* who, like Catholic authorities, requires drilled executants and regimental maneuvers, only to be found in organized and special bodies of men.[6212]
The general inspectors of the University give to each rector the following instructions as a watchword "Wherever the Brethren of the Christian Schools can be found, they shall," for primary teaching, "be preferred to all others."[6213] Thus, to the three classes of subjects taught, a fourth must be added, one not mentioned by the legislator in his law, but which Napoleon admits, which the rectors and prefects recommend or authorize, and which is always inscribed in the contract made between the commune and the instructor. The latter, whether layman or 'frère ignorantin,' engages to teach, besides "reading, writing and decimal arithmetic," "the catechism adopted by the Empire." Consequently, as the first communion (of the pupil) draws near, he is careful, for at least two years, to have his scholars learn the consecrated text by heart, and to recite this text aloud on their benches, article by article; in this way, his school becomes a branch of the Church and, hence, like the Church, a reigning instrumentality. For, in the catechism adopted for the Empire, there is one phrase carefully thought out, full and precise in its meaning, in which Napoleon has concentrated the quintessence of his political and social doctrine and formulated the imperative belief assigned by him as the object of education. The seven or eight hundred thousand children of the lower schools recite this potent phrase to the teacher before reciting it to the priest:
"We especially owe to Napoleon I., our Emperor, love, respect, obedience, fidelity, military service, and the dues (tributs) prescribed for the preservation and defense of the Empire and the throne.... For it is he whom God has raised up in times of difficulty, to restore public worship and the holy religion of our forefathers, and to be its protector."[6214]
II. Higher Education.
Superior instruction.—Characters and conditions of
scientific universities.—Motives for opposition to them.
—In what respect adverse to the French system.—How he
replaces them.—Extent of secondary instruction.—Meets all
wants in the new social order of things.—The careers it
leads to.—Special schools.—Napoleon requires them
professional and practical.—The law school.
Superior instruction, the most important of all, remains. For, in this third and last stage of education, the minds and opinions of young people from eighteen to twenty-four years of age are fully formed. It is then that, already free and nearly ripe, these future occupants of busy careers, just entering into practical life, shape their first general ideas, their still hazy and half-poetic views of things, their premature and foregone conclusions respecting man, nature, society and the great interests of humanity.
If we want them to arrive at sound conclusions, a good many scales must be prepared for them, and these scales must be substantial, convergent, each with its own rungs of the ladder superposed, each with an indication of its total scope, each expressly designating the absent, doubtful, provisional or simply future and possible rungs, because they are in course of formation or on trial.[6215]—Consequently, these must all be got together in a designated place, in adjacent buildings, not alone the body of professors, the spokes-men of science, but collections, laboratories and libraries which constitute the instruments. Moreover, besides ordinary and regular courses of lectures, there must be lecture halls where, at appointed hours, every enterprising, knowledgeable person with something to say may speak to those who would like to listen. Thus, a sort of oral encyclopedia is organized, an universal exposition of human knowledge, a permanent exposition constantly renewed and open, to which its visitors, provided with a certificate of average instruction as an entrance ticket, will see with their own eyes, besides established science that which is under of formation, besides discoveries and proofs the way of discovering and proving, namely the method, history and general progress, the place of each science in its group, and of this group its place in the general whole. Owing to the extreme diversity of subjects taught there will be room and occupation for the extreme diversity of intelligences. Young minds can choose for themselves their own career, mount as high as their strength allows, climb up the tree of knowledge each on his own side, with his own ladder, in his own way, now passing from the branches to the trunk and again from the trunk to the branches, now from a remote bough to the principal branch and from that again back to the trunk.
And more than this, thanks to the co-ordination of lessons well classified, there is, for each course of lectures, the means for arriving at full details in all particulars; the young students can talk amongst themselves and learn from each other, the student of moral science from the student of the natural sciences, the latter from the student of the chemical or physical sciences, and another from the student of the mathematical sciences. Bearing still better fruit, the student, in each of these four circumscriptions, derives information from his co-disciples lodged right and left in the nearest compartments, the jurist from the historian, from the economist, from the philologist, and reciprocally, in such a way as to profit by their impressions and suggestions, and enable them to profit by his. He must have no other object in view for three years, no rank to obtain, no examination to undergo, no competition for which to make preparations, no outward pressure, no collateral preoccupation, no positive, urgent and personal interest to interfere with, turn aside or stifle pure curiosity. He pays something out of his own pocket for each course of lectures he attends; for this reason, he makes the best choice he can, follows it up to the end, takes notes, and comes there, not to seek phrases and distraction, but actualities and instruction, and get full value for his money. It is assumed that knowledge is an object of exchange, foodstuffs stockpiled and delivered by the masters; the student who takes delivery is concerned that it is of superior quality, genuine and nutritious; the masters, undoubtedly, through amour-propre and conscience, try to furnish it this; but it is up to the student himself to fetch it, just what he wants, in this particular storehouse rather than in others, from this or that lecture-stand, official or not. To impart and to acquire knowledge for itself and for it alone, without subordinating this end to another distinct and predominant end, to direct minds towards this object and in this way, under the promptings and restraints of supply and demand, to open up the largest field and the freest career to the faculties, to labor, to the preferences of the thinking individual, master or disciple,—such is (or ought to be) the spirit of the institution. And, evidently, in order that it may be effective according to this spirit, it needs an independent, appropriate body, that is to say, autonomous, sheltered against the interference of the State, of the Church, of the commune, of the province, and of all general or local powers, provided with rules and regulations, made a legal, civil personage, with the right to buy, sell and contract obligations, in short proprietorship.
This is no chimerical plan, the work of a speculative, calculating imagination, which appears well and remains on paper. All the universities of the middle ages were organized according to this type. It found life and activity everywhere and for a long time; the twenty- two universities in France previous to the Revolution, although disfigured, stunted and desiccated, preserved many of its features, certain visible externals, and, in 1811,[6216] Cuvier, who had just inspected the universities of lower Germany, describes it as he found it, on the spot, confined to superior instruction, but finished and complete, adapted to modern requirements, in full vigor and in full bloom.