404. Contradictory Judgments on the Work of the Revolution.—An historian of education in France, ThÉry, opens his chapter on the Revolution with these contemptuous words, “One does not study a void, one does not analyze a negation.”[198] A more recent historian of public instruction during the Revolution, Albert Duruy, arriving at the work of Condorcet, certainly the most important undertaking of the pedagogy of the Revolution, does not hesitate to record this absolute and summary judgment: “We are now no longer in the real and in the possible; we are travelling in the land of chimeras; we are soaring in space at heights which admit of only ideal attainment.”[199]

How easy it is to say this! To believe these facile judges, one who would estimate the efforts of the Revolution in the matter of public instruction would have to choose between a nothing and a chimera. The men of the Revolution have done nothing, say some; they are dreamers and idealists, say others.

These assertions do not bear examination. For every impartial observer it is certain that the Revolution opened a new era in education, and the proof of this is to be found in the very documents that our opponents so triflingly condemn, and the practical spirit of which they misconceive.

405. General Character of that Work.—It is not that the men of the Revolution were educators in the strict sense of the term. The science of education is not indebted to them for new methods. They have not completed the work of Locke, of Rousseau, and of La Chalotais; but they were the first to attempt a legislative organization of a vast system of public instruction. It is just to place them in the front rank of the men who might be called “the politicians of education.” Doubtless they lacked time for applying their ideas, but they had at least the merit of having conceived these ideas, and of having embodied them in legislative acts. The principles which we proclaim to-day, they formulated. The solutions which we attempt to put in practice after a century of waiting, were decreed by them. The reader who will follow the long series of reports and decrees which constitutes the pedagogical work of the Revolution will have witnessed the genesis of popular instruction in France.

406. The State of Primary Instruction.—In order to form a proper appreciation of the merits of the men of the Revolution, it is first necessary to consider in what a deplorable state they found primary instruction. What a contrast between that which they hoped to do and the actual situation in 1789! I very well know that fancy sketches have been drawn of the old rÉgime. A very showy enumeration has been made of the number of colleges; but we have not been told how many of these colleges had no professors, and how many had no pupils. And so of the schools; they are found everywhere, but it remains to be shown what was taught in them, and whether anything was taught in them.[200]

Party writers who are bound to gainsay the work of the French Revolution in the matter of education, generally put under contribution, to serve their political prejudices, the old communal archives. They cite imaginary statistics which prove, for example, that in the diocese of Rouen, in 1718, there were 855 schools for boys, and 306 schools for girls, for a territory of 1159 parishes.

It is first necessary to verify these statistics, whose accuracy has not been demonstrated, and whose figures were evidently obtained only by counting a school wherever the rector of the parish gave lessons in reading and in the catechism to three or four children.

But there are other replies to make to the traducers of the Revolution who tax their ingenuity to prove that instruction was flourishing under the old rÉgime, and that the Revolution destroyed more than it created. With this assumed efflorescence of schools of which we hear, it is necessary to contrast the results as shown by authentic statistics of the number of illiterates. In 1790 there was 53 per cent of men and 73 per cent of women who could not sign their names to their marriage contracts.

Besides, we must inquire what was taught in these pretended schools, how many children attended them, and what was the material and moral condition of the teachers who directed them.

407. What was taught in the Schools.—Instruction was reduced to the catechism, to reading and writing. On this point there can be no dispute. The official programme of the Brethren of the Christian Schools did not go beyond this. The ordinance of Louis XIV., dated in 1698, has been pompously quoted.

“We would have appointed,” it is there said, “as far as it shall be possible, masters and mistresses in all the parishes where there are none, to instruct all children, and in particular those whose parents have made profession of the pretended reformed religion, in the catechism and the prayers which are necessary; to take them to mass on every work day; and also to teach reading and writing to those who will need this knowledge.”

But does not this very text support those who maintain that the Monarchy and the Church have never encouraged primary instruction except as required by the necessities of the struggle against heresy, and that primary instruction under the old rÉgime was scarcely more than an instrument of religious domination?

Most often the school was simply a place to which parents sent their children for temporary care. Writing was not always taught in it. A school-mistress of Haute-Marne was forbidden to teach writing “for fear her pupils might employ their knowledge in writing love-letters.”

