Such is the singular and final result brought about by the institution of the year X (or 1801), due to the intervention of the grossly leveling Jacobin spirit.6384 Indeed, since 1871, and especially since 1879, this spirit, through Napoleonic forms, has given breath, impulse and direction, and these forms suit it. On the principle that education belongs to the State, Napoleon and the old Jacobins were in accord; what he in fact established they had proclaimed as a dogma; hence the structure of his university-organisation was not objectionable to them; on the contrary, it conformed to their instincts. Hence, the reason why the new Jacobins, inheritors of both instinct and dogma, immediately adopted the existing system; none was more convenient, better calculated to meet their views, better adapted in advance to do their work. Consequently, under the third Republic,6385 as under anterior governments, the school machinery continues to turn and grind in the same rut. Through the same working of its mechanism, under the same impulse of its unique and central motor, conforming to the same Napoleonic and Jacobin idea of the teaching State, it is a formidable concept which, more intrusive every year, more widely and more rigorously applied, more and more excludes the opposite concept. This would be the remission of education to those interested in it, to those who possess rights, to parents, to free and private enterprises which depend only on personal exertions and on families, to permanent, special, local corporations, proprietary and organized under status, governed, managed, and supported by themselves. On this model, a few men of intelligence and sensibility, enlightened by what is accomplished abroad, try to organize regional universities in our great academic centers. The State might, perhaps, allow, if not the enterprise itself, then at least something like it, but nothing more. Through its right of public administration, through the powers of its Council of State, through its fiscal legislation, through the immemorial prejudices of its jurists, through the routine of its bureaus, it is hostile to a corporate personality. Never can such a project be considered a veritable civil personage; if the State consents to endow a group of individuals with civil powers, it is always on condition that they be subject to its narrow tutelage and be treated as minors and children. —Besides, these universities, even of age, are to remain as they are, so many dispensaries of diplomas. They are no longer to serve as an intellectual refuge, an oasis at the end of secondary instruction, a station for three or four years for free curiosity and disinterested self-culture. Since the abolition of the volontariat for one year, a young Frenchman no longer enjoys the leisure to cultivate himself in this way; free curiosity is interdicted; he is too much harassed by a too positive interest, by the necessity of obtaining grades and diplomas, by the preoccupations of examinations, by the limitations of age; he has no time to lose in experiments, in mental excursions, in pure speculations. Henceforth, our system allows him only the rÉgime to which we see him subject, namely the rush, the puffing and blowing, the gallop without stopping on a race-course, the perilous jumps at regular distances over previously arranged and numbered obstacles. Instead of being restricted and attenuated, the disadvantages of the Napoleonic institution spread and grow worse, and this is due to the way in which our rulers comprehend it, the original, hereditary way of the Jacobin spirit.

When Napoleon built his University he did it as a statesman and a man of business, with the foresight of a contractor and a practical man, calculating outlay and receipts, means and resources, so as to produce at once and with the least expense, the military and civil tools which he lacked and of which he always had too few because he consumed too many: to this precise, definite purpose he subjected and subordinated all the rest, including the theory of the educational State; she was for him simply a rÉsumÉ, a formula, a setting. On the contrary, for the old Jacobins, she was an axiom, a principle, an article in the Social Contract; by this contract, the State had charge of public education; it had the right and its duty was to undertake this and manage it. The principle being laid down, as convinced theorists and blindly following the deductive method, the derived consequences from it and rushed ahead, with eyes shut, into practical operation, with as much haste as vigor, without concerning themselves with the nature of human materials, of surrounding realities, of available resources, of collateral effects, nor of the total and final effect. Likewise with the new Jacobins of the present day, according to them, since instruction is a good thing,6386 the broader and deeper it is the better; since broad and deep instruction is very good, the State should, with all its energy and by every means in its power, inculcate it on the greatest possible number of children, boys and adolescents. Such, henceforth, is the word of command from on high, transmitted down to the three stages of superior, secondary and primary instruction.6387

