III.
The Plan of a University for the Government of Russia was the work of Diderot’s last years, but no copy of it was given to the public before 1813-14, when M. Guizot published extracts from an autograph manuscript confided to him by Suard. Diderot, with a characteristic respect for competence, with which no egotism can ever interfere in minds of such strength and veracity as his, began by urging the Empress to consult Ernesti of Leipsic, the famous editor of Cicero, and no less famous in his day (1707-1781) for the changes that he introduced into the system of teaching in the German universities. Of Oxford and Cambridge Diderot spoke more kindly than they then deserved.
The one strongly marked idea of the plan is what might have been expected from the editor of the Encyclopædia, namely, the elevation of what the Germans call real or technological instruction, and the banishment of pure literature as a subject of study from the first to the last place in the course. In the faculty of arts the earliest course begins with arithmetic, algebra, the calculation of probabilities, and geometry. Next follow physics and mechanics. Then astronomy. Fourthly, natural history and experimental physics. In the fifth class, chemistry and anatomy. In the sixth, logic and grammar. In the seventh, the language of the country. And it was not until the eighth, that Greek and Latin, eloquence and poetry, took their place among the objects or instruments of education. Parallel with this course, the student was to follow the first principles of metaphysics, of universal morality, and of natural and revealed religion. Here, too, history and geography had a place. In a third parallel, perspective and drawing accompanied the science of the first, and the philosophy and history of the second.
In the thorny field of religious instruction, Diderot expresses no opinion of his own, beyond saying that it is natural for the Empress’s subjects to conform to her way of thinking. As her majesty thinks that the fear of pains to come has much influence on men’s actions, and is persuaded that the total of small daily advantages produced by belief outweighs the total of evils wrought by sectarianism and intolerance, therefore students ought to be instructed in the mystery of the distinction of the two substances, in the immortality of the soul, and so forth.[216]
There is a story that one evening at St. Petersburg, Diderot was declaiming with stormy eloquence against the baseness of those who flatter kings; for such, he said, there ought to be a deeper and a fiercer hell. “Tell me, Diderot,” said the Empress by and by, “what they say in Paris about the death of my husband.” Instead of telling her the plain truth that everybody said that Peter had been murdered by her orders, the philosopher poured out a stream of the smoothest things. “Come now,” said Catherine suddenly, “confess, if you are not walking along the path that leads to your deep hell, you are certainly coming very close to purgatory.” Diderot’s elaborate concessions to her majesty’s political religion would, it is to be feared, have brought him still further in the same sulphureous track.
As we have often had to bewail Diderot’s diffuseness, it is as well to remark that a long passage in the sketch of which we are speaking shows how close and concentrated he could be upon occasion. The two pages in which he demolishes the incorrigible superstition about Latin and Greek,[217] contain a thoroughly exhaustive summary of all the arguments and the answers. In the immense discussion about Latin and Greek that has taken place in the hundred years since Diderot’s time, it is tolerably safe to say that not a single point has been brought forward which Diderot did not in these most pithy and conclusive pages attempt to deal with. He winds up with the position that, even for the man of letters, the present system of teaching Latin and Greek is essentially sterile. I am perfectly sure, he says, that Voltaire, who is not exactly a mediocrity as a man of letters, knows extremely little Greek, and that he is not twentieth nor even hundredth among the Latinists of the day.[218]
Following this sketch is printed a letter to the Countess of Forbach on the education of children. It is full of rich wisdom on its special subject. Nobody can read it without feeling that quality in Diderot which made his friends love him. And we see how, when he was called to practical counsel, he banished into their own sphere the explosive paradoxes with which he delighted to amuse his hours of speculative dreaming.