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Instruction played a central role in the thinking of the physiocrats. These philosophers considered it an essential condition for the maintenance of social order and for promoting a strong economy and thereby the happiness of human beings. Their educational philosophy, which was based on the diffusion of useful and pragmatic knowledge, contained similarities with the ideas expressed at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the Société d’encouragement pour l’industrie nationale (SEIN), especially regarding the education of the working classes. Permeated with the same concern for pragmatic utility and the same philanthropic perspective, the educational ideas of the physiocrats and those of the members of SEIN were at the origin of the “industrial paternalism” that would be practiced in France throughout the nineteenth century.