Consequently, from 1876 to 1890,6388 the State expends for superior instruction, in buildings alone, 99,000,000 francs. Formerly, the receipts of the Faculties about covered their expenses; at the present day, the State allows them annually 6,000,000 francs more than their receipts. It has founded and supports 221 new (professional) chairs, 168 complementary courses of lectures, 129 confÉrences and, to supply the attendants, it provides, since 1877, 300 scholarships for those preparing for the license and, since 1881, 200 scholarships for those preparing for the aggrÉgation. Similarly, in secondary instruction, instead of 81 lycÉes in 1876, it has 100 in 18876389; instead of 3,820 scholarships in 1876, it distributes, in 1887, 10,528; instead of 2,200,000 francs expended for this branch of instruction in 1857, it expends 18,000,000 in 1889.—This overload of teaching caused overloaded exams: it was necessary to include more science than in the past to curriculum of the grades delivered and determined by the State. "This was what was then done whenever possible."6390 Naturally, and through contagion, the obligation of possessing more knowledge descended to secondary instruction. In effect, after this date, we see neo-Kantian philosophy descending like hail from the highest metaphysical ether down upon the pupils in the terminal class of the lycÉes, to the lasting injury of the seventeen-year old brains. Again, after this date, we see in the class of special mathematics6391 an abundance of complicated, confusing problems so that, today, the candidate for the Polytechnic School must, to gain admission, expound theorems that were only mastered by his father after he got there.—Hence, "boxes" and "ovens", private internats, the preparatory secular or ecclesiastical schools and other "scholastic cramming-machines"; hence, the prolonged mechanical effort to introduce into each intellectual sponge all the scientific fluid it can contain, even to saturation, and maintain it in this extreme state of perfection if only for two hours during an examination, after which it may rapidly subside and shrink. Hence, that mistaken use, that inordinate expenditure, that precocious waste of mental energy, and that entire pernicious system which overburden for a substantial period the young, not for their advantage, but, on reaching maturity, to their intellectual detriment.

To reach the uncultivated masses, to address popular intellect and imagination, one must use absolute, simple slogans. In the matter of primary instruction, the simplest and most absolute slogan is that which promises and offers it to all children, boys and girls, not merely universal, but again, complete and gratuitous. To this end, from 1878 to 1891,6392 the State has expended for school buildings and installations 582,000,000 francs; for salaries and other expenses it furnished the latter year 131,000,000. Somebody pays for all this, and it is the tax-payer, and by force; aided by gendarmes, the collector puts his hand forcibly into all pockets, even those containing only sous, and withdraws these millions. Gratuitous instruction sounds well and seems to designate a veritable gift, a present from the great vague personage called the State, and whom the general public dimly sees on the distant horizon as a superior, independent being, and hence a possible benefactor. In reality, his presents are made with our money, while his generosity consists in the fine name with which he here gilds his fiscal exactions, a new constraint added to so many others which he imposes on us and which we endure.6393—Besides, through instinct and tradition, the State is naturally inclined to multiply constraints, and this time there is no concealment. From six to thirteen years of age, primary instruction becomes obligatory.6394 The father is required to prove that his children receive it, if not at the public school at least in a private school or at home. During these seven years it continues, and ten months are devoted to it each year. The school takes and keeps the child three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon; it pours into these little heads all that is possible in such a length of time, all that they can hold and more too,—spelling, syntax, grammatical and logical analysis, rules of composition and of style, history, geography, arithmetic, geometry, drawing, notions of literature, politics, law, and finally a complete moral system, "civic morality."

