Hold of the government on the members of the Institute.—Howhe curbs and keeps them down.—Circle in which lay power mayact.—Favor and freedom of the mathematical, physical andnatural sciences.—Disfavor and restrictions on the moralsciences.—Suppression of the class of moral and politicalsciences.—They belong to the State, included in theimperial domain of the Emperor.—Measures against Ideology,philosophic or historic study of Law, Political Economy andStatistics.—Monopoly of History.
This "National Institute," is the Government's tool and an appendage of the State. This is in conformity with the traditions of the old monarchy and with the plans, sketched out and decreed by the revolutionary assemblies,6236in conformity with the immemorial principle of French law which enlarges the interference of the central power, not only in relation to public instruction but to science, literature and the fine arts. It is the State which has produced and shaped it, which has given to it its title, which assigns it its object, its location, its subdivisions, its dependencies, its correspondences, its mode of recruitment, which prescribes its labors, its reports, its quarterly and annual sessions, which gives it employment and defrays its expenses. Its members receive a salary, and "the subjects elected6237must be confirmed by the First Consul." Moreover, Napoleon has only to utter a word to insure votes for the candidate whom he approves of, or to blackball the candidate whom he dislikes. Even when confirmed by the head of the State, an election can be cancelled by his successor; in 1816,6238Monge, Carnot, Guyton de Morveau, Grégoire, Garat, David and others, sanctioned by long possession and by recognized merit, are to be stricken off the list. By the same sovereign right, the State admits and excludes them, the right of the creator over his creation, and, without pushing his right as far as that, Napoleon uses it.
He holds the members of his Institute in check with singular rigidity, even when, outside of the Institute and as private individuals, they fail to observe in their writings the proper rules imposed on every public body. The rod falls heavily on Jérôme de Lalande, the mathematician and astronomer who continues the work of Montucla, publicly and in a humiliating way, the blow being given by his colleagues who are thus delegated for the purpose. "A member of the Institute," says the imperial note,6239"well known for his attainments, but now fallen into an infantile state, is not wise enough to keep his mouth shut, and tries to have himself talked about, at one time by advertisements unworthy of his old reputation as well as of the body to which he belongs, and again by openly professing atheism, the great enemy of all social organization." Consequently, the presidents and secretaries of the Institute, summoned by the minister, notify the Institute "that it must send to M. de Lalande and enjoin him not to print anything, not cast a shadow in his old age over what he has done in his vigorous days to obtain the esteem of savants." M. de Chateaubriand, in the draft for his admission address, alluding to the revolutionary role of his predecessor, Marie Chénier, observed that he could eulogize him only as the man of letters,6240and, in the reception committee, six out of twelve academicians had accepted the draft. Thereupon, Fontanes, one of the twelve, prudently abstains from going to Saint-Cloud. M. de Ségur, however, president of the committee, he goes. In the evening, at the coucher, Napoleon advances to him before the whole court and, in that terrifying tone of voice which, even today, vibrates from the dead lines of the silent page,
"Sir," says he to him, "do the literary people really desire to set France ablaze?... How dare the Academy speak of regicides?... I ought to put you and M. de Fontanes, as Councillor of State and Grand-Master, in Vincennes.... You preside over the second division of the Institute. I order you to inform it that I will not allow politics at its sessions.... If the class disobeys I will put an end to it as an objectionable club!"
Thus warned, the members of the Institute remain within the circle traced out for them and, for many, the circle is sufficiently large. Let the first division of the Institute, in the mathematical, physical and natural sciences, Lagrange, Laplace, Legendre, Carnot, Biot, Monge, Cassini, Lalande, Burckardt and Arago, Poisson, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, Guyton de Morveau, Vauquelin, Thénard and Haüy, Duhamel, Lamarck, Jussieu, Mirbel, Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier, pursue their researches; let Delambre and Cuvier, in their quarterly reports, sum up and announce discoveries; let, in the second division of the Institute, Volney, Destutt de Tracy, Andrieux, Picard, Lemercier and Chateaubriand, if the latter desires to take part in its sittings, give dissertations on language, grammar, rhetoric, rules of style and of taste; let, in the third division of the Institute, Sylvestre de Sacy publish his Arabic grammar; let Langlés continue his Persian, Indian and Tartar studies; let Quatremère de Quincy, explaining the structure of the great chryselephantine statues, reproduce conjecturally the surface of ivory and the internal framework of the Olympian Jupiter; let D'Ansse de Villoison discover in Venice the commentary of the Alexandrian critics on Homer; let Larcher, Boissonade, Clavier, alongside of Coraÿ publish their editions of the old Greek authors—all this causes no trouble, and all is for the honor of the government. Their credit reflects on the avowed promoter, the official patron and responsible director of science, erudition and talent therefore, in his own interest, he favors and rewards them. Laurent de Jussieu and Cuvier are titular councillors of the University, Delambre is its treasurer, and Fontanes its Grand-Master. Delille, Boissonade and Royer-Collard and Guizot teach in the faculty of letters; Biot, Poisson, Gay-Lussac, Haüy, Thénard, Brongniart, Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire in the faculty of the sciences; Monge, Berthollet, Fourier, Andrieux in the Ecole Polytechnique; Pinel, Vauquelin, Jussieu, Richerand, Dupuytren in the Ecole de Médecine. Fourcroy is councillor of State, Laplace and Chaptal, after having been ministers, become senators; in 1813, there are twenty-three members of the Institute in the Senate; the zoologist Lacépede is grand-chancellor of the Legion of Honor; while fifty-six members of the Institute, decorated with an imperial title, are chevaliers, barons, dukes, and even princes.6241—This is even one more lien, admirably serving to bind them to the government more firmly and to in-corporate them more and more in the system. In effect, they now derive their importance and their living from the system and the government; having become dignitaries and functionaries they possess a password in this twofold capacity; henceforth, they will do well to look upward to the master before expressing a thought and to know how far the password allows them to think.
