We oblige[21101] teachers, male and female, to present certificates of civism, that is to say, of Jacobinism. We close the school if "precepts or maxims opposed to revolutionary morality" are taught in it, that is to say, in conformity with Christian morals. Children will learn to read in the Declaration of Rights and in the Constitution of 1793. Republican manuals and catechisms will be prepared for their use.[21102] "They must be taught the virtuous traits which most honor free men, and especially the traits characteristic of the French Revolution, the best calculated to elevate the soul and render them worthy of equality and liberty." The 14th of July, 10th of August, 2nd of September, 21st of January, and 31st of May must be lauded or justified in their presence. They must be taken to meetings of the municipalities, to the law courts,[21103] and especially to the popular clubs; from these pure sources they will derive a knowledge of their rights, of their duties, of the laws, of republican morality," and, on entering society, they will find themselves imbued with all good maxims. Over and above their political opinions we shape their ordinary habits. We apply on a grand scale the plan of education drawn out by Jean-Jacques (Rousseau).[21104] We want no more literary prigs; in the army, "the 'dandy' breaks down during the first campaign;[21105] we want young men able to endure privation and fatigue, toughened, like Emile, "by hard work" and physical exercise.—We have, thus far, only sketched out this department of education, but the agreement amongst the various plans shows the meaning and bearings of our principle. "Children generally, without exception, says Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau,[21106] the boys from five to twelve, the girls from five to eleven years of age, must be brought up in common at the expense of the Republic; all, under the sacred law of equality, are to receive the same clothing, the same food, the same education, the same attention "in boarding-schools distributed according to cantons, and containing each from four to six hundred pupils.
"Pupils will be made to submit every day and every moment to the same rigid rules... Their beds must be hard, their food healthy, but simple, their clothing comfortable, but coarse." Servants will not be allowed; children must help themselves and, besides this, they must wait on the old and infirm, lodged with or near them. "Among daily duties, manual labor will be the principal thing; all the rest will be accessory." Girls must learn to spin, sew and wash clothes; the boys will work the roads, be shepherds, ploughmen and work-hands; both will have tasks set them, either in the school-workshops, or in the fields and factories in the neighborhood; they will be hired out to surrounding manufacturers and to the tillers of the soil. Saint-Just is more specific and rigid.[21107] "Male children from five to sixteen years of age, must be raised for their country. They must be clad in common cloth at all seasons, and have mats for beds, and sleep eight hours. They are to have common food only, fruits, vegetables, preparations of milk, bread and water. They must not eat meat before sixteen.. Their education, from ten to sixteen, is to be military and agricultural. They will be formed into companies of sixty; six companies make a battalion; the children of a district form a legion; they will assemble annually at the district town, encamp there and drill in infantry tactics, in arenas specially provided for the purpose; they will also learn cavalry maneuvers and every other species of military evolution. In harvest time they are to be distributed amongst the harvesters." After sixteen, "they enter the crafts," with some farmer, artisan, merchant or manufacturer, who becomes their titular "instructor," and with whom they are bound to remain up to the age of twenty-one, "under the penalty of being deprived for life of a citizen's rights.[21108]... All children will dress alike up to sixteen years of age; from twenty-one to twenty-five, they will dress as soldiers, if they are not in the magistracy."—Already we show the effects of the theory by one striking example; we founded the "Ecole de Mars;"[21109] we select out of each district six boys from sixteen to seventeen and a half years old "among the children of sans-culottes;" we summon them to Paris, "to receive there, through a revolutionary education, whatever belongs to the knowledge and habits of a republican soldier. They are schooled in fraternity, in discipline, in frugality, in good habits, in love of country and in detestation of kings." three or four thousand young people are lodged at the Sablons, "in a palisaded enclosure, the intervals of which are guarded by chevaux de frises and sentinels."[21110] We puts them into tents; we feed them with bran bread, rancid pork, water and vinegar; we drill them in the use of arms; we march them out on national holidays and stimulate them with patriotic harangues.—Suppose all Frenchmen educated in such a school; the habits they acquire in youth will persist in the adult, and, in each adult we shall find the sobriety, energy and patriotism of a Spartan or Roman.
