ON EDUCATION AND RELIGION
The annual sum of 4250 francs (L170) was considered by Napoleon--in so
far as he had opportunity for considering the subject--a sufficient
amount of money to devote directly to the education of the people! But
the rulers of States a brief century ago were, as a whole, inclined to
leave educational matters in clerical hands, and the nineteenth
century will stand out in the world's history as the dawn of State
responsibility in regard to the education of the people.
At the Restoration in 1814 more than twelve times as great a sum as
that expended by Napoleon was being devoted to education, and the
amount rose to 3,000,000 francs in 1830, to 12,000,000 during the
Second Empire, and to 160,000,000 under the Third Republic. To the
last sum must be added another 100,000,000 francs (excluding the
money devoted to the erection of schools) spent by the municipalities
and communes, making a total of about L11,400,000. In 1912 the State
alone was spending about L12,000,000 on national education.
At the head of this great spending department of the State is the
Minister of Public Instruction. He controls not only the whole of the
primary schools, but to some extent the entire educational machinery
of the country, private schools being subjected to State inspection
and supervision. Between 1901 and 1907 some 3000 public clerical
schools, and more than 13,000 private clerical schools, were
suppressed by law. The law passed in 1904 required that all schools
controlled by religious bodies should be closed within the next ten
years, which period is just about to elapse. Since the State awoke to
its responsibilities in educational matters, it has taken roughly a
century finally to extinguish clerical control. The schools are
divided into the three grades of Primary, Secondary, and Higher, and
the State admits into any of these pupils of any grade of society. In
the rooms of _lycee_ or college the classes meet in a truly democratic
fashion. The college, which is controlled by the commune under the
State, is considered inferior to the _lycee_, which is entirely in the
hands of the central authority. While the primary schools are
compulsory and gratuitous between the ages of six and thirteen, the
secondary schools charge small fees ranging from L2 a year up to L16.
But parents with bright children can often avoid this expenditure
through the lavish system of scholarships offered by the State.
_Lycees_ were first established for girls in 1880, and there are now
several in existence, one of them having 700 students. The hours of
the classes are from 8.30 to 11.30, and from 1.30 to 3.30, and the aim
has been to run them on the same lines as those of the boys. Since
clericalism was removed from the education of girls, there has no
doubt been a very considerable change in the scholastic environment of
the _jeune fille_, but until a long period has elapsed it will be
difficult for any but those in the closest touch with educational life
in France to point out how far the advantages outweigh the
disadvantages or _vice versa_. The lay schoolmistress may be in
essentials as religiously-minded as any convent-trained type of woman.
Her influence on her pupils may produce as moral and as religious
types of women in the coming generation as those of the immediate
past, but in such a change in the training of the girls of a race not
fond of moral discipline who can foresee the results?
The general tendency of the training given in the _lycee_ has been
towards the suppression of originality. There seems to have grown up
in the mind of the authorities an impression that the only means of
keeping the youth of France under proper control is by holding them
down with an iron grip, not merely during the hours of work but during
recreation also. This may have been necessitated by a certain lack of
discipline in the earliest years of life, young children being allowed
to have their own way to an altogether undesirable extent. As soon as
they are old enough the boys, having, as a rule, begun to be a source
of much trouble in the home, are sent to school. If their parents are
able to afford the fees, the gates of the _lycee_ soon close upon
their days of wilfulness and disobedience. In place of the home life
and the feminine influence with which they have been familiar, they
are confronted with a discipline of semi-military severity. Games are
not allowed, and in the hours of recreation in walled playgrounds of a
generally forbidding order, walking and talking alone are permitted.
Here, as in the class-room, the boys are perpetually under the eyes of
the _pion_, whose duties are restricted entirely to the maintenance of
order. Owing to suppression in natural directions, it is not
surprising if the minds of the boys should turn into the unhealthy
directions of intrigue and pernicious literature.
M. Demolins, who a few years ago tried the experiment of running his
school on English lines, has found the results excellent. So greatly
appreciated are his efforts to abolish the bad features of the _lycee_
that he is unable to meet the demand on the capacity of his buildings.
He is of opinion that the Anglo-Saxon is superior to the French
because of the better training given at school, discouragement of
initiative and suppression of independence being the chief features of
the schools of his own country, while the Anglo-Saxon allows boys a
freedom which develops self-reliance and individuality.
"Every one knows our dreadful college," writes M. Demolins, "with its
much too long classes and studies, its recreations far too short and
without exercise, its prison walks a monotonous going and coming
between high heart-breaking walls, and then every Sunday and Thursday
the military promenade in rank, the exercise of old men, not of
youth."
