BOOK SIXTH. PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.

CHAPTER I. PUBLIC INSTRUCTION

I. Public instruction and its three effects.

Public instruction and its three effects.--Influences of the

master, of the pupils on each other, and of discipline.

--Case in which all three tend towards producing a particular

type of man.

AT fixed intervals a man, in a room, gathers around him children,

youths, a group of young people, ten, twenty, thirty or more; he talks

to them for one or two hours and they listen to him. They sit alongside

of each other, look in each other's faces, touch each other's elbows,

feel that they are class-mates, of the same age and occupied with the

same tasks. They form a society and in two ways, one with another and

all with the master. Hence they live under a statute: every society has

one of its own, spontaneous or imposed on it; as soon as men, little or

big, come together in any number, in a drawing-room, in a café, in the

street, they find themselves subject to a local charter, a sort of code

which prescribes to them, or interdicts a certain sort of conduct. And

so with the school: positive rules along with many tacit rules are

here observed and these form a mould which stamps on minds and souls a

lasting imprint. Whatever a public lesson may be, whatever its object,

secular or ecclesiastic, whether its subject-matter is religious or

scientific, from the bottom to the top of the scale, from the primary

school and the catechism up to the great seminary, in upper schools and

in the faculties, we find in abridgment the academic institution. Of all

social engines, it is probably the most powerful and the most efficient;

for it exercises three kinds of influence on the young lives it enfolds

and directs, one through the teacher, another through the fellow

students and the last through rules and regulations.

On the one hand, the master, considered a scholar, teaches with

authority and the pupils, who feel that they are ignorant, learn with

confidence.--On the other hand, outside of his family and the domestic

circle, the student finds in his group of comrades a new, different

and complete world which has its own ways and customs, its own sense of

honor and its own vices, its own view of things (esprit de corps),

in which independent and spontaneous judgments arise, precocious and

haphazard presentiments, expressions of opinion on all things human and

divine. It is in this environment that he begins to think for himself,

in contact with others like himself and his equals, in contact with

their ideas, much more intelligible and acceptable to him than those of

mature men, and therefore much more persuasive, contagious and exciting;

these form for him the ambient, penetrating atmosphere in which his

thought arises, grows and shapes itself; he here adopts his way of

looking at the great society of adults of which he is soon to become

a member, his first notions of justice and injustice, and hence an

anticipated attitude of respect or of rebellion, in short, a

prejudice which, according as the spirit of the group is reasonable

or unreasonable, is either sound or unsound, social or

antisocial.--Finally, the discipline of the school has its effect.

Whatever its rules and regulations may be, whether liberal or despotic,

lax or strict, monastic, military or worldly, whether a boarding or a

day school, mixed or exclusive, in town or in country, with predominance

of gymnastic training or intellectual efforts, with the mind given to

the study of things or to the study of words, the pupil enters into

a ready-made setting. According to the diversities of this setting

or framework he practices different exercises; he contracts different

habits; he is developed or stunted physically or morally, in one sense

or in a contrary sense. Hence, just as the system is good or bad, he

becomes more or less capable or incapable of bodily or mental effort,

of reflection, of invention, of taking the initiative, of starting an

enterprise, of subordinating himself to a given purpose, of willing,

persistent association, that is to say, in sum, of playing an active and

useful part on the stage of the world he is about to enter upon. Observe

that this apprenticeship in common, sitting on benches according to

certain regulations and under a master, lasts six, ten, fifteen years

and often twenty; that girls are not exempt from it; that not one boy

out of a hundred is educated to the end at home by a private teacher;

that, in secondary and even in superior instruction, the school wheel

turns uniformly and without stopping ten hours a day if the scholar

boards outside, and twenty-four hours a day if he boards within; that

at this age the human clay is soft, that it has not yet received its

shape, that no acquired and resistant form yet protects it from the

potter's hand, against the weight of the turning-wheel, against the

friction of other morsels of clay kneaded alongside of it, against the

three pressures, constant and prolonged, which compose public education.

Evidently, there is here an enormous force, especially if the three

pressures, instead of opposing each other, as often happens, combine and

converge towards the production of a certain finished type of man; if,

from infancy to youth and from youth to adult age, the successive stages

of preparation are superposed in such a way as to stamp the adopted type

deeper and with more exactness; if all the influences and operations

that impress it, near or far, great or small, internal or external, form

together a coherent, defined, applicable and applied system. Let the

State undertake its fabrication and application, let it monopolize

public education, let it become its regulator, director and contractor,

let it set up and work its machine throughout the length and breadth of

the land, let it, through moral authority and legal constraint, force

the new generation to enter therein--it will find twenty years later

in these minors who have become major, the kind and number of ideas it

aimed to provide, the extent, limit and form of mind it approves of, and

the moral and social prejudice that suits its purposes.

II. Napoleon's Educational Instruments.

Napoleon's aim.--University monopoly.--Revival and multitude

of private schools.--Napoleon regards them unfavorably.--His

motives.--Private enterprises compete with public

enterprise.--Measures against them.--Previous authorization

necessary and optional suppression of them.--Taxes on free

education in favor of the university.--Decree of November,

1811.--Limitation of secondary teaching in private schools.

--How the university takes away their pupils.--Day-schools as

prescribed.--Number of boarders limited.--Measures for the

restriction or assimilation of ecclesiastical schools.

--Recruits forcibly obtained in prominent and ill-disposed

families.--Napoleon the sole educator in his empire.

Such is the aim of Napoleon:[6101]

"In the establishment of an educational corps," he says to

himself,[6102] "my principal aim is to secure the means for directing

political and moral opinions."

Still more precisely, he counts on the new institution to set up and

keep open for inspection a universal and complete police registry. "This

registry must be organized in such a way as to keep notes on each child

after age of nine years."[6103] Having seized adults he wants to seize

children also, watch and shape future Frenchmen in advance; brought up

by him, in his hands or in sight, they become ready-made a assistants,

docile subjects and more docile than their parents.[6104] Amongst the

latter, there are still to many unsubmissive and refractory spirits, too

many royalists and too many republicans; domestic traditions from family

to family contradict each other or vary, and children grow up in their

homes only to clash with each other in society afterwards. Let us

anticipate this conflict; let us prepare them for concord; all brought

up in the same fashion, they will some day or other find themselves

unanimous,[6105] not only apparently, as nowadays through fear or force,

but in fact and fundamentally, through inveterate habit and by previous

adaptation of imagination and affection. Otherwise, "there will be

no stable political state" in France;[6106] "so long as one grows up

without knowing whether to be a republican or monarchist, Catholic

or irreligious, the State will never form a nation; it will rest on

uncertain and vague foundations; it will be constantly exposed to

disorder and change."--Consequently, he assigns to himself the monopoly

of public instruction; he alone is to enjoy the right to manufacture and

sell this just like salt and tobacco; "public instruction, throughout

the Empire, is entrusted exclusively to the university. No school, no

establishment for instruction whatever," superior, secondary, primary,

special, general, collateral, secular or ecclesiastic, "may be organized

outside of the imperial university and without the authorization of its

chief."[6107]

Every factory of educational commodities within these boundaries and

operating under this direction is of two sorts. Some of them, in the

best places, interconnected and skillfully grouped, are national

units founded by the government, or at its command, by the communes,--

faculties, lycées, colleges, and small communal schools; others,

isolated and scattered about, are private institutions founded by

individuals, such as boarding-schools and institutions for secondary

instruction, small free schools. The former, State undertakings, ruled,

managed, supported and turned to account by it, according to the plan

prescribed by it and for the object it has proposed, are simply a

prolongation of itself; it is the State which operates in them and

which, directly and entirely, acts through them: they enjoy therefore

all its favor and the others all its disfavor. The latter, during

the Consulate, revived or sprung up by hundreds, in all directions,

spontaneously, under the pressure of necessity, and because the young

need instruction as they need clothes, but haphazard, as required

according to demand and supply, without any superior or common

regulation--nothing being more antipathetic to the governmental genius

of Napoleon:

"It is impossible,"[6108] he says, "to remain longer as we are, since

everybody can start an education shop the same as a cloth shop"

and furnish as he pleases, or as his customers please, this or that

piece of stuff, even of poor quality, and of this or that fashion,

even extravagant or out of date: hence so many different dresses, and a

horrible medley. One good obligatory coat, of stout cloth and suitable

cut, a uniform for which the public authority supplies the pattern, is

what should go on the back of every child, youth or young man; private

individuals who undertake this matter are mistrusted beforehand. Even

when obedient, they are only half-docile; they take their own course

and have their own preferences, they follow their own taste or that of

parents. Every private enterprise, simply because it exists and thrives,

constitutes a more or less independent and dissenting group, Napoleon,

on learning that Sainte-Barbe, restored under the direction of M. de

Lanneau, had five hundred inmates, exclaims:[6109] "How does it happen

that an ordinary private individual has so many in his house?" The

Emperor almost seems jealous; it seems as if he had just discovered a

rival in one corner of his university domain; this man is an usurper on

the domain of the sovereign; he has constituted himself a centre; he has

collected around him clients and a platoon; now, as Louis XIV. said, the

State must have no "platoons apart." Since M. de Lanneau has talent

and is successful, let him enter the official ranks and become a

functionary. Napoleon at once means to get hold of him, his house and

his pupils, and orders M. de Fontaines, Grand-Master of the University,

to negotiate the affair; M. de Lanneau will be suitably compensated;

Sainte-Barbe will be formed into a lycée, and M. de Lanneau shall be

put at the head of it. Let it be noted that he is not an opponent, an

irregular: M. de Fontaines himself praises his teaching, his excellent

mind, his perfect exactitude, and calls him the universitarian of the

university. But he does not belong to it, he stands aloof and stays

at home, he is not disposed to become a mere cog-wheel in the imperial

manufactory. Therefore, whether he is aware of it or not, he does

it harm and all the more according to his prosperity; his full house

empties the lycées; the more pupils he has the less they have. Private

enterprises in their essence enter into competition with public

enterprise.

