The Modern Regime Volume II Part 12

Thus, as in a monastic order, one must join the University by "going into the orders."[6133]--"I want," says Napoleon, "some solemnity attached to this act. My purpose is that the members of the corps of instruction should contract, not as formerly, a religious engagement, but a civil engagement before a notary, or before the justice of the peace, or prefect, or other (officer).... They will espouse education the same as their forerunners espoused the Church, with this difference, that the marriage will not be as sacred, as indissoluble.[6134]... They will engage themselves for three, six, or nine years, and not resign without giving notice a certain number of years beforehand." To heighten the resemblance, "the principle of celibacy must be established, in this sense, that a man consecrated to teaching shall not marry until after having pa.s.sed through the first stages of his career; "for example, "the schoolmasters shall not marry before the age of twenty-five or thirty years, after having obtained a salary of three or four thousand francs and economized something." But, at bottom, marriage, a family, private life, all natural and normal matters in the great world of society, are causes of trouble and weakness in a corps where individuals, to be good organs, must give themselves up wholly and without reserve. "In future,[6135] not only must schoolmasters, but, again, the princ.i.p.als and censors of the lycees, and the princ.i.p.als and rulers of the colleges, be restricted to celibacy and a life in common."--The last complementary and significant trait, which gives to the secular inst.i.tution the aspect of a convent, is this: "No woman shall have a lodging in, or be admitted into, the lycees and colleges."

Now, let us add to the monastic principle of celibacy the monastic and military principle of obedience; the latter, in Napoleon's eyes, is fundamental and the basis of the others; this principle being accepted, a veritable corporation exists; members are ruled by one head and command becomes effective.[6136] "There will be," says Napoleon, "a corps of instructors, if all the princ.i.p.als, censors and professors have one or several chiefs, the same as the Jesuits had their general and their provincial," like the soldiers of a regiment with their colonel and captain. The indispensable link is found; individuals, in this way, keep together, for they are held by authorities, under one regulation.

As with a volunteer in a regiment, or a monk who enters a convent, the members of the University will accept its total regime in advance, present and future, wholly and in detail, and will subject themselves under oath. "They are to take an engagement[6137] to faithfully observe the statutes and regulations of the University. They must promise obedience to the Grand-Master in everything ordered by him for the service of the Emperor, and for the advantage of education. They must engage not to quit the educational corps and abandon their functions before having obtained the Grand-Master's consent. They are to accept no other public or private salaried function without the authentic permission of the Grand-Master. They are bound to give notice to the Grand-Master and his officers of whatever comes to their knowledge that is opposed to the doctrine and principles of the educational corps in the establishments for public instruction." There are many other obligations, indefinite or precise,[6138] of which the sanction is not only moral, but, again, legal, all notable and lasting, an entire surrender of the person who suffers more or less profoundly at having accepted them, and whose compulsory resignation must be a.s.sured by the fear of punishment. "Care must be taken[6139] to insure severe discipline everywhere: the professors themselves are to be subject in certain cases to the penalty of arrest; they will lose no more consideration on this account than the colonels who are punished in the same manner."[6140] It is the least of all penalties; there are others of greater and greater gravity,[6141] "the reprimand in presence of an academical board, censure in presence of the University board, transfer to an inferior office, suspension with or without entire or partial deprivation of salary, half-pay or put on the retired list, or stricken off the University roll," and, in the latter case, "rendered incapable of obtaining employment in any other public administration."--"Every member of the University[6142] who shall fail to conform to the subordination established by the statutes and regulations, or in respect due to superiors, shall be reprimanded, censured or suspended from his functions according to the gravity of the case." In no case may he withdraw of his own accord, resign at will, and voluntarily return to private life; he is bound to obtain beforehand the Grand-Master's a.s.sent; and, if the latter refuses this, he must renew his application three times, every two months, with the formalities, the delays and the importunacy of a long procedure; failing in which, he is not only stricken from the rolls, but again "condemned to a confinement proportioned to the gravity of the circ.u.mstances," and which may last a year.

