(bachelier) in the sciences before he can be a bachelor in the medical
faculty; medicine is not an exact and positive science, but a science
of guess and observation. I should place more confidence in a doctor
who had not studied the exact sciences than in one who possessed them.
I preferred M. Corvisart to M. Hallé, because M. Hallé belongs to the
Institute. M. Corvisart does not even know what two equal triangles are.
The medical student should not be diverted from hospital practice, from
dissections and studies relating to his trade."
There is the same subordination of science to the professions, the same
concern for immediate or near application, the same utilitarian tendency
to aim at a public function or a private career, the same contraction of
studies in the law school, in that order of truths of which Montesquieu,
a Frenchman, fifty years before, had first seized the entire body,
marked the connections and delineated the chart. At issue are the laws
and the "spirit of laws," unwritten or written, by which diverse human
societies live, of whatever form, extent and kind,--the State, commune,
Church, school, army, agricultural or industrial workshop, tribe
or family. These, existing or fossilized, are realities, open to
observation like plants or animals. One may, the same as with animals
and plants, observe them, describe them, compare them together, follow
their history from first to last, study their organization, classify
them in natural groups, disengage the distinctive and dominant
characteristics in each, note its ambient surroundings and ascertain
the internal or external conditions, or "necessary relationships," which
determine its failure or its bloom. For men who live together in society
and in a State, no study is so important; it alone can furnish them with
a clear, demonstrable idea of what society and the State are; and it is
in the law schools that this capital idea must be sought by an educated
student body. If they do not find it there, they invent one to suit
themselves. As 1789 drew near, the antiquated, poor, barren, teaching
of law, fallen into contempt and almost null,[6224] offered no sound,
accredited doctrine which could impose itself on young minds, fill their
empty minds and prevent the intrusion of utopic dreams. And intrude it
did: in the shape of Rousseau's anti-social Utopia, in his anarchical
and despotic Social Contract. To hinder it from returning, the best
thing to do was not to repeat the same mistake, not to leave the lodging
empty, to install in it a fixed occupant beforehand, and to see that
this fixed occupant, which is science, may at all times represent its
title of legitimate proprietor, its method analogous to that of the
natural sciences, its studies of detail from life and in the texts, its
restricted inductions, its concordant verifications, its progressive
discoveries. This in order that, confronting every chance system and
without these titles, minds may of themselves shut their doors, or only
open them provisionally, and always with a care to make the intruder
present his letters of credit: here we have the social service rendered
by the instruction in Law as given in the German mode, as Cuvier had
just described it. Before 1789, in the University of Strasbourg, in
France, it was thus given; but, in this condition and to this extent, it
is not suitable under the new régime, and still less than under the old
one.
Napoleon, in his preparation of jurists, wants executants and not
critics; his faculties must furnish him with men able to apply and not
to give opinions on his laws. Hence, in the teaching of the law, as he
prescribes it, there must be nothing of history, of political economy or
of comparative law; there must be no exposition of foreign legislation,
of feudal or custom law, or of canon law; no account of the
transformations which governed public and private law in Rome down to
the Digest[6225] and, after that, in France, down to the recent codes.
But nothing on remote origins, on successive forms and the diverse and
ever-changing conditions of labor, property and the family; nothing
which, through the law, exposes to view and brings us in contact with
the social body to which it is applied. That is to say, this or that
active and human group, with its habits, prejudices, instincts, dangers
and necessities; nothing but two dry, rigid codes, like two aerolites
fallen from the sky ready-made and all of a piece at an interval
of fourteen centuries. At first, the Institutes,[6226] "by cutting
out[6227] what is not applicable to our legislation and replacing these
matters by a comparison with much finer laws scattered through other
books of Roman law," similar to the classes in the humanities, where
Latin literature is reduced to the finest passages of the classic
authors. Next, the French code, with the comments on it due to the
decisions of the court of appeals and the court of cassation.[6228] All
the courses of lectures of the school shall be obligatory and arranged
as a whole, or tacked on to each other in a compulsory order; each step
the student takes shall be counted, measured and verified every three
months by a certificate, and each year by an examination; at these
examinations there shall be no optional matters, no estimate of
collateral studies or those of complimentary or superior importance.
The student finds no attraction or benefit in studies outside of
the programme, and, in this programme he finds only official texts,
explained by the bill of fare, one by one, with subtlety, and patched
together as well as may be by means of distinctions and interpretations,
so as to provide the understood solution in ordinary cases and a
plausible solution in disputed cases, in other terms, a system of
casuistry.[6229]
And this is just the education which suits the future practitioner. As
a celebrated professor of the second Empire says,[6230] "our young
graduates need a system of instruction which enables them to pass
without perplexity or discouragement from the school to the halls of
justice;" to have the 2281 articles of the civil code at their fingers'
ends, also the rest, hundreds and thousands of them, of the other four
codes; to find at once in relation to each case the set of pertinent
articles, the general rule, neither too broad nor too narrow, which fits
the particular case in question. As for law taken in itself and as a
whole, they have none of that clear, full conception of it to which a
comprehensive and curious mind aspires. "I know nothing of the civil
code," said another professor, older and in closer proximity with the
primitive institution, "I teach only the Code Napoléon." Accordingly,
with his clear-sightedness and his practical and graphic imagination,
Napoleon could perceive in advance the future and certain products of
his machine, the magistrates in their bonnets, seated or standing in
their court-rooms, with the lawyers in their robes facing them pleading,
and, farther on, the great consumers of stamped papers in their bureaus
encumbered with files of documents with the attorneys and notaries
engaged in drawing them up; elsewhere, prefects, sub-prefects, prefect
councilors, government commissioners and other officials, all at work
and doing pretty well, all of them useful organs but mere organs of the
law. The chances were small, fewer than under the ancient régime, for
an erudite and independent thinker, a Montesquieu, to issue from that
school.
III. On Science, Reason and Truth.
Crowning point of the university edifice.--Faith based on
criticism.--How it binds men together and forms a lay
Church.--Social power of this Church.--Scientific and
literary authorities.--How Napoleon enrolls them.--The
Institute, an appendage of the State.
Everywhere else, the direction and reach of superior instruction are
similar. In the Faculties of Science and Literature, much more than in
the Faculties of Medicine and of Law, the principal employment of the
professors is the awarding of grades.--They likewise confer the titles
of bachelor, licentiate and doctor; but the future bachelor is not
prepared by them; the lycée furnishes him for the examination, fresh
from its benches; they have then no audience but future licentiates,
that is to say a few schoolmasters and a licentiate at long intervals
who wants to become a doctor in order to mount upward into the
university hierarchy. Besides these, occasional amateurs, nearly all of
ripe age, who wish to freshen their classic souvenirs, and idlers who
want to kill time, fill the lecture-room. To prevent empty benches the
lecture course becomes a conférence d'Athenée, which is pleasant enough
or sufficiently general to interest or, at least, not to repel people
of society.[6231] Two establishments remain for teaching true science to
the workers who wish to acquire it; who, in the widespread wreck of the
ancient régime have alone survived in the Museum of Natural History,
with its thirteen chairs, and the College of France, with nineteen. But
here, too, the audience is sparse, mixed, disunited and unsatisfactory;
the lectures being public and free, everybody enters the room and leaves
as he pleases during the lecture. Many of the attendants are idlers who
seek distraction in the tone and gestures of the professors, or birds
of passage who come there to warm themselves in winter and to sleep in
summer. Nevertheless, two or three foreigners and half a dozen Frenchmen
thoroughly learn Arabic or zoology from Silvestre de Sacy, Cuvier or
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. That answers the purpose; they are quite enough,
and, elsewhere too in the other branches of knowledge. All that is
required is a small élite of special and eminent men--about one hundred
and fifty in France in the various sciences,[6232] and, behind them,
provisionally, two or three hundred others, their possible successors,
competent and designated beforehand by their works and celebrity to fill
the gaps made by death in the titular staff as these occur. The latter,
representatives of science and of literature, provide the indispensable
adornment of the modern State. But, in addition to this, they are the
depositaries of a new force, which more and more becomes the principal
guide, the influential regulator and even the innermost motor of human
action. Now, in a centralized State, no important force must be left to
itself; Napoleon is not a man to tolerate the independence of this one,
allowing it to act apart and outside of limitations; he knows how to
utilize it and turn it to his own advantage. He has already grasped
another force of the same order but more ancient, and, in the same way,
and with equal skill, he also takes hold of the new one.
In effect, alongside of religious authority, based on divine revelation
and belonging to the clergy, there is now a lay authority founded on
human reason, which is exercised by scientists, erudites, scholars and
philosophers. They too, in their way, form a clergy, since they
frame creeds and teach a faith; only, their preparatory and dominant
disposition is not trust and a docile mind, but distrust and the need
of critical examination. With them, nearly every source of belief is
suspicious. At bottom, among the ways of acquiring knowledge, they
accept but two, the most direct, the simplest, the best tested, and
again on condition that one proves the other, the type of the first
being that process of reasoning by which we show that two and two make
four, and the second that experience by which we demonstrate that heat
above a certain degree melts ice, and that cold below a certain degree
freezes water. This is the sole process that is convincing; all others,
less and less sure in proportion as they diverge from it, possess only
a secondary, provisional and contestable value, that which it confers on
them after verification and check.--Let us accordingly avail ourselves
of this one, and not of another, to express, restrain or suspend
our judgment. So long as the intellect uses it and only it, or its
analogues, to affirm, set aside or doubt, it is called reason, and the
truths thus obtained are definitive acquisitions. Acquired one by one,
the truths thus obtained have for a long time remained scattered, in
the shape of fragments; only isolated sciences have existed or bits of
science. About the middle of the eighteenth century these separate parts
became united and have formed one body, a coherent system. Out of this,
formerly called philosophy, that is to say a view of nature as a whole,
consisting of perfect order on lasting foundations, a sort of universal
network which, suddenly enlarged, stretches beyond the physical world
to the moral world, taking in man and men, their faculties and their
passions, their individual and their collective works, various human
societies, their history, customs and institutions, their codes and
governments, their religions, languages, literatures and fine arts,
their agriculture, industries, property, the family and the rest.[6233]
Then also, in each natural whole the simultaneous or successive parts
are connected together; a knowledge of their mutual ties is important,
and, in the spiritual order of things, one accomplishes this, as in
the material order, through scientific distrust, through critical
examination, by credible experimentation and process.[6234]
Undoubtedly, in 1789, the work in common on this ground had resulted
only in false conceptions; but this is because instead of credible
processes another hasty, plausible, popular, risky and deceptive method
was applied. People wanted to go fast, conveniently, directly, and, for
guide, accepted unreason under the name of reason. Now, in the light of
disastrous experience, there was a return to the narrow, stony, long and
painful road which alone leads, both, in speculation, to truth and, in
practice, to salvation.--Besides, this second conclusion, like the first
one, was due to recent experience. Henceforth it was evident that, in
political and social matters, ideas quickly descend from speculation to
practice. When anybody talks to me about stones, plants, animals and the
stars I must, to listen, be interested in these; if anybody talks to me
about man and society, it suffices that I am a man and a member of that
society; for then it concerns myself, my nearest, daily, most sensitive
and dearest interests; by virtue of being a tax-payer and a subject, a
citizen and an elector, a property-owner or a proletarian, a consumer or
a producer, a free-thinker or a Catholic, a father, son or husband,
the doctrine is addressed to me; to affect me it has only to be within
reach, through interpreters and others that promulgate it.--This office
appertains to writers great or small, particularly to the educated who
possess wit, imagination or eloquence, a pleasing style, the art of
finding readers or of making themselves understood. Owing to their
interposition, a doctrine wrought out by the specialist or thinker
in his study, spreads around through the novel, the theatre and the
lecture-room, by pamphlets, the newspaper, dictionaries, manuals and
conversation, and, finally, by teaching itself. It thus enters all
houses, knocks at the door of each intellect, and, according as it works
its way more or less forcibly, contributes more or less effectively
to make or unmake the ideas and sentiments that adapt it to the social
order of things in which it is comprised.