For this reason, if tolerated by the latter, it is reluctantly and

because nothing else can be done; there are too many of them; the money

and the means to replace them at one stroke would be wanting. Moreover,

with instruction, the consumers, as with other supplies and commodities,

naturally dislike monopoly; they must be gradually brought to it;

resignation must come to them through habit. The State, accordingly, may

allow private enterprises to exist, at least for the time being. But,

on condition of their being kept in the strictest dependence, of its

arrogating to itself the right over them of life and death, of reducing

them to the state of tributaries and branches, of utilizing them, of

transforming their native and injurious rivalry into a fruitful and

forced collaboration. Not only must private schools obtain from the

State its express consent to be born, for lack of which they are closed

and their principals punished,[6110] but again, even when licensed, they

live subject to the good-will of the Grand-Master, who can and must

close them as soon as he recognizes in them "grave abuses and principles

contrary to those professed by the University." Meanwhile, the

University supports itself with their funds; since it alone has the

right to teach, it may profit by this right, concede for money the

faculty of teaching or of being taught alongside of it, oblige every

head of an institution to pay so much for himself and so much for

each of his pupils; in sum, here as elsewhere, in derogation of the

university blockade, as with the continental blockade, the state sells

licenses to certain parties. So true is this that, even with superior

instruction, when nobody competes with it, it sells them: every graduate

who gives a course of lectures on literature or on science must pay

beforehand, for the year, 75 francs at Paris and 50 francs in the

provinces. Every graduate who begin to lecture on law or medicine

must pay beforehand 150 francs at Paris and 100 francs in the

provinces.[6111] There is the same annual duty on the directors of

secondary schools, boarding-schools and private institutions. Moreover,

to obtain the indispensable license, the master of a boarding-school at

Paris must pay 300 francs, and in a province 200 francs; the principal

of an institution in Paris pays 600 francs, and in the provinces 400

francs; besides that, this license, always revocable, is granted only

for ten years; at the end of the ten years the titular must obtain

a renewal and pay the tax anew. As to his pupils, of whatever kind,

boarding scholars, day scholars, or even gratis,[6112] the University

levies on each a tax equal to the twentieth of the cost of full board;

the director himself of the establishment is the one who fixes and

levies the tax; he is the responsible collector of it, book-keeper

and the debtor. Let him not forget to declare exactly the terms of his

school and the number of his pupils; otherwise, there is investigation,

verification, condemnation, restitution, fine, censure, and the possible

closing of his establishment.

Regulations, stricter and stricter, tighten the cord around his neck

and, in 1811, the rigid articles of the last decree draw so tight as to

insure certain strangling at short date. Napoleon counts on that.[6113]

For his lycées, especially at the start, have not succeeded; they have

failed to obtain the confidence of families;[6114] the discipline is too

military, the education is not sufficiently paternal, the principals and

professors are only indifferent functionaries, more or less egoist or

worldly. Only former subaltern officers, rude and foul-mouthed, serve

as superintendents and assistant-teachers. The holders of State

scholarships bring with them "habits fashioned out of a bad education,"

or by the ignorance of almost no education at all,[6115] so that "for

a child that is well born and well brought up," their companionship is

lopsided and their contact as harmful as it is repulsive. Consequently,

the lycées during the first years,[6116] solely filled with the few

holders of scholarships, remain deserted or scarcely occupied, whilst

"the élite of the young crowd into more or less expensive private

schools."

This élite of which the University is thus robbed must be got back.

Since the young do not attend the lycée because they like it, they must

come through necessity; to this end, other issues are rendered difficult

and several are entirely barred; and better still, all those that are

tolerated are made to converge to one sole central outlet, a university

establishment, in such a way that the director of each private school,

changed from a rival into a purveyor, serves the university instead

of injuring it and gives it pupils instead of taking them away. In the

first place, his high standard of instruction is limited;[6117] even

in the country and in the towns that have neither lycée nor college, he

must teach nothing above a fixed degree; if he is the principal of an

institution, this degree must not go beyond the class of the humanities;

he must leave to the faculties of the State their domain intact,

differential calculus, astronomy, geology, natural history and superior

literature. If he is the master of a boarding-school, this degree must

not extend beyond grammar classes, nor the first elements of geometry

and arithmetic; he must leave to State lycées and colleges their domain

intact, the humanities properly so called, superior lectures and means

of secondary instruction.--In the second place, in the towns possessing

a lycée or college, he must teach at home only what the University

leaves untaught;[6118] he is not deprived, indeed, of the younger boys;

he may still instruct and keep them; but he must conduct all his pupils

over ten years of age to the college or lycée, where they will regularly

follow the classes as day-scholars. Consequently, daily and twice a

day, he marches them to and fro between his house and the university

establishment; before going, in the intermission, and after the class is

dismissed he examines them in the lesson they have received out of

his house; apart from that, he lodges and feeds them, his office

being reduced to this. He is nothing beyond a watched and serviceable

auxiliary, a subaltern, a University tutor and "coach," a sort of

unpaid, or rather paying, schoolmaster and innkeeper in its employ.

All this does not yet suffice. Not only does the State recruit its

day-scholars in his establishment but it takes from him his

boarding-scholars. "On and after the first of November 1812,[6119] the

heads of institutions and the masters of boarding-schools shall receive

no resident pupils in their houses above the age of nine years, until

the lycée or college, established in the same town or place where there

is a lycée, shall have as many boarders as it can take." This complement

shall be 300 boarders per lycée; there are to be "80 lycées in full

operation "during the year 1812, and 100 in the course of the year 1813,

so that, at this last date, the total of the complement demanded,

without counting that of the colleges, amounts to 30,000

boarding-scholars. Such is the enormous levy of the State on the crop of

boarding-school pupils. It evidently seizes the entire crop in advance;

private establishments, after it, can only glean, and through tolerance.

In reality, the decree forbids them to receive boarding-scholars;

henceforth, the University will have the monopoly of them.

The proceedings against the small seminaries, more energetic

competitors, are still more vigorous. "There shall be but one secondary

ecclesiastical school in each department; the Grand-Master will

designate those that are to be maintained; the others are to be closed.

None of them shall be in the country. All those not situated in a

town provided with a lycée or with a college shall be closed. All

the buildings and furniture belonging to the ecclesiastic schools

not retained shall be seized and confiscated for the benefit of the

University. "In all places where ecclesiastical schools exist, the

pupils of these schools shall be taken to the lycée or college and join

its classes." Finally, "all these schools shall be under the control of

the University; they must be organized only by her; their prospectus and

their regulations must be drawn up by the council of the University at

the suggestion of the Grand Master. The teaching must be done only by

members of the University at the disposition of the Grand Master." In

like manner, in the lay schools, at Sainte-Barbe for example,[6120]

every professor, private tutor, or even common superintendent, must

be provided with a special authorization by the University. Staff and

discipline, the spirit and matter of the teaching, every detail of study

and recreation,[6121] all are imposed, conducted and restrained in these

so-called free establishments; whatever they may be, ecclesiastic or

secular, not only does the University surround and hamper them, but

again it absorbs and assimilates them; it does not even leave them

any external distinctive appearance. It is true that, in the small

seminaries, the exercises begin at the ringing of a bell, and the pupils

wear an ecclesiastic dress; but the priest's gown, adopted by the State

that adopts the Church, is still a State uniform. In the other private

establishments, the uniform is that which it imposes, the lay uniform,

belonging to colleges and lycées "under penalty of being closed ";

while, in addition, there is the drum, the demeanor, the habits, ways

and regularity of the barracks. All initiative, all invention, all

diversity, every professional or local adaptation is abolished.[6122]

M. de Lanneau thus wrote[6123]: "I am nothing but a sergeant-major of

languid and mangled classes... to the tap of a drum and under military

colors."

Against the encroachments of this institutional university there is no

longer neither public nor private shelter, since even domestic education

at home, is not respected. In 1808,[6124] "among the old and wealthy

families which are not in the system," Napoleon selects ten from each

department and fifty at Paris of which the sons from sixteen to eighteen

must be compelled to go to Saint-Cyr and, on leaving it, into the army

as second lieutenants.[6125] In 1813, he adds 10,000 more of them, many

of whom are the sons of Conventionalists or Vendéans, who, under the

title of guards of honor, are to form a corps apart and who are at once

trained in the barracks. All the more necessary is the subjection

to this Napoleonic education of the sons of important and refractory

families, everywhere numerous in the annexed countries. Already in

1802, Fourcroy had explained in a report to the legislative corps the

political and social utility of the future University.[6126] Napoleon,

at his discretion, may recruit and select scholars among his recent

subjects; only, it is not in a lycée that he places them, but in a still

more military school, at La Fléche, of which the pupils are all sons of

officers and, so to say, children of the army. Towards the end of 1812,

he orders the Roman prince Patrizzi to send his two sons to this school,

one seventeen years of age and the other thirteen[6127]; and, to be

sure of them, he has them taken from their home and brought there by

gendarmes. Along with these, 90 other Italians of high rank are counted

at La Fléche, the Dorias, the Paliavicinis, the Alfieris, with 120 young

men of the Illyrian provinces, others again furnished by the countries

of the Rhine confederation, in all 360 inmates at 800 per annum. The

parents might often accompany or follow their children and establish

themselves within reach of them. This privilege was not granted to

Prince Patrizzi; he was stopped on the road at Marseilles and kept

there.--In this way, through the skilful combination of legislative

prescriptions with arbitrary appointments, Napoleon becomes in fact,

directly or indirectly, the sole head-schoolmaster of all Frenchmen old

or newcomers, the unique and universal educator in his empire.

III. Napoleon's machinery.

His machinery.--The educating body.--How its members come

to realize their union.--Hierarchy of rank.--How ambition

and amour-propre are gratified.--The monastic principle of

celibacy.--The monastic and military principle of

obedience.--Obligations contracted and discipline enforced.

--The École Normale and recruits for the future university.

To effect this purpose, he requires a good instrument, some great human

machine which designed, put together and set up by himself, henceforth

works alone and of its own accord, without deviating or breaking down,

conformably to his instructions and always under his eye, but without

the necessity of his lending a hand and personally interfering in its

predetermined and calculated movement. The finest engines of this

sort are the religious orders, masterpieces of the Catholic, Roman and

governmental mind, all managed from above according to fixed rules in

view of a definite object, so many kinds of intelligent automatons,

alone capable of working indefinitely without loss of energy, with

persistency, uniformity and precision, at the minimum of cost and the

maximum of effect, and this through the simple play of their internal

mechanism which, fully regulated beforehand, adapts them completely and

ready-made to this special service, to the social operations which a

recognized authority and a superior intelligence have assigned to

them as their function.--Nothing could be better suited to the social

instinct of Napoleon, to his imagination, his taste, his political

policy and his plans, and on this point he loftily proclaims his

preferences.

"I know," says he to the Council of State, "that the Jesuits, as regards

instruction, have left a very great void. I do not want to restore them,

nor any other body that has its sovereign at Rome."[6128]

Nevertheless, one is necessary. "As for myself, I would rather confide

public education to a religious order than leave it as it is to-day,"

which means free and abandoned to private individuals. "But I want

neither one nor the other." Two conditions are requisite for the new

establishment. First of all,

"I want a corporation because a corporation never dies"; it alone,

through its perpetuity, maintains teaching in the way marked out for it,

brings up "according to fixed principles" successive generations, thus

assuring the stability of the political State, and "inspires youth with

a spirit and opinions in conformity with the new laws of the empire."