408. Discipline.—Corporal punishments were more than ever the order of the day. The bishop of Montpellier, at the end of the seventeenth century, forbids, it is true, beating with sticks, kicks, and raps on the head; but he authorizes the ferule and the rod, on the condition that the patient be not completely exposed.

409. Condition of the Teachers.—That which is graver still is that the teachers themselves (I speak of lay teachers, who, it is true, were not numerous) lived in a wretched condition, without material independence and without moral dignity. In general, there were no fixed salaries. Wages varied from 40 to 200 francs, arbitrarily fixed by the vestry-board or by the community, in return for a great number of services the most various and the least exalted. The school-masters were far less teachers than sextons, choristers, beadles, bell-ringers, clock-makers, and even grave-diggers. “Attendance at marriages and at burials was counted at the rate of 15 sols and dinner for marriages, and 20 sols for burials.” And Albert Duruy concludes that in this there were substantial advantages to the school-masters;[201]—advantages dearly bought in every case, and repudiated by those who were interested in them. “The more services we render the community,” said the teachers of Bourgogne in their complaints in 1789, “the more we are degraded.”[202] The school-masters were scarcely more than the domestics of the curÉ.

In order to live, they were not only obliged to accept these church services, but they also became shoemakers, tailors, innkeepers, millers, etc. The teacher of the commune of Angles, in the High Alps, was a “barbers’ surgeon.”

Thus there was no assured salary, and consequently no moral consideration. “In the communes, teachers were regarded as strangers and not as citizens; like tramps and vagrants, they were not admitted to the assemblies of the commune.”

410. The Recruitment of Teachers.—Nowhere were there normal schools for the training of teachers. The schools were entrusted to the first comer. The bishop granted his approbation, or permission to teach, after an examination of the most summary kind. The duties of teaching were the means of subsistence which were accepted without call and without serious preparation. In Provence, school-masters attended kinds of “teachers’ fairs” for the purpose of being hired. In the Alps, teachers were numerous, but only in winter. They tarried in the plain and in the valleys only during the inclement season. They returned home for the labors of the summer.

Consequently, most of the schools existed only in name. “The schools,” we are told,[203] “were in vacation for four or five months.” For a half of the year, the school-masters were free to follow another trade, or, rather, to devote themselves more completely to their ordinary trade, which their school duties did not always interrupt.

411. What the School Itself was.—School-houses were most frequently merely wretched huts, wooden cots, and narrow ground-floors, badly lighted, which served at the same time as a domicile for the school-master and his family, and as a class-room for pupils. Benches and tables were things rarely seen, and pupils wrote while standing.

In a word, the state of primary instruction, when the States-General opened in 1789, was as follows: schools few in number and poorly attended; few lay teachers, trained no one knows how, without thorough instruction, and, as they themselves said, “degraded” by their inferior position; few or no elementary books; gratuity only partial; finally, a general indifference for elementary instruction, which philosophers like Voltaire, and Rousseau, and Parliamentarians like La Chalotais, themselves lightly esteemed.

412. The Proper Work of the Revolution.—I do not say that the Revolution accomplished all that there was to be attempted in order to bring instruction up to the needs of the new society; but it purposed to do this. Every time a liberal ministry has decided to work for the promotion of instruction, it has revived its plans; and it is these same plans that by a vigorous effort public authority has attempted to realize in recent times.

413. The Reports of 1789.—Already, in the reports of 1789, public opinion vigorously pronounced itself in favor of educational reforms. “The cahiers of 1789, even those of the clergy and the nobility, demand the reorganization of public instruction on a comprehensive plan. The cahiers of the clergy of Rodez and of Saumur demand ‘that there may be formed a plan of national education for the young’; those of Lyons, that education be restricted ‘to a teaching body whose members may not be removable except for negligence, misconduct, or incapacity; that it may no longer be conducted according to arbitrary principles, and that all public instructors be obliged to conform to a uniform plan adopted by the States-General.’ The cahiers of the nobility of Lyons insist that ‘a national character’ be impressed on the education of both sexes. Those of Paris demand ‘that public education be perfected, and extended to all classes of citizens.’ Those of Blois, ‘that there be established a council composed of the most enlightened scholars of the capital and of the provinces and of the citizens of the different orders, to form a plan of national education, for the use of all the classes of society, and to edit elementary treatises.’”[204]

414. Mirabeau (1749-1791).—From the first days of the Revolution, pedagogical literature abounds, and gives evidence of the ever-growing interest which public opinion attaches to educational questions. The Oratorians, of whom La Chalotais said, “that they were free from the prejudices of the school and of the cloister, and that they were citizens,” present to the National Assembly a series of scholastic plans. On its part, the Assembly sets itself at work; Talleyrand prepares his great report, and Mirabeau embodies his own reflections in four eloquent discourses.