A system of things ending in a prison is not attractive, and is established only after great resistance. "We were under the necessity,"

says the superior council,[6143] "of taking candidates as they could be found, differing infinitely in methods, principles and sentiments, accustomed to almost unlimited pardon or, at least, to being governed by the caprices of parents and nearly all disliking the regime attempted to be enforced on them." Moreover, through this intervention of the State, "the local authorities find one of their most cherished prerogatives wrested from them." In sum, "the masters detested the new duties imposed on them; the administrators and bishops protested against the appointments not made at their suggestion; fathers of families complained of the new taxes they had to pay. It is said that the University is known only by its imposts and by its forced regulations; again, in 1811, most of its masters are incompetent, or intractable, and of a bad spirit.--There is still another reason for tightening the cord that binds them into a corporation. "The absolute subordination of every individual belonging to the University is its first necessity; without discipline and without obedience, no University could exist. This obedience must be prompt, and, in grave cases, where recourse must be had to the authority of the government, obedience must always be provisional." But, on this incurably refractory staff, pressure is not enough; it has grown old and hardened; the true remedy, therefore, consists in replacing it with a younger one, more manageable, expressly shaped and wrought out in a special school, which will be for the University what Fontainebleau is for the army, what the grand seminaries are for the clergy, a nursery of subjects carefully selected and fas.h.i.+oned beforehand.

Such is the object of the "ecole Normale."[6144] Young students enter it at the age of seventeen and bind themselves to remain in the University at least ten years.[6145] Young students enter it at the age of seventeen (for a period of 3 years) and bind themselves afterwards to remain in the University at least ten years. It is a boarding-school and they are obliged to live in common: "individual exits are not allowed," while "the exits in common... in uniform... can be made only under the direction and conduct of superintendent masters.. .. These superintendents inspect the pupils during their studies and recreations, on rising and on going to bed and during the night... No pupil is allowed to pa.s.s the hours set aside for recreation in his own room without permission of the superintendent. No pupil is allowed to enter the hall of another division without the permission of two superintendents.... The director of studies must examine the books of the pupils whenever he deems it necessary, and as often as once a month." Every hour of the day has its prescribed task; all exercises, including religious observances, are prescribed, each in time and place, with a detail and meticulousness, as if purposely to close all possible issues to personal initiation and everywhere subst.i.tute mechanical uniformity for individual diversities. "The princ.i.p.al duties of the pupils are respect for religion, attachment to the sovereign and the government, steady application, constant regularity, docility and submission to superiors; whoever fails in these duties is punished according to the gravity of the offense."[6146]--In 1812,[6147] the Normal School is still a small one, scarcely housed, lodged in the upper stories of the lycee Louis le Grand, and composed of forty pupils and four masters. But Napoleon has its eyes on it and is kept informed of what goes on in it. He does not approve of the comments on the "Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate," by Montesquieu, on the "eloge de Marc Aurele,"

by Thomas, on the "Annales" of Tacitus: "Let the young read Caesar's commentaries... Corneille, Bossuet, are the masters worth having; these, under the full sail of obedience, enter into the established order of things of their time; they strengthen it, they ill.u.s.trate it," they are the literary coadjutors of public authority. Let the spirit of the Normal School conform to that of these great men. The University establishment is the original, central workshop which forges, finishes and supplies the finest pieces, the best wheels. Just now the workshop is incomplete, poorly fitted out, poorly directed and still rudimentary; but it is to be enlarged and completed and made to turn out more and better work. For the time being, it produces only what is needed to fill the annual vacancies in the lycees and in the colleges. Nevertheless, the first decree states that it is "intended to receive as many as three hundred youths."[6148] The production of this number will fill all vacancies, however great they may be, and fill them with products of superior and authentic quality. These human products thus manufactured by the State in its own shop, these school instruments which the State stamps with its own mark, the State naturally prefers. It imposes them on its various branches; it puts them by order into its lycees and colleges; at last, it accepts no others; not only does it confer on itself the monopoly of teaching, but again the preparation of the masters who teach. In 1813,[6149] a circular announces that "the number of places that chance to fall vacant from year to year, in the various University establishments, sensibly diminishes according as the organization of the teaching body becomes more complete and regular in its operation, as order and discipline are established, and as education becomes graduated and proportionate to diverse localities. The moment has thus arrived for declaring that the Normal School is henceforth the only road by which to enter upon the career of public instruction; it will suffice for all the needs of the service."