The boarder at the _lycee_, of course, feels the harshness of the
regime to a degree that the day-boy never experiences, home hours
mitigating the severity of the long working day.
As a whole, it may be said that the ideal of the educational system
has been intellectuality rather than that of character building, and
in the former France is superior to England, the system producing a
higher average of intellectual capacity. If both countries could take
to themselves the strong features that each possesses it would be very
materially to their advantage. Changes in the right direction are
already taking place in France. It is quite probable that the _pion_
will be suppressed before long, and cricket, football, and other manly
and health-giving games are beginning to take the place of the old
man's stroll under supervision. The fact that the Boy Scout is
appearing all over France seems to herald the dawn of a growing
sturdiness and manliness in the youth of the nation. At the present
day the average boy has an undoubtedly girlish softness in his dress
and general appearance. He wears sailor suits at an age which would
produce laughter amongst Anglo-Saxon boys. He appears in white socks
for several years longer than the English boy would tolerate, and his
thinly-soled boots suggest the promenade rather than any form of
strenuous game. His clothes do not appear to have been made for any
hard wear, and as a rule the knickerbockers of soft thin grey material
so generally to be seen are unfit for any rough use whatever. Even the
large black leather portfolios in which books and papers are carried
to and from school seem to receive as careful handling as though they
belonged to a Government official rather than that most destructive of
creatures--the schoolboy. In England one is familiar with the sight of
four or five books dangling at the end of the strap which secures
them, enabling the owner to convert his home-work into a handy weapon
of offence, but the soft leather case of French boys and girls, which
must be carefully carried under one arm, offers no such fascinating
by-purpose.
[Illustration: CHILDREN OF PARIS IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.]
If parents keep their boys in socks for a longer period than seems
rational to the Anglo-Saxon, they frequently go farther with their
girls, who often enough may be seen with bare legs until they are
nearly as tall as their mothers.
Very much stress is laid on the examinations, which commence at the
age of fifteen or sixteen, when the _lycee_ and college training
terminates. The system since 1902 has consisted of a period of seven
years divided into two parts. At the expiry of the first, which
consists of four years, the pupil can choose one of four courses. The
first is Latin and Greek, the second Latin and sciences, the third
Latin and modern languages, and the fourth sciences and modern
languages. Having passed three years on one of these courses, he
should be ready for the two examinations by which he can obtain the
degree known as the _Baccalaureat de l'enseignement_. This is the
outer gateway to be passed through before the scholar can enter the
citadels of any of the great professions, such as law, letters,
medicine, or Protestant theology.
The State provides the higher education in its universities and in its
specialised higher schools, and since 1875 private individuals and
bodies, so long as they are not clerical, have been permitted to take
part in the advanced educational work of the country, but the State
faculties alone have the power to confer degrees. The five classes of
faculties associated with the various universities confer degrees in
law, science, medicine, letters, and Protestant theology.
[Illustration: LE PUY-EN-VELAY IN THE AUVERGNE COUNTRY.]
The keystone of the arch of learning in France is the _Institut de
France_. It embodies the five great academies of science and
literature, but omits that of medicine, which stands apart.
In England some social importance attaches to a man on account of his
having been educated at Eton or Harrow and having afterwards taken a
degree at one of the two mother universities, irrespective of his
having shown himself an indifferent scholar, but south of the Channel
the scene of a man's education counts for naught in later life. The
moral and social sides of the English system would seem to have
crowded out to a great extent the intellectual side, which, with the
essentially practical people of France, forms the whole structure.
From the teacher in the primary school to the heads of the
universities no effort is made to influence character: "As soon as the
student leaves the lecture hall he is free to return to the niche he
has constituted for himself, to its probable triviality and its
possible grossness, or to the vulgar pleasures of the town.... We lose
the advantage of that peculiar monastic, thoughtful life which is
offered to the young Englishman."[3]
[3] W. L. George.