It is obviously very useful for every adult to be able to read, write and reckon. Who, then, can criticize a Government because it insists that all children be taught these basic skills? But for the same reason and on the same principle, provision could be made for swimming-schools in every village and town on the sea-coast, or on the streams and rivers; every boy should be obliged to learn how to swim.—That it may be useful for every boy and girl in the United States to pass through the entire system of primary instruction is peculiar to the United States and is comprehensible in an extensive and new country where multiplied and diverse pursuits present themselves on all sides;6395 where every career may lead to the highest pinnacle; where a rail-splitter may become president of the republic; where the adult often changes his career and, to afford him the means for improvising a competency at each change, he must possess the elements of every kind of knowledge; where the wife, being for the man an object of luxury, does not use her arms in the fields and scarcely ever uses her hands in the household.6396—It is not the same in France. Nine out of ten pupils in the primary school are sons or daughters of peasants or of workmen and will remain in the condition of their parents; the girl, adult, will do washing and cooking all her life at home or abroad; the son, adult, confined to his occupation will work all his life in a shop or on his own or another's field. Between this destiny of the adult and the plenitude of his primary instruction, the disproportion is enormous; it is evident that his education does not prepare him for the life he has to lead; but for another life, less monotonous, under less restraint, more cerebral, and of which a faint glimpse disgusts him with his own;6397 at least, it will disgust him for a long time and frequently, until the day comes when his school acquisitions, wholly superficial, shall have evaporated in contact with the ambient atmosphere and no longer appear to him other than empty phrases; in France, for an ordinary peasant or workman, so much the better if this day comes early.6398

At the very least, three quarters of these acquisitions are for him superfluous. He derives no advantage from them, neither for inward satisfaction or for getting ahead in the world; and yet they must all be gone through with. In vain would the father of a family like to curtail his children's mental stores to useful knowledge, to reading, writing and arithmetic, to giving to these just the necessary time, at the right season, three months for two or three winters, to keep his twelve-year-old daughter at home to help her mother and take care of the other children, to keep his boy of ten years for pasturing cattle or for goading on the oxen at the plow.6399 In relation to his children and their interests as well as for his own necessities, he is suspect, he is not a good judge; the State has more light and better intentions than he has. Consequently, the State has the right to constrain him and in fact, from above, from Paris, the State does this. Legislators, as formerly in 1793, have acted according to Jacobin procedure, as despotic theorists. They have formed in their minds a uniform, universal, simple type, that of a child from six to thirteen years as they want to see it, without adjusting the instruction they impose on it to its prospective condition, making abstraction of his positive and personal interest, of his near and certain future, setting the father aside, the natural judge and competent measurer of the education suitable to his son and daughter, the sole authorized arbiter for determining the quality, duration, circumstances and counterpoise of the mental and moral manipulation to which these young lives, inseparable from his own, are going to be subject away from home.—Never, since the Revolution, has the State so vigorously affirmed its omnipotence, nor pushed in encroachments on and intrusion into the proper domain of the individual so far, even to the very center of domestic life. Note that in 1793 and 1794 the plans of Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau and of Saint-Just remained on paper; the latter for ten years have been in practical operation.63100

At bottom, the Jacobin is a sectarian, propagator of his own faith, and hostile to the faith of others. Instead of admitting that that people's conceptions are different and rejoicing that there are so many of them, each adapted to the human group which believes in it, and essential to believers to help them along, he admits but one, his own, and he uses power to force it upon adherents. He also has his own creed, his catechism, his imperative formula, and he imposes them.— Henceforth,63101 education shall be not only free and obligatory but again secular and nothing but secular. Thus far, the great majority of parents, most of the fathers and all of the mothers, were desirous that it should at the same time be religious. Without speaking of professing Christians, many heads of families, even lukewarm, indifferent or skeptical, judge that this mixture of the two is better for children, and especially for girls. According to them, knowledge and faith should not enter into these young minds separate, but combined and as one aliment; at least, in the particular case in which they were concerned, this, in their view, was better for the child, for themselves, for the internal discipline of the household, for good order at home for which they were responsible, for the maintenance of respect, and for the preservation of morals. For this reason, the municipal councils, previous to the laws of 1882 and 1886, still free to choose instruction and teachers as they pleased, often entrusted their school to the Christian Brethren or Sisters under contract for a number of years, at a fixed price, and all the more willingly because this price was very low.63102 Hence, in 1886, there were in the public schools 10,029 teachers of the Christian Brethren and 39,125 of the Sisters. Now, since 1886, the law insists that public instruction shall be not only secular, but that lay teachers only shall teach; the communal schools, in particular, shall be all secularized, and, to complete this operation, the legislator fixes the term of delay; after that, no member of a congregation, monk or nun, shall teach in any public school.