Mirabeau’s discourses, published after his death through the good offices of his friend Cabanis, had the following titles: 1. Draft of a Law for the Organization of the Teaching Body; 2. Public and Military Festivals; 3. Organization of a National LycÉe; 4. The Education of the Heir Presumptive of the Crown.

415. The Dangers of Ignorance.—With what brilliancy the illustrious orator made appear the advantages and the necessity of instruction!

“Those who desire that the peasant may not know how to read or write, have doubtless made a patrimony of his ignorance, and their motives are not difficult to appreciate; but they do not know that when they have made a wild beast of a man, they expose themselves to the momentary danger of seeing him transformed into a savage beast. Without intelligence there is no morality. But on whom, then, is it important to bestow intelligence, if it is not upon the rich? Is not the safeguard of their enjoyments the morality of the people? Through the influence of the laws, through that of a wise administration, through the efforts to which each one should be inspired by the hope of ameliorating the condition of his fellows, exert yourselves, public and private citizens, to diffuse in all quarters the noble fruits of knowledge. Believe that in dissipating one single error, in propagating one single wholesome truth, you will do something for the happiness of the human race; and whoever you are, do not have the least doubt that it is only by this means that you can assure your own happiness.”

But through some inexplicable spirit of timidity, Mirabeau did not draw from these principles the consequences that they permit. He does not admit that the State can impose the obligation to attend school.

“Society,” he says, “has not the right to prescribe instruction as a duty.... Public authority has not the right, with respect to the members of the social body, to go beyond the limits of watchfulness against injustice and of protection against violence....” “Society,” he adds, “can exact of each one only the sacrifices necessary for the maintenance of the liberty and the safety of all.”

Mirabeau forgets that the obligation to send children to school is exactly one of those necessary sacrifices which the State has the right to impose on parents.

Hostile to obligation, Mirabeau feels no greater partisanship for gratuity:—

“Gratuitous education,” he said, “is paid for by everybody, while its fruits are immediately gathered by only a small number of individuals.”

416. Liberty of Teaching.—Like so many other generous spirits, Mirabeau cherished the dream of the most complete liberty of teaching.[205]

“Your single purpose,” he said to the members, “is to give to man the use of all his faculties, to make him enjoy all his rights, to develop the corporate life out of all the individual lives freely developed, and the will of the whole out of all personal wills.”

417. Distribution of Studies.—In Mirabeau’s plan, public and national instruction depends, not on the executive power, but on “the magistrates who truly represent the people, that is to say, who are elected and often renewed by the people,”—in other terms, the officers of departments or districts. Establishments for instruction ought not to form a consolidated body.

Let us observe, finally, that by the side of the primary schools Mirabeau established a college of literature for each department, and at Paris, a single National LycÉe, “designed to secure to a select number of French youth the means of finishing their education.” In this he established a chair of method, which, he said, ought to be the basis of instruction.

In conclusion, the work of Mirabeau is but a very imperfect sketch, and a sort of graduated transition between the old and the new rÉgime.

We do not yet find in it the grand ideas which are to impassion men, and it is the Rapport of Talleyrand which constitutes the real introduction to the educational work of the Revolution.

418. The Constituent Assembly and Talleyrand.—The constitution of Sept. 4, 1791, announced the following provision:—

“There shall be created and organized a system of public instruction, common to all citizens, and gratuitous with respect to those branches of instruction which are indispensable for all men.”

It was to put in force the decree of the Constitution that Talleyrand drew up his Rapport and presented it to the Assembly at the sessions of September 10 and 11. The entire bill contained not less than 208 articles. Having reached the term of its troubled existence, the Assembly did not find the time to discuss it, and, while regretting “not having established the bases of the regeneration of education,” it referred the examination of Talleyrand’s work to the Legislative Assembly.

The Legislative Assembly showed but little anxiety to accept the legacy of its predecessor. Another report, that of Condorcet, was prepared, so that the bill of Talleyrand never had the honor of a parliamentary discussion.