VI. Objects and sentiments.

Object of the educational corps and adaptation of youth to the established order of things.--Sentiments required of children and adults.--Pa.s.sive acceptance of these rules.

--Extent and details of school regulations.--Emulation and the desire to be at the head.--Constant compet.i.tion and annual distribution of prizes.

What is the object of this service?--Previous to the Revolution, when directed by, or under the supervision of, the Church, its great object was the maintenance and strengthening of the faith of the young.

Successor of the old kings, the new ruler underlines[6150] among "the bases of education," "the precepts of the Catholic religion," and this phrase he writes himself with a marked intention; when first drawn up, the Council of State had written the Christian religion; Napoleon himself, in the definitive and public decree, subst.i.tutes the narrowest term for the broadest.[6151] In this particular, he is politic, taking one step more on the road on which he has entered through the Concordat, desiring to conciliate Rome and the French clergy by seeming to give religion the highest place.--But it is only a place for show, similar to that which he a.s.signs to ecclesiastical dignitaries in public ceremonies and on the roll of precedence. He does not concern himself with reanimating or even preserving earnest belief: far from that:

"it should be so arranged," he says,[6152] "that young people may be neither too bigoted nor too incredulous: they should be adapted to the state of the nation and of society."

All that can be demanded of them is external deference, personal attendance on the ceremonies of wors.h.i.+p, a brief prayer in Latin muttered in haste at the beginning and end of each lesson,[6153] in short, acts like those of raising one's hat or other public marks of respect, such as the official att.i.tudes imposed by a government, author of the Concordat, on its military and civil staff. They likewise, the lyceans and the collegians, are to belong to it and do already, Napoleon thus forming his adult staff out of his juvenile staff.

In fact, it is for himself that he works, for himself alone, and not at all for the Church whose ascendancy would prejudice his own; much better, in private conversation, he declares that he had wished to supplant it: his object in forming the University is first and especially "to take education out of the hands of the priests.[6154]

They consider this world only as a vehicle for transportation to the other," and Napoleon wants "the vehicle filled with good soldiers for his armies," good functionaries for his administrations, and good, zealous subjects for his service.--And, thereupon, in the decree which organizes the University, and following after this phrase written for effect, he states the real and fundamental truth.

"All the schools belonging to the University shall take for the basis of their teaching loyalty to the Emperor, to the imperial monarchy to which the happiness of the people is confided and to the Napoleonic dynasty which preserves the unity of France and of all liberal ideas proclaimed by the Const.i.tutions."

In other terms, the object is to plant civil faith in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of children, boys and young men, to make them believe in the beauty, goodness and excellence of the established order of things, to predispose their minds and hearts in favor of the system, to adapt them to this system,[6155] to the concentration of authority and to the centralization of services, to uniformity and to "falling into line"

(encadrement), to equality in obeying, to compet.i.tion, to enthusiasm, in short, to the spirit of the reign, to the combinations of the comprehensive and calculating mind which, claiming for itself and appropriating for its own use the entire field of human action, sets up its sign-posts everywhere, its barriers, its rectilinear compartments, lays out and arranges its racecourses, brings together and introduces the runners, urges them on, stimulates them at each stage, reduces their soul to the fixed determination of getting ahead fast and far, leaving to the individual but one motive for living, that of the desire to figure in the foremost rank in the career where, now by choice and now through force, he finds himself enclosed and launched.[6156]

For this purpose, two sentiments are essential with adults and therefore with children:

The first is the pa.s.sive acceptance of a prescribed regulation, and nowhere does a rule applied from above bind and direct the whole life by such precise and multiplied injunctions as under the University regime.

School life is circ.u.mscribed and marked out according to a rigid, unique system, the same for all the colleges and lycees of the Empire, according to an imperative and detailed plan which foresees and prescribes everything even to the minutest point, labor and rest of mind and of body, material and method of instruction, cla.s.s-books, pa.s.sages to translate or to recite, a list of fifteen hundred volumes for each library with a prohibition against introducing another volume into it without the Grand-Master's permission, hours, duration, application and sessions of cla.s.ses, of studies, of recreations and of promenades causing the premeditated stifling of native curiosity, of spontaneous inquiry, of inventive and personal originality, both with the masters and still more, with the scholars. This to such an extent that one day, under the second Empire, a minister, drawing out his watch, could exclaim with satisfaction,

"At this very time, in such a cla.s.s, all the scholars of the Empire are studying a certain page in Virgil."

