Editing Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (section)

== Education ==
Born in [[Paris]], Turgot was the youngest son of [[Michel-Étienne Turgot]], "[[Provost (civil)|provost]] of the merchants" of Paris, and Madeleine Francoise Martineau de Brétignolles, and came from an old [[Normandy|Norman]] family.<ref>Turgot is a [[Normans|Norman]] surname, former first name ([[Old Norse]]: ''Thorgaut'') [http://www.viking.no/e/france/family-names.html Norman family names of Viking origin] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200219224345/http://www.viking.no/e/france/family-names.html |date=19 February 2020 }} [http://www.geopatronyme.com/cgi-bin/carte/nomcarte.cgi?nom=turgot&client=cdip Surname localization in France] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190517053054/http://www.viking.no/e/france/family-names.html |date=17 May 2019 }}</ref> As one of four children, he had a younger sister and two older brothers, one of whom, [[Étienne-François Turgot]] (1721–1789), was a naturalist, and served as administrator of [[Malta]] and governor of [[French Guiana]]. Anne Robert Jacques was educated for the Church, and at the [[Collège de Sorbonne|Sorbonne]], to which he was admitted in 1749 (being then styled ''abbé de Brucourt'').  He delivered two remarkable [[Latin]] dissertations, ''On the Benefits which the Christian Religion has conferred on Mankind'', and ''On the Historical Progress of the Human Mind''.<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911|inline=1 |wstitle=Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques |volume=27 |pages=415–17}}</ref> In 1750 he decided not to take holy orders, giving as his reason that "he could not bear to wear a mask all his life."<ref>{{Citation|author=H. Packwood Adams|title=The French revolution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pV9EAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA31|year=1914|publisher=McClurg|page=31|access-date=13 March 2016|archive-date=2 July 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140702093619/http://books.google.com/books?id=pV9EAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA31|url-status=live}}</ref>

The first sign of Turgot's interest in economics is a letter (1749) on paper money, written to his fellow-student the abbé de Cicé, refuting the abbé [[Jean Terrasson]]'s defence of [[John Law (economist)|John Law]]'s system. He was fond of verse-making, and tried to introduce into French verse the rules of Latin prosody, his translation of the fourth book of the ''[[Aeneid]]'' into classical [[hexameter]] verses being greeted by [[Voltaire]] as "the only ''prose'' translation in which he had found any enthusiasm."<ref name="EB1911"/>