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.