In this respect, the First Consul's intentions are clear from the very first day: In his reconstruction of the Institute6242he has suppressed "the division of moral and political sciences," and consequently the first four sections of this division, "analysis of sensations and ideas, moral science, social science and legislation, and political economy." He thus cuts off the main branch with its four distinct branches, and what he keeps or tolerates he trims and grafts or fastens on to another branch of the third class, that of the erudites and antiquaries. The latter may very well occupy themselves with political and moral sciences but only "in their relations with history," and especially with ancient history. General conclusions, applicable theories, on account of their generality, to late events and to the actual situation are unnecessary; even as applied to the State in the abstract, and in the cold forms of speculative discussion, they are forbidden. The First Consul, on the strength of this, in connection with "Dernières vues de politique et de finances, published by Necker, has set forth his exact rule and his threatening purpose:
"Can you imagine," says he to Roederer, "that any man, since I became head of the State, could propose three sorts of government for France? Never shall the daughter of M. Necker come back to Paris!"
She would then get to be a distinct center of political opinion while only one is necessary, that of the First Consul in his Council of State. Again, this council itself is only half competent and at best consultative:
"You yourselves do not know what government is.6243You have no idea of it. I am the only one, owing to my position, that can know what a government is."
On this sphere, and everywhere on its undefined perimeter, afar, as far away as his piercing eye can penetrate, no independent way of thinking must be conceived or, especially, published.
In particular, the foremost and guiding science of the analysis of the human understanding, pursued according to the methods and after the examples furnished by Locke, Hume, Condillac and Destutt de Tracy, ideology is forbidden.
"It is owing to ideology," he says,6244"to that metaphysical obscurity which, employing its subtleties in trying to get at first causes, seeks to base the legislation of a people on that foundation, instead of appropriating laws to a knowledge of the human heart and the lessons of history, that all the misfortunes of our beautiful France must be attributed."
In 1806, M. de Tracy, unable to print his "Commentaire sur l'Esprit des Lois" in France, sends it to the president of the United States, Jefferson, who translates it into English, publishes it anonymously, and has it taught in his schools.6245About the same date, the republication of the "Traité d'économie-politique" of J.—B. Say is prohibited, the first edition of which, published in 1804, was soon exhausted.6246In 1808, all publications of local and general statistics, formerly incited and directed by Chaptal, were interrupted and stopped; Napoleon always demands figures, but he keeps them for himself; if divulged they would prove inconvenient, and henceforth they become State secrets. The same precautions and the same rigor are extended to books on law, even technical, and against a "Précis historique du droit Romain." "This work," says the censorship, "might give rise to a comparison between the progress of authority under Augustus and that going on under the reign of Napoleon, in such a way as to produce a bad effect on public opinion."6247In effect, nothing is more dangerous than history, for it is composed, not of general propositions that are unintelligible except to the meditative, but of particular facts accessible and interesting to the first one that comes along.
For this reason, not only the science of sensations and of ideas, philosophic law and comparative law, politics and moral law, the science of wealth and statistics, but again, and especially, the history of France, is a State affair, an object of government; for no object affects the government more nearly; no study contributes so much towards strengthening or weakening the ideas and impressions which shape public opinion for or against him.6248It is not sufficient to superintend this history, to suppress it if need be, to prevent it from being a poor one; it must again be ordered, inspired and manufactured, that it may be a good one.
"There is no work more important.6249... I do not count the expense in this regard. It is even my intention to make the minister ensure that this work is under my protection.."
Above all, the attitude of the authors who write should be made sure of. "Not only must this work be entrusted to authors of real talent, but again to attached men, who will present facts in this true light and prepare healthy instruction by bringing history down to the year VIII." But this instruction can be healthy only through a series of preliminary and convergent judgments, insinuating into all minds the final approval and well-founded admiration of the existing régime. Accordingly, the historian must feel at each line" the defects of the ancient régime, "the influence of the court of Rome, of confessional tickets, of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, of the ridiculous marriage of Louis XIV. with Madame de Maintenon, the perpetual disorder in the finances, the pretensions of the parliament, the want of rules and leadership in the administration,.. in such a way that one breathes on reaching the epoch when one enjoys the benefits of that which is due to the unity of the laws, administration and territory." The constant feebleness of the government under Louis XIV, even, under Louis XV. and Louis XVI., "should inspire the need of sustaining the newly accomplished work and its acquired preponderance." On the 18th of Brumaire (19-11-1799), France came into port; the Revolution must be spoken of only as a final, fatal and inevitable tempest.6250"When that work, well done and written in a right direction, appears, nobody will have the will or the patience to write another, especially when, far from being encouraged by the police, one will be discouraged by it." In this way, the government which, in relation to the young, has awarded to itself the monopoly of teaching, awards to itself in relation to adults, the monopoly of history.
