Within the relativistic framework of Enlightenment philosopy, a number of coherent thematic groupings stand out more than others: a secularised deism or atheism, an expanded awareness of the value of foreign cultures, and the transformative idea that history will never return to its starting point – a notion that for some like Fontenelle, Turgot or Condorcet was elevated to a belief in progress.

What concerns me in this chapter is how these attitudes were remoulded when they reached the man in the street. Indeed, the discussion is even more narrowly focused, as it largely concerns a single person who has already made his appearance, and therefore needs no further introduction. The person to whom I refer is, of course, the tailor's son and silk manufacturer Johan Hjerpe. But for the sake of comparison, he has a companion – the Parisian master glass worker Jacques-Louis Ménétra.

Both men lived during the Enlightenment, but they were far from being part of the cultural élite that gave the epoch its name. They were unknown to the public of their time, although they have now achieved a certain renown thanks to the current enthusiasm among historians for typical but non-élite case histories from the past. In recent years, Ménétra has been as much in the limelight as Menocchio, Martin Guerre or Pierre Maury, those most famous and favoured objects of attention within the field of recent socio-historical research into popular culture and mentality. Hjerpe, too, has occasionally been consulted as a witness from the masses, although in recent years I am the only historian to have paid him any real attention, and he still awaits his breakthrough.

It is obvious why these men of the people have caught the interest of social historians: Ménétra and Hjerpe were both copious writers; indeed, words positively flowed from their pens. They were contemporaries; they were social equals, and to some extent were influenced by the same events, in particular Enlightenment and the French Revolution. But they reacted to these at least partially pan-European upheavals from separate cultural and geographical spheres. Furthermore, they were very different as people, and would hardly have found much pleasure in each other's company. Nonetheless, in certain fundamental respects they seem to have had the same outlook on the world and on life, a common mentality which is recognisable under the layers of cultural and individual peculiarities.