The movement of ideas launched in the early 1860s by Alexander Massol, who has often be forgotten by researchers, and spread in a review “La morale indépendante”, supported by the “loudspeaker”' that the booming Grand Orient de France was, played a great role in the making of a secular civic and moral education and in the birth of free thought in France. Of a Saint-Simonian origin, Massol kept strong links with the Republican Saint-Simonians in Paris and in the province, and was equally linked with the positivist circles of Emile Littré's environment, where Jules Ferry went among other persons. The contribution aims at making the ideas of the Massolian movement known and at studying the networks of influences he might have had from the liberal Empire to the time when the IIIrd Republic launched its education program.