CARLI, GIAN RINALDO. - Born at Capodistria on 11 April 1720, died at Milan on 22 February 1795, is one of the most outstanding figures in the Milanese cultural milieu which flourished around Verri, Beccaria, and Parini. At the age of 24 he became professor of astronomy and nautical science at the University of Padua (1744–49), and gave evidence of his scientific studies in his work *Sulla declinazione dell'ago magnetico* (1747). After an unsuccessful attempt to establish an industry, he went to Milan (1764) where he became part of that cultured society which gathered around the *Caffè*.
In 1765 he published the *Discorso della Patria agli italiani*; and in the field of economic science he demonstrated his competence with a work *Delle monete e dell'istituzione delle zecche in Italia*, still appreciated today by economists.
He devoted particular attention to educational problems, “as those which could contribute to improving society both in relation to morals and to the conditions of the mind.” To this end he wrote *Nuovo metodo per le scuole pubbliche d'Italia* (Works, XVIII, Milan 1787).
Noting the defects of the schools of his time, in which pedantic teachers exercised the memory rather than forming the mind, he outlined a plan for educational reform, affirming above all that education is the responsibility of the State, which must provide common educational schools for children from 4 to 9–10 years of age, where they would learn to read, write, and do arithmetic. Following these schools are those which he calls elementary, but which in reality correspond to the present-day *ginnasio-liceo*: their aim is to provide an intellectual culture by first stimulating the memory (through the study of languages, moral maxims, geography—which should begin with the topography of one’s own country—and history), then reflection (geometry, logic); finally the young would study Italian and Latin poetry and rhetoric. “In keeping with certain principles of the humanistic school, Carli wished that glory and honour should be placed in the education of the young as the most effective incentives to instil vigour and energy for great and useful deeds and enterprises.”
To complete their studies, students would proceed either to the Academy of Sciences and Arts, with purely scientific aims, or to the university, with entirely professional aims.
Although not immune to the influence of Rousseau, Carli, in his work *L'uomo libero*, refuted the *Contrat social* of the Genevan; while in *Ragionamento sulla ineguaglianza fisica, morale e civile tra gli uomini* (1792), he criticised Rousseau’s *Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes*. In the first essay he aims to arouse “subordination and respect for the laws.”
In the other essay he asserts against Rousseau the spiritual and ethical inequality of Christianity, in whose conception the physical, moral, and civil inequalities constitute a law of necessary harmony for the preservation and progress of society, which is like a mountain composed of layers of different natures, one superimposed upon another, so that they mutually support each other; whereas a mountain composed entirely of uniform sand could not resist any change wrought by rain, wind, or air.