir presented to M. de Mably on the education of his son is Rousseau's first writing related to his experience as an educator. In Lyon in 1740 he was given a difficult preceptorship in the family of the notable Jean Bonnot de Mably, Prévost général of the Maréchaussée de Lyon. This preceptorship runs out after a year already. Two young children with little inclination to study were entrusted to him: François-Paul-Marie Bonnot de Mably, nicknamed M. de Sainte-Marie, aged 5 and a half, and Jean-Antoine Bonnot de Mably, nicknamed M. de Condillac, aged 4 and a half years old.
The long Memoir , devoted to the first, comes from an "educational commission" and an experience of applied education: it is presented as a project and a synthesis, and its writing is located around Dec. 1740. The young tutor addresses M. de Mably to whom he announces the plan and the order of an education for his son to "form the heart, the judgment and the mind". This is not the natural education that will later be advocated in Émile . Did Rousseau really give this memoir to M. de Mably? We only know that he offered this manuscript of the Memoir to Mrs. Dupin, his employer in 1743, and that it has since been kept in the “papers of Mrs. Dupin”. It was first published in 1884 in Paris by G. de Villeneuve-Guibert in Le portfolio de Madame Dupin .
The Bodmer Foundation manuscript is the only one in existence. A much shorter Educational Project, of clearer construction and of unknown date, had first been found among Rousseau's papers at his death (this manuscript, now lost, had been published in Geneva in 1782). It is very close to the Memoir and seems to be later (there is however no certainty as to the chronological order of the two texts).
How to cite
Cologny, Martin Bodmer Foundation, R-49.2: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Memoir presented to Mr. de Mably on the education of Mr. his son (https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/fr/list/ one/fmb/ms-Rousseau-R-049-002).
Origin and rights
Martin Bodmer Foundation, R-49.2. Creative commons license ( terms of use ).