And this corporation must be secular. Its members are to be State and

not Church "Jesuits";[6129] they must belong to the Emperor and not to

the Pope, and will form, in the hands of the government, a civil militia

composed of "ten thousand persons," administrators and professors of

every degree, comprehending schoolmasters, an organized, coherent and

lasting militia

As it must be secular, there must be no hold on it through dogma

or faith, paradise or hell, no spiritual incitements; consequently,

temporal means are to be employed, not less effective, when one knows

how to manage them,--self-esteem, pride, (amour propre), competition,

imagination, ambition, magnificent hopes and vague dreams of unlimited

promotion, in short, the means and motives already maintaining the

temper and zeal of the army. "The educational corps must copy the

classification of military grades; "an order of promotion," a hierarchy

of places is to be instituted; no one will attain superior rank without

having passed through the inferior; "no one can become a principal

without having been a teacher, nor professor in the higher classes

without having taught in the lower ones."--And, on the other hand, the

highest places will be within reach of all; "the young, who devoted

themselves to teaching, will enjoy the perspective of rising from one

grade to another, up to the highest dignities of the State." Authority,

importance, titles, large salaries, pre-eminence, precedence,--these are

to exist in the University as in other public careers and furnish the

wherewithal for the most magnificent dreams.[6130] "The feet of this

great body[6131] will be on the college benches and its head in the

senate." Its chief, the Grand-Master, unique of his species, less

restricted, with freer hands than the ministers themselves, is to be one

of the principal personages of the empire; his greatness will exalt the

condition and feeling of his subordinates. In the provinces, on every

festive occasion or at every public ceremony, people will take pride in

seeing their rector or principal in official costume seated alongside of

the general or prefect in full uniform.[6132]

The consideration awarded to their chief will reflect on them; they will

enjoy it along with him; they will say to themselves that they too, like

him and those under him, all together, form an élite; by degrees, they

will feel that they are all one body; they will acquire the spirit of

the association and attach themselves to the University, the same as a

soldier to his regiment or like a monk to his brethren in a monastery.

Thus, as in a monastic order, one must join the University by "going

into the orders."[6133]--"I want," says Napoleon, "some solemnity

attached to this act. My purpose is that the members of the corps of

instruction should contract, not as formerly, a religious engagement,

but a civil engagement before a notary, or before the justice of the

peace, or prefect, or other (officer).... They will espouse education

the same as their forerunners espoused the Church, with this difference,

that the marriage will not be as sacred, as indissoluble.[6134]... They

will engage themselves for three, six, or nine years, and not resign

without giving notice a certain number of years beforehand." To heighten

the resemblance, "the principle of celibacy must be established, in this

sense, that a man consecrated to teaching shall not marry until after

having passed through the first stages of his career; "for example, "the

schoolmasters shall not marry before the age of twenty-five or thirty

years, after having obtained a salary of three or four thousand francs

and economized something." But, at bottom, marriage, a family, private

life, all natural and normal matters in the great world of society, are

causes of trouble and weakness in a corps where individuals, to be

good organs, must give themselves up wholly and without reserve. "In

future,[6135] not only must schoolmasters, but, again, the principals

and censors of the lycées, and the principals and rulers of the

colleges, be restricted to celibacy and a life in common."--The

last complementary and significant trait, which gives to the secular

institution the aspect of a convent, is this: "No woman shall have a

lodging in, or be admitted into, the lycées and colleges."

Now, let us add to the monastic principle of celibacy the monastic and

military principle of obedience; the latter, in Napoleon's eyes, is

fundamental and the basis of the others; this principle being accepted,

a veritable corporation exists; members are ruled by one head and

command becomes effective.[6136] "There will be," says Napoleon, "a

corps of instructors, if all the principals, censors and professors have

one or several chiefs, the same as the Jesuits had their general and

their provincial," like the soldiers of a regiment with their colonel

and captain. The indispensable link is found; individuals, in this way,

keep together, for they are held by authorities, under one regulation.

As with a volunteer in a regiment, or a monk who enters a convent,

the members of the University will accept its total régime in advance,

present and future, wholly and in detail, and will subject themselves

under oath. "They are to take an engagement[6137] to faithfully observe

the statutes and regulations of the University. They must promise

obedience to the Grand-Master in everything ordered by him for the

service of the Emperor, and for the advantage of education. They must

engage not to quit the educational corps and abandon their functions

before having obtained the Grand-Master's consent. They are to accept

no other public or private salaried function without the authentic

permission of the Grand-Master. They are bound to give notice to the

Grand-Master and his officers of whatever comes to their knowledge that

is opposed to the doctrine and principles of the educational corps

in the establishments for public instruction." There are many other

obligations, indefinite or precise,[6138] of which the sanction is

not only moral, but, again, legal, all notable and lasting, an entire

surrender of the person who suffers more or less profoundly at having

accepted them, and whose compulsory resignation must be assured by

the fear of punishment. "Care must be taken[6139] to insure severe

discipline everywhere: the professors themselves are to be subject

in certain cases to the penalty of arrest; they will lose no more

consideration on this account than the colonels who are punished in the

same manner."[6140] It is the least of all penalties; there are others

of greater and greater gravity,[6141] "the reprimand in presence of an

academical board, censure in presence of the University board, transfer

to an inferior office, suspension with or without entire or partial

deprivation of salary, half-pay or put on the retired list, or stricken

off the University roll," and, in the latter case, "rendered incapable

of obtaining employment in any other public administration."--"Every

member of the University[6142] who shall fail to conform to the

subordination established by the statutes and regulations, or in respect

due to superiors, shall be reprimanded, censured or suspended from

his functions according to the gravity of the case." In no case may he

withdraw of his own accord, resign at will, and voluntarily return

to private life; he is bound to obtain beforehand the Grand-Master's

assent; and, if the latter refuses this, he must renew his application

three times, every two months, with the formalities, the delays and

the importunacy of a long procedure; failing in which, he is not

only stricken from the rolls, but again "condemned to a confinement

proportioned to the gravity of the circumstances," and which may last a

year.

A system of things ending in a prison is not attractive, and is

established only after great resistance. "We were under the necessity,"

says the superior council,[6143] "of taking candidates as they could

be found, differing infinitely in methods, principles and sentiments,

accustomed to almost unlimited pardon or, at least, to being governed by

the caprices of parents and nearly all disliking the régime attempted to

be enforced on them." Moreover, through this intervention of the State,

"the local authorities find one of their most cherished prerogatives

wrested from them." In sum, "the masters detested the new duties

imposed on them; the administrators and bishops protested against

the appointments not made at their suggestion; fathers of families

complained of the new taxes they had to pay. It is said that the

University is known only by its imposts and by its forced regulations;

again, in 1811, most of its masters are incompetent, or intractable, and

of a bad spirit.--There is still another reason for tightening the cord

that binds them into a corporation. "The absolute subordination of every

individual belonging to the University is its first necessity; without

discipline and without obedience, no University could exist. This

obedience must be prompt, and, in grave cases, where recourse must

be had to the authority of the government, obedience must always be

provisional." But, on this incurably refractory staff, pressure is

not enough; it has grown old and hardened; the true remedy, therefore,

consists in replacing it with a younger one, more manageable, expressly

shaped and wrought out in a special school, which will be for the

University what Fontainebleau is for the army, what the grand seminaries

are for the clergy, a nursery of subjects carefully selected and

fashioned beforehand.

Such is the object of the "École Normale."[6144] Young students enter it

at the age of seventeen and bind themselves to remain in the University

at least ten years.[6145] Young students enter it at the age of

seventeen (for a period of 3 years) and bind themselves afterwards to

remain in the University at least ten years. It is a boarding-school

and they are obliged to live in common: "individual exits are not

allowed," while "the exits in common... in uniform... can be made only

under the direction and conduct of superintendent masters.. .. These

superintendents inspect the pupils during their studies and recreations,

on rising and on going to bed and during the night... No pupil is

allowed to pass the hours set aside for recreation in his own room

without permission of the superintendent. No pupil is allowed to

enter the hall of another division without the permission of two

superintendents.... The director of studies must examine the books

of the pupils whenever he deems it necessary, and as often as once a

month." Every hour of the day has its prescribed task; all exercises,

including religious observances, are prescribed, each in time and place,

with a detail and meticulousness, as if purposely to close all possible

issues to personal initiation and everywhere substitute mechanical

uniformity for individual diversities. "The principal duties of the

pupils are respect for religion, attachment to the sovereign and the

government, steady application, constant regularity, docility and

submission to superiors; whoever fails in these duties is punished

according to the gravity of the offense."[6146]--In 1812,[6147] the

Normal School is still a small one, scarcely housed, lodged in the upper

stories of the lycée Louis le Grand, and composed of forty pupils and

four masters. But Napoleon has its eyes on it and is kept informed of

what goes on in it. He does not approve of the comments on the "Dialogue

de Sylla et d'Eucrate," by Montesquieu, on the "Éloge de Marc Aurèle,"

by Thomas, on the "Annales" of Tacitus: "Let the young read Cæsar's

commentaries... Corneille, Bossuet, are the masters worth having; these,

under the full sail of obedience, enter into the established order of

things of their time; they strengthen it, they illustrate it," they

are the literary coadjutors of public authority. Let the spirit of

the Normal School conform to that of these great men. The University

establishment is the original, central workshop which forges, finishes

and supplies the finest pieces, the best wheels. Just now the workshop

is incomplete, poorly fitted out, poorly directed and still rudimentary;

but it is to be enlarged and completed and made to turn out more and

better work. For the time being, it produces only what is needed to fill

the annual vacancies in the lycées and in the colleges. Nevertheless,

the first decree states that it is "intended to receive as many as

three hundred youths."[6148] The production of this number will fill

all vacancies, however great they may be, and fill them with products of

superior and authentic quality. These human products thus manufactured

by the State in its own shop, these school instruments which the State

stamps with its own mark, the State naturally prefers. It imposes them

on its various branches; it puts them by order into its lycées and

colleges; at last, it accepts no others; not only does it confer on

itself the monopoly of teaching, but again the preparation of the

masters who teach. In 1813,[6149] a circular announces that "the number

of places that chance to fall vacant from year to year, in the various

University establishments, sensibly diminishes according as the

organization of the teaching body becomes more complete and regular in

its operation, as order and discipline are established, and as education

becomes graduated and proportionate to diverse localities. The moment

has thus arrived for declaring that the Normal School is henceforth the

only road by which to enter upon the career of public instruction; it

will suffice for all the needs of the service."

