ROYER, CLéMENCE-AUGUSTE

(b. Nantes, France, 21 April 1830; d. Paris, France, 5 February 1902), philosophy of science, evolution, feminism.

Best known as the first French translator of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, Royer was recognized by members of the French Société d’Anthropologie de Paris as a scientist and philosopher in her own right. In a culture that barred women from most formal education and professional activities, her contributions to the organization’s discussions demonstrate the breadth of her learning and span a wide variety of scientific subjects. Elected to membership by this organization in 1870, she was also awarded the Legion of Honor by France for her services as a “woman of letters and scientific writer.”

Early Influences At the time of Royer’s birth her parents, Josephine-Gabrielle Andouard and Augustin-Tené Toyer, were not yet married, but her birth was legitimated by their subsequent marriage. Her family was educated, Catholic, royalist, and politically active. Her father resigned his commission in the army in order to participate in the revolution of July 1830 on the side of the Bourbons, for which he was later tried and acquitted of treason. After some idiosyncratic teaching by her parents and some formal teaching in a convent school, Royer’s intellect was stimulated by the Revolution of 1848, which caused her to reject her parents’ royalist political leanings and become an ardent republican. Following her father’s death in 1849, she began to reeducate herself through self-study and courses leading to teaching certificates. In 1854 she taught at a girls’ school in Wales, gaining her knowledge of English that would be important for translating Darwin, and encountering a religious diversity that provoked her transition away from Christianity. Returning to France in 1855, she taught in a school possessing a great library of eighteenth-century writers, and upon reading through this library became convinced of two things: (1) she had been deceived by Catholic dogma and therefore should reject it; and (2) she had inherited the French Encyclopédists’ love of science and should pursue the study of science and nature.

Royer went to Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1856 and after two years of reading systematically through the library, felt confident enough in her increased knowledge to offer courses for women in logic. She followed these in 1859 by a forty-lesson course on the Philosophy of Nature and History (of which only the first lesson is extant) in which she espoused a Lamarckian evolutionary position. She also began writing articles on economics for two journals established by Pascal DuPrat, who was active in French politics and with whom she would begin living as “wife” in 1865. In 1860, her entry on tax reform in a competition sponsored by the Swiss canton of Vaud earned second place, behind that of the famous socialist/anarchist Pierre Proudhon.

Darwin, Social Darwinism, and Feminism As a result of her writings, the contacts she made through her relationship with DuPrat, her knowledge of English, and her understanding of Malthusian economics, she was contacted to translate Darwin’s Origin of Species. Her translation, based on the third English edition, appeared in 1862 and included voluminous notes by Royer and a long preface extending Darwin’s theory to human society. Many scholars of this period have accused Royer of distorting Darwin’s text to serve her own philosophical and scientific purposes. Yvette Conry accused Royer of “intellectual Jesuitism” and of justifying Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet de Lamarck over Darwin. She then accused Royer of willfully destroying the authenticity of the Darwinian text for her own purposes. Some recent scholars, however, have shown Royer to have been more faithful to the text and more critically astute than earlier historians claimed, while acknowledging that her editorial footnotes and lengthy preface did not help the French to accept Darwin’s theory (see the works by Blanckaert, Harvey, and Miles cited below). She continued as Darwin’s authorized French translator until 1870, when, in the third French edition, she added a preface castigating Darwin for the hereditary theory of pangenesis he had proposed in Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, while neglecting to include changes he had made in later English editions of the Origin. Angered, Darwin withdrew permission and sought another translator.

By this time Royer had published at least twenty-four articles, reviews, and monographs on a variety of topics, the treatise on tax reform, a two-volume novel (Les Jumeaux d’Hellas), and a major book applying Darwinian theory to the evolution of humans and human society (Origine de l’homme et des sociétés). In 1870 she became the first woman elected to membership in the Société d’Anthropologie, for her scientific contributions as well as her translation of Darwin. She believed her strength in science was taking the facts that male scientists were able to discover (due to their access to laboratories and teaching positions) and forming theories and applications from their detailed findings. Increasingly she used this forum to disseminate her feminist and scientific beliefs concerning women and their roles in society. She argued for increased education and economic freedom for women, a position that many of her colleagues were willing to support. However, some of her proposals, including giving women new social and economic power, granting women the right to have children outside of marriage, and providing education to women that was equal to that of men, were too extreme for them.