419. Talleyrand (1758-1838).—The ex-bishop of Autun, having become a revolutionist of 1789, before being the chamberlain of Napoleon I. and the minister of Louis XVIII., scarcely deserves by his character the esteem of history; he too often gave a striking example of political versatility. But at least, by his supple and acute intelligence, and by the abundance of his ideas, he has always risen to the height of the various tasks that he has undertaken, and his Rapport is a remarkable work.

420. General Principles.—As Montesquieu has said, “the laws of education ought to be relative to the principles of government.” It is by this truth that Talleyrand is inspired in the long considerations that serve as a preamble to his bill.

What was to be done in the presence of a constitution which, limiting the powers of the king, called the entire people to participate in political life? That constitution would have remained sterile, would have been but a dead letter, if a suitable education had not come to vivify it by causing it to pass, so to speak, into the blood of the nation. In what did the new rÉgime consist? You have separated, said Talleyrand to the members, you have separated the will of the whole, or the power of making the laws, from the executive power, which you have reserved to the king. But that general will must be upright, and, in order to be upright, it must be enlightened and instructed. After having given power to the people, you ought to teach them wisdom. Of what use would it be to enfranchise brutal and unconscious forces, to turn them over to their own keeping? Instruction is the necessary counterpoise of liberty. The law, which is henceforth the work of the people, ought not to be at the mercy of the tumultuous opinions of an ignorant multitude.

421. Education as related to Liberty and Equality.—Talleyrand is pleased with his thought, and, considering in turn the two fundamental ideas of the Revolution, the idea of equality and the idea of liberty, he shows, not without some length of analysis, that instruction is necessary, on the one hand, to create free individuals, by giving to them a conscience and a reason, and on the other, to draw men together by diminishing the inequality of intelligences.

422. Rules for Public Instruction.—Instruction is due to all. There must be schools in the villages as in the cities. Instruction ought to be given by all; there ought to be no privilege in instruction. Finally, instruction ought to extend to all subjects; everything shall be taught which can be taught:—

“In a well organized society, though no one can attain to universal knowledge, it should nevertheless be possible to learn everything.”

423. Political Education.—At the basis of every educational system there is always a dominant and essential thought. In the Middle Age—and the Middle Age is continued in the schools of the Jesuits—it is the idea of salvation, it is the preparation of the soul for the future life. In the seventeenth century it is the conception of a perfect justness of spirit joined to uprightness of heart; such was the ideal of the solitaries of Port Royal. In 1792 politics became the almost exclusive preoccupation of the educators of youth. Everything else—religion, accuracy of judgment, nobility of heart—is relegated to the second place: man is nothing more than a political animal, brought into the world to know, to love, and to obey the constitution.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man became, in the system of Talleyrand, the catechism of childhood. It is necessary that the future citizen learn to know, to love, to obey, and finally to perfect the constitution. We cannot help thinking that Talleyrand himself showed a marvellous aptitude for loving and obeying the constitution. Unfortunately this has not always been the case!

424. Universal Morality.—One of the most beautiful pages of Talleyrand’s work is certainly that in which he recommends the teaching of universal morality, and claims the autonomy of natural laws, distinct from all positive religion.

“We must learn to infuse ourselves with morality, which is the first need of all constitutions.... Morality must be taught as a real science, whose principles will be demonstrated to the reason of all men, and to that of all ages. It is only in this way that it will resist all trials. It has long been a matter of lamentation to see men of all nations and of all religions make it depend exclusively on that multitude of opinions which divide them. From this have resulted great evils; for abandoning morality to uncertainty, and often to absurdity, it has necessarily been compromised; it has been made versatile and unsettled. It is time to establish it upon its own bases, and to show men that if baneful divisions separate them, they at least have in morality a common meeting place where they all ought to take refuge and unite for protection. It is necessary, then, to detach it in some sort from everything else, in order to reunite it at once to that which merits our approval and our homage.... This change is simple and injures nothing; above all, it is possible. How is it possible not to see, in fact, that abstraction being made of every system and of every opinion, and by considering in men only their relations with other men, they can be taught what is good and just, made to love it, and made to find happiness in virtuous actions and wretchedness in those which are not so?”

