"It must be admitted that a very great concession is made to the clergy in allowing Latin to serve as the basis of education.The clergy know Latin as well as the University; it is their own tongue.Their tuition, moreover, is cheaper; hence they must inevitably draw a large portion of our youth into their small seminaries and their schools of a higher grade...."
The conclusion of course follows: change the course of study, and you decatholicize the realm; and as the clergy know only Latin and the Bible, when they have among them neither masters of art, nor farmers, nor accountants;
when, of their forty thousand priests, there are not twenty, perhaps, with the ability to make a plan or forge a nail, -- we soon shall see which the fathers of families will choose, industry or the breviary, and whether they do not regard labor as the most beautiful language in which to pray to God.
Thus would end this ridiculous opposition between religious education and profane science, between the spiritual and the temporal, between reason and faith, between altar and throne, old rubrics henceforth meaningless, but with which they still impose upon the good nature of the public, until it takes offence.
M.Chevalier does not insist, however, on this solution: he knows that religion and monarchy are two powers which, though continually quarrelling, cannot exist without each other; and that he may not awaken suspicion, he launches out into another revolutionary idea, -- equality.
"France is in a position to furnish the polytechnic school with twenty times as many scholars as enter at present (the average being one hundred and seventy-six, this would amount to three thousand five hundred and twenty).
The University has but to say the word....If my opinion was of any weight, I should maintain that mathematical capacity is much less special than is commonly supposed.I remember the success with which children, taken at random, so to speak, from the pavements of Paris, follow the teaching of La Martiniere by the method of Captain Tabareau."
If the higher education, reconstructed according to the views of M.
Chevalier, was sought after by all young French men instead of by only ninety thousand as commonly, there would be no exaggeration in raising the estimate of the number of minds mathematically inclined from three thousand five hundred and twenty to ten thousand; but, by the same argument, we should have ten thousand artists, philologists, and philosophers; ten thousand doctors, physicians, chemists, and naturalists; ten thousand economists, legists, and administrators; twenty thousand manufacturers, foremen, merchants, and accountants; forty thousand farmers, wine-growers, miners, etc., --
in all, one hundred thousand specialists a year, or about one-third of our youth.The rest, having, instead of special adaptations, only mingled adaptations, would be distributed indifferently elsewhere.
It is certain that so powerful an impetus given to intelligence would quicken the progress of equality, and I do not doubt that such is the secret desire of M.Chevalier.But that is precisely what troubles me: capacity is never wanting, any more than population, and the problem is to find employment for the one and bread for the other.In vain does M.Chevalier tell us: "The higher education would give less ground for the complaint that it throws into society crowds of ambitious persons without any means of satisfying their desires, and interested in the overthrow of the State;
people without employment and unable to get any, good for nothing and believing themselves fit for anything, especially for the direction of public affairs.
Scientific studies do not so inflate the mind.They enlighten and regulate it at once; they fit men for practical life...." Such language, I reply, is good to use with patriarchs: a professor of political economy should have more respect for his position and his audience.The government has only one hundred and twenty offices annually at its disposal for one hundred and seventy-six students admitted to the polytechnic school: what, then, would be its embarrassment if the number of admissions was ten thousand, or even, taking M.Chevalier's figures, three thousand five hundred? And, to generalize, the whole number of civil positions is sixty thousand, or three thousand vacancies annually; what dismay would the government be thrown into if, suddenly adopting the reformatory ideas of M.Chevalier, it should find itself besieged by fifty thousand office-seekers! The following objection has often been made to republicans without eliciting a reply:
When everybody shall have the electoral privilege, will the deputies do any better, and will the proletariat be further advanced? I ask the same question of M.Chevalier: When each academic year shall bring you one hundred thousand fitted men, what will you do with them?
To provide for these interesting young people, you will go down to the lowest round of the ladder.You will oblige the young man, after fifteen years of lofty study, to begin, no longer as now with the offices of aspirant engineer, sub-lieutenant of artillery, second lieutenant, deputy, comptroller, general guardian, etc., but with the ignoble positions of pioneer, train-