In this respect it acts like positive religions; in its way and on many
accounts, it is one of them. In the first place, like religion, it is a
living, principal, inexhaustible fountain-head, a high central reservoir
of active and directing belief. If the public reservoir is not filled
by an intermittent flow, by sudden freshets, by obscure infiltrations
of the mystic faculty, it is regularly and openly fed by the constant
contributions of the normal faculties. On the other hand, confronting
faith, by the side of that beneficent divination which, answering the
demands of conscience and the emotions, fashions the ideal world and
makes the real world conform to this, it poses the testing process
which, analyzing the past and the present, disengages possible laws and
the probabilities of the future. Doctrine likewise has its dogmas, many
definitive and others in the way of becoming so, and hence a full and
complete conception of things, vast enough and clear enough, in spite of
what it lacks, to take in at once nature and humanity. It, too, gathers
its faithful in a great church, believers and semi believers, who,
consequently or inconsequently, accept its authority in whole or in
part, listen to its preachers, revere its doctors, and deferentially
await the decisions of its councils. Wide-spread, still uncertain and
lax under a wavering hierarchy, the new Church, for a hundred years
past, is steadily in the way of consolidation, of progressive ascendancy
and of indefinite extension. Its conquests are constantly increasing;
sooner or later, it will be the first of social powers. Even for the
chief of an army, even for the head of a State, even to Napoleon, it is
well to become one of its great dignitaries; the second title, in modern
society, adds a prestige to the first one: "Salary of His Majesty the
Emperor and King as member of the Institute, 1500 francs;" thus begins
his civil list, in the enumeration of receipts. Already in Egypt,
intentionally and for effect, he heads his proclamations with
"Bonaparte, commander-in chief, member of the Institute." "I am sure,"
he says, "that the lowest drummer will comprehend it!"
Such a body, enjoying such credit, cannot remain independent. Napoleon
is not content to be one of its members. He wants to hold it in his
grasp, have it at his own disposition, and use it the same as a member
or, at least, contrive to get effective control of it. He has reserved
to himself an equally powerful one in the old Catholic Church; he has
reserved to himself like equivalents in the young lay Church; and, in
both cases, he limits them, and subjects them to all the restrictions
which a living body can support. In relation to science and religion he
might repeat word for word his utterances in relation to religion and to
faith. "Napoleon has no desire to change the belief of his populations;
he respects spiritual matters; he wishes simply to dominate them without
touching them, without meddling with them; all he desires is to make
them square with his views, with his policy, but through the
influence of temporalities." To this end, he negotiated with the Pope,
reconstructed, as he wanted it, the Church of France, appointed bishops,
restrained and directed the canonical authorities. To this end, he
settles matters with the literary and scientific authorities, gets them
together in a large hall, gives them arm-chairs to sit in, gives by-laws
to their groups, a purpose and a rank in the State, in brief, he adopts,
remakes, and completes the "National Institute" of France.[6235]
IV. Napoleon's stranglehold on science.
Hold of the government on the members of the Institute.--How
he curbs and keeps them down.--Circle in which lay power may
act.--Favor and freedom of the mathematical, physical and
natural sciences.--Disfavor and restrictions on the moral
sciences.--Suppression of the class of moral and political
sciences.--They belong to the State, included in the
imperial domain of the Emperor.--Measures against Ideology,
philosophic or historic study of Law, Political Economy and
Statistics.--Monopoly of History.
This "National Institute," is the Government's tool and an appendage of
the State. This is in conformity with the traditions of the old monarchy
and with the plans, sketched out and decreed by the revolutionary
assemblies,[6236] in conformity with the immemorial principle of French
law which enlarges the interference of the central power, not only in
relation to public instruction but to science, literature and the fine
arts. It is the State which has produced and shaped it, which has
given to it its title, which assigns it its object, its location,
its subdivisions, its dependencies, its correspondences, its mode of
recruitment, which prescribes its labors, its reports, its quarterly and
annual sessions, which gives it employment and defrays its expenses.
Its members receive a salary, and "the subjects elected[6237] must be
confirmed by the First Consul." Moreover, Napoleon has only to utter
a word to insure votes for the candidate whom he approves of, or to
blackball the candidate whom he dislikes. Even when confirmed by the
head of the State, an election can be cancelled by his successor; in
1816,[6238] Monge, Carnot, Guyton de Morveau, Grégoire, Garat, David and
others, sanctioned by long possession and by recognized merit, are to be
stricken off the list. By the same sovereign right, the State admits and
excludes them, the right of the creator over his creation, and, without
pushing his right as far as that, Napoleon uses it.
He holds the members of his Institute in check with singular rigidity,
even when, outside of the Institute and as private individuals, they
fail to observe in their writings the proper rules imposed on
every public body. The rod falls heavily on Jérôme de Lalande, the
mathematician and astronomer who continues the work of Montucla,
publicly and in a humiliating way, the blow being given by his
colleagues who are thus delegated for the purpose. "A member of
the Institute," says the imperial note,[6239] "well known for his
attainments, but now fallen into an infantile state, is not wise enough
to keep his mouth shut, and tries to have himself talked about, at one
time by advertisements unworthy of his old reputation as well as of the
body to which he belongs, and again by openly professing atheism, the
great enemy of all social organization." Consequently, the presidents
and secretaries of the Institute, summoned by the minister, notify the
Institute "that it must send to M. de Lalande and enjoin him not to
print anything, not cast a shadow in his old age over what he has
done in his vigorous days to obtain the esteem of savants." M. de
Chateaubriand, in the draft for his admission address, alluding to the
revolutionary role of his predecessor, Marie Chénier, observed that
he could eulogize him only as the man of letters,[6240] and, in the
reception committee, six out of twelve academicians had accepted the
draft. Thereupon, Fontanes, one of the twelve, prudently abstains from
going to Saint-Cloud. M. de Ségur, however, president of the committee,
he goes. In the evening, at the coucher, Napoleon advances to him before
the whole court and, in that terrifying tone of voice which, even today,
vibrates from the dead lines of the silent page,
"Sir," says he to him, "do the literary people really desire to set
France ablaze?... How dare the Academy speak of regicides?... I ought to
put you and M. de Fontanes, as Councillor of State and Grand-Master, in
Vincennes.... You preside over the second division of the Institute.
I order you to inform it that I will not allow politics at its
sessions.... If the class disobeys I will put an end to it as an
objectionable club!"
Thus warned, the members of the Institute remain within the circle
traced out for them and, for many, the circle is sufficiently large. Let
the first division of the Institute, in the mathematical, physical and
natural sciences, Lagrange, Laplace, Legendre, Carnot, Biot, Monge,
Cassini, Lalande, Burckardt and Arago, Poisson, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac,
Guyton de Morveau, Vauquelin, Thénard and Haüy, Duhamel, Lamarck,
Jussieu, Mirbel, Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier, pursue their
researches; let Delambre and Cuvier, in their quarterly reports, sum up
and announce discoveries; let, in the second division of the Institute,
Volney, Destutt de Tracy, Andrieux, Picard, Lemercier and Chateaubriand,
if the latter desires to take part in its sittings, give dissertations
on language, grammar, rhetoric, rules of style and of taste; let, in the
third division of the Institute, Sylvestre de Sacy publish his Arabic
grammar; let Langlés continue his Persian, Indian and Tartar studies;
let Quatremère de Quincy, explaining the structure of the great
chryselephantine statues, reproduce conjecturally the surface of ivory
and the internal framework of the Olympian Jupiter; let D'Ansse de
Villoison discover in Venice the commentary of the Alexandrian critics
on Homer; let Larcher, Boissonade, Clavier, alongside of Coraÿ publish
their editions of the old Greek authors--all this causes no trouble,
and all is for the honor of the government. Their credit reflects on
the avowed promoter, the official patron and responsible director of
science, erudition and talent therefore, in his own interest, he favors
and rewards them. Laurent de Jussieu and Cuvier are titular councillors
of the University, Delambre is its treasurer, and Fontanes its
Grand-Master. Delille, Boissonade and Royer-Collard and Guizot teach in
the faculty of letters; Biot, Poisson, Gay-Lussac, Haüy, Thénard,
Brongniart, Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire in the faculty of the sciences;
Monge, Berthollet, Fourier, Andrieux in the Ecole Polytechnique; Pinel,
Vauquelin, Jussieu, Richerand, Dupuytren in the Ecole de Médecine.
Fourcroy is councillor of State, Laplace and Chaptal, after having been
ministers, become senators; in 1813, there are twenty-three members of
the Institute in the Senate; the zoologist Lacépede is grand-chancellor
of the Legion of Honor; while fifty-six members of the Institute,
decorated with an imperial title, are chevaliers, barons, dukes, and
even princes.[6241]--This is even one more lien, admirably serving to
bind them to the government more firmly and to in-corporate them more
and more in the system. In effect, they now derive their importance
and their living from the system and the government; having become
dignitaries and functionaries they possess a password in this twofold
capacity; henceforth, they will do well to look upward to the master
before expressing a thought and to know how far the password allows them
to think.
In this respect, the First Consul's intentions are clear from the
very first day: In his reconstruction of the Institute[6242] he
has suppressed "the division of moral and political sciences," and
consequently the first four sections of this division, "analysis of
sensations and ideas, moral science, social science and legislation,
and political economy." He thus cuts off the main branch with its four
distinct branches, and what he keeps or tolerates he trims and grafts
or fastens on to another branch of the third class, that of the erudites
and antiquaries. The latter may very well occupy themselves with
political and moral sciences but only "in their relations with history,"
and especially with ancient history. General conclusions, applicable
theories, on account of their generality, to late events and to the
actual situation are unnecessary; even as applied to the State in the
abstract, and in the cold forms of speculative discussion, they are
forbidden. The First Consul, on the strength of this, in connection with
"Dernières vues de politique et de finances, published by Necker, has
set forth his exact rule and his threatening purpose:
"Can you imagine," says he to Roederer, "that any man, since I became
head of the State, could propose three sorts of government for France?