An almost childlike simplicity seems to be the keynote of the religion
of that portion of the French people which still adheres to the
observances of the Roman Church. The nation, until recent years,
professed the Catholic faith and worshipped the Virgin as the mother
of the Saviour of the world. In her honour, and to keep her presence
ever in mind, to envisage her to mortal eyes, they erected statues and
placed little figures at street-corners, by the road-side, and upon
the altars of churches, and these are still objects of veneration
among the people. One of the largest and most imposing representations
of the Virgin is Notre Dame de France, a colossal figure cast from
guns captured in the Crimean War, which is erected on the summit of
the basaltic cliff which towers above the ancient town of Le
Puy-en-Velay (Haute Loire). The figure is so gigantic--it stands forth
gilded by the rising or the setting sun high above one's head, even
when standing on the top of the rock upon which it has been
erected--that one can scarce forbear to look upon it without some
admiration, irrespective of its merits as a work of art. The features
are of a sweet and simple beauty, although of a stereotyped order, and
even to those whose religious ideas do not lean in the direction of
the veneration of representations of deities it is easy to see how a
simple peasant, trained in the religious system which erects such
images, can fall into the attitude of prayer by merely looking on such
an achievement.... Gazing at the figure standing high in the midst of
an amphitheatre of picturesque mountains, one feels some explanation
for the attitude of the religious towards the immense figure; ... and
then one turns away to descend from the rock, and passing behind the
pedestal of the effigy one observes a door, and above it a notice to
the effect that on payment of ten centimes one may ascend within the
_Vierge_, and when the maximum fee has been paid one may actually
place oneself within the head and gaze out upon an immense panorama
from a position of wonderful novelty.... Where is the vision, where
the sense of fitness, where any atmosphere of sanctity? Does the
incongruity of such an arrangement strike no one among the
religiously-minded people who visit Le Puy?
It would appear that the French prefer to have all that is outward in
their religion as much a part of their daily lives as any other
objects of common use. Thus the coverings of the inner doors of a
French church are almost invariably worn into holes or discoloured
with the frequent handling of those who every day spend a few minutes
in the incense-laden atmosphere of their parish church. The floors are
dirty with the constant coming and going from the streets, and the
need for doormats does not appear to be observed. On week-days, apart
from the clergy, it is exceptional to see a man in a church unless he
is there in some official capacity. One will find men carrying out
repairs, and it does not seem to occur to them to remove their hats;
one will see them as tourists with guide-books in their hands, or, as
at St. Denis in the suburbs of Paris, a man in uniform will conduct
visitors through the choir and crypt, and he too finds it unnecessary
to uncover his head; but one goes far to find any other than women and
children kneeling in prayer before the altars or stations of the cross
on any other day than Sunday. It is the women whose religious needs
bring them into places of worship in the midst of the working hours of
the weekday, men rarely coming unless their steps are directed thither
for a wedding or a funeral. And on Sundays few churches would be
required if the women ceased to attend.
[Illustration: LA ROCHE, A VILLAGE OF HAUTE SAVOIE.]
Funerals have not yet lost their impressive trappings as is the case
in England, where even the poor are beginning to find it less a
necessity to have the hearse drawn by horses adorned with immense
black plumes and long black cloths coming down almost to the ground.
In France these things are still much in evidence, and imposing black
and purple hangings studded with immense silver tear-drops are put up
in the church if the estate or the relatives of the deceased can
afford such melancholy splendour. Before leaving the church after the
funeral service, friends and relatives pass one by one to the bier,
and there each takes a crucifix and makes the sign of the cross.
The interior of a French church is, as a rule, so dark and shadowy
that the clusters of candles burning before the shrines sparkle
brilliantly in the cavernous gloom of its apsidal chapels, casting an
uncertain and mystic light on pictures and effigies of saints and
apostles, on shining objects of silver and gold, and on gaudy ornament
and tinsel. Looming out of the obscurity, the ghostly representation
of the crucified Christ is faintly illuminated; a few inky figures are
grouped before the altars, their blackness relieved only by the white
caps of the peasants--for it is the custom for women to wear black
when they go to church; the air is heavy with incense, and one feels
that superficial glamour which makes its strong appeal to those who
find satisfaction in the mainly sensuous emotions caused by these
surroundings. When an organ pours forth its sonorous and mellow notes
and men's voices chant Gregorian music before the brilliantly lighted
altar sparkling with golden ornament, when the solemn Latin liturgy is
recited and the consecrated elements are raised by the priest, the
average religious requirements of the French would seem to be
satisfied. Those who do not find any satisfaction in watching and
listening to these offices of the Roman Church as a rule drop into a
state of agnosticism, if not of complete irreligion. To be logical one
must do so, and a growing majority of Frenchmen seem to find no other
course unless they belong to the comparatively small body of
Protestants or the Jewish communities.[4] There can be no doubt at all
that the Roman Church has lost its hold on a vast proportion of its
adherents, and those who are still numbered among the "faithful" are
every year shrinking in numbers.
[4] The Protestants number about 600,000, the Jews 70,000, and the
nominal Catholics 39,000,000.