Measures against writers so called and popularizers.—Censorship, control of theaters, publications and printing.—Extent and minuteness of the repression.—Persistency indirection and impulsion.—The logical completeness andbeauty of the whole system his final object.—How heaccomplishes his own destruction.
If Napoleon in this manner takes precautions against those who think, it is only because their thoughts, should they be written down, might reach the public,6251and only the sovereign alone has the right to talk in public. Between writer and readers, every communication is intercepted beforehand by a triple and quadruple line of defenses through which a long, tortuous and narrow wicket is the only passage, and where the manuscript, like a bundle of suspicious goods, is overhauled and repeatedly verified after having obtained its free certificate and its permit of circulation. Napoleon declares "the printing-office6252to be an arsenal which must not be within the reach of everybody... It is very important for me that only those be allowed to print who have the confidence of the government. A man who addresses the public in print is like the man who speaks in public in an assembly, and certainly no one can dispute the sovereign's right to prevent the first comer from haranguing the public."—On the strength of this, he makes publishing a privileged, authorized and regulated office of the State. The writer, consequently, before reaching the public, must previously undergo the scrutiny of the printer and bookseller, who, both responsible, sworn and patented, will take good care not to risk their patent, the loss of their daily bread, ruin, and, besides this, a fine and imprisonment.—In the second place, the printer, the bookseller and the author are obliged to place the manuscript or, by way of toleration, the work as it goes through the press, in the hands of the official censors;6253the latter read it and make their weekly report to the general director of publications; they indicate the good or bad spirit of the work, the "unsuitable or forbidden passages according to circumstances," the intended, involuntary or merely possible allusions; they exact the necessary suppressions, rectifications and additions. The publisher obeys, the printers furnish proofs, and the author has submitted; his proceedings and attendance in the bureaux are at end. He thinks himself safe in port, but he is not.
Through an express reservation, the director-general always has the right to suppress works, "even after they have been examined, printed and authorized to appear." In addition to this, the minister of the police,6254who, above the director-general, likewise has his censorship bureau, may, in his own right, place seals on the sheets already printed, destroy the plates and forms in the printing-office, send a thousand copies of the "Germany" by Madame de Staël to the paper-mill, "take measures to see that not a sheet remains," demand of the author his manuscript, recover from the author's friends the two copies he has lent to them, and take back from the director-general himself the two copies for his service locked up in a drawer in his cabinet.—Two years before this, Napoleon said to Auguste de Staël,6255
"Your mother is not bad. She has intelligence, a good deal of intelligence. But she is unaccustomed to any kind of discipline. She would not be six months in Paris before I should be obliged to put her in the Temple or at Bicêtre. I should be sorry to do this, because it would make a noise and that would injure me in public Opinion."
It makes but little difference whether she abstains from talking politics: "people talk politics in talking about literature, the fine arts and morality, about everything in the world; women should busy themselves with their knitting," and men keep silent or, if they do talk, let it be on a given subject and in the sense prescribed.
Of course, the inspection of publications is still more rigorous and more repressive, more exacting and more persistent.—At the theatre, where the assembled spectators become enthusiastic through the quick contagion of their sensibilities, the police cut out of the "Heraclius" of Corneille and the "Athalie" of Racine6256from twelve to twenty-five consecutive lines and patch up the broken passages as carefully as possible with lines or parts of lines of their own.—On the periodical press, on the newspaper which has acquired a body of readers and which exercises an influence and groups its subscribers according to an opinion, if not political, at least philosophic and literary, there is a compression which goes even as far as utter ruin. From the beginning of the Consulate,6257sixty out of seventy-three political journals are suppressed; in 1811, the thirteen that still existed are reduced to four and the editors-in-chief are appointed by the minister of police. The property of these journals, on the other hand, is confiscated, while the Emperor, who had taken it, concedes it, one third to his police and the other two thirds to people of the court or littérateurs who are his functionaries or his creatures. Under this always aggravated system the newspapers, from year to year, become so barren that the police, to interest and amuse the public, contrive a pen warfare in their columns between one amateur of French music and one of Italian music.