Never shall the daughter of M. Necker come back to Paris!"
She would then get to be a distinct center of political opinion while
only one is necessary, that of the First Consul in his Council of
State. Again, this council itself is only half competent and at best
consultative:
"You yourselves do not know what government is.[6243] You have no idea
of it. I am the only one, owing to my position, that can know what a
government is."
On this sphere, and everywhere on its undefined perimeter, afar, as far
away as his piercing eye can penetrate, no independent way of thinking
must be conceived or, especially, published.
In particular, the foremost and guiding science of the analysis of the
human understanding, pursued according to the methods and after the
examples furnished by Locke, Hume, Condillac and Destutt de Tracy,
ideology is forbidden.
"It is owing to ideology," he says,[6244] "to that metaphysical
obscurity which, employing its subtleties in trying to get at first
causes, seeks to base the legislation of a people on that foundation,
instead of appropriating laws to a knowledge of the human heart and the
lessons of history, that all the misfortunes of our beautiful France
must be attributed."
In 1806, M. de Tracy, unable to print his "Commentaire sur l'Esprit
des Lois" in France, sends it to the president of the United States,
Jefferson, who translates it into English, publishes it anonymously,
and has it taught in his schools.[6245] About the same date, the
republication of the "Traité d'économie-politique" of J.--B. Say is
prohibited, the first edition of which, published in 1804, was soon
exhausted.[6246] In 1808, all publications of local and general
statistics, formerly incited and directed by Chaptal, were interrupted
and stopped; Napoleon always demands figures, but he keeps them for
himself; if divulged they would prove inconvenient, and henceforth
they become State secrets. The same precautions and the same rigor
are extended to books on law, even technical, and against a "Précis
historique du droit Romain." "This work," says the censorship, "might
give rise to a comparison between the progress of authority under
Augustus and that going on under the reign of Napoleon, in such a way as
to produce a bad effect on public opinion."[6247] In effect, nothing
is more dangerous than history, for it is composed, not of general
propositions that are unintelligible except to the meditative, but of
particular facts accessible and interesting to the first one that comes
along.
For this reason, not only the science of sensations and of ideas,
philosophic law and comparative law, politics and moral law, the science
of wealth and statistics, but again, and especially, the history of
France, is a State affair, an object of government; for no object
affects the government more nearly; no study contributes so much towards
strengthening or weakening the ideas and impressions which shape public
opinion for or against him.[6248] It is not sufficient to superintend
this history, to suppress it if need be, to prevent it from being a poor
one; it must again be ordered, inspired and manufactured, that it may be
a good one.
"There is no work more important.[6249]... I do not count the expense
in this regard. It is even my intention to make the minister ensure that
this work is under my protection.."
Above all, the attitude of the authors who write should be made sure
of. "Not only must this work be entrusted to authors of real talent,
but again to attached men, who will present facts in this true light and
prepare healthy instruction by bringing history down to the year VIII."
But this instruction can be healthy only through a series of preliminary
and convergent judgments, insinuating into all minds the final approval
and well-founded admiration of the existing régime. Accordingly, the
historian must feel at each line" the defects of the ancient régime,
"the influence of the court of Rome, of confessional tickets, of the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, of the ridiculous marriage of Louis
XIV. with Madame de Maintenon, the perpetual disorder in the finances,
the pretensions of the parliament, the want of rules and leadership in
the administration,.. in such a way that one breathes on reaching the
epoch when one enjoys the benefits of that which is due to the unity of
the laws, administration and territory." The constant feebleness of
the government under Louis XIV, even, under Louis XV. and Louis XVI.,
"should inspire the need of sustaining the newly accomplished work
and its acquired preponderance." On the 18th of Brumaire (19-11-1799),
France came into port; the Revolution must be spoken of only as a final,
fatal and inevitable tempest.[6250] "When that work, well done and
written in a right direction, appears, nobody will have the will or the
patience to write another, especially when, far from being encouraged by
the police, one will be discouraged by it." In this way, the government
which, in relation to the young, has awarded to itself the monopoly
of teaching, awards to itself in relation to adults, the monopoly of
history.
V. On Censorship under Napoleon.
Measures against writers so called and popularizers.
--Censorship, control of theaters, publications and printing.
--Extent and minuteness of the repression.--Persistency in
direction and impulsion.--The logical completeness and
beauty of the whole system his final object.--How he
accomplishes his own destruction.
If Napoleon in this manner takes precautions against those who think, it
is only because their thoughts, should they be written down, might reach
the public,[6251] and only the sovereign alone has the right to talk in
public. Between writer and readers, every communication is intercepted
beforehand by a triple and quadruple line of defenses through which
a long, tortuous and narrow wicket is the only passage, and where
the manuscript, like a bundle of suspicious goods, is overhauled and
repeatedly verified after having obtained its free certificate and its
permit of circulation. Napoleon declares "the printing-office[6252] to
be an arsenal which must not be within the reach of everybody... It is
very important for me that only those be allowed to print who have the
confidence of the government. A man who addresses the public in print is
like the man who speaks in public in an assembly, and certainly no
one can dispute the sovereign's right to prevent the first comer from
haranguing the public."--On the strength of this, he makes publishing
a privileged, authorized and regulated office of the State. The writer,
consequently, before reaching the public, must previously undergo the
scrutiny of the printer and bookseller, who, both responsible, sworn
and patented, will take good care not to risk their patent, the loss of
their daily bread, ruin, and, besides this, a fine and imprisonment.--In
the second place, the printer, the bookseller and the author are obliged
to place the manuscript or, by way of toleration, the work as it goes
through the press, in the hands of the official censors;[6253] the
latter read it and make their weekly report to the general director
of publications; they indicate the good or bad spirit of the work,
the "unsuitable or forbidden passages according to circumstances,"
the intended, involuntary or merely possible allusions; they exact the
necessary suppressions, rectifications and additions. The publisher
obeys, the printers furnish proofs, and the author has submitted; his
proceedings and attendance in the bureaux are at end. He thinks himself
safe in port, but he is not.
Through an express reservation, the director-general always has the
right to suppress works, "even after they have been examined, printed
and authorized to appear." In addition to this, the minister of
the police,[6254] who, above the director-general, likewise has his
censorship bureau, may, in his own right, place seals on the sheets
already printed, destroy the plates and forms in the printing-office,
send a thousand copies of the "Germany" by Madame de Staël to the
paper-mill, "take measures to see that not a sheet remains," demand of
the author his manuscript, recover from the author's friends the two
copies he has lent to them, and take back from the director-general
himself the two copies for his service locked up in a drawer in
his cabinet.--Two years before this, Napoleon said to Auguste de
Staël,[6255]
"Your mother is not bad. She has intelligence, a good deal of
intelligence. But she is unaccustomed to any kind of discipline. She
would not be six months in Paris before I should be obliged to put her
in the Temple or at Bicêtre. I should be sorry to do this, because it
would make a noise and that would injure me in public Opinion."
It makes but little difference whether she abstains from talking
politics: "people talk politics in talking about literature, the fine
arts and morality, about everything in the world; women should busy
themselves with their knitting," and men keep silent or, if they do
talk, let it be on a given subject and in the sense prescribed.
Of course, the inspection of publications is still more rigorous and
more repressive, more exacting and more persistent.--At the theatre,
where the assembled spectators become enthusiastic through the quick
contagion of their sensibilities, the police cut out of the "Heraclius"
of Corneille and the "Athalie" of Racine[6256] from twelve to
twenty-five consecutive lines and patch up the broken passages as
carefully as possible with lines or parts of lines of their own.--On the
periodical press, on the newspaper which has acquired a body of readers
and which exercises an influence and groups its subscribers according to
an opinion, if not political, at least philosophic and literary,
there is a compression which goes even as far as utter ruin. From the
beginning of the Consulate,[6257] sixty out of seventy-three political
journals are suppressed; in 1811, the thirteen that still existed are
reduced to four and the editors-in-chief are appointed by the minister
of police. The property of these journals, on the other hand, is
confiscated, while the Emperor, who had taken it, concedes it, one
third to his police and the other two thirds to people of the court
or littérateurs who are his functionaries or his creatures. Under this
always aggravated system the newspapers, from year to year, become so
barren that the police, to interest and amuse the public, contrive a pen
warfare in their columns between one amateur of French music and one of
Italian music.
Books, almost as rigorously kept within bounds, are mutilated or
prevented from appearing.[6258] Chateaubriand is forbidden to reprint
his "Essay on Revolutions," published in London under the Directory. In
"L'Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem" he is compelled to cut out "a good
deal of declamation on courts, courtiers and certain features calculated
to excite misplaced allusions." The censorship interdicts the "Dernier
des Abencerrages," where" it finds too warm an interest in the Spanish
cause." One must read the entire register to see it at work and in
detail, to feel the sinister and grotesque minutia with which it pursues
and destroys, not alone among great or petty writers but, again,
among compilers and insignificant abbreviators, in a translation, in a
dictionary, in a manual, in an almanac, not only ideas but suggestions,
echoes, semblances and oversights in thinking, the possibilities of
awakening reflection and comparison:
* every souvenir of the ancient régime, this or that mention of Kléber
or Moreau, or a particular conversation of Sully and Henry IV.;
* "a game of loto,[6259] which familiarizes youth with the history
of their country," but which says too much about "the family of the
grand-dauphin of Louis XVI. and his aunts";
* the general work of the reveries of Cagliostro and of M. Henri de
Saint-Mesmin, very laudatory of the Emperor, excellent "for filling
the soul of Frenchmen with his presence, but which must leave out three
awkward comparisons that might be detected by the malevolent or the
foolish;"
* the "translation into French verse of several of David's psalms,"
which are not dangerous in Latin but which, in French, have the defect
of a possible application, through coincidence and prophecy, to the
Church as suffering, and to religion as persecuted;
and quantities of other literary insects hatched in the depths of
publication, nearly all ephemeral, crawling and imperceptible, but which
the censor, through zeal and his trade, considers as fearsome dragons
whose heads must be smashed or their teeth extracted.
After the next brood they prove inoffensive, and, better still, are
useful, especially the almanacs,[6260] "in rectifying on various points
the people's attitudes. It will probably be possible after 1812 to
control their composition, and they are filled with anecdotes, songs and
stories adapted to the maintenance of patriotism and of devotion to the
sacred person of His Majesty and to the Napoleonic dynasty."--To this
end, the police likewise improves, orders and pays for dramatic or lyric
productions of all kinds, cantatas, ballets, impromptus, vaudevilles,
comedies, grand-operas, comic operas, a hundred and seventy-six works
in one day, composed for the birth of the King of Rome and paid for in
rewards to the sum of 88,400 francs. Let the administration look to
this beforehand so as to raise up talent and have it bear good fruit.