Already, under the pressure of our decrees, civism affects customs, and there are manifest signs, on all sides, of public regeneration. "The French people," says Robespierre, "seems to have outstripped the rest of humanity, by two thousand years; one might be tempted to regard them, living amongst them, as a different species. In the rest of Europe, a ploughman, an artisan, is an animal formed for the pleasures of a noble; in France, the nobles are trying to transform themselves into ploughmen and artisans, but do not succeed in obtaining that honor."[21111] Life in all directions is gradually assuming democratic forms Wealthy prisoners are prohibited from purchasing delicacies, or procuring special conveniences; they eat along with the poor prisoners the same ration, at the common mess[21112]. Bakers have orders to make but one quality of bread, the brown bread called equality bread, and, to obtain his ration, each person must place himself in line with the rest of the crowd. On holidays[21113] everybody will bring his provisions down into the street and eat as one family with his neighbor; on décadi all are to sing and dance together, pell-mell, in the temple of the Supreme being. The decrees of the Convention and the orders of the representatives impose the republican cockade on women; public opinion and example impose on men the costume and appearance of sans-culottes we see even dandies wearing mustaches, long hair, red cap, vest and heavy wooden shoes.[21114] Nobody calls a person Monsieur or Madame; the only titles allowed are citoyen and citoyenne while thee and Thou is the general rule. Rude familiarity takes the place of monarchical politeness; all greet each other as equals and comrades.[21115] There is now only one tone, one style, one language; revolutionary forms constitute the tissue of speech, as well as of written discourse; thought now seems to consists entirely of our ideas and phrases.[21116] All names are transformed, those of months and of days, those of places and of monuments, baptismal names and names of families: St. Denis has become Franciade; Peter Gaspard is converted into Anaxagoras, and Antoine-Louis into Brutus; Leroi, the deputy, calls himself Laloi, and Leroy, the jurist, calls himself August-Tenth.—By dint of thus shaping the exterior we reach the interior, and through outward civism we prepare internal civism. Both are obligatory, but the latter much more so than the former; for that is the fundamental principle,[21117] "the incentive which sustains and impels a democratic and popular government." It is impossible to apply the social contract if everybody does not scrupulously observe the first clause of it, namely, the complete surrender of himself to the community; everybody, then, must give himself up entirely, not only actually but heartily, and devote himself to the public good, which public good is the regeneration of Man as we have defined it. The veritable citizen is he who thus marches along with us. With him, as with us, abstract truths of philosophy control the conscience and govern the will. He starts with our articles of faith and follows them out to the end; he endorses our acts, he recites our creed, he observes our discipline, he is a believing and practicing Jacobin, an orthodox Jacobin, unsullied, and without taint of heresy or schism. Never does he swerve to the left toward exaggeration, nor to the right toward toleration; without haste or delay he travels along the narrow, steep and straight path which we have marked out for him; this is the pathway of reason, for, as there is but one reason, there is but one pathway. Let no one swerve from the line; there are abysses on each side of it. Let us follow our guides, men of principles, the pure, especially Couthon, Saint-Just and Robespierre; they are choice specimens, all cast in the true mold, and it is this unique and rigid mold in which all French men are to be recast.
2101 ([return])
[ This and the following text are taken from the "Contrat-Social" by Rousseau. Cf. "The ancient Régime," book III., ch.. IV.]
2102 ([return])
[ This idea, so universally prevalent and precocious, is uttered by Mirabeau in the session of the 10th of August, 1789. (Buchez et Roux, II., 257.) "I know of but three ways of maintaining one's existence in society, and these are to be either a beggar, a robber or a hireling. The proprietor is himself only the first of hirelings. What we commonly call his property is nothing more than the pay society awards him for distributing amongst others that which is entrusted to him to distribute through his expenses and through what he consumes; proprietors are the agents, the stewards of the social body.">[
2103 ([return])
[ Report by Roland, January 6, 1793, and by Cambon, February 1, 1793.]