425. Four Grades of Instruction.—The organization of instruction, in Talleyrand’s bill, was “to be combined with that of the government,” and to be modeled after the division of administrative functions. The Rapport established four grades of instruction. There was a school for each canton, corresponding to each primary assembly. Then came intermediate or secondary instruction, intended, if not for all, at least for the greater number, and given in the principal town of the district, or arrondissement. In the third place, special schools, scattered over the territory of the kingdom, in the principal towns of the departments, prepare young men for the different professions. Finally, the select intelligences find at Paris, in the National Institute, all that constitutes the higher instruction.

The great novelty of this system was the creation of cantonal schools, open to peasants and to workmen, to those whom, up to this time, improvidence or the purpose of the great sent off to their plows or to their planes.

426. Gratuity of Primary Instruction.—Talleyrand did not desire compulsory education any more than Mirabeau; but, in accordance with the constitution of 1791, he demands the gratuity of primary instruction. Society is under obligations to give elementary instruction, but not intermediate and secondary instruction, and still less, special and higher instruction. Gratuitous for the lowest grade, and in case of that elementary knowledge which constitutes for every civilized man a real moral necessity, instruction ought not to be free to young men who aspire to a liberal profession, because they have leisure, and who have leisure because they have wealth. However, Talleyrand admits exceptions in the case of talent. By the creation of national scholarships, the doors of all the schools will be opened to select intelligences whom the lowness of their condition would condemn to remain obscure and unappreciated, did not society lend to them a helping hand.

427. Programme of Primary Instruction.—Primary instruction should comprise the principles of the national language, the elementary rules of calculation and mensuration; the elements of religion, the principles of morals, the principles of the constitution; finally, the development of the physical, intellectual, and moral powers.

428. Means of Instruction.—We shall not insist on the details of the organization of the different parts of that which Talleyrand himself called his “immense machine.” Let us notice only the last part of his work, where he discusses a certain number of general questions under this arbitrary and unjustifiable title: Des moyens d’instruction. The professors, carefully chosen, shall be elected by the king. Talleyrand does not determine that they shall be irremovable, but he requires that their situation shall be surrounded by all possible guarantees. Prizes, and rewards of every kind, shall encourage the teachers of youth to redouble their zeal and to find new methods. Talleyrand counts on dramatic representations and on national holidays to hasten the progress of instruction. Finally, let it be added that he entrusts the supreme direction of public instruction to six commissioners, chosen by the king and obliged to make an annual report.

429. The Education of Women.—Talleyrand, in his proposal, has not wholly forgotten women, and what he has said of them is just and sensible. He discusses the question of their political rights, and, in accord with tradition and good sense, he concludes that the happiness of women, their own interests, their nature and their proper destination, ought to forbid them from entering the political arena. What is particularly fit for them is a domestic education, which, received in the family, prepares them for living there. Like Mirabeau, he wishes woman to remain a woman. Her function, said the great orator, is to perpetuate the species, to watch with solicitude over the perilous periods of early youth, and “to enchain to her feet all the energies of the husband by the irresistible power of her weakness.” Without being as gallant in his expressions, Talleyrand’s thought is the same. He thought it necessary, however, in order to respond to certain proprieties, that the State should establish institutions of public education destined to replace the convents.

This desire sets right whatever was unreasonable in this passage of his proposed law:—

“Girls shall not be admitted to the primary schools after the age of eight. After that age the National Assembly advises parents to entrust the education of their daughters only to themselves, and reminds them that this is their first duty.”

430. The Legislative Assembly and Condorcet.—Of all the educational undertakings of the Revolution, the most remarkable is that of Condorcet. His Rapport presented to the Legislative Assembly, in behalf of the committee on public instruction, April 20 and 21, 1792, reprinted in 1793 by order of the Convention, did not directly have the honor of a public discussion; but it contained principles and solutions which are found in the deliberations and legislative acts of his successors. It remained, during the whole duration of the Convention, the widely accessible source whence the legislators of that time, like Romme, Bouquier, and Lakanal, drew their inspiration.