"Complaints are made because we have no literature;[6261] it is the
fault of the minister of the interior. Napoleon personally and in the
height of a campaign interposes in theatrical matters. Whether far away
in Prussia or at home in France, he leads tragic authors by the hand,
Raynouard, Legouvé, Luce de Lancival; he listens to the first reading of
the "Mort d'Henri IV." and the "États de Blois." He gives to Gardel, a
ballet-composer, "a fine theme in the Return of Ulysses." He explains to
authors how dramatic effect should, in their hands, become a political
lesson; for lack of anything better, and waiting for these to comprehend
it, he uses the theatre the same as a tribune for the reading to the
spectators of his bulletins of the grand army.
On the other hand, in the daily newspapers, he is his own advocate, the
most vehement, the haughtiest, the most powerful of polemics. For a long
time, in the "Moniteur," he himself dictates articles which are known by
his style. After Austerlitz, he has no time to do this, but he inspires
them all and they are prepared under his orders. In the "Moniteur" and
other gazettes, it is his voice which, directly or by his spokesmen,
reaches the public; it alone prevails and one may divine what it utters!
The official acclaim of every group or authority in the State again
swell the one great, constant, triumphant adulatory hymn which, with
its insistence, unanimity and violent sonorities, tends to bewilder all
minds, deaden consciences and pervert the judgment.
"Were it open to doubt," says a member of the tribunate,[6262] "whether
heaven or chance gives sovereigns on earth, would it not be evident for
us that we owe our Emperor to some divinity?"
Another of the choir then takes up the theme in a minor key and thus
sings the victory of Austerlitz:
"Europe, threatened by a new invasion of the barbarians, owes its safety
to the genius of another Charles Martel."
Similar cantatas follow, intoned in the senate and lower house by
Lacépède, Pérignon and Garat, and then, in each diocese, by the bishops,
some of whom, in their pastoral letters, raise themselves up to the
technical considerations of military art, and, the better to praise the
Emperor, explain to their parishioners the admirable combinations of his
strategic genius.
And truly, his strategy is admirable, lately against Catholic ideas and
now against the secular mind. First of all, he has extended, selected
and defined his field of operations, and here is his objective point,
fixed by himself:
"On public affairs, which are my affairs in political, social and
moral matters, on history, and especially on actual history, recent
and modern, nobody of the present generation is to give any thought
but myself and, in the next generation, everybody will follow my
example."[6263]
The monopoly of education therefore belongs to him. He has introduced
military uniforms, discipline and spirit into all the public and private
secondary educational establishments. He has reduced and subjected the
ecclesiastical superintendence of primary education to the minimum. He
has removed the last vestige of regional, encyclopedic and autonomous
universities and substituted for these special and professional schools,
He has rendered veritable superior instruction abortive and stifled all
spontaneous and disinterested curiosity in youth.--Meanwhile ascending
to the source of secular knowledge, he has brought the Institute under
his influence. On this government tool he has effected the necessary
cuts, appropriated the credit to himself and imposed his favor or
disfavor on the masters of science and literature. Then, descending
from the source to the canals, constructing dams, arranging channels,
applying his constraints and impulsions, he has subjected science
and literature to his police, to his censorship and to his control
of publishing and printing. He has taken possession of all the
media--theatres, newspapers, books, pulpits and tribunes. He has
organized all these into one vast industry which he watches over and
directs, a factory of public attitudes which works unceasingly and in
his hands to the glorification of his system, reign and person.[6264]
Again here, he is found equal and similar to himself, a stern conqueror
making the most of his conquest to the last extreme, a shrewd operator
as meticulous as he is shrewd, as resourceful as he is consequent,
incomparable in adapting means to ends, unscrupulous in carrying them
out,[6265] fully satisfied that, through the constant physical pressure
of universal and crushing dread, all resistance would be overcome. He
is maintaining and prolonging the struggle with colossal forces, but
against a historic and natural force lying beyond his grasp, lately
against belief founded on religious instinct and on tradition, and
now against evidence engendered by realities and by the agency of the
testing process. Consequently, obliged to forbid the testing process, to
falsify things, to disfigure the reality, to deny the evidence, to lie
daily and each day more outrageously,[6266] to accumulate glaring
acts so as to impose silence, to arouse by this silence and by these
lies[6267] the attention and perspicacity of the public, to transform
almost mute whispers into sounding words and insufficient eulogies into
open protestations. In short, weakened by his own success and condemned
beforehand to succumb under his victories, to disappear after a short
triumph, Napoleon will leave intact and erect the indestructible rival
(science and knowledge) whom he would like to crush as an adversary but
turn to account as an instrument.[6268]
*****
[Footnote 6201: Lamennais, "Du Progrès de la Révolution," p.163.]
[Footnote 6202: Any socialist or social-nationalist leader would
undoubtedly have been impressed by Napoleon's ability to control and
dominate his admiring people and do their best to copy his methods.
(SR.)]
[Footnote 6203: "The Modern Régime," I., 247.]
[Footnote 6204: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 159.]
[Footnote 6205: Maggiolo, "Les Écoles en Lorraine avant et aprés 1789,"
3rd part, p.22 and following pages. (Details on the foundation or the
revival of primary schools in four departments after 1802.) Sometimes,
the master is the one who taught before 1789, and his salary is always
the same as at that time; I estimate that, in a village of an average
size, he might earn in all between 500 and 600 francs a year; his
situation improves slowly and remains humble and wretched down to the
law of 1833.--There are no normal schools for the education of primary
instructors except one at Strasbourg established in 1811 by the prefect,
and the promise of another after the return from Elba, April 27, 1815.
Hence the teaching staff is of poor quality, picked up here and there
haphazard. But, as the small schools satisfy a felt want, they increase.
In 1815, there are more than 22,000, about as many as in 1789; in the
four departments examined by M. Maggiolo there are almost as many as
there are communes.--Nevertheless, elsewhere, "in certain departments,
it is not rare to find twenty or thirty communes in one arrondissement
with only one schoolmaster.... One who can read and write is consulted
by his neighbors the same as a doctor."--("Ambroise Rendu," by E.
Rendu, p.107, Report of 1817.)]
[Footnote 6206: Decree of May 1, 1802, articles 2, 4 and 5.--Decree of
March 17, 1808, articles 5, 8 and 117.]
[Footnote 6207: E. Rendu, Ibid., pp.39 and 41]
[Footnote 6208: Id., ibid., 41. (Answers of approval of the bishops,
letter of the archbishop of Bordeaux, May 29, 1808.) "There are only too
many schools whose instructors neither give lessons nor set examples
of Catholicism or even of Christianity. It is very desirable that these
wicked men should not be allowed to teach."]
[Footnote 6209: Decree of Nov. 15, 1911, article 192.--Cf. the decree
of March 17, 1808, article 6. "The small primary schools are those
where one learns to read, write and cipher."--Ibid., § 3, article 5,
definition of boarding-schools and secondary communal schools. This
definition is rendered still more precise in the decree of Nov.15, 1811,
article 16.]
[Footnote 6210: Pelet de la Lozère, ibid. 175. (Words of Napoleon before
the Council of State, May 21, 180.)]
[Footnote 6211: Alexis Chevalier, "Les Frères des écoles chrétiennes
pendant la Révolution," 93. (Report by Portalis approved by the First
Consul, Frimaire 10, year XII.)]
[Footnote 6212: Like in the socialist and national-socialist parties and
trade unions which were to dominate the Western democracies throughout
the 20th century. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6213: "Ambroise Rendu," by E. Rendu, P.42.]
[Footnote 6214: D'Haussonville, "L'Église romaine et le premier Empire,"
II.,257, 266. (Report of Portalis to the Emperor, Feb. 13, 1806.)]
[Footnote 6215: Here Taine describes what today is often named as being
the "state of the art." (SR.)]
[Footnote 6216: Cuvier, "Rapport sur l'instruction publique dans les
nouveaux départements de la basse Allemagne, fait en exécution du décret
du 13 novembre 1810," pp. 4-8. "The principle and aim of each university
is to have courses of lectures on every branch of human knowledge if
there are any pupils who desire this... No professor can hinder his
colleague from treating the same subjects as himself; most of their
increase depends on the remuneration of the pupils which excites the
greatest emulation in their work."--The university, generally, is in
some small town; the student has no society but that of his comrades
and his professors; again, the university has jurisdiction over him and
itself exercises its rights of oversight and police. "Living in
their families, with no public amusements, with no distractions, the
middle-class Germans, especially in North Germany, regard reading, study
and meditation as their chief pleasures and main necessity; they
study to learn rather than to prepare themselves for a lucrative
profession.....The theologian scrutinizes even to their roots the truth
of morality and of natural theology. As to positive religion he wishes
to know its history and will study in the original tongue sacred
writings and all the languages relating to it that may throw light
on it; he desires to possess the details of Church history and become
acquainted with the usages of one century after another and the motives
of the changes which took place.--The law student is not content with a
knowledge of the code of his country; in his studies everything must be
related to the general principles of natural and political laws. He must
know the history of rights at all epochs, and, consequently, he has
need of the political history of nations; he must be familiar with the
various European constitutions, and be able to read the diplomas and
charters of all ages; the complex German legislation obliges him, and
will for a long time, to know the canon laws of both religious, of
feudal and public law, as well as of civil and criminal law; and if
the means of verifying at its sources all that is taught to him are not
afforded to him, he regards instruction as cut short and insufficient."]
[Footnote 6217: Louis Liard, "L'Enseignement supérieur en France,"
pp.307-309]
[Footnote 6218: Two prisons at the time.(SR.)]
[Footnote 6219: Comte Chaptal, "Notes."--Chaptal, a bright scholar,
studied in his philosophy class at Rodez under M. Laguerbe, a highly
esteemed professor. "Everything was confined to unintelligible
discussions on metaphysics and to the puerile subtleties of logic." This
lasted two years. Public discussions by the pupils were held three or
four hours long; the bishop, the noblesse, the full chapter attended
at these scholastic game-cock fights. Chaptal acquired a few correct
notions of geometry, algebra and the planetary system, but outside of
that, he says, "I got nothing out of it but a great facility in speaking
Latin and a passion for caviling."]
[Footnote 6220: Useful qualities for an administrator, anytime anywhere.
(SR.)]