Her comments, read before the société in 1874 and scheduled for publication as “Sur la natalité” in the organization’s journal the following year, were suppressed by the société ’s leadership in deference to other professional colleagues, clerical leaders in the country, and the new conservative governmental leaders. In 1877 the Paris police denied her request to speak on a related topic in a lecture series organized by the Belgian writer Céline Renooz Muro. Joy Harvey, who has studied Royer extensively, argues that this denial explains why Royer did not participate in the first Congress on the Rights of Women held in Paris in 1878.

During the decade preceding this congress, the French feminist movement had developed a new vigor and had begun to lobby for changes in laws and attitudes, changes that Royer had advocated since her days in Lausanne. She became involved in the International Congress for the Rights of Women sometime in the early 1880s and gradually became more active in the women’s movement by joining a mixed Masonic lodge (1893) and by writing for the feminist newspaper La Fronde when it was formed in 1897. Royer’s participation in the feminist movement and her sensitivity to the plight of women were grounded in the philosophical and scientific systems she had developed over forty years of study and reflection.

Between 1890 and 1900, she published over twenty articles and a book in which she developed her grand theory of nature (Natura rerum). In her book, she advocated a monistic theory of matter that rejected the physical descriptions of atoms and their behaviors proposed by Isaac Newton and John Dalton. Her atoms were living, conscious, and dynamic (active), and they repulsed each other. She also attempted to demonstrate a fundamental unity throughout nature, such that everything had life and even the atoms were subject to natural selection. While these ideas seem outrageous to modern readers, they were widely discussed in the nineteenth century. Royer’s unique contribution was to develop a theory that addressed criticisms of mechanistic post-Newtonian science and incorporated various ideas proposed largely by the romantic Naturphilosophers into one grand unified theory. In 1897 more than 250 celebrated intellectuals, including two political leaders (Georges Clemenceau and Anatole France), the celebrated chemist Marcellin Berth-elot, and the writer Émile Zola, attended a banquet organized to honor her life and work. In 1900, La Fronde carried a four-part review of Natura rerum, predicting that some day Royer would receive the glory due her. On 16 August 1900, the Minister of Public Instruction named Royer a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for her services as a “woman of letters and scientific writer.” She received her certificate and cross on 12 November, and her friends organized a second banquet on 16 November to celebrate what they considered a long overdue honor.

Royer’s health continued to decline during the year following this second banquet, with her asthmatic problems increasing and her sight decreasing. She died on 5 February 1902 after lapsing into a coma and was buried on 10 February in the Cemetery of Neuilly in Paris.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following places in Paris are rich resources for works by Royer and correspondence from or to her: the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand, the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Archives Nationales de France, and the Archives of the Société d’Anthropologie located at the Musée de l’Homme.

WORKS BY ROYER

Théorie de l’impôt; ou, La dîme sociale. 2 vols. Paris: Guillaumin, 1862. Tax reform.

L’Origine des espèces; ou, Des lois du progrès chez les êtres organisés. Translation. Paris: Guillaumin et Cie et Victor Masson et Fils, 1862. The infamous “Préface” details Royer’s evolutionary views. Later editions with additional notes, Préfaces, and “Avant-propos” by Royer were published in 1866 (2nd ed.), 1869 (3rd ed.), and 1882 (4th ed., published by Flammarion). Fraisse (1985 and 2002) includes Royer’s preface to the first French edition.

Les Jumeaux d’Hellas. 2 vols. Paris: A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et Cie, 1864.