VI. Objects and sentiments.

Object of the educational corps and adaptation of youth to

the established order of things.--Sentiments required of

children and adults.--Passive acceptance of these rules.

--Extent and details of school regulations.--Emulation and the

desire to be at the head.--Constant competition and annual

distribution of prizes.

What is the object of this service?--Previous to the Revolution, when

directed by, or under the supervision of, the Church, its great object

was the maintenance and strengthening of the faith of the young.

Successor of the old kings, the new ruler underlines[6150] among "the

bases of education," "the precepts of the Catholic religion," and this

phrase he writes himself with a marked intention; when first drawn

up, the Council of State had written the Christian religion; Napoleon

himself, in the definitive and public decree, substitutes the narrowest

term for the broadest.[6151] In this particular, he is politic, taking

one step more on the road on which he has entered through the Concordat,

desiring to conciliate Rome and the French clergy by seeming to give

religion the highest place.--But it is only a place for show, similar to

that which he assigns to ecclesiastical dignitaries in public ceremonies

and on the roll of precedence. He does not concern himself with

reanimating or even preserving earnest belief: far from that:

"it should be so arranged," he says,[6152] "that young people may be

neither too bigoted nor too incredulous: they should be adapted to the

state of the nation and of society."

All that can be demanded of them is external deference, personal

attendance on the ceremonies of worship, a brief prayer in Latin

muttered in haste at the beginning and end of each lesson,[6153] in

short, acts like those of raising one's hat or other public marks of

respect, such as the official attitudes imposed by a government, author

of the Concordat, on its military and civil staff. They likewise, the

lyceans and the collegians, are to belong to it and do already, Napoleon

thus forming his adult staff out of his juvenile staff.

In fact, it is for himself that he works, for himself alone, and not

at all for the Church whose ascendancy would prejudice his own; much

better, in private conversation, he declares that he had wished

to supplant it: his object in forming the University is first and

especially "to take education out of the hands of the priests.[6154]

They consider this world only as a vehicle for transportation to the

other," and Napoleon wants "the vehicle filled with good soldiers for

his armies," good functionaries for his administrations, and good,

zealous subjects for his service.--And, thereupon, in the decree which

organizes the University, and following after this phrase written for

effect, he states the real and fundamental truth.

"All the schools belonging to the University shall take for the basis of

their teaching loyalty to the Emperor, to the imperial monarchy to which

the happiness of the people is confided and to the Napoleonic dynasty

which preserves the unity of France and of all liberal ideas proclaimed

by the Constitutions."

In other terms, the object is to plant civil faith in the breasts

of children, boys and young men, to make them believe in the beauty,

goodness and excellence of the established order of things, to

predispose their minds and hearts in favor of the system, to adapt

them to this system,[6155] to the concentration of authority and to the

centralization of services, to uniformity and to "falling into line"

(encadrement), to equality in obeying, to competition, to enthusiasm,

in short, to the spirit of the reign, to the combinations of the

comprehensive and calculating mind which, claiming for itself and

appropriating for its own use the entire field of human action, sets up

its sign-posts everywhere, its barriers, its rectilinear compartments,

lays out and arranges its racecourses, brings together and introduces

the runners, urges them on, stimulates them at each stage, reduces their

soul to the fixed determination of getting ahead fast and far, leaving

to the individual but one motive for living, that of the desire to

figure in the foremost rank in the career where, now by choice and now

through force, he finds himself enclosed and launched.[6156]

For this purpose, two sentiments are essential with adults and therefore

with children:

The first is the passive acceptance of a prescribed regulation, and

nowhere does a rule applied from above bind and direct the whole life by

such precise and multiplied injunctions as under the University régime.

School life is circumscribed and marked out according to a rigid,

unique system, the same for all the colleges and lycées of the Empire,

according to an imperative and detailed plan which foresees and

prescribes everything even to the minutest point, labor and rest of mind

and of body, material and method of instruction, class-books, passages

to translate or to recite, a list of fifteen hundred volumes for each

library with a prohibition against introducing another volume into it

without the Grand-Master's permission, hours, duration, application

and sessions of classes, of studies, of recreations and of promenades

causing the premeditated stifling of native curiosity, of spontaneous

inquiry, of inventive and personal originality, both with the masters

and still more, with the scholars. This to such an extent that one

day, under the second Empire, a minister, drawing out his watch, could

exclaim with satisfaction,

"At this very time, in such a class, all the scholars of the Empire are

studying a certain page in Virgil."

Well--informed, judicious, impartial and even kindly-disposed

foreigners,[6157] on seeing this mechanism which everywhere substitutes

for the initiative from below the compression and impetus from above,

are very much surprised. "The law means that the young shall never for

one moment be left to themselves; the children are under their masters'

eyes all day" and all night. Every step outside of the regulations is

a false one and always arrested by the ever-present authority. And, in

cases of infraction, punishments are severe; "according to the gravity

of the case,[6158] the pupils will be punished by confinement from three

days to three months in the lycée or college, in some place assigned to

that purpose; if fathers, mothers or guardians object to these measures,

the pupil must be sent home and can no longer enter any other college

or lycée belonging to the university, which, as an effect of university

monopoly, thereafter deprives him of instruction, unless his parents are

wealthy enough to employ a professor at home. "Everything that can be

effected by rigid discipline is thus obtained[6159] and better, perhaps,

in France than in any other country," for if, on leaving the lycée,

young people have lost a will of their own, they have acquired "a

love of and habits of subordination and punctuality" which are lacking

elsewhere.

Meanwhile, on this narrow and strictly defined road, whilst the

regulation supports them, emulation pushes them on. In this respect, the

new university corps, which, according to Napoleon himself, must be a

company of "lay Jesuits," resumes to its advantage the double process

which its forerunners, the former Jesuits, had so well employed

in education. On the one hand, constant direction and incessant

watchfulness; on the other hand, the appeal to amour-propre and to the

excitements of parades before the public. If the pupil works hard, it is

not for the purpose of learning and knowing, but to be the first in his

class; the object is not to develop in him the need of truthfulness and

the love of knowledge, but his memory, taste and literary talent; at

best, the logical faculty of arrangement and deduction, but especially

the desire to surpass his rivals, to distinguish himself, to shine, at

first in the little public of his companions, and next, at the end of

the year, before the great public of grown-up men. Hence, the weekly

compositions, the register of ranks and names, every place being

numbered and proclaimed; hence, those annual and solemn awards of prizes

in each lycée and at the grand competition of all lycées, along with

the pomp, music, decoration, speeches and attendance of distinguished

personages. The German observer testifies to the powerful effect of a

ceremony of this kind[6160]:

"One might think one's self at the play, so theatrical was it;"

and he notices the oratorical tone of the speakers, "the fire of their

declamation," the communication of emotion, the applause of the public,

the prolonged shouts, the ardent expression of the pupils obtaining the

prizes, their sparkling eyes, their blushes, the joy and the tears of

the parents. Undoubtedly, the system has its defects; very few of the

pupils can expect to obtain the first place; others lack the spur and

are moreover neglected by the master. But the élite make extraordinary

efforts and, with this, there is success. "During the war times," says

again another German, "I lodged a good many French officers who knew one

half of Virgil and Horace by heart." Similarly, in mathematics, young

people of eighteen, pupils of the Polytechnic School, understand very

well the differential and integral calculus, and, according to the

testimony of an Englishman,[6161] "they know it better than many of the

English professors."

V. Military preparation and the cult of the Emperor.

This general preparation is specified and directed by Napoleon as a

policy, and, as he specially needs soldiers, the school, in his hands,

becomes the vestibule of the barracks. Right away the institution

received a military turn and spirit, and this form, which is essential

to him, becomes more and more restricted. In 1805, during four

months,[6162] Fourcroy, ordered by the Emperor, visits the new lycées

"with an inspector of reviews and a captain or adjutant-major, who

everywhere gives instruction in drill and discipline." The young have

been already broke in; "almost everywhere," he says on his return, "I

saw young people without a murmur or reflection obey even younger and

weaker corporals and sergeants who had been raised to a merited rank

through their good behavior and progress. He himself, although a

liberal, finds reasons which justify to the legislative body this

unpopular practice;[6163] he replies to the objections and alarm of the

parents "that it is favorable to order, without which there are no good

studies," and moreover "it accustoms the pupils to carrying and using

arms, which shortens their work and accelerates their promotion on being

summoned by the conscription to the service of the State." The tap of

the drum, the attitude in presenting arms, marching at command, uniform,

gold lace, and all that, in 1811, becomes obligatory, not only for the

lycées and colleges, but again, and under the penalty of being closed,

for private institutions.[6164] At the end of the Empire, there were in

the departments which composed old France 76,000 scholars studying under

this system of stimulation and constraint. "Our masters," as a

former pupil is to say later on, "resembled captain-instructors, our

study-rooms mess--rooms, our recreations drills, and our examinations

reviews."[6165] The whole tendency of the school inclines it towards the

military and merges therein on the studies being completed--sometimes,

even, it flows into it before the term is over. After 1806,[6166] the

anticipated conscriptions take youths from the benches of the philosophy

and rhetoric classes. After 1808, ministerial circulars[6167] demand of

the lycées boys (des enfants de bonne volonté), scholars of eighteen and

nineteen who "know how to manoeuvre," so that they may at once be made

under-officers or second-lieutenants; and these the lycées furnish

without any difficulty by hundreds. In this way, the beardless volunteer

entering upon the career one or two years sooner, but gaining by this

one or two grades in rank.--"Thus," says a principal[6168] of one of the

colleges, "the brain of the French boy is full of the soldier. As far as

knowledge goes there is but little hope of it, at least under existing

circumstances. In the schools, says another witness of the reign,[6169]

"the young refuse to learn anything but mathematics and a knowledge of

arms. I can recall many examples of young lads of ten or twelve

years who daily entreated their father and mother to let them go with

Napoleon."--In those days, the military profession is evidently the

first of all, almost the only one. Every civilian is a pékin, that is

to say an inferior, and is treated as such.[6170] At the door of the

theatre, the officer breaks the line of those who are waiting to get

their tickets and, as a right, takes one under the nose of those who

came before him; they let him pass, go in, and they wait. In the café,

where the newspapers are read in common, he lays hold of them as if

through a requisition and uses them as he pleases in the face of the

patient bourgeois.