[Footnote 6221: The Grande Ecoles today in 1998 produce first of all a
special type of engineer, a general engineer, specialist in nothing but
highly trained in mathematics, physics and chemistry. This education
is found, either in Ecole Centrale, mainly providing private enterprise
with engineers, and Polytechnique, mainly providing the State
with engineers. Specialist engineers, in construction, chemistry,
electronics, electricity etc. are produced by a few dozens prestigious
engineering or commercial schools which admit the students who have
completed 2 or 3 years of preparatory school and successfully competed
for the more popular schools. The special schools Taine talks about are
the precursors of a great many of the schools available in France
today. The principle of admission by concurs is still in use and produce
engineers who are able and willing to work hard, engineers who are
competent but often a bit proud and overly sure of themselves. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6222: Louis Liard, "Universités et Facultés," pp. 1-12.]
[Footnote 6223: Pelet de la Lozère, 176 (Session of the Council of
State, May 21, 1806).]
[Footnote 6224: Liard, "L'Enseignement supérieur en France," 71, 73. "In
the law schools, say the memorials of 1789, there is not the fiftieth
part of the pupils who attend the professors' lectures."--Fourcroy,"
Exposé des motifs de la loi concernant les Ecoles de droit," March 13,
1804. "In the old law faculties the studies were of no account, inexact
and rare, the lectures being neglected or not attended. Notes were
bought instead of being taken. Candidates were received so easily that
the examinations no longer deserved their name. Bachelor's degrees and
others were titles bought without study or trouble."--Cf the "Mémoires"
of Brissot and the "Souvenirs of d'Audifret-Pasquier," both of them
law students before 1789.--M. Léo de Savigny, in his recent work,
"Die französischen Rechts facultäten" (p.74 et seq.) refers to other
authorities not less decisive.]
[Footnote 6225: Reference is made to the synopsis of the Justitian code
of civil and other Roman laws. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6226: Treaty of law written Roman jurists under Justitian in
533. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6227: Decree of March 19, 1807, articles 42, 45.]
[Footnote 6228: The French Supreme Court. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6229: Courcelle-Seneuil, "Préparation à l'étude du droit"
(1887), pp. 5, 6 (on the teaching of law by the Faculty of Paris).]
[Footnote 6230: Léo de Savigny, ibid., p. 161.]
[Footnote 6231: Bréal, "Quelques mots sur l'instruction publique"
(1892), pp. 327, 341.--Liard, "Universités et Facultés," p.13 et seq.]
[Footnote 6232: Act of Jan.23, 1803, for the organization of the
Institute.]
[Footnote 6233: Voltaire's "Essai sur les moeurs" is of 1756; "L'Esprit
des Lois" by Montesquieu also, in 1754, and his "Traité des Sensations."
The "Emile" of Rousseau is of 1762; the "Traité de la formation
mécanique des langues," by de Brosses, is of 1765; the "Physiocratie" by
Quesnay appeared in 1768, and the "Encyclopédie" between 1750 and 1765.]
[Footnote 6234: On the equal value of the testing process in moral and
physical sciences, David Hume, in 1737, stated the matter decisively in
his "Essay on Human Nature." Since that time, and particularly since the
"Compte-rendu" by Necker, but especially in our time, statistics have
shown that the near or remote determining motives of human action are
powers (Grandeurs) expressed by figures, interdependent, and which
warrant, here as elsewhere, precise and numerical foresight.]
[Footnote 6235: What an impression Taine's description of Napoleon's
set-up must have had on Hitler, Lenin and, possibly Stalin and their
successors. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6236: Cf. Liard, "L'Enseignement supérieur en France," vol.
I., in full.--Also the law of Brumaire 3, year Iv. (Oct.25, 1795), on
the primitive organization of the Institute.]
[Footnote 6237: Decree of Jan. 23, 1803.]
[Footnote 6238: Decree of March 21, 1816]
[Footnote 6239: "Corréspondance de Napoléon," letters to M. de
Champagny, Dec.13, 1805, and Jan. 3, 1806. "I see with pleasure the
promise made by M. de Lalande and what passed on that occasion."]
[Footnote 6240: De Ségur, "Mémoires," III., 457.--"M. de Chateaubriand
composed his address with a good deal of skill; he evidently did not
wish to offend any of his colleagues without even excepting Napoleon.
He lauded with great eloquence the fame of the Emperor and exalted the
grandeur of republican sentiments." In explanation of and excusing his
silence and omissions regarding his regicide predecessor, he likened
Chénier to Milton and remarked that, for forty years, the same silence
had been observed in England with reference to Milton.]
[Footnote 6241: Edmond Leblanc, "Napoléon 1ere et ses institutions
civiles eL administratives," pp. 225-233.--Annuaire de l'Institut for
1813]
[Footnote 6242: Law of Oct. 25, 1795, and act of Jan. 23, 1803.]
[Footnote 6243: Roederer, III., 548.--Id., III., 332 (Aug. 2, 1801).]
[Footnote 6244: Welschinger, "La Censure sous le premier Empire," p.440.
(Speech by Napoleon to the Council of State, Dec.20, 1812.)--Merlet,
"Tableau de la littérature française de 1800 à 1815," I., 128. M.
Royer-Collard had just given his first lecture at the Sorbonne to an
audience of three hundred persons against the philosophy of Locke
and Condillac (1811). Napoleon, having read the lecture, says on the
following day to Talleyrand: "Do you know, Monsieur le Grand-Electeur,
that a new and very important philosophy is appearing in my
University... which may well rid us entirely of the ideologists by
killing them on the spot with reason?"--Royer-Collard, on being informed
of this eulogium, remarked to some of his friends: "The Emperor is
mistaken. Descartes is more disobedient to despotism than Locke."]
[Footnote 6245: Mignet, "Notices et Portraits." (Eulogy of M. de
Tracy.)]
[Footnote 6246: J.-B. Say, "Traité d'économie-politique," 2d ed., 1814
(Notice). "The press was no longer free. Every exact presentation of
things received the censure of a government founded on a lie."]
[Footnote 6247: Welschinger, p. 160 (Jan. 24, 1810).--Villemain,
"Souvenirs contemporains," vol. I., p. 180. After 1812, "it is literally
exact to state that every emission of written ideas, every historical
mention, even the most remote and most foreign, became a daring and
suspicious matter."--(Journal of Sir John Malcolm, Aug. 4, 1815, visit
to Langlès, the orientalist, editor of Chardin, to which he has added
notes, one of which is on the mission to Persia of Sir John Malcolm) "He
at first said to me that he had followed another author: afterwards he
excused himself by alleging the system of Bonaparte, whose censors, he
said, not only cut out certain passages, but added others which they
believed helped along his plans."]
[Footnote 6248: Reading this Lenin and others like him undoubtedly would
agree with Napoleon and therefore liberally fund plans to place agents
and controllers in all the Universities in the World hence ensuring
politically correct attitudes. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6249: Merlet, ibid. (According to the papers of M. de
Fontanes, II. 258.)]
[Footnote 6250: Id., Ibid. "Care must be taken to avoid all reaction
in speaking of the Revolution. No man could oppose it. Blame belongs
neither to those who have perished nor to those who survived it. It was
not in any individual might to change the elements and foresee events
born out of the nature of things."]
[Footnote 6251: Villemain, Ibid., I., 145. (Words of M. de Narbonne
on leaving Napoleon after several interviews with him in 1812.) "The
Emperor, so powerful, 50 victorious is disturbed by only one thing in
this world and that is by people who talk, and, in default of these, by
those who think. And yet he seems to like them or, at least, cannot do
without them."]
[Footnote 6252: Welschinger, ibid., p.30. (Session of the Council of
State, Dec.12, 1809)]
[Footnote 6253: Welschinger, ibid., pp.31, 33, 175, 190. (Decree of
Feb.5, 1810.)--"Revue Critique," Sep. 1870. (Weekly bulletin of the
general direction of publicauons for the last three months of 1810 and
the first three months of 1814, published by Charles Thursot.)]
[Footnote 6254: Collection of laws and decrees, vol. XII., p.170. "When
the censors shall have examined a work and allowed the publication
of it, the publishers shall be authorized to have it printed. But
the minister of the police shall still have the right to suppress it
entirely if he thinks proper."--Welschinger, ibid., pp. 346-374.]
[Footnote 6255: Welschinger, ibid., pp. 173, 175.]
[Footnote 6256: Id., ibid., pp. 223, 231, 233. (The copy of "Athalie"
with the erasures of the police still exists in the prompter's library
of the Théâtre Français.)--Id., ibid., p 244. (Letter of the
secretary-general of the police to the weekly managers of the Théâtre
Français, Feb. 1, 1809, In relation to the "Mort d'Hector," by Luce de
Lancival.) "Messieurs, His Excellency, the minister-senator, has
expressly charged me to request the suppression of the following lines
on the stage--'Hector': Déposez un moment ce fer toujours vainqueur,
Cher Hector, et craignez de laisser le bonheur."]
[Footnote 6257: Welschinger, ibid., p. 13. (Act of Jan. 17, 1800.)--117,
118. (Acts of Feb. 18, 1811, and Sep. 17, 1813.)--119, 129. (No
indemnity for legitimate owners. The decree of confiscation states in
principle that the ownership of journals can become property only
by virtue of an express concession made by the sovereign, that this
concession was not made to the actual founders and proprietors and that
their claim is null.)]
[Footnote 6258: Id.. ibid., pp.196, 201.]
[Footnote 6259: "Revue critique," ibid., pp.142, 146, 149.]
[Footnote 6260: Welschinger, ibid., p. 251.]
[Footnote 6261: "Corréspondance de Napoléon Iere." (Letter of the
Emperor to Cambacérès, Nov.21, 1806.)--Letters to Fouché, Oct.25 and
Dec. 31, 1806.)--Welschinger, ibid., pp.236, 244.]
[Footnote 6262: "Moniteur," Jan. I, 1806. (Tribunate, session of Nivôse
9, year XIV., speeches of MM. Albisson and Gillet.--Senate, speeches
of MM. Pérignon, Garat, de Lacépède.)--In the following numbers we find
municipal addresses, letters of bishops and the odes of poets in the
same strain.--In the way of official enthusiasm take the following two
fine examples. ("Debats," March 29, 1811.) "The Paris municipal council
deliberated on the vote of a pension for life of 10,000 francs in favor
of M. de Govers, His Majesty's second page, for bringing to the Hôtel
de Ville the joyful news of the birth of the King of Rome.. .. Everybody
was charmed with his grace and presence of mind."--Faber, "Notices sur
l'intérieur de France," p.25. "I know of a tolerably large town which
could not light its lamps in 1804, on account of having sent its mayor
to Paris at the expense of the commune to see Bonaparte crowned."]
[Footnote 6263: Taine here explains the method which was to be copied by
all the totalitarian leaders of the 20th century, especially by the ever
present communist-socialist-revolutionary organizations and their more
or less hidden leaders. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6264: Lenin, Stalin and their successors must all have found
this idea interesting and did also proceed to put much of the media in
the world under their control. (SR.)]