Books, almost as rigorously kept within bounds, are mutilated or prevented from appearing.6258Chateaubriand is forbidden to reprint his "Essay on Revolutions," published in London under the Directory. In "L'Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem" he is compelled to cut out "a good deal of declamation on courts, courtiers and certain features calculated to excite misplaced allusions." The censorship interdicts the "Dernier des Abencerrages," where" it finds too warm an interest in the Spanish cause." One must read the entire register to see it at work and in detail, to feel the sinister and grotesque minutia with which it pursues and destroys, not alone among great or petty writers but, again, among compilers and insignificant abbreviators, in a translation, in a dictionary, in a manual, in an almanac, not only ideas but suggestions, echoes, semblances and oversights in thinking, the possibilities of awakening reflection and comparison:
* every souvenir of the ancient régime, this or that mention of Kléber or Moreau, or a particular conversation of Sully and Henry IV.;
* "a game of loto,6259which familiarizes youth with the history of their country," but which says too much about "the family of the grand-dauphin of Louis XVI. and his aunts";
* the general work of the reveries of Cagliostro and of M. Henri de Saint-Mesmin, very laudatory of the Emperor, excellent "for filling the soul of Frenchmen with his presence, but which must leave out three awkward comparisons that might be detected by the malevolent or the foolish;"
* the "translation into French verse of several of David's psalms," which are not dangerous in Latin but which, in French, have the defect of a possible application, through coincidence and prophecy, to the Church as suffering, and to religion as persecuted;
and quantities of other literary insects hatched in the depths of publication, nearly all ephemeral, crawling and imperceptible, but which the censor, through zeal and his trade, considers as fearsome dragons whose heads must be smashed or their teeth extracted.
After the next brood they prove inoffensive, and, better still, are useful, especially the almanacs,6260"in rectifying on various points the people's attitudes. It will probably be possible after 1812 to control their composition, and they are filled with anecdotes, songs and stories adapted to the maintenance of patriotism and of devotion to the sacred person of His Majesty and to the Napoleonic dynasty."—To this end, the police likewise improves, orders and pays for dramatic or lyric productions of all kinds, cantatas, ballets, impromptus, vaudevilles, comedies, grand-operas, comic operas, a hundred and seventy-six works in one day, composed for the birth of the King of Rome and paid for in rewards to the sum of 88,400 francs. Let the administration look to this beforehand so as to raise up talent and have it bear good fruit. "Complaints are made because we have no literature;6261it is the fault of the minister of the interior. Napoleon personally and in the height of a campaign interposes in theatrical matters. Whether far away in Prussia or at home in France, he leads tragic authors by the hand, Raynouard, Legouvé, Luce de Lancival; he listens to the first reading of the "Mort d'Henri IV." and the "États de Blois." He gives to Gardel, a ballet-composer, "a fine theme in the Return of Ulysses." He explains to authors how dramatic effect should, in their hands, become a political lesson; for lack of anything better, and waiting for these to comprehend it, he uses the theatre the same as a tribune for the reading to the spectators of his bulletins of the grand army.
On the other hand, in the daily newspapers, he is his own advocate, the most vehement, the haughtiest, the most powerful of polemics. For a long time, in the "Moniteur," he himself dictates articles which are known by his style. After Austerlitz, he has no time to do this, but he inspires them all and they are prepared under his orders. In the "Moniteur" and other gazettes, it is his voice which, directly or by his spokesmen, reaches the public; it alone prevails and one may divine what it utters! The official acclaim of every group or authority in the State again swell the one great, constant, triumphant adulatory hymn which, with its insistence, unanimity and violent sonorities, tends to bewilder all minds, deaden consciences and pervert the judgment.
"Were it open to doubt," says a member of the tribunate,6262"whether heaven or chance gives sovereigns on earth, would it not be evident for us that we owe our Emperor to some divinity?"
Another of the choir then takes up the theme in a minor key and thus sings the victory of Austerlitz:
"Europe, threatened by a new invasion of the barbarians, owes its safety to the genius of another Charles Martel."
Similar cantatas follow, intoned in the senate and lower house by Lacépède, Pérignon and Garat, and then, in each diocese, by the bishops, some of whom, in their pastoral letters, raise themselves up to the technical considerations of military art, and, the better to praise the Emperor, explain to their parishioners the admirable combinations of his strategic genius.
And truly, his strategy is admirable, lately against Catholic ideas and now against the secular mind. First of all, he has extended, selected and defined his field of operations, and here is his objective point, fixed by himself:
"On public affairs, which are my affairs in political, social and moral matters, on history, and especially on actual history, recent and modern, nobody of the present generation is to give any thought but myself and, in the next generation, everybody will follow my example."6263
The monopoly of education therefore belongs to him. He has introduced military uniforms, discipline and spirit into all the public and private secondary educational establishments. He has reduced and subjected the ecclesiastical superintendence of primary education to the minimum. He has removed the last vestige of regional, encyclopedic and autonomous universities and substituted for these special and professional schools, He has rendered veritable superior instruction abortive and stifled all spontaneous and disinterested curiosity in youth.—Meanwhile ascending to the source of secular knowledge, he has brought the Institute under his influence. On this government tool he has effected the necessary cuts, appropriated the credit to himself and imposed his favor or disfavor on the masters of science and literature. Then, descending from the source to the canals, constructing dams, arranging channels, applying his constraints and impulsions, he has subjected science and literature to his police, to his censorship and to his control of publishing and printing. He has taken possession of all the media—theatres, newspapers, books, pulpits and tribunes. He has organized all these into one vast industry which he watches over and directs, a factory of public attitudes which works unceasingly and in his hands to the glorification of his system, reign and person.6264Again here, he is found equal and similar to himself, a stern conqueror making the most of his conquest to the last extreme, a shrewd operator as meticulous as he is shrewd, as resourceful as he is consequent, incomparable in adapting means to ends, unscrupulous in carrying them out,6265fully satisfied that, through the constant physical pressure of universal and crushing dread, all resistance would be overcome. He is maintaining and prolonging the struggle with colossal forces, but against a historic and natural force lying beyond his grasp, lately against belief founded on religious instinct and on tradition, and now against evidence engendered by realities and by the agency of the testing process. Consequently, obliged to forbid the testing process, to falsify things, to disfigure the reality, to deny the evidence, to lie daily and each day more outrageously,6266to accumulate glaring acts so as to impose silence, to arouse by this silence and by these lies6267the attention and perspicacity of the public, to transform almost mute whispers into sounding words and insufficient eulogies into open protestations. In short, weakened by his own success and condemned beforehand to succumb under his victories, to disappear after a short triumph, Napoleon will leave intact and erect the indestructible rival (science and knowledge) whom he would like to crush as an adversary but turn to account as an instrument.6268
6201 (return)[ Lamennais, "Du Progrès de la Révolution," p.163.]