The central idea of this glorification of the army, be it understood, is

the worship of Napoleon, the supreme, unique, absolute sovereign of the

army and all the rest, while the prestige of this name is as great, as

carefully maintained, in the school as in the army. At the start, he put

his own free scholars (boursiers) into the lycées and colleges, about

3000 boys[6171] whom he supports and brings up at his own expense, for

his own advantage, destined to become his creatures, and who form the

uppermost layer of the school population; about one hundred and fifty of

these scholarships to each lycée, first occupants of the lycée and still

for a long time more numerous than their paying comrades, all of a more

or less needy family, sons of soldiers and functionaries who live on the

Emperor and rely on him only, all accustomed from infancy to regard

the Emperor as the arbiter of their destiny, the special, generous and

all-powerful patron who, having taken charge of them now, will also take

charge of them in the future. A figure of this kind fills and occupies

the entire field of their imagination; whatever grandeur it already

possesses it here becomes still more grand, colossal and superhuman.

At the beginning their enthusiasm gave the pitch to their

co-disciples;[6172] the institution, through its mechanism, labors to

keep this up, and the administrators or professors, by order or through

zeal, use all their efforts to make the sonorous and ringing chord

vibrate with all the more energy. After 1811, even in a private

institution,[6173] "the victories of the Emperor form almost the only

subject on which the imagination of the pupils is allowed to exercise

itself." After 1807,[6174] at Louis le Grand, the prize compositions

are those on the recent victory of Jena. "Our masters themselves," says

Alfred de Vigny, "unceasingly read to us the bulletins of the Grande

Armée, while cries of Vive l'Empereur interrupted Virgil and Plato." In

sum, write many witnesses,[6175] Bonaparte desired to bestow on French

youths the organization of the "Mamelukes," and he nearly succeeded.

More exactly and in his own words, "His Majesty[6176] desired to realize

in a State of forty millions of inhabitants what had been done in Sparta

and in Athens.--" But," he is to say later, "I only half succeeded.

That was one of my finest conceptions";[6177] M. de Fontanes and the

other university men did not comprehend this or want to comprehend it.

Napoleon himself could give only a moment of attention to his school

work, his halting-spells between two campaigns;[6178] in his absence,

"they spoiled for him his best ideas"; "his executants "never perfectly

carried out his intentions. "He scolded, and they bowed to the storm,

but not the less continued on in the usual way." Fourcroy kept too much

of the Revolution in mind, and Fontanes too much of the ancient régime;

the former was too much a man of science, and the latter too much a

man of letters; with such capacities they laid too great stress on

intellectual culture and too little on discipline of the feelings. In

education, literature and science are "secondary" matters; the essential

thing is training, an early, methodical, prolonged, irresistible

training which, through the convergence of every means--lessons,

examples and habits--inculcates "principles," and lastingly impresses

on young souls "the national doctrine," a sort of social and political

catechism, the first article of which commands fanatical docility,

passionate devotion, and the total surrender of one's self to the

Emperor.[6179]

*****

[Footnote 6101: (and obviously the aim of all other dictatorships.

(SR.))]

[Footnote 6102: Pelet de la Lozère, 161. (Speech by Napoleon to the

Council of State, March 11, 1806.)]

[Footnote 6103: Our last son entered the French School system at the age

of 5 in 1984 and his school record followed him from school to school

until he left 13 years later with his terminal exam, the Baccalaureat.

(SR.)]

[Footnote 6104: What a wonderful procedure, it was to be copied and

used by all the dominant rulers of the 20th century. Taine's book is,

however, not to be let into immature hands, so no wonder it was hardly

ever referred to by those who had profited by it. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6105: A. de Beauchamp, Recueil des lois et réglements sur

l'enseignement supérior, 4 vol. ( (Rapport of Fourcroy to the Corps

Législatif, May 6, 1806.) "How important it is... that the mode of

education admitted to be the best should add to this advantage, that

of being uniform for the whole Empire, teaching the same knowledge,

inculcating the same principles on individuals who must live together in

the same society, forming in some way but one body, possessing but

one mind, and all contributing to the public good through unanimity of

sentiment and action."]

[Footnote 6106: Pelet de la Lozère, 154.]

[Footnote 6107: A. de Beauchamp, ibid. (Decree of March 7,

1808.)--Special and collateral schools which teach subjects not taught

in the lycées, for example the living languages, which are confined

to filling a gap, and do not compete with the lycées, are subject to

previous authorization and to university pay.]

[Footnote 6108: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 170. (Session of the Council of

State, March 20, 1806).]

[Footnote 6109: Quicherat, "Histoire de Sainte-Barbe," III., 125.]

[Footnote 6110: A. de Beauchamp, ibid. (Decrees of March 17, 1808, arts

103 and 105, of Sep. 17, 1808, arts. 2 and 3 of Novem. 15, 1801, arts.

54, 55 and 56.) "Should any one publicly teach and keep a school without

the Grand-Master's consent, he will be officially prosecuted by our

imperial judges, who will close the school.... He will be brought before

the criminal court and condemned to a fine of from one hundred to two

hundred francs, without prejudice to greater penalties, should he be

found guilty of having directed instruction in a way contrary to order

and to the public interest."--Ibid., art. 57. (On the closing of schools

provided with prescribed authority.)]

[Footnote 6111: A. de Beauchamp, ibid. (Decree of Sep. 17, 1808, arts.

27, 28, 29, 30, and act passed April 7, 1809.)]

[Footnote 6112: Id., ibid. (Decrees of March 17, 1808, art. 134; of Sep.

17, 1808, arts. 25 and 26; of Nov.15, 1811, art. 63).]

[Footnote 6113: Ambroise Rendu, "Essai sur l'instruction publique," 4

vols., 1819, I., 221. (Notice to M. de Fontanes, March 24, 1808. "The

university undertakes all public institutions, and must strive to have

as few private institutions as possible.]

[Footnote 6114: Eugène Rendu, "Ambroise Rendu et l'Université de France"

(1861), pp.25, 26. (Letter of the Emperor to Fourcroy, Floreal 3, year

XIII, ordering him to inspect the lycées and Report of Fourcroy at

the end of four months.) "In general, the drum. the drill and military

discipline keep the parents in most of the towns from sending their

children to the lycée.... Advantage is taken of this measure to make

parents believe that the Emperor wants only to make soldiers." Ibid.

(Note of M. de Champagny, Minister of the Interior, written a few months

later.) "A large half of the heads (of the lycée) or professors is, from

a moral point of view, completely indifferent. One quarter, by their

talk, their conduct, their reputation, exhibit the most dangerous

character in the eyes of the youths... The greatest fault of the

principals is their lack of religious spirit, religious zeal.... There

are not more than two or three lycees in which this may be seen. Hence

the removal of the children by the parents which is attributed to

political prejudices; hence the rarity of paying pupils; hence the

discredit of the lycées. In this respect opinion is unanimous."]

[Footnote 6115: "Histoire du Collége Louis le Grand," by Esmond,

emeritus censor, 1845, p.267 "Who were the assistant-teachers? Retired

subaltern officers who preserved the coarseness of the camp and knew of

no virtue but passive obedience.... The age at which scholarships were

given was not fixed, the Emperor's choice often falling on boys of

fifteen or sixteen, who presented themselves with habits already formed

out of a bad education and so ignorant that one was obliged to assign

them to the lowest classes, along with children."--Fabry, "Mémoires pour

servir à l'histoire de l'instruction publique depuis 1789," I., 391.

"The kernel of boarding-scholars, (holders of scholarships) was

furnished by the Prytanée. Profound corruption, to which the military

régime gives an appearance of regularity, a cool impiety which conforms

to the outward ceremonies of religion as to the movements of a drill,...

steady tradition has transmitted this spirit to all the pupils that have

succeeded each other for twelve years."]

[Footnote 6116: Fabry, ibid., vol. II.,12, and vol. III., 399.]

[Footnote 6117: Decree of Nov.15, 1811, articles 15, 16, 22.]

[Footnote 6118: Quicherat, ibid., III.. 93 to 105.--Up to 1809, owing

to M. de Fontane's toleration, M. de Lanneau could keep one half of his

pupils in his house under the name of pupils in preparatory classes, or

for the lectures in French or on commerce; nevertheless, he was obliged

to renounce teaching philosophy. In 1810, he is ordered to send all his

scholars to the lycée within three months. There were at this date 400

scholars in Sainte-Barbe.]

[Footnote 6119: Decree of Nov.15, 1811, articles 1, 4, 5, 9, 17 to 19

and 24 to 32.--"Procès-verbaux des séances du conseil de l'Université

impériale." (Manuscripts in the archives of the Ministry of Public

Instruction, furnished by M. A. de Beauchamp), session of March 12,

1811, note of the Emperor communicated by the Grand-Master. "His Majesty

requires that the following arrangement be added to the decree presented

to him: Wherever there is a lycée, the Grand-Master will order private

institutions to be closed until the lycée has all the boarders it can

contain." The personal intervention of Napoleon is here evident;

the decree starts with him; he wished it at once more rigorous, more

decidedly arbitrary and prohibitive.]

[Footnote 6120: Quicherat, ibid., III.,95-105.--Ibid., 126. After the

decree of November 15, 1811, threatening circulars follow each other

for fifteen months and always to hold fast or annoy the heads of

institutions or private schools. Even in the smallest boarding-schools,

the school exercises must be announced by the drum and the uniform worn

under penalty of being shut up]

[Footnote 6121: Ibid., III., 42.--At Sainte-Barbe, before 1808, there

were various sports favoring agility and flexibility of the body,

such as running races, etc. All that is suppressed by the imperial

University; it does not admit that anything can be done better or

otherwise than by itself.]

[Footnote 6122: Decree of March 17, 1808, article 38. Among "the bases

of teaching," the legislator prescribes "obedience to the statutes the

object of which is the uniformity of instruction."]

[Footnote 6123: Quicherat, III., 128.]

[Footnote 6124: "The Modern Régime," I., 164.]

[Footnote 6125: See, for a comprehension of the full effect of this

forced education, "Les Mécontens" by Mérimée, the rôle of Lieutenant

Marquis Edward de Naugis.]

[Footnote 6126: "Recueil," by A. de Beauchamp; Report by Fourcroy, April

20, 1802: "The populations which have become united with France

and which, speaking a different language and accustomed to foreign

institutions, need to abandon old habits and refashion themselves on

those of their new country, cannot find at home the essential means for

giving their sons the instruction, the manners and the character which

should amalgamate them with Frenchmen. What destiny could be more

advantageous for them and, at the same time, what a resource for the

government, which desires nothing so much as to attach new citizens to

France!"]