431. Condorcet (1743-1794).—Condorcet was admirably qualified for the task which the Legislative Assembly imposed on him, in charging him with the organization of public instruction. During the first years of the Revolution he had employed his leisure (he was not a member of the Constituent Assembly) in writing five MÉmoires on instruction, which appeared in a periodical called the BibliothÈque de l’homme public. The Rapport which he submitted to the Assembly was a sort of rÉsumÉ of his long reflections. Condorcet brought to this work, not the indiscreet imagination of an improvised educator, but the authority of a competent thinker, who, if he had no personal experience in teaching, had at least reflected much on these topics and was conscious of all their difficulties. Besides, he devoted himself to his work with the ardor of an enthusiastic nature, and with the serious convictions of a mind that had carried farther than any one else the religion of progress and zeal for the public good.

432. General Considerations upon Instruction.—All the Revolutionists have sung the praises of instruction, of which they were the passionate admirers. Condorcet is its reflective partisan. He did not love it more than the others, but he comprehended it better, and better stated why it should be loved. He first takes up the ideas of Talleyrand, and shows that without instruction, liberty and equality would be chimeras:—

“A free constitution which should not be correspondent to the universal instruction of citizens, would come to destruction after a few conflicts, and would degenerate into one of those forms of government which cannot preserve the peace among an ignorant and corrupt people.”

Anarchy or despotism, such is the future of peoples who have become free before having been enlightened.

As to equality, without falling into the chimeras of an instruction which should be the same for all, and which should reduce all men to the same level, Condorcet desires to realize it so far as it is possible. He desires that the poorest and the humblest shall be sufficiently instructed to belong to himself, and not to be at the mercy of the first charlatan who comes along, and also to be able to fulfill his civil duties, to be an elector, a juror, etc.

433. Instruction and Morality.—The instrument of liberty and equality, instruction, in the opinion of Condorcet, is, in addition, the real source of public morality and of human progress. If it were not correspondent to the advances in knowledge, a free and impartial constitution would be hostile rather than favorable to good morals.

“Instruction alone can give the assurance that the principle of justice which the equality of rights ordains, shall not be in contradiction with this other principle, which prescribes that only those rights shall be accorded to men which they can exercise without danger to society.”

But it is moral reasons still more than political motives that make instruction the condition of virtue. Condorcet has shrewdly seen that the vices of the people come chiefly from their intellectual impotency.

“These vices come,” he says, “from the need of escaping from ennui in moments of leisure, and in escaping from it through sensations and not through ideas.”

These are notable words which should never be lost sight of by the teachers and moralists of the people.

To cause gross natures to pass from the life of the senses to the intellectual life; to make study agreeable to the end that the higher pleasures of the spirit may struggle successfully against the appetites for material pleasures; to put the book in the place of the wine bottle; to substitute the library for the saloon; in a word, to replace sensation by idea,—such is the fundamental problem of popular education.

434. Instruction and Progress.—Condorcet was a fanatic on the subject of progress. Up to the last moment of his life he dreamed of progress, its conditions, and its laws. Now the most potent means of hastening progress is to instruct men; and here is the final reason why instruction is so dear to him.

These are grand words:—

“If the indefinite improvement of our species is, as I believe, a general law of nature, man ought no longer to regard himself as a being limited to a transitory and isolated existence, destined to vanish after an alternative of happiness or of misery for himself, and of good and evil for those whom chance has placed near him; but he becomes an active part of the grand whole, and a fellow-laborer in a work that is eternal. In an existence of a moment, and upon a point in space, he can, by his works, compass all places, relate himself to all the centuries, and continue to act long centuries after his memory has disappeared from the earth.” And further on: “For a long time I have considered these views as dreams which were to be realized only in an indefinite future, and for a world where I should not exist. A happy event has suddenly opened an immense career to the hopes of the human race; a single instant has put a century of distance between the man of to-day and him of to-morrow.”

435. The Liberality of Condorcet.—Wrongly credited with a despotic and absolute habit of mind, Condorcet is, on the contrary, full of scruples and penetrated with respect as regards the liberty of individual opinions. In fact, he carefully distinguishes instruction from education. Instruction has to do with positive and certain knowledge, the truths of fact and of calculation; education, with political and religious beliefs. Now, if the State is the natural dispenser of instruction, it ought, on the contrary, in the matter of education, to forbear, and to declare itself incompetent. In other words, the State ought not to abuse its power by imposing by force on its citizens such or such a religious Credo, such or such a political dogma.

“Public authority cannot establish a body of doctrine which is to be exclusively taught. No public power ought to have the authority, or even the permission, to prevent the development of new truths, or the teaching of theories contrary to its particular policy or to its momentary interests.”