6202 (return)[ Any socialist or social-nationalist leader would undoubtedly have been impressed by Napoleon's ability to control and dominate his admiring people and do their best to copy his methods. (SR.)]
6203 (return)[ "The Modern Régime," I., 247.]
6204 (return)[ Pelet de la Lozère, p. 159.]
6205 (return)[ Maggiolo, "Les Écoles en Lorraine avant et aprés 1789," 3rd part, p.22 and following pages. (Details on the foundation or the revival of primary schools in four departments after 1802.) Sometimes, the master is the one who taught before 1789, and his salary is always the same as at that time; I estimate that, in a village of an average size, he might earn in all between 500 and 600 francs a year; his situation improves slowly and remains humble and wretched down to the law of 1833.—There are no normal schools for the education of primary instructors except one at Strasbourg established in 1811 by the prefect, and the promise of another after the return from Elba, April 27, 1815. Hence the teaching staff is of poor quality, picked up here and there haphazard. But, as the small schools satisfy a felt want, they increase. In 1815, there are more than 22,000, about as many as in 1789; in the four departments examined by M. Maggiolo there are almost as many as there are communes.—Nevertheless, elsewhere, "in certain departments, it is not rare to find twenty or thirty communes in one arrondissement with only one schoolmaster.... One who can read and write is consulted by his neighbors the same as a doctor."—("Ambroise Rendu," by E. Rendu, p.107, Report of 1817.)]
6206 (return)[ Decree of May 1, 1802, articles 2, 4 and 5.—Decree of March 17, 1808, articles 5, 8 and 117.]
6207 (return)[ E. Rendu, Ibid., pp.39 and 41]
6208 (return)[ Id., ibid., 41. (Answers of approval of the bishops, letter of the archbishop of Bordeaux, May 29, 1808.) "There are only too many schools whose instructors neither give lessons nor set examples of Catholicism or even of Christianity. It is very desirable that these wicked men should not be allowed to teach."]
6209 (return)[ Decree of Nov. 15, 1911, article 192.—Cf. the decree of March 17, 1808, article 6. "The small primary schools are those where one learns to read, write and cipher."—Ibid., § 3, article 5, definition of boarding-schools and secondary communal schools. This definition is rendered still more precise in the decree of Nov.15, 1811, article 16.]
6210 (return)[ Pelet de la Lozère, ibid. 175. (Words of Napoleon before the Council of State, May 21, 180.)]
6211 (return)[ Alexis Chevalier, "Les Frères des écoles chrétiennes pendant la Révolution," 93. (Report by Portalis approved by the First Consul, Frimaire 10, year XII.)]
6212 (return)[ Like in the socialist and national-socialist parties and trade unions which were to dominate the Western democracies throughout the 20th century. (SR.)]
6213 (return)[ "Ambroise Rendu," by E. Rendu, P.42.]
6214 (return)[ D'Haussonville, "L'Église romaine et le premier Empire," II.,257, 266. (Report of Portalis to the Emperor, Feb. 13, 1806.)]
6215 (return)[ Here Taine describes what today is often named as being the "state of the art." (SR.)]
6216 (return)[ Cuvier, "Rapport sur l'instruction publique dans les nouveaux départements de la basse Allemagne, fait en exécution du décret du 13 novembre 1810," pp. 4-8. "The principle and aim of each university is to have courses of lectures on every branch of human knowledge if there are any pupils who desire this... No professor can hinder his colleague from treating the same subjects as himself; most of their increase depends on the remuneration of the pupils which excites the greatest emulation in their work."—The university, generally, is in some small town; the student has no society but that of his comrades and his professors; again, the university has jurisdiction over him and itself exercises its rights of oversight and police. "Living in their families, with no public amusements, with no distractions, the middle-class Germans, especially in North Germany, regard reading, study and meditation as their chief pleasures and main necessity; they study to learn rather than to prepare themselves for a lucrative profession.....The theologian scrutinizes even to their roots the truth of morality and of natural theology. As to positive religion he wishes to know its history and will study in the original tongue sacred writings and all the languages relating to it that may throw light on it; he desires to possess the details of Church history and become acquainted with the usages of one century after another and the motives of the changes which took place.—The law student is not content with a knowledge of the code of his country; in his studies everything must be related to the general principles of natural and political laws. He must know the history of rights at all epochs, and, consequently, he has need of the political history of nations; he must be familiar with the various European constitutions, and be able to read the diplomas and charters of all ages; the complex German legislation obliges him, and will for a long time, to know the canon laws of both religious, of feudal and public law, as well as of civil and criminal law; and if the means of verifying at its sources all that is taught to him are not afforded to him, he regards instruction as cut short and insufficient."]