[Footnote 6127: "Journal d'un déténu de 1807 à 1814" (I vol., 1828, in

English), p.167. (An account given by Charles Choderlos de Laclos, who

was then at La Flèche.]

[Footnote 6128: Pelet de la Lozère, ibid., pp.162, 163.167. (Speeches by

Napoleon to the Council of State, sessions of Feb. 10, March 1, 11 and

20, April 7, and May 21 and 29, 1806.)]

[Footnote 6129: Napoleon himself said this: "I want a corporation, not

of Jesuits whose sovereign is in Rome, but Jesuits who have no

other ambition but to be useful and no other interest but the public

interest."]

[Footnote 6130: This intention is formally expressed in the law. (Decree

of March 17, 1808, art. 30.) "Immediately after the formation of

the imperial university, the order of rank shall be followed in the

appointment of functionaries, and no one can be assigned a place who has

not passed through the lowest. The situations will then afford a career

which offers to knowledge and good behavior the hope of reaching the

highest position in the imperial university."]

[Footnote 6131: Pelet de la Lozère, ibid.]

[Footnote 6132: "Procès-verbaux des séances du conseil de l'Université."

(In manuscript.) Memoir of February 1, 1811, on the means for developing

the spirit of the corporation in the University. In this memoir,

communicated to the Emperor, the above motive is alleged.]

[Footnote 6133: Pelet de la Lozère.]

[Footnote 6134: I can imagine the effect this description of Napoleon's

genius and inventive spirit must have had on Lenin when he lived and

studied in Paris and forged his plans for a communist state, a world

revolution, an annihilation of the existing order and the creation of a

new (and better) one. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6135: Decree of March 17, 1808, arts. 101, 102.]

[Footnote 6136: In any pre-revolutionary society, authority must be

undermined, women introduced whenever it can lessen the efficiency of

the organization. But once the revolution has won, then Lenin's dictum

about entrusting men of administrative talent with the full authority

of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to be followed. As Taine was

translated into German, Hitler is likely, directly or indirectly to have

studied Napoleon. Hitler's "führerprincip" a principle which gave the

Nazi society its terrible efficiency was probably the result. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6137: Decree of March 20, 1808, articles 40-46.]

[Footnote 6138: For example, act of March 31, 1812, On leaves of

absence.--Cf. the regulations of April 8, 1810, for the "École de la

Maternité," titres ix, x and xi). In this strict and special instance we

see plainly what Napoleon meant by "the police" of a school.]

[Footnote 6139: Pelet de la Lozère, Ibid.]

[Footnote 6140: It seems to me probable that an aspiring revolutionary

like Hitler, Lenin, Stalin or Trotsky) would attempt to copy Napoleon's

once he had successfully taken power inside first the party and later

the state. To enhance the dissolution of a democracy the opposite

system, that is tenure irrespective of performance, the right to operate

militant trade unions and to conduct strikes, would be demanded for all

government employees. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6141: Decree of March 17, 1808, articles 47 and 48.]

[Footnote 6142: Decree of Nov. 15, 1811, articles 66 and 69.]

[Footnote 6143: Procès-verbaux et papiers du conseil supérior de

l'Université (in manuscript).--(Two memoirs submitted to the Emperor,

Feb. 1, 1811, on the means of strengthening the discipline and spirit of

the body in the University.)--The memoir requests that the sentences of

the university authorities be executable on the simple exequatur of the

courts; it is important to diminish the intervention of tribunals and

prefects, to cut short appeals and pleadings; the University must have

full powers and full jurisdiction on its domain, collect taxes from

its taxpayers, and repress all infractions of those amenable to its

jurisdiction. (Please not the exequatur is a French ordnance by which

the courts gives a decision by a third party or an umpire executory

force. SR.)]

[Footnote 6144: "Statut sur l'administration, l'ensignement et la police

de l'École normale," March 30, 1810, title II, articles 20-23.]

[Footnote 6145: Taine entered in L'Ecole Normale in October 1848, first

in his year, having written an essay in philosophy (in Latin) with the

title: Si animus cum corpore extinguitur, quid sit Deus? Quid homo? Quid

societas? Quid philosophia? (If the soul dies with the body what happens

to God? Man? Society? Philosophy?) And an essay in French imagining that

he was Voltaire writing to his English friend Cedeville pretending to

give his impressions on England. When he had arrived on 30 October 1848

Taine wrote to Cornélis de Witt: "Here I am in the convent and prisoner

for three years." (SR.)]

[Footnote 6146: I note, however, that the École Normale Superior

produced Taine, and it seemed to have had the same effect upon him as

by boarding school and its similar regime upon me, namely of making me

informed and rebellious. I have also noted that the most uninteresting

and smug young people I have met have followed school systems like that

of the United States where no great effort is demanded but the peer

pressure helps to produce ignorant, self-satisfied students. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6147: Villemain, "Souvenirs contemporaines," vol. I., 137-156.

("Une visite à l'École normale en 1812," Napoleon's own words to M. de

Narbonne.) "Tacitus is a dissatisfied senator, an Auteuil grumbler, who

revenges himself, pen in hand, in his cabinet. His is the spite of the

aristocrat and philosopher both at once.... Marcus Aurelius is a sort

of Joseph II., and, in much larger proportions, a philanthropist and

sectarian in commerce with the sophists and ideologues of his time,

flattering them and imitating them.... I like Diocletian better."--"...

Public education lies in the future and in the duration of my work after

I am gone."]

[Footnote 6148: Decree of March 17, 1808, art. 110 and the following.]

[Footnote 6149: Circular of Nov. 13, 1813.]

[Footnote 6150: Decree of March 17, 1808, article 38.]

[Footnote 6151: Pelet de la Lozere, ibid., 158.]

[Footnote 6152: Id., ibid., 168. (Session of March 20, 1806.)]

[Footnote 6153: Hermann Niemeyer, "Beobactungen auf einer

Deportation-Reise nach Frankreich im J. 1807" (Halle, 1824),

II.,353.--Fabry, "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de l'instruction

publique," III., 120. (Documents and testimony of pupils showing that

religion in the lycées is only ceremonial practice.)--Id., Riancey,

"Histoire de l'instruction publique," II.,378. (Reports of nine

chaplains in the royal colleges in 1830 proving that the same spirit

prevailed throughout the Restoration: "A boy sent to one of these

establishments containing 400 pupils for the term of eight years has

only eight or ten chances favoring the preservation of his faith; all

the others are against him, that is to say, out of four hundred chances,

three hundred and ninety risk his being a man with no religion."]

[Footnote 6154: Fabry, ibid., III., 175. (Napoleon's own words to a

member of his council.)--Pelet de la Lozère, ibid., 161: "I do not want

priests meddling with public education."--167: "The establishment of

a teaching corps will be a guarantee against the re-establishment of

monks. Without that they would some day come back."]

[Footnote 6155: Fabry, ibid, III., 120. (Abstract of the system of

lycées by a pupil who passed many years in two lycées.) Terms for board

900 francs, insufficiency of food and clothing, crowded lectures and

dormitories, too many pupils in each class, profits of the principal who

lives well, gives one grand dinner a week to thirty persons, deprives

the dormitory, already too narrow, of space for a billiard-table, and

takes for his own use a terrace planted with fine trees. The censor, the

steward, the chaplain, the sub-director do the same, although to a less

degree. The masters are likewise as poorly fed as the scholars. The

punishments are severe, no paternal remonstrance or guidance, the

under-masters maltreated on applying the rules, despised by their

superiors and without any influence on their pupils.--"Libertinage,

idleness self-interest animated all breasts, there being no tie of

friendship uniting either the masters to the scholars nor the pupils

amongst themselves."]

[Footnote 6156: Finding myself in charge of a numerous staff of

technicians, artisans, operators and workers hired by the United Nations

to serve a military mission in Lebanon I was faced with motivating

everyone, not only when they would become eligible for promotion, but

also during the daily humdrum existence. I one day coined the phrase

that "everyone wants to be important" and tried to make them feel so by

insisting that all tasks, even the most humble had to be done well. I

gave preference to seniority by giving the most senior man the chance to

prove himself once a higher post fell vacant. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6157: Hermann Niemeyer, "Beobachtungen," etc., II.,350. "A

very worthy man, professor in one of the royal colleges, said to me:

'What backward steps we have been obliged to take! How all the pleasure

of teaching, all the love for our art, has been taken away from us by

this constraint!'"]

[Footnote 6158: Id., ibid., II.,339.--"Decree of November 15, 1811 art.

17."]

[Footnote 6159: Id., ibid., II.,353.]

[Footnote 6160: Hermann Niemeyer, ibid., 366, and following pages. On

the character, advantages and defects of the system, this testimony of

an eye-witness is very instructive and forms an almost complete picture.

The subjects taught are reduced to Latin and mathematics; there is

scarcely any Greek, and none of the modern languages, hardly a tinge of

history and the natural sciences, while philology is null; that which

a pupil must know of the classics is their "contents and their spirit"

(Geist und Inhalt).--Cf. Guizot, "Essai sur l'histoire et l'état actuel

de l'instruction publique," 1816, p.103.]

[Footnote 6161: "Travels in France during the Years 1814 and 1815"

(Edinburgh, 1816), vol. I., p. 152.]

[Footnote 6162: "Ambroise Rendu et l'Université de France," by E. Rendu

(1861), pp. 25 and 26. (Letter of the Emperor, Floréal 3, year XIII, and

report by Fourcroy.)]

[Footnote 6163: "Recueil," etc., by de Beauchamp, I., 151. (Report to

the Corps Législatif by Fourcroy, May 6, 1806.)]

[Footnote 6164: "Procès-verbaux et papiers" (manuscripts) of the

superior council of the University, session of March 12, 1811, note by

the Emperor communicated by the Grand-Master: "The Grand-Master will

direct that in all boarding-schools and institutions which may come into

existence, the pupils shall wear a uniform, and that everything shall go

on as in the lycées according to military discipline." In the decree in

conformity with this, of Nov. 15, 1811, the word military was omitted,

probably because it seemed too crude; but it shows the thought

behind it, the veritable desire of Napoleon.--Quicherat," Histoire de

Sainte-Barbe," III., 126. The decree was enforced "even in the smallest

boarding-schools."]

[Footnote 6165: Testimony of Alfred de Vigny in "Grandeur et Servitude

militaires." Same impression of Alfred de Musset in his "Confession d'un

enfant du siècle."]

[Footnote 6166: Quicherat, ibid., p.126.]

[Footnote 6167: "The Modern Régime," I. (Laff. I. p. 550.)]

[Footnote 6168: Hermann Niemeyer, ibid., I., 153.]