[Footnote 6265: Faber, ibid., p. 32 (1807). "I saw one day a physician,
an honest man, unexpectedly denounced for having stated in a social
gathering in the town some observations on the medical system under
the existing government. The denunciator, a French employee, was the
physician's friend and denounced him because he was afraid of being
denounced himself."--Count Chaptal, "Notes." Enumeration of the police
forces which control and complete each other. "Besides the minister and
the prefect of police Napoleon had three directors-general residing
at Paris and also in superintendence of the departments;.. besides,
commissioners-general of police in all the large towns and special
commissioners in all others; moreover, the gendarmerie, which daily
transmitted a bulletin of the situation all over France to the
inspector-general; again, reports of his aids and generals, of his guard
on supplementary police, the most dangerous of all to persons about
the court and to the principal agents of the administration; finally,
several special police-bodies to render to him an account of what passed
among savants, tradesmen and soldiers. All this correspondence reached
him at Moscow as at the Tuileries."]
[Footnote 6266: Faber, ibid. (1807), p.35. "Lying, systematically
organized, forming the basis of government and consecrated in public
acts,... the abjuring of all truth, of all personal conviction, is the
characteristic of the administrators as presenting to view the acts,
sentiments and ideas of the government, which makes use of them for
scenic effect in the pieces it gives on the theatre of the world...
. The administrators do not believe a word they say, nor those
administered."]
[Footnote 6267: The following two confidential police reports show,
among many others, the sentiments of the public and the usefulness of
repressive measures. (Archives nationales, F.7, 3016, Report of the
commissioner-general of Marseilles for the second quarter of 1808.)
"Events in Spain have largely fixed, and essentially fixed, attention.
In vain would the attentive observer like to conceal the truth on this
point; the fact is that the Spanish revolution is unfavorably looked
upon. It was at first thought that the legitimate heir would succeed to
Charles IV. The way in which people have been undeceived has given the
public a direction quite opposite to the devoted ideas of His Majesty
the Emperor... No generous soul... rises to the level of the great
continental cause."--Ibid. (Report for the second quarter of 1809.) "I
have posted observers in the public grounds.... As a result of these
measures, of this constant vigilance, of the care I have taken to summon
before me the heads of public establishments when I have ascertained
that the slightest word has been spoken, I attain the end proposed. But
I am assured that if the fear of the upper police did not restrain
the disturbers, the brawlers, they would publicly express an opinion
contrary to the principles of the government.... Public opinion is daily
going down. There is great misery and consternation. Murmurs are not
openly heard, but discontent exists among citizens generally.... The
continental war. the naval warfare, events in Rome, Spain and Germany,
the absolute cessation of trade, the conscription, the droits unis...
are all so many motives of corruption of the public mind. Priests and
devotees, merchants and proprietors, artisans, workmen, the people in
fine, everybody is discontented.... In general, they are insensible
to the continental victories. All classes of citizens are much more
sensitive to the levies of the conscription than to the successes which
come from them."]
[Footnote 6268: There is here, 100 years later, a message for us about
the enormous force which, under the name of politically correct, is
haunting our media, our universities and our political life. (SR.)]
CHAPTER III. EVOLUTION BETWEEN 1814 AND 1890.
I. Evolution of the Napoleonic machine.
History of the Napoleonic machine.--The first of its two
arms, operating on adults, is dislocated and breaks.--The
second, which operates on youth, works intact until 1850.
--Why it remains intact.--Motives of governors.--Motives of
the governed.
After him, the springs of his machine relax; and so do, naturally, the
two groups controlled by the machine. The first, that of adult men,
frees itself the most and the soonest: during the following half
century, we see the preventive or repressive censorship of books,
journals and theatres, every special instrument that gags free speech,
relaxing its hold, breaking down bit by bit and at last tumbling to the
ground. Even when again set up and persistently and brutally applied,
old legal muzzles are never to become as serviceable as before. No
government will undertake, like that of Napoleon, to stop at once all
outlets of written thought; some will always remain more or less open.
Even during the rigorous years of the Restoration and of the second
Empire the stifling process is to diminish; mouths open and there is
some way of public expression, at least in books and likewise through
the press, provided one speaks discreetly and moderately in cool and
general terms and in a low, even tone of voice. Here, the imperial
machine, too aggressive, soon broke down; immediately, the iron arm by
which it held adults seemed insupportable to them and they were able
more and more to bend, push it away or break it. Today, in 1890, nothing
remains of it but its fragments; for twenty years it has ceased to work
and its parts, even, are utterly useless.
But, to the contrary, in the other direction, in the second group, on
children, on boys, on young men, the second arm, intact down to 1850,
then shortened but soon strengthened, more energetic and more effective
than ever, maintained its hold almost entirely.
Undoubtedly, after 1814, its mechanism is less rigid, its application
less strict, its employment less universal, its operation less severe;
it gives less offence and does not hurt as much. For example, after
the first Restoration,[6301] the decree of 1811 against the smaller
seminaries is repealed. They are handed back to the bishops, resume
their ecclesiastical character and return to the special and normal
road out of which Napoleon forced them to march. The drum, the drill and
other exercises too evidently Napoleonic disappear almost immediately in
the private and public establishments devoted to common instruction. The
school system ceases to be a military apprenticeship and the college is
no longer a preparatory annex for the barracks. Soon and for many years,
Guizot, Cousin, and Villemain brilliantly hold the chairs at Sorbonne
university and teach the highest subjects of philosophy, literature and
history admired by attentive and sympathetic audiences. Later, under the
monarchy of July, the Institute, mutilated by the First Consul, restores
and completes itself. It becomes once more united with the suspect
division of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, which after
the Consulate, had been missing. In 1833, a minister, Guizot, provides,
through a law which has become an institution, for the regular
maintenance, the obligatory appropriation, the certain recruitment, and
for the quality and universality of primary instruction. At the same
time, during eighteen years, the university administration, moderating
its pressure or smoothing its sharp points, operates at the three
stages of instruction in tolerant or liberal hands, with all the caution
compatible with its organization. It does so in such a way as to do a
great deal of good without much harm, by half-satisfying the majority
which, in its entirety, is semi-believer, semi-freethinker, by not
seriously offending anybody except the Catholic clergy and that
unyielding minority which, through doctrinal principle or through
religious zeal, assigns to education as a directing end and supreme
object, the definitive cultivation, rooting and flowering of faith. But,
in law as well as in fact, the University of 1808 still subsists; it has
kept its rights, it levies its taxes, it exercises its jurisdiction and
enjoys its monopoly.
In the early days of the Restoration, in 1814, the government maintained
it only provisionally. It promised everything, radical reform and
full liberty. It announced that, through its efforts, "the forms
and direction of the education of children should be restored to the
authority of fathers and mothers, tutors and families."[6302] Simply
a prospectus and an advertisement by the new pedagogue who installs
himself and thus, by soothing words, tries to conciliate parents. After
a partial sketch and an ordinance quickly repealed,[6303] the rulers
discover that the University of Napoleon is a very good reigning tool,
much better than that of which they had the management previous to 1789,
much easier handled and more serviceable. It is the same with all social
tools sketched out and half-fashioned by the Revolution and completed
and set a-going by the Consulate and the Empire; each is constructed
"by reason," "according to principles," and therefore its mechanism is
simple; its pieces all fit into each other with precision; they transmit
throughout exactly the impulsion received and thus operate at one
stroke, with uniformity, instantaneously, with certitude, oil all parts
of the territory; the lever which starts the machine is central and,
throughout its various services, the new rulers hold this lever in hand.
Apropos of local administration, the Duc d'Angoulême said in 1815,[6304]
"We prefer the departments to the provinces." In like manner, the
government of the restored monarchy prefers the imperial University,
sole, unique, coherent, disciplined and centralized, to the old
provincial universities, the old scattered, scholastic institution,
diverse, superintended rather than governed, to every school
establishment more or less independent and spontaneous.
In the first place, it gains thereby a vast staff of salaried
dependents, the entire teaching staff,[6305] on which it has a hold
through its favors or the reverse through ambition and the desire for
promotion, through fear of dismissal and concern for daily bread. At
first, 22,000 primary teachers, thousands of professors, directors,
censors, principals, regents and subordinates in the 36 lycées, 368
colleges and 1255 institutions and boarding-schools. After this, many
hundreds of notable individuals, all the leading personages of each
university circumscription, the administrators of 28 academies, the
professors of the 23 literary faculties, of the 10 faculties of the
sciences, of the 9 faculties of law, and of the 3 faculties of
medicine. Add to these, the savants of the Collège de France and École
Polytechnique, every establishment devoted to high, speculative
or practical instruction: these are highest in repute and the most
influential; here the heads of science and of literature are found.
Through them and their seconds or followers of every degree, in the
faculties, lycées, colleges, minor seminaries, institutions, boarding
schools, and small schools, beliefs or opinions can be imposed on, or
suggested to, 2000 law students, 4000 medical students, 81,000 thousand
pupils in secondary education and 700,000 scholars in the primary
department. Let us retain and make use of this admirable tool, but let
us apply it to our own purposes and utilize it for our service.[6306]
Thus far, under the Republic and the Empire, its designers, more or less
Jacobin, have moved it as they thought best, and therefore moved it to
the "left". Let us now move, as it suits us, to the "right."[6307]
All that is necessary is to turn it in another direction and for good;
henceforth," the basis of education[6308] shall be religion, monarchy,
legitimacy and the charter."
To this end, we, the dominant party, use our legal rights. In the place
of bad wheels we put good ones. We purify our staff. We do not appoint
or leave in place any but safe men. At the end of six years, nearly
all the rectors, proviseurs and professors of philosophy, many other
professors and a number of the censors,[6309] are all priests. At the
Sorbonne, M. Cousin has been silenced and M. Guizot replaced by M.
Durosoir. At the Collège de France we have dismissed Tissot and we do
not accept M. Magendie. We "suppress" in block the Faculty of Medicine
in order that, on reorganizing it, our hands may be free and eleven
professors with bad notes be got rid of, among others Pinel, Dubois, de
Jussieu, Desgenettes, Pelletan and Vauquelin. We suppress another center
of insalubrities, the upper École Normale, and, for the recruitment of
our educational body, we institute[6310] at the principal seat of each
academy a sort of university novitiate where the pupils, few in number,
expressly selected, prepared from their infancy, will imbibe deeper
and more firmly retain the sound doctrines suitable to their future
condition.