6217 (return)[ Louis Liard, "L'Enseignement supérieur en France," pp.307-309]
6218 (return)[ Two prisons at the time.(SR.)]
6219 (return)[ Comte Chaptal, "Notes."—Chaptal, a bright scholar, studied in his philosophy class at Rodez under M. Laguerbe, a highly esteemed professor. "Everything was confined to unintelligible discussions on metaphysics and to the puerile subtleties of logic." This lasted two years. Public discussions by the pupils were held three or four hours long; the bishop, the noblesse, the full chapter attended at these scholastic game-cock fights. Chaptal acquired a few correct notions of geometry, algebra and the planetary system, but outside of that, he says, "I got nothing out of it but a great facility in speaking Latin and a passion for caviling."]
6220 (return)[ Useful qualities for an administrator, anytime anywhere. (SR.)]
6221 (return)[ The Grande Ecoles today in 1998 produce first of all a special type of engineer, a general engineer, specialist in nothing but highly trained in mathematics, physics and chemistry. This education is found, either in Ecole Centrale, mainly providing private enterprise with engineers, and Polytechnique, mainly providing the State with engineers. Specialist engineers, in construction, chemistry, electronics, electricity etc. are produced by a few dozens prestigious engineering or commercial schools which admit the students who have completed 2 or 3 years of preparatory school and successfully competed for the more popular schools. The special schools Taine talks about are the precursors of a great many of the schools available in France today. The principle of admission by concurs is still in use and produce engineers who are able and willing to work hard, engineers who are competent but often a bit proud and overly sure of themselves. (SR.)]
6222 (return)[ Louis Liard, "Universités et Facultés," pp. 1-12.]
6223 (return)[ Pelet de la Lozère, 176 (Session of the Council of State, May 21, 1806).]
6224 (return)[ Liard, "L'Enseignement supérieur en France," 71, 73. "In the law schools, say the memorials of 1789, there is not the fiftieth part of the pupils who attend the professors' lectures."—Fourcroy," Exposé des motifs de la loi concernant les Ecoles de droit," March 13, 1804. "In the old law faculties the studies were of no account, inexact and rare, the lectures being neglected or not attended. Notes were bought instead of being taken. Candidates were received so easily that the examinations no longer deserved their name. Bachelor's degrees and others were titles bought without study or trouble."—Cf the "Mémoires" of Brissot and the "Souvenirs of d'Audifret-Pasquier," both of them law students before 1789.—M. Léo de Savigny, in his recent work, "Die französischen Rechts facultäten" (p.74 et seq.) refers to other authorities not less decisive.]
6225 (return)[ Reference is made to the synopsis of the Justitian code of civil and other Roman laws. (SR.)]
6226 (return)[ Treaty of law written Roman jurists under Justitian in 533. (SR.)]
6227 (return)[ Decree of March 19, 1807, articles 42, 45.]
6228 (return)[ The French Supreme Court. (SR.)]
6229 (return)[ Courcelle-Seneuil, "Préparation à l'étude du droit" (1887), pp. 5, 6 (on the teaching of law by the Faculty of Paris).]
6230 (return)[ Léo de Savigny, ibid., p. 161.]
6231 (return)[ Bréal, "Quelques mots sur l'instruction publique" (1892), pp. 327, 341.—Liard, "Universités et Facultés," p.13 et seq.]
6232 (return)[ Act of Jan.23, 1803, for the organization of the Institute.]
6233 (return)[ Voltaire's "Essai sur les moeurs" is of 1756; "L'Esprit des Lois" by Montesquieu also, in 1754, and his "Traité des Sensations." The "Emile" of Rousseau is of 1762; the "Traité de la formation mécanique des langues," by de Brosses, is of 1765; the "Physiocratie" by Quesnay appeared in 1768, and the "Encyclopédie" between 1750 and 1765.]
6234 (return)[ On the equal value of the testing process in moral and physical sciences, David Hume, in 1737, stated the matter decisively in his "Essay on Human Nature." Since that time, and particularly since the "Compte-rendu" by Necker, but especially in our time, statistics have shown that the near or remote determining motives of human action are powers (Grandeurs) expressed by figures, interdependent, and which warrant, here as elsewhere, precise and numerical foresight.]
6235 (return)[ What an impression Taine's description of Napoleon's set-up must have had on Hitler, Lenin and, possibly Stalin and their successors. (SR.)]
6236 (return)[ Cf. Liard, "L'Enseignement supérieur en France," vol. I., in full.—Also the law of Brumaire 3, year Iv. (Oct.25, 1795), on the primitive organization of the Institute.]