436. Five Grades of Instruction.—Condorcet distinguishes five grades of instruction: 1. Primary schools proper; 2. Secondary schools, that is, such as we now call higher primary schools; 3. Institutes, or colleges of secondary instruction; 4. LycÉes, or institutions of higher instruction; 5. The National Society of Sciences and Arts, which corresponds to our Institute.

Two things are especially to be noted: first, Condorcet establishes for the first time higher primary schools, and demands one for each district, and in addition one for each town of four thousand inhabitants; then, for primary schools proper, he takes the population as a basis for their establishment, and requires one for each four hundred inhabitants.[206]

437. Purpose and Plan of Primary Instruction.—Condorcet has admirably defined the purpose of primary instruction:—

“In the primary schools there is taught that which is necessary for each individual in order to direct his own conduct and to enjoy the plenitude of his own rights.”

The programme comprised reading, writing, some notions on grammar, the rules of arithmetic, simple methods of measuring a field and a building with exactness; a simple description of the productions of the country, of the processes in agriculture and the arts; the development of the first moral ideas and the rules for conduct derived from them; finally, such of the principles of social order as can be put within the comprehension of children.

438. The Idea of Courses for Adults.—Condorcet was strongly impressed with the necessity of continuing the instruction of the workman and of the peasant after withdrawal from school:—

“We have observed that instruction ought not to abandon individuals the moment they leave the schools; that it ought to embrace all ages; that there is no period of life when it is not useful and possible to learn, and that this supplementary instruction is so much the more necessary as that of infancy has been contracted to the narrowest limits. Here is one of the principal causes of the ignorance in which the poor classes of society are to-day plunged; they lacked not nearly so much the possibility of receiving an elementary instruction as that of preserving its advantages.”

Consequently, Condorcet proposed, if not courses of instruction for adults, at least something very like them,—weekly lectures, given each Sunday by the village teachers, a kind of lay sermons.

“Each Sunday the teacher shall give a public lecture which citizens of all ages will attend. In this arrangement we have seen a means of giving to young people those necessary parts of knowledge, which, however, did not form a part of their primary education.”

439. Professional and Technical Education.—But Condorcet does not think his duty to the people done when he has given them intellectual emancipation. He is very anxious to give in addition to the sons of peasants or workmen the means of struggling against misery, by diffusing more and more among the masses of the people a technical knowledge of the arts and trades. He deserves to be counted among the adepts in professional instruction and in industrial education. He asks that there be placed in the schools “models of machines or of trades”; and in all grades of instruction, he recommends with a special solicitude the teaching of the practical arts.

We fancy we are doing something new to-day when we establish school museums. “Each school,” says Condorcet, “shall have a small library, and a small cabinet in which shall be placed some meteorological instruments or some specimens of natural history.”

440. The Education of Women.—Condorcet may be regarded as one of the most ardent apostles of the education of women. He wishes education to be common and equal. He is evidently wrong when he dreams of a perfect identity of instruction for the two sexes, when he forgets the particular destination of women, and the special character of their education. But we have found so many educators disposed to depreciate the abilities of woman, that we are happy to find at last one voice that exalts them, even beyond measure.

Let us recall, however, the excellent reasons which he gives in support of his thesis on the equality of education. It is necessary that women should be instructed: 1. in order that they may be able to bring up their children, of whom they are the natural instructors; 2. in order that they may be the worthy companions, the equals of their husbands, that they may feel an interest in their pursuits, share in their preoccupations, and, finally, participate in their life, such being the condition of conjugal happiness; 3. in order, further, by an analogous reason, that they may not quench, by their ignorance, that inspiration of heart and mind which previous studies have developed in their husbands, but that they may nourish this flame by conversation and reading in common; 4. finally, because this is just,—because the two sexes have an equal right to instruction.

441. Reservations to be made.—All is not equally worthy of commendation in the work of Condorcet. Some faults and some omissions mar this fine piece of political pedagogy. The faults are, first, the exaggerated idea of liberty and of equality. From Condorcet’s ardors for liberty there issues, in his plan for education, a grave error,—the idea of making of the teaching body a sort of State within the State, an independent authority, a fourth power, released from all exterior authority, governing itself and administering its own affairs, the State intervening only as treasurer to pay for the services which it neither regulates nor supervises. The liberal Daunou, while explaining the system of our author, has criticised it on this point.[207] “Condorcet,” he said, “the enemy of corporations, has sanctioned one in his scheme of national instruction; he established, as it were, an academic church. This is because Condorcet, the enemy of kings, would add in the balance of public powers one counterbalance more to that royal power whose monstrous existence, in a free constitution, is sufficiently attested by the alarms and fears of all the friends of liberty.”