[Footnote 6169: "Travels in France," etc., II.,123. (Testimony of a

French gentleman.) "The rapid destruction of population in France caused

constant promotions, and the army became the career which offered the

most chances. It was a profession for which no education was necessary

and to which all had access. There, Bonaparte never allowed merit to go

unrecognized."]

[Footnote 6170: Véron, "Mémoires d'un bourgeois de Paris," I., 127 (year

1806).]

[Footnote 6171: Guizot, ibid., pp.59 and 61.--Fabry, "Mémoires pour

servir à l'histoire de l'instruction publique," III., 102. (On the

families of these favorites and on the means made use of to obtain these

scholarships.)--Jourdain, "le Budget de l'instruction publique (1857)",

p. 144.--In 1809, in the 36 lycées, there are 9,068 pupils, boarding

and day scholars, of whom 4,199 are boursiers. In 1811, there are 10,926

pupils, of whom 4,008 are boursiers. In 1813, there are 14,992

pupils, of whom 3,500 are boursiers. At the same epoch, in private

establishments, there are 30,000 pupils.]

[Footnote 6172: Fabry, ibid., II.,391 (1819). (On the peopling of the

lycées and colleges.) "The first nucleus of the boarders was furnished

by the Prytanée.... Tradition has steadily transmitted this spirit to

all the pupils that succeeded each other for the first twelve years."--

Ibid., III., 112 "The institution of lycees tends to creating a race

inimical to repose, eager and ambitious, foreign to the domestic

affections and of a military and adventurous spirit."]

[Footnote 6173: Quicherat, ibid., III., 126.]

[Footnote 6174: Hermann Niemeyer, ibid., II.,350.]

[Footnote 6175: Fabry, ibid., III., 109-112.]

[Footnote 6176: Ambroise Rendu, "Essai sur l'instruction publique,"

(1819), I., 221. (Letter of Napoleon to M. de Fontanes, March 24,

1808.)]

[Footnote 6177: "Mémorial," June 17, 1816.]

[Footnote 6178: Pelet de la Lozère, ibid., 154, 157, 159.]

[Footnote 6179: "Mémorial," June 17, 1816. "This conception of the

University by Napoleon must be taken with another, of more vast

proportions, which he sets forth in the same conversation and which

clearly shows his complete plan. He desired "the military classing of

the nation," that is to say five successive conscriptions, one above the

other. The first, that of children and boys by means of the University;

the second, that of ordinary conscripts yearly and effected by the

drawing by lot; the third, fourth and fifth provided by three standards

of national guard, the first one comprising young unmarried men and held

to frontier service, the second comprising men of middle age, married

and to serve only in the department, and the third comprising aged men

to be employed only in the defense of towns--in all, through these three

classes, two millions of classified men, enrolled and armed, each

with his post assigned him in case of invasion. "In 1810 or 1811 up to

fifteen or twenty drafts of this" proposal "was read to the council of

State. The Emperor, who laid great stress on it, frequently came back

to it." We see the place of the University in his edifice: from ten to

sixty years, his universal conscription was to take, first, children,

then adults, and, with healthy persons, the semi-invalids, as, for

instance, Cambacérès, the arch-chancellor, gross, impotent, and, of all

men, the least military. "There is Cambacérès," says Napoleon, "who must

be ready to shoulder his gun if danger makes it necessary.... Then you

will have a nation sticking together like lime and sand, able to defy

time and man." There is constant repugnance to this by the whole Council

of State, "marked disfavor, mute and inert opposition.... Each member

trembled at seeing himself classed, transported abroad," and, under

pretext of internal defense, used for foreign wars. "The Emperor,

absorbed with other projects, saw this plan vanish."]

CHAPTER II.

I. Primary Instruction.

Primary instruction.--Additional and special restrictions on

the teacher.--Ecclesiastical supervision.--Napoleon's

motives.--Limitation of primary instruction.--Ignorant

monks preferred.--The imperial catechism.

Such is secondary education, his most personal, most elaborate, most

complete work; the other two stories of the educational system, under

and over, built in a more summary fashion, are adapted to the middle

story and form, the three together, a regular monument, of which the

architect has skillfully balanced the proportions, distributed the

rooms, calculated the service and designed the facade and scenic effect.

"Napoleon," says a contemporary adversary,[6201] "familiar with power

only in its most absolute form, military despotism, tried to partition

France in two categories, one composed of the masses, destined to fill

the ranks of his vast army, and disposed, through the brutishness which

he was willing to maintain; to passive obedience and fanatical devotion;

the other, more refined by reason of its wealth, was to lead the former

according to the views of the chief who equally dominated both, for

which purpose it was to be formed in schools where, trained for a

servile and, so to say, mechanical submission, it would acquire relative

knowledge, especially in the art of war and with regard to a wholly

material administration; after this, vanity and self-interest were to

attach it to his person and identify it, in some way with his system of

government."

Lighten this gloomy picture one degree and it is true.[6202] As to

primary instruction, there was no State appropriation, no credit

inscribed on the budget, no aid in money, save 25,000 francs, allotted

in 1812, to the novices of the Frères Ignorantins and of which they

received but 4,500 francs;[6203] the sole mark of favor accorded to the

small schools is an exemption from the dues of the University.[6204] His

councillors, with their habits of fiscal logic, proposed to exact

this tax here as elsewhere; a shrewd politician, he thinks that its

collection would prove odious and he is bound not to let his popularity

suffer among villagers and common people; it is 200,000 francs a year

which he abstains from taking from them; but here his liberalities in

behalf of primary instruction stop. Let parents and the communes take

this burden on themselves, pay its expenses, seek out and hire the

teacher, and provide for a necessity which is local and almost domestic.

The government, which invites them to do this, will simply furnish the

plan, that is to say, a set of rules, prescriptions and restrictions.

At first, there is the authorization of the prefect, guardian of the

commune, who, having invited the commune to found a school, has

himself, through a circular, given instructions to this end, and who

now interferes in the contract between the municipal council and the

teacher, to approve of or to rectify its clauses--the name of the

employee, duration of his engagement, hours and seasons for his classes,

subjects to be taught, the sum total and conditions of his pay in money

or in kind; the school grant must be paid by the commune, the school

tax by the pupils, the petty fees which help pay the teacher's living

expenses and which he gets from accessory offices such as mayor's clerk,

clock-winder, sexton, bell-ringer and chorister in the church[6205]--At

the same time, and in addition, there is the authorization of the

rector; for the small as well as the average or larger schools are

included in the University;[6206] the new master becomes a member of

the teaching body, binds himself and belongs to it by oath, takes

upon himself its obligations and submissions, comes under the special

jurisdiction of the university authorities, and is inspected, directed

and controlled by them in his class and outside of his class.--The

last supervision, still more searching and active, which close by,

incessantly and on the spot, hovers over all small schools by order

and spontaneously, is the ecclesiastical supervision. A circular of the

Grand-Master, M. de Fontanes,[6207] requests the bishops to instruct

"messieurs les curés of their diocese to send in detailed notes on their

parish schoolmasters;" "when these notes are returned," he says,

"please address them to me with your remarks on them; according to these

indications I will approve of the instructor who merits your suffrage

and he will receive the diploma authorizing him to continue in his

functions. Whoever fails to present these guarantees will not receive a

diploma and I shall take care to replace him with another man whom you

may judge to be the most capable."[6208]

If Napoleon thus places his small schools under ecclesiastical

oversight, it is not merely to conciliate the clergy by giving it the

lead of the majority of souls, all the uncultivated souls, but because,

for his own interests, he does not want the mass of the people to think

and reason too much for themselves.

"The Academy inspectors,"[6209] says the decree of 1811, "will see that

the masters of the primary schools do not carry their teaching beyond

reading, writing and arithmetic."

Beyond this limit, should the instructor teach a few of the children the

first elements of Latin or geometry, geography or history, his school

becomes secondary; it is then ranked as a boarding-school, while its

pupils are subjected to the university recompense, military drill,

uniform, and all the above specified exigencies; and yet more--it must

no longer exist and is officially closed. A peasant who reads, writes

and ciphers and who remains a peasant need know no more, and, to be a

good soldier, he need not know as much; moreover, that is enough, and

more too, to enable him to become an under and even a superior officer.

Take, for instance, Captain Coignet, whose memoirs we have, who, to be

appointed a second-lieutenant, had to learn to write and who could never

write other than a large hand, like young beginners.--The best masters

for such limited instruction are the Brethren of the Christian Schools

and these, against the advice of his counselors, Napoleon supports:

"If they are obliged," he says, by their vows to refrain from other

knowledge than reading, writing and the elements of arithmetic,... it is

that they may be better adapted to their destiny."[6210] "In comprising

them in the University, they become connected with the civil order of

things and the danger of their independence is anticipated."

Henceforth, "they no longer have a stranger or a foreigner for their

chief." "The superior-general at Rome has renounced all inspection over

them; it is understood that in France their superior-general will reside

at Lyons."[6211] The latter, with his monks, fall into the hands of

the government and come under the authority of the Grand-Master. Such

a corporation, with the head of it in one's power, is a perfect

instrument, the surest, the most exact, always to be relied on and which

never acts on one side of, or beyond, the limits marked out for it.

Nothing pleases Napoleon more, who,

* in the civil order of things, wants to be Pope;

* who builds up his State, as the Pope his Church, on old Roman

tradition;

* who, to govern from above, allies himself with ecclesiastical

authority;

* who, like Catholic authorities, requires drilled executants and

regimental maneuvers, only to be found in organized and special bodies

of men.[6212]

The general inspectors of the University give to each rector the

following instructions as a watchword "Wherever the Brethren of the

Christian Schools can be found, they shall," for primary teaching, "be

preferred to all others."[6213] Thus, to the three classes of subjects

taught, a fourth must be added, one not mentioned by the legislator

in his law, but which Napoleon admits, which the rectors and prefects

recommend or authorize, and which is always inscribed in the contract

made between the commune and the instructor. The latter, whether layman

or 'frère ignorantin,' engages to teach, besides "reading, writing

and decimal arithmetic," "the catechism adopted by the Empire."

