"Atheism is aristocratic," said Robespierre, thinking of Rousseau. Atheism is democratic, say our present-day school teachers. Whence comes this difference of opinion? First because it was fashionable among the great lords of the eighteenth century to be libertines and free-thinkers, but among the people the belief in God was unanimous. Secondly, because the priests of our day, for the reasons which I have given and from remembrance of the persecutions suffered by their Church at the date of the first triumphs of democracy, have remained aristocrats or have become so even more firmly than they ever were before. Atheism then has become democratic as a weapon against the deists who are generally aristocrats.
Besides, atheism fits in very well, whatever Robespierre may have thought, with the general sentiments of the baser demagogy. To be restrained by nothing, to be limited by nothing, that is the dominant idea of the people, or rather it is the dominant idea of the democrat for the people, that it should be restrained by nothing and limited by nothing in its sovereign power. Now God is a limit, God is a restraint. And just as the democrat will not admit of a secular constitution which the people could not destroy and which would prevent him from making bad laws; just as the democrat will not submit—if we may adopt the terminology of Aristotle—to being governed by laws, to be governed that is by an ancient body of law which would check the people and obstruct it in its daily fabrication of decrees; so just in the same spirit the democrat does not admit of a God Who has issued His commandments, Who has issued His body of laws, anterior and superior to all the laws and all the decrees of men, and Who sets His limit on the legislative eccentricities of the people, on its capricious omnipotence, in a word, on the sovereignty of the people.
After Sedan, Bismarck was asked: "Now that Napoleon has fallen, on whom do you make war?" He replied: "On Louis XIV." So the democrat questioned on his atheism could reply: "I am warring against Moses."
This is the origin of the atheism of democrats and schoolmasters. This is the origin of the formula: "Neither God nor Master," which for the anarchist requires no correction nor supplement, which for the democrat has only to be modified: "Neither God nor Master, save the People."
At the end of one of his great political speeches in 1849 or 1850, Victor Hugo said: "In the future there will only be two powers; the People and God." The modern democrat has persuaded himself that if there be a God, the sovereignty of the people is infringed, if he believe in Him.
Lastly, the school teacher is confirmed in his democratic sentiments, in all his democratic sentiments, by the political position which has been made for him in France. It is a strange thing, a disconcerting anomaly, that the Governments of the nineteenth century (especially, we must do it this justice, the present Government), have very handsomely respected the liberty of professors of higher education, and of secondary education, and have not in the very slightest degree respected the liberty of the teachers of elementary education. The professor of higher education, especially since 1870, can teach exactly what he pleases, except immorality and contempt of our country and its laws. He can even discuss our laws, provided always that he maintains the principle that, such as they are, they ought to be obeyed till they are repealed. His liberty as to his opinions political, social and religious is complete. It is only occasionally constrained by the disorderly demonstrations of his students. The professor of secondary education enjoys a liberty almost equally wide. He is subject, but only in an extremely liberal fashion, to a programme or syllabus of studies. As to the spirit in which he conducts his work he is practically never molested. He is given a free hand.
Nor has it ever occurred to any Government to ask a professor of higher and secondary education how he votes at political elections, still less to require him to canvass in favour of the candidates agreeable to the Government.
When, however, we pass to elementary education we see everything is changed. The elementary teacher is not appointed by his natural chief, the recteur or Minister of Public Education, he is appointed by the préfet, that is by the Minister of the Interior, the political head of the Government. In other words, this is the same process as the appointment of officials by the people, described a few pages back, but with one intermediary the less. It is pre-eminently the Minister of the Interior who represents the political will of the nation at any given date. And it is the Minister of the Interior who through his préfets appoints the elementary school teacher. It is then the political will of the nation which chooses the school teachers. It would be impossible to convey to them more clearly (which is only fair, for people should be made to understand their duties) that they are chosen for considerations of politics and that they ought to consider themselves as political agents.
And indeed they are nothing else, or perhaps we should say they are something else but above all they are politicians. The schoolteachers depend on the préfets and the préfets depend much on the deputies, yet it is not the deputies who appoint them, but it is they who can remove them, who can get them promoted or disgraced, who by constant removals can reduce them to destitution. Surely, every candid person will exclaim, given the difficult and scandalous situation in which they are put by the hand which appoints them, they ought at least to have the guarantee and assurance, very relative and ineffectual though it be, of irremovability. But they have not got it. The professors of higher education who do not require it have got it, the professors of secondary education have it to all intents and purposes. The elementary school teacher has it not.
He is, therefore, delivered over to the politicians who make of him an electioneering agent, who reckon him as such, and who would never pardon him if he failed them.