We let the small seminaries multiply and fill up until they comprise
50,000 pupils. It is the bishop who founds them; no educator or
inspector of education is so worthy of confidence. Therefore, we confer
upon him "in all that concerns religion,"[6311] the duty "of visiting
them himself, or delegating his vicars-general to visit them," the
faculty "of suggesting to the royal council of public instruction the
measures which he deems necessary." At the top of the hierarchy sits
a Grand-Master with the powers and title of M. de Fontanes and with
an additional title, member of the cabinet and minister of public
instruction, M. de Freyssinous, bishop of Hermopolis,[6312] and, in
difficult cases, this bishop, placed between his Catholic conscience and
the positive articles of the legal statute, "sacrifices the law" to his
conscience.[6313]--This is the advantage which can be taken from the
tool of public education. After 1850, it is to be used in the same way
and in the same sense; after 1796, and later after 1875, it was made to
work as vigorously in the opposite direction. Whatever the rulers may
be, whether monarchists, imperialists or republicans, they are the
masters who use it for their own advantage; for this reason, even when
resolved not to abuse the instrument, they keep it intact; they reserve
the use of it for themselves,[6314] and pretty hard blows are necessary
to sever or relax the firm hold which they have on the central lever.
Except for these excesses and especially after they finish, when the
government, from 1828 to 1848, ceases to be sectarian, and the
normal play of the institution is no longer corrupted by political
interference, the governed accept the University in block, just as their
rulers maintain it: they also have motives of their own, the same as for
submitting to other tools of Napoleonic centralization.--And first
of all, as a departmental and communal institution, the university
institution operates wholly alone; it exacts little or no collaboration
on the part of those interested; it relieves them of any effort, dispute
or care, which is pleasant. Like the local administration, which,
without their help or with scarcely any, provides them with bridges,
roads, canals, cleanliness, salubrity and precautions against contagious
diseases, the scholastic administration, without making any demand on
their indolence, puts its full service, the local and central apparatus
of primary, secondary, superior and special instruction, its staff and
material, furniture and buildings, masters and schedules, examinations
and grades, rules and discipline, expenditure and receipts, all at its
disposition. As at the door of a table d'hôte, they are told,
"Come in and take a seat. We offer you the dishes you like best and in
the most convenient order. Don't trouble yourself about the waiters
or the kitchen; a grand central society, an intelligent and beneficent
agency, presiding at Paris takes charge of this and relieves you of it.
Pass your plate, and eat; that is all you need care about. Besides, the
charge is very small."[6315]
In effect, here as elsewhere, Napoleon has introduced his rigid
economical habits, exact accounts and timely or disguised
tax-levies.[6316] A few additional centimes among a good many others
inserted by his own order in the local budget, a few imperceptible
millions among several hundreds of other millions in the enormous sum of
the central budget, constitute the resources which defray the expenses
of public education. Not only does the quota of each taxpayer for this
purpose remain insignificant, but it disappears in the sum total of
which it is only an item that he does not notice.--The parents, for the
instruction of a child, do not pay out of their pockets directly, with
the consciousness of a distinct service rendered them and which they
indemnify,[6317] but 12, 10, 3, or even 2 francs a year; again,
through the increasing extension of gratis instruction, a fifth, then a
third,[6318] and later one half of them are exempt from this charge.
For secondary instruction, at the college or the lycée, they take out
of their purses annually only 40 or 50 francs; and, if their son is a
boarder, these few francs mingle in with others forming the total sum
paid for him during the year, about 700 francs,[6319] which is a small
sum for defraying the expenses, not only of instruction, but, again, for
the support of the lad in lodging, food, washing, light, fire and the
rest. The parents, at this rate, feel that they are not making a bad
bargain; they are not undergoing extortion, the State not acting like a
rapacious contractor. And better yet, it is often a paternal creditor,
distributing, as it does, three or four thousand scholarships. If their
son obtains one of these, their annual debt is remitted to them and the
entire university provision of instruction and support is given to
them gratis. In the Faculties, the payment of fees for entrance,
examinations, grades and diplomas is not surprising, for the
certificates or parchments they receive in exchange for their money are,
for the young man, so many positive acquisitions which smooth the way to
a career and serve as valuable stock which confers upon him social rank.
Besides, the entrance to these Faculties is free and gratuitous, as well
as in all other establishments for superior instruction. Whoever chooses
and when he chooses may attend without paying a cent.
Thus constituted, the University seems to the public as a liberal,
democratic, humanitarian institution and yet economical, expending
very little. Its administrators and professors, even the best of them,
receive only a small salary--6000 francs at the Muséum and the Collége
de France,[6320] 7500 at the Sorbonne, 5000 in the provincial Faculties,
4000 or 3000 in the lycées, 2000, 1500 and 1200 in the communal
colleges--just enough to live on. The highest functionaries live in a
very modest way; each keeps body and soul together on a small salary
which he earns by moderate work, without notable increase or decrease,
in the expectation of gradual promotion or of a sure pension at the end.
There is no waste, the accounts being well kept; there are no sinecures,
even in the libraries; no unfair treatment or notorious scandals. Envy,
notions of equality scarcely exist; there are enough situations for
petty ambitions and average merit, while there is scarcely any place
for great ambitions or great merit. Eminent men serve the State and
the public cheaply for a living salary, a higher rank in the Legion of
Honor, sometimes for a seat in the Institute, or for European fame
in connection with a university, with no other recompense than the
satisfaction of working according to conscience[6321] and of winning the
esteem of twenty or thirty competent judges who, in France or abroad,
are capable of appreciating their labor at its just value.[6322]
The last reason for accepting or tolerating the University; its work
at home, or in its surroundings, develops gradually and more or less
broadly according to necessities.--In 1815, there were 22,000 primary
schools of every kind; in 1829,[6323] 30,000; and in 1850, 63,000. In
1815, 737,000 children were taught in them; in 1829, 1,357,000; and
in 1850, 3,787,000. In 1815, there was only one normal school for the
education of primary teachers; in 1850, there are 78. Consequently,
whilst in 1827, 42 out of 100 conscripts could read, there were in 1877,
85; whilst in 1820, 34 out of 100 women could write their names on the
marriage contract, in 1879 there are 70.--Similarly, in the lycées and
colleges, the University which, in 1815, turned out 37,000 youths, turns
out 54,000 in 1848, and 64,000 in 1865;[6324] many branches of study,
especially history,[6325] are introduced into secondary instruction
and bear good fruit.--Even in superior instruction which, through
organization, remains languid, for parade, or in a rut, there are
ameliorations; the State adds chairs to its Paris establishments and
founds new Faculties in the provinces. In sum, an inquisitive mind
capable of self-direction can, at least in Paris, acquire full
information and obtain a comprehensive education on all subjects by
turning the diverse university institutions to account.--If there
are very serious objections to the system, for example, regarding the
boarding part of it (internat), the fathers who had been subject to it
accept it for their sons. If there were very great defects in it, for
example, the lack of veritable universities, the public which had not
been abroad and ignores history did not perceive them. In vain does M.
Cousin, in relation to public instruction in Germany, in his eloquent
report of 1834, as formerly Cuvier in his discreet report of 1811, point
out this defect; in vain does M. Guizot, the minister, propose to remove
it:
"I did not find," says he,[6326] "any strong public opinion which
induced me to carry out any general and urgent measure in higher
instruction. In the matter of superior instruction the public, at
this time,... was not interested in any great idea, or prompted by
any impatient want.... Higher education as it was organized and given,
sufficed for the practical needs of society, which regarded it with a
mixture of satisfaction and indifference."
In the matter of education, not only at this third stage but again for
the first two stages, public opinion so far as aims, results, methods
and limitations is concerned, was apathetic. That wonderful science
which, in the eighteenth century, with Jean-Jacques, Condillac,
Valentin, Hally, Abbé de l'Epée and so many others, sent forth such
powerful and fruitful jets, had dried up and died out; transplanted to
Switzerland and Germany, pedagogy yet lives but it is dead on its native
soil.[6327] There is no longer in France any persistent research nor are
there any fecund theories on the aims, means, methods, degrees and forms
of mental and moral culture, no doctrine in process of formation and
application, no controversies, no dictionaries and special manuals, not
one well-informed and important Review, and no public lectures. Now
an experimental science is simply the summing-up of many diverse
experiences, freely attempted, freely discussed and verified. Through
the forced results of the university monopoly there are no actual
universities: among other results of the Napoleonic institution, one
could after 1808 note, the decadence of pedagogy and foresee its early
demise. Neither parents, nor masters nor the young cared anything about
it; outside of the system in which they live they imagine nothing; they
are accustomed to it the same as to the house in which they dwell. They
may grumble sometimes at the arrangement of the rooms, the low stories
and narrow staircases, against bad lighting, ventilation and want of
cleanliness, against the exactions of the proprietor and concierge; but,
as for transforming the building, arranging it otherwise, reconstructing
it in whole or in part, they never think of it. For, in the first place,
they have no plan; and next, the house is too large and its parts too
well united; through its mass and size it maintains itself and would
still remain indefinitely if, all at once, in 1848, an unforeseen
earthquake had not made breaches in its walls.
II. Educational monopoly of Church and State.
Law of 1850 and freedom of instruction.--Its apparent object
and real effects.--Alliance of Church and State.--The real
monopoly.--Ecclesiastical control of the University until
1859.--Gradual rupture of the Alliance.--The University
again becomes secular.--Lay and clerical interests.
--Separation and satisfaction of both interests down to 1876.
--Peculiarity of this system.--State motives for taking the
upper hand.--Parents, in fact, have no choice between two
monopolies.--Original and forced decline of private
institutions.--Their ruin complete after 1850 owing to the
too-powerful and double competition of Church and State.
--The Church and the State sole surviving educators.
--Interested and doctrinal direction of the two educational
systems.--Increasing divergence in both directions.--Their
effect on youth.
The day after the 24th of February 1848,[6328] M. Cousin, meeting M.
de Remusat on the quay Voltaire, raised his arms towards heaven and
exclaimed:
"Let us hurry and fall on our knees in front of the bishops--they alone
can save us now!"
While M. Thiers, with equal vivacity, in the parliamentary committee
exclaimed: "Cousin, Cousin, do you comprehend the lesson we have
received? Abbé Dupanloup is right."[6329] Hence the new law.[6330] M.
Beugnot, who presented it, clearly explains its aims and object: the
Government "must assemble the moral forces of the country and unite
them with each other to combat with and overthrow the common enemy," the
anti-social party, "which, victorious, would have no mercy on anybody,"
neither on the University nor on the Church. Consequently, the
University abandons its monopoly: the State is no longer the sole
purveyor of public instruction; private schools and associations may
teach as they please. The government will no longer inspect their
"education," but only "morality, hygiene, and salubrity;"[6331]--they
are out of its jurisdiction and exempt from its taxes. Therefore, the
government establishments and free establishments will no longer be
dangerous adversaries, but "useful co-operators;" they will owe and give
to each other "good advice and good examples;" it will maintain for
both "an equal interest;" henceforth, its University "will be merely an
institution supported by it to quicken competition and make this bear
good fruit," and, to this end, it comes to an understanding with its
principal competitor, the Church.