Well--informed, judicious, impartial and even kindly-disposed foreigners,[6157] on seeing this mechanism which everywhere subst.i.tutes for the initiative from below the compression and impetus from above, are very much surprised. "The law means that the young shall never for one moment be left to themselves; the children are under their masters'

eyes all day" and all night. Every step outside of the regulations is a false one and always arrested by the ever-present authority. And, in cases of infraction, punishments are severe; "according to the gravity of the case,[6158] the pupils will be punished by confinement from three days to three months in the lycee or college, in some place a.s.signed to that purpose; if fathers, mothers or guardians object to these measures, the pupil must be sent home and can no longer enter any other college or lycee belonging to the university, which, as an effect of university monopoly, thereafter deprives him of instruction, unless his parents are wealthy enough to employ a professor at home. "Everything that can be effected by rigid discipline is thus obtained[6159] and better, perhaps, in France than in any other country," for if, on leaving the lycee, young people have lost a will of their own, they have acquired "a love of and habits of subordination and punctuality" which are lacking elsewhere.

Meanwhile, on this narrow and strictly defined road, whilst the regulation supports them, emulation pushes them on. In this respect, the new university corps, which, according to Napoleon himself, must be a company of "lay Jesuits," resumes to its advantage the double process which its forerunners, the former Jesuits, had so well employed in education. On the one hand, constant direction and incessant watchfulness; on the other hand, the appeal to amour-propre and to the excitements of parades before the public. If the pupil works hard, it is not for the purpose of learning and knowing, but to be the first in his cla.s.s; the object is not to develop in him the need of truthfulness and the love of knowledge, but his memory, taste and literary talent; at best, the logical faculty of arrangement and deduction, but especially the desire to surpa.s.s his rivals, to distinguish himself, to s.h.i.+ne, at first in the little public of his companions, and next, at the end of the year, before the great public of grown-up men. Hence, the weekly compositions, the register of ranks and names, every place being numbered and proclaimed; hence, those annual and solemn awards of prizes in each lycee and at the grand compet.i.tion of all lycees, along with the pomp, music, decoration, speeches and attendance of distinguished personages. The German observer testifies to the powerful effect of a ceremony of this kind[6160]:

"One might think one's self at the play, so theatrical was it;"

and he notices the oratorical tone of the speakers, "the fire of their declamation," the communication of emotion, the applause of the public, the prolonged shouts, the ardent expression of the pupils obtaining the prizes, their sparkling eyes, their blushes, the joy and the tears of the parents. Undoubtedly, the system has its defects; very few of the pupils can expect to obtain the first place; others lack the spur and are moreover neglected by the master. But the elite make extraordinary efforts and, with this, there is success. "During the war times," says again another German, "I lodged a good many French officers who knew one half of Virgil and Horace by heart." Similarly, in mathematics, young people of eighteen, pupils of the Polytechnic School, understand very well the differential and integral calculus, and, according to the testimony of an Englishman,[6161] "they know it better than many of the English professors."