Meanwhile, each year, by virtue of the law, the communal schools are secularized by hundreds, by fair means or foul; although this is by right a local matter, the municipal councils are not consulted; the heads of families have no voice in this private, domestic interest which touches them to the quick, and such a sensitive point. And likewise, in the cost of the operation their part is officially imposed them; at the present day,63103 in the sum-total of 131,000,000 francs which primary instruction costs annually, the communes contribute 50,000,000 francs; from 1878 to 1891, in the sum-total of 582,000,000 francs expended on school buildings, they contributed 312,000,000 francs.—If certain parents are not pleased with this system they have only to subscribe amongst themselves, build a private school at their own expense, and support Christian Brothers or Sisters in these as teachers. That is their affair; they will not pay one cent less to the commune, to the department or to the State, so that their tax will be double and they will pay twice, first for the primary instruction which they dislike, and next for the primary instruction which suits them.—Thousands of private schools are founded on these conditions. In 1887,63104 these had 1,091,810 pupils, about one fifth of all children inscribed in all the primary schools. Thus one fifth of the parents do not want the secular system for their children; at least, they prefer the other when the other is offered to them; but, to offer it to them, very large donations, a multitude of voluntary subscriptions, are necessary. The distrust and aversion which this system, imposed from above excites can be measured by the number of parents and children and by the greatness of the donations and subscriptions. Note, moreover, that in many of the other communes, in all places where the resources, the common understanding and the generosity of individual founders and donators are not sufficient, the parents, even distrustful and hostile, are now constrained to send their children to the school which is repugnant to them.—In order to be more precise, imagine an official and daily journal entitled Secular journal, obligatory and gratuitous for children from six to thirteen, founded and supported by the State, at an average cost of 582,000,000 francs to set it agoing, and 131,0000,000 francs of annual expenditure, the whole taken from the purses of taxpayers, willingly or not; take it for granted that the 6,000,000 children, girls and boys, from six to thirteen, are forced subscribers to this journal, that they get it every day except Sundays, that, every day, they are bound to read the paper for six hours. The State, through toleration, allows the parents who do not like the official sheet to take another which suits them; but, that another may be within reach, it is necessary that local benefactors, associated together and taxed by themselves, should be willing to establish and support it; otherwise, the father of a family is constrained to read the secular journal to his children, which he deems badly composed and marred by superfluities and shortcomings, in brief edited in an objectionable spirit. Such is the way in which the Jacobin State respects the liberty of the individual.

On the other hand, through this operation, it has extended and fortified itself; it has multiplied the institutions it directs and the persons whom it controls. To direct, inspect, augment and diffuse its primary instruction, the State has maintained 173 normal schools for teachers, male and female, 736 schools and courses of lectures in primary, superior and professional instruction, 66,784 elementary schools, 3,597 maternal schools, and about 115,000 functionaries, men and women.63105 Through these 115,000 officials, representatives and megaphones, Secular Reason, which is enthroned at Paris, sends its voice even to the smallest and most remote villages. It is this Reason, as our rulers define it, with the inclinations, limitations and prejudices they have need of, the near-sighted and half-domesticated grand-daughter of that other formidable sightless, brutal and mad grandmother, who, in 1793 and 1794, sat under the same name and in the same place. With less of violence and blundering, but by virtue of the same instinct and with the same one-sidedness, the latter employs the same propaganda. She too wants to seize the new generations, and through her programs and manuals, her insinuations and summaries of the Ancient RÉgime, the Revolution and the Empire, by her perceptions of recent or contemporary matters, through her formulae and suggestions in relation to moral, social and political affairs, it is of her and she alone, that she preaches and glorifies.