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The Idea of Progress in Rabelais
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
As Though defining the issues for future discussions of progress, Seneca says in one of his epistles: “I differ from Posidonius when he holds that mechanical tools were the invention of wise men .... It was man's ingenuity, not his wisdom, that discovered all these devices. And I also differ from him when he says that wise men discovered our mines of iron and copper .... Nay, the sort of men who discover such things are the sort of men who are busied with them, men whose minds are nimble and keen, but not great or exalted; and the same holds true of any other discovery which can only be made by means of a bent body and of a mind whose gaze is upon the ground.”
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951
References
1 See A. C. Keller, “Edgar Zilsel, the Artisans, and the Idea of Progress in the Renaissance”, JHI, xi (1950), 235–240, and bibliographical indications contained therein.
2 Quoted by W. H. Woodward, Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1906), p. 101.
3 For a discussion of Rabelais' use of ancient authors, see A. F. Chappell, “Rabelais and the Authority of the Ancients”, MLR, xviii (1923), 29–36.
4 “Vos Philosophes qui se complaignent toutes choses estre par les anciens escriptes, rien ne leur estre laissé de nouveau à inventer, ont tort trop evident. Ce que du ciel vous apparoist, et appelez Phenomenes, ce que la terre vous exhibe, ce que la mer et autres fleuues contiennent, n'est comparable à ce qui est en terre caché. …”
5 Nat. Hist. xix. 1. That the tone is altered was pointed out by L. Sainéan—Rev. du 16e siècle, iii (1915), 198—and by many writers since.
6 “Par ses enfans, peut estre, sera inventée herbe de semblable energie, moyenant laquelle pourront les humains visiter les sources des gresles, les bondes des pluyes et l'officine des fouldres; pourront envahir les regions de la lune, entrer le territoire des signes celestes, et là prendre logis.”
7 “Semblablement, ou alloient veoir comment on tiroit les metaulx, ou comment on fondoit l'artillerye, ou alloient veoir les lapidaires, orfevres et tailleurs de pierreries, ou les alchymistes et monoyeurs, ou les haultelissiers, les tissotiers, les velotiers, les horologiers, miralliers, imprimeurs, organistes, tinturiers et aultres telles sortes d'ouvriers, et, partout donnans le vin, aprenoient et consideroient l'industrie et invention des mestiers” (i, 24).
8 It is not clear why Henri Hauser, the astute scholar of economic conditions in the Renaissance, overlooked this aspect of Rabelais' works. Hauser discusses the enumerations of crafts and of details related to them but does not hint at the serious rôle which they play in Rabelais' educational scheme and in the Gargantua and Pantagruel as a whole. See “Les métiers dans la littérature française du xvie siècle”, Mélanges offerts à Joseph Vianey (Paris, 1934), pp. 105–113.
9 E. Callot, “L'Essor des sciences biologiques au xvi” siècle,“ Rev. de philos., xxxvii (1937), 32, 137–138.
10 Especially Sussanneau: see L. Thuasne, “Le Sylvius Oreatus”, Rev. des bibliotèques, xv (1905), 271.
11 George A. Piersol, “Andreas Vesalius and his Times”, Univ. of Penn. Lectures (Philadelphia, 1916), pp. 397–416; Harvey Cushing, A Bio-Bibliography of Andreas Vesalius (New York, 1943), p. xxvi.
12 Above, note 3.
13 Quoted from W. P. Hotchkiss' Eng. transl, of the Preface, in Logan Clandening, Source Book of Medical History (New York and London, 1942).
14 For a recent estimate of Vesalius' conscious radicalism and its significance to Renaissance thought, see Ernst A. Cassirer, “The Place of Vesalius in the Culture of the Renaissance”, The Four Hundredth Anniversary Celebration of De Humani Corporis Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius, in Yale Journal of Biol, and Med., xvi (1943), 109–119. In general, the emphasis of medical and cultural historians has been on Vesalius' “craftsmanship.” The other side of the important combination which he represents is examined, with insight and originality, by Ludwig Edelstein, “Andreas Vesalius, the Humanist”, Bull. of the Hist. of Med., xiv (1943), 547–561.
15 See Benjamin Farrington, “Vesalius on the Ruin of Ancient Medicine”, Mod. Quarterly, i (1938), 23–28.
16 Geoffroy Atkinson, Les nouveaux horizons de la Renaissance française (Paris, 1935), in his sections on ancients and modems, distinguishes the radicalism of the geographical writers of the 16th century from the conservatism of the scholarly writers. The new work in geography was undoubtedly an instance of the progressive influence exerted from the technological side upon the learned (later than the period discussed in this paper, but showing the same impact).
17 The best discussions of the anatomical work leading up to the De Humani Corporis Fabrica of 1543 are in Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York, 1941), v, 498–531, and in Charles Singer and C. Rabin, A Prelude to Modern Science (Cambridge, 1946), which add much to J. M. Ball's Vesalius the Reformer of Anatomy (St. Louis, 1910).
18 Cited by E. C. Streeter, “Vesalius at Paris”, Yale Journal of Medicine, xvi (1943), 127.
19 See Thorndike, passim.