V. Military preparation and the cult of the Emperor.

This general preparation is specified and directed by Napoleon as a policy, and, as he specially needs soldiers, the school, in his hands, becomes the vestibule of the barracks. Right away the inst.i.tution received a military turn and spirit, and this form, which is essential to him, becomes more and more restricted. In 1805, during four months,[6162] Fourcroy, ordered by the Emperor, visits the new lycees "with an inspector of reviews and a captain or adjutant-major, who everywhere gives instruction in drill and discipline." The young have been already broke in; "almost everywhere," he says on his return, "I saw young people without a murmur or reflection obey even younger and weaker corporals and sergeants who had been raised to a merited rank through their good behavior and progress. He himself, although a liberal, finds reasons which justify to the legislative body this unpopular practice;[6163] he replies to the objections and alarm of the parents "that it is favorable to order, without which there are no good studies," and moreover "it accustoms the pupils to carrying and using arms, which shortens their work and accelerates their promotion on being summoned by the conscription to the service of the State." The tap of the drum, the att.i.tude in presenting arms, marching at command, uniform, gold lace, and all that, in 1811, becomes obligatory, not only for the lycees and colleges, but again, and under the penalty of being closed, for private inst.i.tutions.[6164] At the end of the Empire, there were in the departments which composed old France 76,000 scholars studying under this system of stimulation and constraint. "Our masters," as a former pupil is to say later on, "resembled captain-instructors, our study-rooms mess--rooms, our recreations drills, and our examinations reviews."[6165] The whole tendency of the school inclines it towards the military and merges therein on the studies being completed--sometimes, even, it flows into it before the term is over. After 1806,[6166] the antic.i.p.ated conscriptions take youths from the benches of the philosophy and rhetoric cla.s.ses. After 1808, ministerial circulars[6167] demand of the lycees boys (des enfants de bonne volonte), scholars of eighteen and nineteen who "know how to manoeuvre," so that they may at once be made under-officers or second-lieutenants; and these the lycees furnish without any difficulty by hundreds. In this way, the beardless volunteer entering upon the career one or two years sooner, but gaining by this one or two grades in rank.--"Thus," says a princ.i.p.al[6168] of one of the colleges, "the brain of the French boy is full of the soldier. As far as knowledge goes there is but little hope of it, at least under existing circ.u.mstances. In the schools, says another witness of the reign,[6169]

"the young refuse to learn anything but mathematics and a knowledge of arms. I can recall many examples of young lads of ten or twelve years who daily entreated their father and mother to let them go with Napoleon."--In those days, the military profession is evidently the first of all, almost the only one. Every civilian is a pekin, that is to say an inferior, and is treated as such.[6170] At the door of the theatre, the officer breaks the line of those who are waiting to get their tickets and, as a right, takes one under the nose of those who came before him; they let him pa.s.s, go in, and they wait. In the cafe, where the newspapers are read in common, he lays hold of them as if through a requisition and uses them as he pleases in the face of the patient bourgeois.

The central idea of this glorification of the army, be it understood, is the wors.h.i.+p of Napoleon, the supreme, unique, absolute sovereign of the army and all the rest, while the prestige of this name is as great, as carefully maintained, in the school as in the army. At the start, he put his own free scholars (boursiers) into the lycees and colleges, about 3000 boys[6171] whom he supports and brings up at his own expense, for his own advantage, destined to become his creatures, and who form the uppermost layer of the school population; about one hundred and fifty of these scholars.h.i.+ps to each lycee, first occupants of the lycee and still for a long time more numerous than their paying comrades, all of a more or less needy family, sons of soldiers and functionaries who live on the Emperor and rely on him only, all accustomed from infancy to regard the Emperor as the arbiter of their destiny, the special, generous and all-powerful patron who, having taken charge of them now, will also take charge of them in the future. A figure of this kind fills and occupies the entire field of their imagination; whatever grandeur it already possesses it here becomes still more grand, colossal and superhuman.

At the beginning their enthusiasm gave the pitch to their co-disciples;[6172] the inst.i.tution, through its mechanism, labors to keep this up, and the administrators or professors, by order or through zeal, use all their efforts to make the sonorous and ringing chord vibrate with all the more energy. After 1811, even in a private inst.i.tution,[6173] "the victories of the Emperor form almost the only subject on which the imagination of the pupils is allowed to exercise itself." After 1807,[6174] at Louis le Grand, the prize compositions are those on the recent victory of Jena. "Our masters themselves," says Alfred de Vigny, "unceasingly read to us the bulletins of the Grande Armee, while cries of Vive l'Empereur interrupted Virgil and Plato." In sum, write many witnesses,[6175] Bonaparte desired to bestow on French youths the organization of the "Mamelukes," and he nearly succeeded.

More exactly and in his own words, "His Majesty[6176] desired to realize in a State of forty millions of inhabitants what had been done in Sparta and in Athens.--" But," he is to say later, "I only half succeeded.

That was one of my finest conceptions";[6177] M. de Fontanes and the other university men did not comprehend this or want to comprehend it.