6237 (return)[ Decree of Jan. 23, 1803.]
6238 (return)[ Decree of March 21, 1816]
6239 (return)[ "Corréspondance de Napoléon," letters to M. de Champagny, Dec.13, 1805, and Jan. 3, 1806. "I see with pleasure the promise made by M. de Lalande and what passed on that occasion."]
6240 (return)[ De Ségur, "Mémoires," III., 457.—"M. de Chateaubriand composed his address with a good deal of skill; he evidently did not wish to offend any of his colleagues without even excepting Napoleon. He lauded with great eloquence the fame of the Emperor and exalted the grandeur of republican sentiments." In explanation of and excusing his silence and omissions regarding his regicide predecessor, he likened Chénier to Milton and remarked that, for forty years, the same silence had been observed in England with reference to Milton.]
6241 (return)[ Edmond Leblanc, "Napoléon 1ere et ses institutions civiles eL administratives," pp. 225-233.—Annuaire de l'Institut for 1813]
6242 (return)[ Law of Oct. 25, 1795, and act of Jan. 23, 1803.]
6243 (return)[ Roederer, III., 548.—Id., III., 332 (Aug. 2, 1801).]
6244 (return)[ Welschinger, "La Censure sous le premier Empire," p.440. (Speech by Napoleon to the Council of State, Dec.20, 1812.)—Merlet, "Tableau de la littérature française de 1800 à 1815," I., 128. M. Royer-Collard had just given his first lecture at the Sorbonne to an audience of three hundred persons against the philosophy of Locke and Condillac (1811). Napoleon, having read the lecture, says on the following day to Talleyrand: "Do you know, Monsieur le Grand-Electeur, that a new and very important philosophy is appearing in my University... which may well rid us entirely of the ideologists by killing them on the spot with reason?"—Royer-Collard, on being informed of this eulogium, remarked to some of his friends: "The Emperor is mistaken. Descartes is more disobedient to despotism than Locke."]
6245 (return)[ Mignet, "Notices et Portraits." (Eulogy of M. de Tracy.)]
6246 (return)[ J.-B. Say, "Traité d'économie-politique," 2d ed., 1814 (Notice). "The press was no longer free. Every exact presentation of things received the censure of a government founded on a lie."]
6247 (return)[ Welschinger, p. 160 (Jan. 24, 1810).—Villemain, "Souvenirs contemporains," vol. I., p. 180. After 1812, "it is literally exact to state that every emission of written ideas, every historical mention, even the most remote and most foreign, became a daring and suspicious matter."—(Journal of Sir John Malcolm, Aug. 4, 1815, visit to Langlès, the orientalist, editor of Chardin, to which he has added notes, one of which is on the mission to Persia of Sir John Malcolm) "He at first said to me that he had followed another author: afterwards he excused himself by alleging the system of Bonaparte, whose censors, he said, not only cut out certain passages, but added others which they believed helped along his plans."]
6248 (return)[ Reading this Lenin and others like him undoubtedly would agree with Napoleon and therefore liberally fund plans to place agents and controllers in all the Universities in the World hence ensuring politically correct attitudes. (SR.)]
6249 (return)[ Merlet, ibid. (According to the papers of M. de Fontanes, II. 258.)]
6250 (return)[ Id., Ibid. "Care must be taken to avoid all reaction in speaking of the Revolution. No man could oppose it. Blame belongs neither to those who have perished nor to those who survived it. It was not in any individual might to change the elements and foresee events born out of the nature of things."]
6251 (return)[ Villemain, Ibid., I., 145. (Words of M. de Narbonne on leaving Napoleon after several interviews with him in 1812.) "The Emperor, so powerful, 50 victorious is disturbed by only one thing in this world and that is by people who talk, and, in default of these, by those who think. And yet he seems to like them or, at least, cannot do without them."]
6252 (return)[ Welschinger, ibid., p.30. (Session of the Council of State, Dec.12, 1809)]
6253 (return)[ Welschinger, ibid., pp.31, 33, 175, 190. (Decree of Feb.5, 1810.)—"Revue Critique," Sep. 1870. (Weekly bulletin of the general direction of publicauons for the last three months of 1810 and the first three months of 1814, published by Charles Thursot.)]
6254 (return)[ Collection of laws and decrees, vol. XII., p.170. "When the censors shall have examined a work and allowed the publication of it, the publishers shall be authorized to have it printed. But the minister of the police shall still have the right to suppress it entirely if he thinks proper."—Welschinger, ibid., pp. 346-374.]
6255 (return)[ Welschinger, ibid., pp. 173, 175.]
6256 (return)[ Id., ibid., pp. 223, 231, 233. (The copy of "Athalie" with the erasures of the police still exists in the prompter's library of the Théâtre Français.)—Id., ibid., p 244. (Letter of the secretary-general of the police to the weekly managers of the Théâtre Français, Feb. 1, 1809, In relation to the "Mort d'Hector," by Luce de Lancival.) "Messieurs, His Excellency, the minister-senator, has expressly charged me to request the suppression of the following lines on the stage—'Hector': Déposez un moment ce fer toujours vainqueur, Cher Hector, et craignez de laisser le bonheur."]