But in this coalition of the two powers it is the Church which has the
best of it, takes the upper hand and points out the way. For, not only
does she profit by the liberty decreed, and profit by it almost alone,
founding in twenty years afterwards nearly one hundred ecclesiastical
colleges and putting the Ignorantin brethren everywhere in the primary
schools; but, again, by virtue of the law,[6332] she places four bishops
or archbishops in the superior council of the University; by virtue of
the law, she puts into each departmental academic council the bishop of
the diocese and a priest selected by him; moreover, through her credit
with the central government she enjoys all the administrative favors.
In short, from above and close at hand, she leads, keeps in check,
and governs the lay University and, from 1849 to 1859, the priestly
domination and interference, the bickering, the repressions, the
dismissals,[6333] the cases of disgrace, are a revival of the system
which, from 1821 to 1828, had already been severe. As under the
Restoration, the Church had joined hands with the State to administrate
the school-machine in concert with it; but, under the Restoration, she
reserves to herself the upper hand, and it is she who works the machine
rather than the State. In sum, under the name, the show, and the
theoretical proclamation of liberty for all, the University monopoly
is reorganized, if not by law, at least in fact, and in favor of the
Church.
Towards 1859, and after the war in Italy, regarding the Pope and
the temporal power, the hands which were joined now let go and then
separate; there is a dissolution of partnership; their interests cease
to agree. Two words are coined, both predestined to great fortune, on
the one side the "secular" interest and on the other side the "clerical"
interest; henceforth, the government no longer subordinates the former
to the latter and, under the ministry of M. Duruy, the direction of the
University becomes frankly secular. Consequently, the entire educational
system, in gross and in its principal features, is to resemble, until
1876, that of the of July.[6334] For sixteen years, the two great
teaching powers, the spiritual and the temporal, unable to do better,
are to support each other but act apart, each on its own ground and each
in its own way; only the Church no longer acts through the toleration
and gracious permission of the University, but through the legal
abolition of the monopoly and by virtue of a written law. The whole
composes a passable régime, less oppressive than those that preceded it;
in any event, the two millions of devout Catholics who consider unbelief
as a terrible evil, the fathers and mothers who subordinate instruction
to education,[6335] and desire above all things to preserve the faith
of their children up to adult age, now find in the ecclesiastical
establishments well-run hothouses and protected against draughts of
modernity. One urgent need of the first order,[6336] legitimate, deeply
felt by many men and especially by women, has received satisfaction;
parents who do not experience this want, place their children in the
lycées; in 1865, in the smaller seminaries and other ecclesiastical
schools there are 54,000 pupils and in the State colleges and lycées
64,000,[6337] which two bodies balance each other.
But even that is a danger. For, naturally, the teaching State finds with
regret that its clients diminish; it does not view the rival favorably
which takes away so many of its pupils. Naturally also, in case of an
electoral struggle, the Church favors the party which favors it, the
effect of which is to expose it to ill-will and, in case of political
defeat, to hostilities. Now, the chances are, that, should hostile
rulers, in this case, attempt to strike it in its most vulnerable point,
that of teaching, they might set aside liberty, and even toleration, and
adopt the school machine of Napoleon in order to restore it as best they
could, enlarge it, derive from it for their own profit and against the
Church, whatever could be got out of it, to use with all their power
according to the principles and intentions of the Convention and the
Directory. Thus, the compromise accepted by Church and State is simply
a provisional truce; to-morrow, this truce will be broken; the fatal
French prejudice which erects the State into a national educator is ever
present; after a partial and brief slackening of its energy, it will try
to recover its ascendancy and recommence its ravages.--And, on the other
hand, even under this régime, more liberal than its predecessor, real
liberty is much restricted; instead of one monopoly, there are two.
Between two kinds of establishments, one secular, resembling a barracks,
and the other ecclesiastical, resembling a seminary or convent, parents
may choose and that is all. Ordinarily, if they prefer one, it is not
because they consider it good, but because, in their opinion, the other
is worse, while there is no third one at hand, built after a different
type, with its own independent and special character, adapting itself to
their tastes and accommodating itself to their necessities.
In the early years of the century there were thousands of secondary
schools of every kind and degree, everywhere born or reborn,
spontaneous, local, raised up through the mutual understanding of
parents and masters, and, consequently, subject to this understanding,
diverse, flexible, dependent on the law of supply and demand,
competitive, each careful to keep its own patrons, each compelled, like
every other private enterprise, to adjust its working to the views and
faculties of its clients. It is very probable that, if these had been
allowed to exist, if the new legislator had not been radically hostile
to permanent corporations, endowments, and mortmain titles; if, through
the jealous intervention of his Council of State and the enormous
levies of his fiscal system, the government had not discouraged free
associations and the free donations to which they might have been
entitled, the best of these secondary schools would have survived: those
which might have been able to adapt themselves to their surroundings
would have had the most vitality; according to a well-known law, they
would have prospered in branching off, each in its own sense and in its
own way.--Now, at this date, after the demolitions of the Revolution,
all pedagogic roads were open and, at each of their starting-points,
the runners were ready, not merely the secular but, again, independent
ecclesiastics, liberal Gallicans, surviving Jansenists, constitutional
priests, enlightened monks, some of them philosophers and half-secular
in mind or even at heart, using Port-Royal manuals, Rollin's "Traité des
Études" and Condillac's "Cours d'Etudes," the best-tried and most fecund
methods of instruction, all the traditions of the seventeenth century
from Arnauld to Lancelot and all the novelties of the eighteenth century
from Locke to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, all wide-awake or aroused by the
demands of the public and by this unique opportunity and eager to do
and to do well. In the provinces[6338] as at Paris, people were seeking,
trying and groping. There was room and encouragement for original,
sporadic and multiple invention, for schools proportionate with and
suited to various and changing necessities, Latin, mathematical or
mixed schools, some for theoretical science and others for practical
apprenticeship, these commercial and those industrial, from the lowest
standpoint of technical and rapid preparation up to the loftiest summits
of speculative and prolonged study.
On this school world in the way of formation, Napoleon has riveted his
uniformity, the rigorous apparatus of his university, his unique
system, narrow, inflexible, applied from above. We have seen with what
restrictions, with what insistence, with what convergence of means, what
prohibitions, what taxes, what application of the university monopoly,
and with what systematic hostility to private establishments!--In the
towns, and by force, they become branches of the lycée and imitate its
classes; in this way Sainte-Barbe is allowed to subsist at Paris and,
until the abolition of the monopoly, the principal establishments of
Paris, Massin, Jauffrey, Bellaguet, existed only on this condition,
that of becoming auxiliaries, subordinates and innkeepers for lycée
day-scholars; such is still the case to-day for the lycées Bossuet
and Gerson. In the way of education and instruction the little that an
institution thus reduced can preserve of originality and of pedagogic
virtue is of no account.--In the country, the Oratoriens who have
repurchased Juilly are obliged,[6339] in order to establish a free and
durable school of "Christian and national education," to turn aside
the civil law which interdicts trusts and organize themselves into a
"Tontine Society" and thus present their disinterested enterprise in the
light of an industrial and commercial speculation, that of a lucrative
and well-attended boarding school. Still at the present day similar
fictions have to be resorted to for the establishment and duration of
like enterprises.[6340]
Naturally, under this prohibitive régime, private establishments are
born with difficulty; and afterwards, absorbed, mutilated and strangled,
they find no less difficulty in keeping alive and thus degenerate,
decline and succumb one by one. And yet, in 1815, not counting the 41
small seminaries with their 5000 scholars, there still remained 1,225
private schools, with 39,000 scholars, confronting the 36 lycées and 368
communal colleges which, together, had only 37,000 scholars. Of these
1,255 private schools there are only 825 in 1854, 622 in 1865, 494 in
1876, and, finally, in 1887, 302 with 20,174 scholars; on the other
hand, the State establishments have 89,000 schools, and those of the
Church amount to 73,000. It is only after 1850 that the decadence of
secular and private institutions is precipitated; in effect, instead
of one competitor, they have two, the second as formidable as the first
one, both enjoying unlimited credit, possessors of immense capital and
determined to spend money without calculation, the State, on one side
abstracting millions from the pockets of the taxpayers and, on the other
side, the Church deriving its millions from the purses of the faithful:
the struggle between isolated individuals and these two great
organized powers who give instruction at a discount or gratis is too
unequal.[6341]
Such is the actual and final effect of the first Napoleonic monopoly:
the enterprise of the State has, by a counter-stroke, incited the
enterprise of the clergy; both now complete the ruin of the others,
private, different in kind and independent, which, supported wholly by
family approbation, have no other object in view than to render families
content. On the contrary, along with this purpose, the two survivors
have another object, each its own, a superior and doctrinal object, due
to its own particular interest and antagonism to the opposite interest;
it is in view of this object, in view of a political or religious
purpose, that each in its own domicile directs education and instruction
like Napoleon, each inculcates on, or insinuates into, young minds its
social and moral opinions which are clear-cut and become cutting. Now,
the majority of parents, who prefer peace to war, desire that their
children should entertain moderate and not bellicose opinions. They
would like to see them respectful and intelligent, and nothing more.
But neither of the two rival institutions thus limits itself; each works
beyond and aside,[6342] and when the father, at the end of July,[6343]
goes for his son at the ecclesiastical college or secular institution,
he risks finding in the young man of seventeen the militant prejudices,
the hasty and violent conclusions and the uncompromising rigidity of
either a "laïcisant" or a "clérical."
III. Internal Vices
The internal vices of the system.--Barrack or convent
discipline of the boarding-school.--Number and proportions
of scholars in State and Church establishments.--Starting
point of the French boarding-school.--The school community
viewed not as a distinct organ of the State but as a
mechanism wielded by the State.--Effects of these two
conceptions.--Why the boarding-school entered into and
strengthened ecclesiastical establishments.--Effects of the
boarding-school on the young man.--Gaps in his experience,
errors of judgment, no education of his will.--The evil
aggravated by the French system of special and higher
schools.
Meanwhile, the innate vices of the primitive system have lasted and,
and, among others, the worst of all, the internat[6344] under the
discipline of barracks or convent, while the university, through
its priority and supremacy, in contact with or contiguously, has
communicated this discipline at first to its subordinates, and afterward
to its rivals.--In 1887,[6345] in the State lycées and colleges,
there are more than 39,000 boarding-schools (internes) while, in the
ecclesiastic establishments, it is worse: out of 50,000 pupils there,
over 27,000 are internes, to which must be added the 23,000 pupils of
the small seminaries, properly so called, nearly all of them boarders;
in a total of 163,000 pupils we find 89,000 internes.[6346] Thus, to
secure secondary instruction, more than one-half of the youth of France
undergo the internat, ecclesiastic or secular. This is peculiar to
France, and is due to the way in which Napoleon, in 1806, seized on and
perverted all school enterprises.[6347]