“Lamarck: Sa vie, ses travaux et son système.” La Philosophie Positive 3, no. 2 (1868): 173–205; 3, no. 3 (1868): 333–372; 4, no. 1 (1869): 5–30.

Origine de l’homme et des sociétés. Paris: Guillaumin, 1869.

“Remarques sur le transformisme.” Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie, 2nd series, 5 (21 April 1870): 265–312.

“De l’Origine des diverses races humaines, et de la race aryenne en particulier.” Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie, 2nd series, 8 (18 December 1873): 905–936.

“Sur la natalité.” Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie, 2nd series, 9 (16 July 1874): 597–616. Page proofs suppressed by the publications committee and located in the Archives of the Société d’Anthropologie, Carton B, Bibliothèque du Musée de l’Homme, Paris. Translated in Harvey (1997).

“Deux hypothèses sur l’hérédité.” Revue d’Anthropologie 6 (1877): 443–484, 660–685.

Le Bien et la loi morale: Éthique et téléologie. Paris: Guillaumin, 1881.

“L’instinct social.” Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie, 3rd series, 5 (16 November 1882): 707–727.

“Attraction et gravitation d’après Newton.” La Philosophie Positive 31 (1883): 206–226. “L’Evolution mentale dans la série organique.” Revus Scientifique, 3rd series, 39 (1887): 749–758; 40 (1887): 70–79.

“Discussion sur la dépopulation de la France.” Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie, 4th series, 1 (2 October 1890).

Natura rerum: La Constitution du monde, dynamique des atomes, nouveaux principes de philosophie naturelle. Paris: Schleicher Frères, 1900.

“Introduction à la philosophie des femmes.” In Clémence Royer:

Philosophe et femme de sciences, by Geneviève Fraisse. Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 1985 and 2002. An English translation can be found in Miles (1988).

OTHER SOURCES

Blanckaert, Claude. “L’Anthropologie au féminin: Clémence Royer (1830–1902).” Revue de Synthèse, 3rd series, 105 (1982): 23–38.

———. “‘Les bas-fonds de la science française’: Clémence Royer, L’Origine de l’homme et le Darwinisme social.” Bulletin et Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, n.s., 3 (1991): 115–130.

Clark, Linda L. Social Darwinism in France. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984.

Conry, Yvette. L’Introduction du Darwinisme en France au XIX^e siècle. Paris: Vrin, 1974.

Fraisse, Geneviève. Clémence Royer: Philosophe et femme de sciences. Paris: Éditions de la Découverte, 1985 and 2002.

Fraisse has included the French texts for the first lecture for Philosophy for Women and for the preface of the first French edition of Origin of Species.

Harvey, Joy. “‘Doubly Revolutionary’: Clémence Royer before the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris.” In Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of the History of Science: B.

Symposia. Bucharest: Academy of Socialist Republic of Romania, 1981.

———. “‘Strangers to Each Other’: Male and Female Relationships in the Life and Work of Clémence Royer, 1830–1902.” In Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789–1979, edited by Pnina G. Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987.

———. “Almost a Man of Genius”: Clémence Royer, Feminism, and Nineteenth-Century Science. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997. This is undoubtedly the best biography of Royer and includes an English translation of the suppressed “Sur la natalité.”

Miles, Sara Joan. “Evolution and Natural Law in the Synthetic Science of Clémence Royer.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1988. This work contains a transcription of Royer’s autobiography and English translations of the first lecture for the course of Philosophy for Women and Royer’s prefaces to the first and third French editions of Origin of Species.

———. “Clémence Royer et De l’Origine des espèces: Traductrice ou traîtresse?” Revue de Synthèse, 4th series, no. 1 (January–March 1989): 61–83.

Roger, Jacques. “Les Néo-Lamarckiens français.” Revue de Synthèse 95–96 (1979): 279–468.

Stebbins, Robert E. “France.” In Comparative Reception of Darwinism, edited by Thomas F. Glick. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972.

Sara Joan Miles