6257 (return)[ Welschinger, ibid., p. 13. (Act of Jan. 17, 1800.)—117, 118. (Acts of Feb. 18, 1811, and Sep. 17, 1813.)—119, 129. (No indemnity for legitimate owners. The decree of confiscation states in principle that the ownership of journals can become property only by virtue of an express concession made by the sovereign, that this concession was not made to the actual founders and proprietors and that their claim is null.)]
6258 (return)[ Id.. ibid., pp.196, 201.]
6259 (return)[ "Revue critique," ibid., pp.142, 146, 149.]
6260 (return)[ Welschinger, ibid., p. 251.]
6261 (return)[ "Corréspondance de Napoléon Iere." (Letter of the Emperor to Cambacérès, Nov.21, 1806.)—Letters to Fouché, Oct.25 and Dec. 31, 1806.)—Welschinger, ibid., pp.236, 244.]
6262 (return)[ "Moniteur," Jan. I, 1806. (Tribunate, session of Nivôse 9, year XIV., speeches of MM. Albisson and Gillet.—Senate, speeches of MM. Pérignon, Garat, de Lacépède.)—In the following numbers we find municipal addresses, letters of bishops and the odes of poets in the same strain.—In the way of official enthusiasm take the following two fine examples. ("Debats," March 29, 1811.) "The Paris municipal council deliberated on the vote of a pension for life of 10,000 francs in favor of M. de Govers, His Majesty's second page, for bringing to the Hôtel de Ville the joyful news of the birth of the King of Rome.. .. Everybody was charmed with his grace and presence of mind."—Faber, "Notices sur l'intérieur de France," p.25. "I know of a tolerably large town which could not light its lamps in 1804, on account of having sent its mayor to Paris at the expense of the commune to see Bonaparte crowned."]
6263 (return)[ Taine here explains the method which was to be copied by all the totalitarian leaders of the 20th century, especially by the ever present communist-socialist-revolutionary organizations and their more or less hidden leaders. (SR.)]
6264 (return)[ Lenin, Stalin and their successors must all have found this idea interesting and did also proceed to put much of the media in the world under their control. (SR.)]
6265 (return)[ Faber, ibid., p. 32 (1807). "I saw one day a physician, an honest man, unexpectedly denounced for having stated in a social gathering in the town some observations on the medical system under the existing government. The denunciator, a French employee, was the physician's friend and denounced him because he was afraid of being denounced himself."—Count Chaptal, "Notes." Enumeration of the police forces which control and complete each other. "Besides the minister and the prefect of police Napoleon had three directors-general residing at Paris and also in superintendence of the departments;.. besides, commissioners-general of police in all the large towns and special commissioners in all others; moreover, the gendarmerie, which daily transmitted a bulletin of the situation all over France to the inspector-general; again, reports of his aids and generals, of his guard on supplementary police, the most dangerous of all to persons about the court and to the principal agents of the administration; finally, several special police-bodies to render to him an account of what passed among savants, tradesmen and soldiers. All this correspondence reached him at Moscow as at the Tuileries."]
6266 (return)[ Faber, ibid. (1807), p.35. "Lying, systematically organized, forming the basis of government and consecrated in public acts,... the abjuring of all truth, of all personal conviction, is the characteristic of the administrators as presenting to view the acts, sentiments and ideas of the government, which makes use of them for scenic effect in the pieces it gives on the theatre of the world... . The administrators do not believe a word they say, nor those administered."]
6267 (return)[ The following two confidential police reports show, among many others, the sentiments of the public and the usefulness of repressive measures. (Archives nationales, F.7, 3016, Report of the commissioner-general of Marseilles for the second quarter of 1808.) "Events in Spain have largely fixed, and essentially fixed, attention. In vain would the attentive observer like to conceal the truth on this point; the fact is that the Spanish revolution is unfavorably looked upon. It was at first thought that the legitimate heir would succeed to Charles IV. The way in which people have been undeceived has given the public a direction quite opposite to the devoted ideas of His Majesty the Emperor... No generous soul... rises to the level of the great continental cause."—Ibid. (Report for the second quarter of 1809.) "I have posted observers in the public grounds.... As a result of these measures, of this constant vigilance, of the care I have taken to summon before me the heads of public establishments when I have ascertained that the slightest word has been spoken, I attain the end proposed. But I am assured that if the fear of the upper police did not restrain the disturbers, the brawlers, they would publicly express an opinion contrary to the principles of the government.... Public opinion is daily going down. There is great misery and consternation. Murmurs are not openly heard, but discontent exists among citizens generally.... The continental war. the naval warfare, events in Rome, Spain and Germany, the absolute cessation of trade, the conscription, the droits unis... are all so many motives of corruption of the public mind. Priests and devotees, merchants and proprietors, artisans, workmen, the people in fine, everybody is discontented.... In general, they are insensible to the continental victories. All classes of citizens are much more sensitive to the levies of the conscription than to the successes which come from them."]
6268 (return)[ There is here, 100 years later, a message for us about the enormous force which, under the name of politically correct, is haunting our media, our universities and our political life. (SR.)]