Napoleon himself could give only a moment of attention to his school work, his halting-spells between two campaigns;[6178] in his absence, "they spoiled for him his best ideas"; "his executants "never perfectly carried out his intentions. "He scolded, and they bowed to the storm, but not the less continued on in the usual way." Fourcroy kept too much of the Revolution in mind, and Fontanes too much of the ancient regime; the former was too much a man of science, and the latter too much a man of letters; with such capacities they laid too great stress on intellectual culture and too little on discipline of the feelings. In education, literature and science are "secondary" matters; the essential thing is training, an early, methodical, prolonged, irresistible training which, through the convergence of every means--lessons, examples and habits--inculcates "principles," and lastingly impresses on young souls "the national doctrine," a sort of social and political catechism, the first article of which commands fanatical docility, pa.s.sionate devotion, and the total surrender of one's self to the Emperor.[6179]

[Footnote 6101: (and obviously the aim of all other dictators.h.i.+ps.

(SR.))]

[Footnote 6102: Pelet de la Lozere, 161. (Speech by Napoleon to the Council of State, March 11, 1806.)]

[Footnote 6103: Our last son entered the French School system at the age of 5 in 1984 and his school record followed him from school to school until he left 13 years later with his terminal exam, the Baccalaureat.

(SR.)]

[Footnote 6104: What a wonderful procedure, it was to be copied and used by all the dominant rulers of the 20th century. Taine's book is, however, not to be let into immature hands, so no wonder it was hardly ever referred to by those who had profited by it. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6105: A. de Beauchamp, Recueil des lois et reglements sur l'enseignement superior, 4 vol. ( (Rapport of Fourcroy to the Corps Legislatif, May 6, 1806.) "How important it is... that the mode of education admitted to be the best should add to this advantage, that of being uniform for the whole Empire, teaching the same knowledge, inculcating the same principles on individuals who must live together in the same society, forming in some way but one body, possessing but one mind, and all contributing to the public good through unanimity of sentiment and action."]

[Footnote 6106: Pelet de la Lozere, 154.]

[Footnote 6107: A. de Beauchamp, ibid. (Decree of March 7, 1808.)--Special and collateral schools which teach subjects not taught in the lycees, for example the living languages, which are confined to filling a gap, and do not compete with the lycees, are subject to previous authorization and to university pay.]

[Footnote 6108: Pelet de la Lozere, p. 170. (Session of the Council of State, March 20, 1806).]

[Footnote 6109: Quicherat, "Histoire de Sainte-Barbe," III., 125.]

[Footnote 6110: A. de Beauchamp, ibid. (Decrees of March 17, 1808, arts 103 and 105, of Sep. 17, 1808, arts. 2 and 3 of Novem. 15, 1801, arts.

54, 55 and 56.) "Should any one publicly teach and keep a school without the Grand-Master's consent, he will be officially prosecuted by our imperial judges, who will close the school.... He will be brought before the criminal court and condemned to a fine of from one hundred to two hundred francs, without prejudice to greater penalties, should he be found guilty of having directed instruction in a way contrary to order and to the public interest."--Ibid., art. 57. (On the closing of schools provided with prescribed authority.)]

[Footnote 6111: A. de Beauchamp, ibid. (Decree of Sep. 17, 1808, arts.

27, 28, 29, 30, and act pa.s.sed April 7, 1809.)]

[Footnote 6112: Id., ibid. (Decrees of March 17, 1808, art. 134; of Sep.

17, 1808, arts. 25 and 26; of Nov.15, 1811, art. 63).]

[Footnote 6113: Ambroise Rendu, "Essai sur l'instruction publique," 4 vols., 1819, I., 221. (Notice to M. de Fontanes, March 24, 1808. "The university undertakes all public inst.i.tutions, and must strive to have as few private inst.i.tutions as possible.]

[Footnote 6114: Eugene Rendu, "Ambroise Rendu et l'Universite de France"

(1861), pp.25, 26. (Letter of the Emperor to Fourcroy, Floreal 3, year XIII, ordering him to inspect the lycees and Report of Fourcroy at the end of four months.) "In general, the drum. the drill and military discipline keep the parents in most of the towns from sending their children to the lycee.... Advantage is taken of this measure to make parents believe that the Emperor wants only to make soldiers." Ibid.