The passion for equality led Condorcet into another chimera,—that of the absolute gratuity of instruction of all grades.

Finally, in his dreams of infinite perfectibility, Condorcet allows himself to be carried so far away as to imagine for man, and to expect from instruction, results that are utterly unattainable. Instruction, according to him, ought to be so complete “as to cause the disappearance of every inequality which induces dependence.”

442. Prejudices of the Mathematician.—From another point of view, Condorcet was led astray by his predilection for the sciences. He so far forgot that he was a member of the French Academy as to obey only his tendencies, a little too exclusive, as a mathematician and a member of the Academy of Sciences. By a reaction, natural enough, against those long centuries in which an abuse was made of literary culture, Condorcet is too prompt to underrate the influence of letters in education, and to invest the sciences with the place of honor. The reasons which he invokes to justify his preference are not all conclusive.

443. Omissions.—The idea of obligatory instruction is still wanting in the scheme we are examining. We shall be surprised, perhaps, that Condorcet, who has so clearly proclaimed the necessity of universal instruction, did not think to impose obligatory attendance, which is the only means of establishing it. This is because the early revolutionists, in the ardor of their enthusiasm, did not suspect the opposition to the accomplishment of their plans that was to come from the indifference of the greater number, and from the prejudices of those who, as Condorcet has eloquently said, “thought they were obeying God while betraying their country.” It seemed to them that when centres of light had been made to glow over the whole surface of the country, citizens would hasten after them, impelled by a natural appetite, spontaneously thirsting for enlightenment. They were deceived. These hopes, a little artless, were destined to be disproved by facts; and it was to triumph over the neglect of some, and the resistance of others, that the Convention, supplying one of the rare defects in Condorcet’s plan, decreed, on several occasions, instruction “imperative and forced,” as was then said.

On still another point, Condorcet remained inferior to his successors; in his report there was no mention made of the organization of normal schools. In this grave and fundamental question of the education of the teaching body, Condorcet contented himself with a provisional expedient, which consisted in entrusting to the professors of the grade immediately higher the care of preparing teachers for the grade lower.

444. Final Conclusion.—But even with these reservations, the work of Condorcet deserves scarcely anything but praise. We have commended its new and exalted conceptions. Its beautiful and exact arrangement and its masterly style also deserve praise. Condorcet’s periods are symmetrical in their fullness, and the expression is precise and vigorous. Doubtless there is some monotony and some frigidity in that style so concise and strong. But at intervals there are outbursts of passion. The man whom his contemporaries compared to “an enraged lamb,” or to a “volcano covered with snow,” is painted to the life in his writings. His Rapport is like a beautiful and finished statue of marble, cold to the touch, but upon which the hand might feel beating in places a vein warm with life.

[445. Analytical Summary.—1. The more important lessons to be derived from this study are the following: the necessity of making instruction universal and of having it administered by the State; the need of making instruction obligatory, and, in certain grades, gratuitous; the value of intellectual culture as a moral safeguard.

2. The right of the State to self-preservation carries with it the right to ordain the establishment of schools for giving a certain kind and degree of instruction. This constitutes the first form of compulsion.

3. When there is not a voluntary and general attendance on the schools ordained by the State, it may avail itself of the supplementary right to make attendance obligatory. This constitutes the second form of compulsion.

4. Gratuity is the logical sequence to compulsion. If the State may require all children to partake of a certain degree of instruction, it must make such instruction free.

5. Should instruction that is above the compulsory grade be free? This depends on the question whether the State needs a certain amount of the higher culture, and whether this required amount will be secured at the pupils’ own expense. Monsieur CompayrÉ decides, as against Condorcet (paragraph 441), that the higher grades of instruction should not be gratuitous. In this country the prevailing theory is that the higher education should be endowed by the State.

6. The relation of instruction to morality has never been more justly and pointedly stated than in paragraph 433. This is not only good sense but sound philosophy.]