"French Protestants," writes Mr. W. L. George,[5] "and French Jews are
as devout, as clean-living, as spiritually minded as our most
enlightened Churchmen and Nonconformists; a visit to any Parisian
synagogue or to the Oratory will demonstrate in a moment that the
French have not forgotten how to pray. The congregations are as large
as ever they were, and they contain as great a proportion of men as in
England." And he adds: "This distinction of sex must everywhere be
made, and particularly in France, where Roman Catholicism flaunts a
sumptuous aestheticism, voluptuous and worldly, capable of appealing
both to the refined and to the sensuous." Mr. George believes that
French Catholics have not turned against Christ, but against the
ministers of the Christian religion in his land because they have
been discovered to be unfaithful servants. It is his belief that the
Church is dying--"dying hard but surely"; and who can quarrel with his
statement that the people have turned their backs on its ministers,
that they are on the threshold of agnosticism, and that the Church is
putting forth no hand to stay them? The next two or three generations
can scarcely fail to witness the death by atrophy of the Roman faith
in France; but the French are not an irreligious people, and perhaps a
wider faith may spring up from the ashes of the creed which is so fast
growing cold.
[5] _France in the Twentieth Century_--an admirable work.
One might compare religious systems to the unresponsive edifices in
which public worship is conducted, for they seem equally incapable of
spontaneous adaptability to the needs of the people, and only the
stress and labour of the laity ever produces any adaptation to the
changing needs of those for whom the structure exists.
Because the accumulated resentment of the French people as a whole
against the shortcomings of their national Church has resulted in a
complete divorce from the State, and because the clergy have rebelled
against the laws which have recently been passed, and have therefore
become in a certain sense outlaws--servants, as it were, of a
discredited section of the community--it has been easy for superficial
observers to come to the conclusion that the French nation has
virtually assumed the garb of atheism. This is always the arrow which
strikes the legislative body determined to dissociate itself with any
form of religion, but as in England, where devoted Churchmen are
ranged on the side of disestablishment, so in France the national
voice that spoke for a severance between Church and State was not that
of a people without religion, but rather that of a people unwilling to
maintain a system which had fallen away from its duty and its ideals.
Atheism and agnosticism would appear to be phases in the religious
development of the human race, the positions into which various types
of mind are driven when dissatisfied with the explanation of the
purpose, duty, and future of the individual as set forth by a
particular Church. That some new development of the truth will
supersede that which has been cast aside seems inevitable.
In this period of upheaval what is the attitude of the people, of the
peasant, to _M. le Cure_? Social intimacy between priest and
parishioners is very great, and the _cure_ is often a very good
fellow whose practical religion is much broader than the
ecclesiasticism he represents. He is, roughly speaking, of the peasant
class and is regarded as socially inferior by the equivalent to the
"county" circle of his neighbourhood. Unlike the English clergy, who
are often distinguishable from the laity by little besides a
distinctive collar and hat, he is always to be seen in his _soutane_
and with white-bordered black lappets beneath his chin. He is, as a
rule, anti-Republican, and is therefore out of sympathy with the
people and the whole apparatus of the government of to-day. To a huge
mass of the people he is nicknamed the _calotin_.
Paul Sabatier explains how the association of the Church with politics
affects the relations of priest and parishioner:--
At election times, especially, how great an impression is made on
the mind of the simple by the defeat of one who has been put
forward as the candidate of _le bon Dieu_, and the triumph of the
candidate of "the satanic sect"! When such coincidences recur
over forty years with increasing frequency, the most pious
countryman begins to ask if Satan be not stronger than the
Almighty. The artisan, meeting his parish priest, speaks in a
tone at once commiserating and mocking of God's business, which
is not going well. Blasphemy! thinks our good priest. But no;
they have only blasphemed who taught him to identify a political
party with religion. His rudeness is not very different from that
of Elijah, chiding on Carmel's summit the priests of Baal.... But
this rudeness, like that of the prophet, disguises an outburst of
religious feeling, still awkward in its manifestation, and even,
perhaps, expressing itself by deplorable means----....[6]
[6] _France To-day: its Religious Orientation._ M. Sabatier
proclaims himself a Protestant who has sought to love both
Catholicism and Free Thought.
Since 1882, when the undenominational schools were established, there
has been a fierce battle between Church and State, which has scarcely
come to a close at the present hour; but emerging from the din and
dust of the prolonged warfare there is one salient fact, namely, a
growing desire among the great mass of teachers for increasing the
undenominational moral teaching in the schools. A compelling force is
obliging the school to build up a strong moral training for the young,
entirely independent of clerical influence.