Consequently, as the first communion (of the pupil) draws near, he

is careful, for at least two years, to have his scholars learn the

consecrated text by heart, and to recite this text aloud on their

benches, article by article; in this way, his school becomes a branch of

the Church and, hence, like the Church, a reigning instrumentality. For,

in the catechism adopted for the Empire, there is one phrase carefully

thought out, full and precise in its meaning, in which Napoleon has

concentrated the quintessence of his political and social doctrine

and formulated the imperative belief assigned by him as the object of

education. The seven or eight hundred thousand children of the lower

schools recite this potent phrase to the teacher before reciting it to

the priest:

"We especially owe to Napoleon I., our Emperor, love, respect,

obedience, fidelity, military service, and the dues (tributs) prescribed

for the preservation and defense of the Empire and the throne.... For it

is he whom God has raised up in times of difficulty, to restore

public worship and the holy religion of our forefathers, and to be its

protector."[6214]

II. Higher Education.

Superior instruction.--Characters and conditions of

scientific universities.--Motives for opposition to them.

--In what respect adverse to the French system.--How he

replaces them.--Extent of secondary instruction.--Meets all

wants in the new social order of things.--The careers it

leads to.--Special schools.--Napoleon requires them

professional and practical.--The law school.

Superior instruction, the most important of all, remains. For, in this

third and last stage of education, the minds and opinions of young

people from eighteen to twenty-four years of age are fully formed. It is

then that, already free and nearly ripe, these future occupants of busy

careers, just entering into practical life, shape their first general

ideas, their still hazy and half-poetic views of things, their premature

and foregone conclusions respecting man, nature, society and the great

interests of humanity.

If we want them to arrive at sound conclusions, a good many scales must

be prepared for them, and these scales must be substantial, convergent,

each with its own rungs of the ladder superposed, each with an

indication of its total scope, each expressly designating the absent,

doubtful, provisional or simply future and possible rungs, because they

are in course of formation or on trial.[6215]--Consequently, these must

all be got together in a designated place, in adjacent buildings,

not alone the body of professors, the spokes-men of science,

but collections, laboratories and libraries which constitute the

instruments. Moreover, besides ordinary and regular courses of

lectures, there must be lecture halls where, at appointed hours, every

enterprising, knowledgeable person with something to say may speak to

those who would like to listen. Thus, a sort of oral encyclopedia is

organized, an universal exposition of human knowledge, a permanent

exposition constantly renewed and open, to which its visitors, provided

with a certificate of average instruction as an entrance ticket, will

see with their own eyes, besides established science that which is under

of formation, besides discoveries and proofs the way of discovering and

proving, namely the method, history and general progress, the place of

each science in its group, and of this group its place in the general

whole. Owing to the extreme diversity of subjects taught there will be

room and occupation for the extreme diversity of intelligences. Young

minds can choose for themselves their own career, mount as high as their

strength allows, climb up the tree of knowledge each on his own side,

with his own ladder, in his own way, now passing from the branches to

the trunk and again from the trunk to the branches, now from a remote

bough to the principal branch and from that again back to the trunk.

And more than this, thanks to the co-ordination of lessons well

classified, there is, for each course of lectures, the means for

arriving at full details in all particulars; the young students can

talk amongst themselves and learn from each other, the student of moral

science from the student of the natural sciences, the latter from the

student of the chemical or physical sciences, and another from the

student of the mathematical sciences. Bearing still better fruit, the

student, in each of these four circumscriptions, derives information

from his co-disciples lodged right and left in the nearest compartments,

the jurist from the historian, from the economist, from the philologist,

and reciprocally, in such a way as to profit by their impressions and

suggestions, and enable them to profit by his. He must have no other

object in view for three years, no rank to obtain, no examination to

undergo, no competition for which to make preparations, no outward

pressure, no collateral preoccupation, no positive, urgent and personal

interest to interfere with, turn aside or stifle pure curiosity. He pays

something out of his own pocket for each course of lectures he attends;

for this reason, he makes the best choice he can, follows it up to the

end, takes notes, and comes there, not to seek phrases and distraction,

but actualities and instruction, and get full value for his money. It is

assumed that knowledge is an object of exchange, foodstuffs stockpiled

and delivered by the masters; the student who takes delivery is

concerned that it is of superior quality, genuine and nutritious;

the masters, undoubtedly, through amour-propre and conscience, try to

furnish it this; but it is up to the student himself to fetch it, just

what he wants, in this particular storehouse rather than in others, from

this or that lecture-stand, official or not. To impart and to acquire

knowledge for itself and for it alone, without subordinating this end

to another distinct and predominant end, to direct minds towards this

object and in this way, under the promptings and restraints of supply

and demand, to open up the largest field and the freest career to the

faculties, to labor, to the preferences of the thinking individual,

master or disciple,--such is (or ought to be) the spirit of the

institution. And, evidently, in order that it may be effective according

to this spirit, it needs an independent, appropriate body, that is to

say, autonomous, sheltered against the interference of the State, of

the Church, of the commune, of the province, and of all general or

local powers, provided with rules and regulations, made a legal, civil

personage, with the right to buy, sell and contract obligations, in

short proprietorship.

This is no chimerical plan, the work of a speculative, calculating

imagination, which appears well and remains on paper. All the

universities of the middle ages were organized according to this type.

It found life and activity everywhere and for a long time; the twenty-

two universities in France previous to the Revolution, although

disfigured, stunted and desiccated, preserved many of its features,

certain visible externals, and, in 1811,[6216] Cuvier, who had just

inspected the universities of lower Germany, describes it as he found

it, on the spot, confined to superior instruction, but finished and

complete, adapted to modern requirements, in full vigor and in full

bloom.

There is no room in the France to which Cuvier returns for institutions

of this stamp; they are excluded from it by the social system which has

prevailed.--First of all, public law, as the Revolution and Napoleon

comprehended it and enacted it, is hostile to them;[6217] for it sets

up the principle that in a State there must be no special corporations

permanent, under their own control, supported by mort main property,

acting in their own right and conducting a public service for their own

benefit, especially if this service is that of teaching; for the State

has taken this charge upon itself, reserved it for itself and assumed

the monopoly of it; hence, the unique and comprehensive university

founded by it, and which excludes free, local and numerous universities.

Thus, in its essence, it is the self-teaching State and not

self-teaching science; thus defined, the two types are contradictory;

not only are the two bodies different, but again the two spirits are

incompatible; each has an aim of its own, which is not the aim of the

other. In a special sense, the use to which the Emperor assigns his

university is contrary to the aim of the German universities; it is

founded for his own advantage, that he may possess "the means for

shaping moral and political opinions." With this object in view it

would be wrong for him to allow several establishments within reach of

students in which they would be directed by science alone; it is certain

that, in many points, the direction here given to youth would poorly

square with the rigid, uniform, narrow lines in which Napoleon wishes

to confine them. Schools of this kind would get to be centers of

opposition; young men thus fashioned would become dissenters; they would

gladly hold personal, independent opinions alongside, or outside, of

"the national doctrine," outside of Napoleonic and civil orthodoxy;

and worse still, they would believe in their opinions. Having studied

seriously and at first sources, the jurist, the theologian, the

philosopher, the historian, the philologist, the economist might perhaps

cherish the dangerous pretension of considering himself competent even

in social matters; being a Frenchman, he would talk with assurance and

indiscretion; he would be much more troublesome than a German; it would

soon be necessary to send him to Bicêtre or to the Temple.[6218]--In

the present state of things, with the exigencies of the reign, and even

in the interests of the young themselves, it is essential that superior

instruction should be neither encyclopedic nor very profound.

Were this a defect, Frenchmen would not perceive it; they are accustomed

to it. Already, before 1789, the classes in the humanities were

generally completed by the lesson in philosophy. In this course logic,

morals and metaphysics were taught. Here the young persons handled,

adjusted, and knocked about more or less adroitly the formula on God,

nature, the soul and science they had learned by rote. Less scholastic,

abridged, and made easy, this verbal exercise has been maintained in

the lycées.[6219] Under the new régime, as well as under the old one, a

string of abstract terms, which the professor thought he could explain

and which the pupil thought he understood, involves young minds in a

maze of high, speculative conceptions, beyond their reach and far beyond

their experience, education and years. Because pupils play with words,

they suppose that they grasp and master ideas, which fancy deprives

them of any desire to obtain them. Consequently, in the great French

establishment, young people hardly remark the lack of veritable

Universities; a liberal, broad spirit of inquiry is not aroused in them;

they do not regret their inability to have covered the cycle of varied

research and critical investigation, the long and painful road which

alone surely leads to profound general conceptions, those grand ideas

which are verifiable and solidly based.--And, on the other hand,

their quick, summary mode of preparation suffices for the positive and

appreciable needs of the new society. The problem is to fill the gaps

made in it by the Revolution and to provide the annual and indispensable

quota of educated youth. Now, after as before the Revolution, this is

understood as being all who have passed through the entire series

of classes; under the system, subject to the drill in Latin and

mathematics. The young men have here acquired the habit of using clear,

connected ideas, a taste for close reasoning, the art of condensing a

phrase or a paragraph, an aptitude for attending to the daily business

of a worldly, civil life, especially the faculty of carrying on a

discussion, of writing a good letter, even the talent for composing

a good report or memorial.[6220] A young man with these skills,

some scraps of natural philosophy, and with still briefer notions of

geography and history, has all the general, preliminary culture he

needs, all the information he requires for aspiring to one of the

careers called liberal. The choice rests with himself; he will be

what he wants to be, or what he is able to be--professor, engineer,

physician, member of the bar, an administrator or a functionary. In each

of his qualifications he renders an important service to the public, he

exercises an honorable profession; let him be competent and expert, that

concerns society. But that alone is all that society cares about; it is

not essential that it should find in him additionally an erudite or a

philosopher.

* Let him be competent and worthy of confidence in his particular

profession,

* let him know how to teach classes or frame a course of lectures, how

to build a bridge, a bastion, an edifice, how to cure a disease, perform

an amputation, draw up a contract, manage a case in court, and give

judgment;

* let the State, for greater public convenience, organize, check, and

certify this special capacity,

* let it verify this by examinations and diploma,

* let it make of this a sort of coin of current value, duly minted and

of proper standard;

* let this be protected against counterfeits, not only by its

preferences but again by its prohibitions, by the penalties it enacts

against the illegal practice of pharmacy and of medicine, by the

obligations it imposes on magistrates, lawyers and ministerial officials

not to act until obtaining this or that grade,--

such is what the interest of society demands and what it may exact.

According to this principle, the State creates special schools, (today

in 1998 called Grande Ecoles[6221]), and, through the indirect monopoly

which it possesses, it fills them with listeners; henceforth, these are

to furnish the youth of France with superior education.[6222]

From the start, Napoleon, as logician, with his usual lucidity and

precision, lays it down that they shall be strictly practical and

professional. "Make professors (régents) for me," said he one day

in connection with the Ecole normale, "and not littérateurs, wits or

seekers or inventors in any branch of knowledge." In like manner says he

again,[6223]