The Modern Regime Volume II Part 15

And more than this, thanks to the co-ordination of lessons well cla.s.sified, 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 circ.u.mscriptions, 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 compet.i.tion 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 a.s.sumed 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 inst.i.tution. 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.

There is no room in the France to which Cuvier returns for inst.i.tutions of this stamp; they are excluded from it by the social system which has prevailed.--First of all, public law, as the Revolution and Napoleon comprehended it and enacted it, is hostile to them;[6217] for it sets up the principle that in a State there must be no special corporations permanent, under their own control, supported by mort main property, acting in their own right and conducting a public service for their own benefit, especially if this service is that of teaching; for the State has taken this charge upon itself, reserved it for itself and a.s.sumed the monopoly of it; hence, the unique and comprehensive university founded by it, and which excludes free, local and numerous universities.

Thus, in its essence, it is the self-teaching State and not self-teaching science; thus defined, the two types are contradictory; not only are the two bodies different, but again the two spirits are incompatible; each has an aim of its own, which is not the aim of the other. In a special sense, the use to which the Emperor a.s.signs his university is contrary to the aim of the German universities; it is founded for his own advantage, that he may possess "the means for shaping moral and political opinions." With this object in view it would be wrong for him to allow several establishments within reach of students in which they would be directed by science alone; it is certain that, in many points, the direction here given to youth would poorly square with the rigid, uniform, narrow lines in which Napoleon wishes to confine them. Schools of this kind would get to be centers of opposition; young men thus fashioned would become dissenters; they would gladly hold personal, independent opinions alongside, or outside, of "the national doctrine," outside of Napoleonic and civil orthodoxy; and worse still, they would believe in their opinions. Having studied seriously and at first sources, the jurist, the theologian, the philosopher, the historian, the philologist, the economist might perhaps cherish the dangerous pretension of considering himself competent even in social matters; being a Frenchman, he would talk with a.s.surance and indiscretion; he would be much more troublesome than a German; it would soon be necessary to send him to Bicetre or to the Temple.[6218]--In the present state of things, with the exigencies of the reign, and even in the interests of the young themselves, it is essential that superior instruction should be neither encyclopedic nor very profound.

Were this a defect, Frenchmen would not perceive it; they are accustomed to it. Already, before 1789, the cla.s.ses in the humanities were generally completed by the lesson in philosophy. In this course logic, morals and metaphysics were taught. Here the young persons handled, adjusted, and knocked about more or less adroitly the formula on G.o.d, nature, the soul and science they had learned by rote. Less scholastic, abridged, and made easy, this verbal exercise has been maintained in the lycees.[6219] Under the new regime, as well as under the old one, a string of abstract terms, which the professor thought he could explain and which the pupil thought he understood, involves young minds in a maze of high, speculative conceptions, beyond their reach and far beyond their experience, education and years. Because pupils play with words, they suppose that they grasp and master ideas, which fancy deprives them of any desire to obtain them. Consequently, in the great French establishment, young people hardly remark the lack of veritable Universities; a liberal, broad spirit of inquiry is not aroused in them; they do not regret their inability to have covered the cycle of varied research and critical investigation, the long and painful road which alone surely leads to profound general conceptions, those grand ideas which are verifiable and solidly based.--And, on the other hand, their quick, summary mode of preparation suffices for the positive and appreciable needs of the new society. The problem is to fill the gaps made in it by the Revolution and to provide the annual and indispensable quota of educated youth. Now, after as before the Revolution, this is understood as being all who have pa.s.sed through the entire series of cla.s.ses; under the system, subject to the drill in Latin and mathematics. The young men have here acquired the habit of using clear, connected ideas, a taste for close reasoning, the art of condensing a phrase or a paragraph, an apt.i.tude for attending to the daily business of a worldly, civil life, especially the faculty of carrying on a discussion, of writing a good letter, even the talent for composing a good report or memorial.[6220] A young man with these skills, some sc.r.a.ps of natural philosophy, and with still briefer notions of geography and history, has all the general, preliminary culture he needs, all the information he requires for aspiring to one of the careers called liberal. The choice rests with himself; he will be what he wants to be, or what he is able to be--professor, engineer, physician, member of the bar, an administrator or a functionary. In each of his qualifications he renders an important service to the public, he exercises an honorable profession; let him be competent and expert, that concerns society. But that alone is all that society cares about; it is not essential that it should find in him additionally an erudite or a philosopher.

* Let him be competent and worthy of confidence in his particular profession,

* let him know how to teach cla.s.ses or frame a course of lectures, how to build a bridge, a bastion, an edifice, how to cure a disease, perform an amputation, draw up a contract, manage a case in court, and give judgment;

* let the State, for greater public convenience, organize, check, and certify this special capacity,

* let it verify this by examinations and diploma,

* let it make of this a sort of coin of current value, duly minted and of proper standard;

* let this be protected against counterfeits, not only by its preferences but again by its prohibitions, by the penalties it enacts against the illegal practice of pharmacy and of medicine, by the obligations it imposes on magistrates, lawyers and ministerial officials not to act until obtaining this or that grade,--

such is what the interest of society demands and what it may exact.

According to this principle, the State creates special schools, (today in 1998 called Grande Ecoles[6221]), and, through the indirect monopoly which it possesses, it fills them with listeners; henceforth, these are to furnish the youth of France with superior education.[6222]

From the start, Napoleon, as logician, with his usual lucidity and precision, lays it down that they shall be strictly practical and professional. "Make professors (regents) for me," said he one day in connection with the Ecole normale, "and not litterateurs, wits or seekers or inventors in any branch of knowledge." In like manner says he again,[6223]

"I do not approve of the regulation requiring a man to be bachelor (bachelier) in the sciences before he can be a bachelor in the medical faculty; medicine is not an exact and positive science, but a science of guess and observation. I should place more confidence in a doctor who had not studied the exact sciences than in one who possessed them.

I preferred M. Corvisart to M. Halle, because M. Halle belongs to the Inst.i.tute. M. Corvisart does not even know what two equal triangles are.

The medical student should not be diverted from hospital practice, from dissections and studies relating to his trade."

There is the same subordination of science to the professions, the same concern for immediate or near application, the same utilitarian tendency to aim at a public function or a private career, the same contraction of studies in the law school, in that order of truths of which Montesquieu, a Frenchman, fifty years before, had first seized the entire body, marked the connections and delineated the chart. At issue are the laws and the "spirit of laws," unwritten or written, by which diverse human societies live, of whatever form, extent and kind,--the State, commune, Church, school, army, agricultural or industrial workshop, tribe or family. These, existing or fossilized, are realities, open to observation like plants or animals. One may, the same as with animals and plants, observe them, describe them, compare them together, follow their history from first to last, study their organization, cla.s.sify them in natural groups, disengage the distinctive and dominant characteristics in each, note its ambient surroundings and ascertain the internal or external conditions, or "necessary relationships," which determine its failure or its bloom. For men who live together in society and in a State, no study is so important; it alone can furnish them with a clear, demonstrable idea of what society and the State are; and it is in the law schools that this capital idea must be sought by an educated student body. If they do not find it there, they invent one to suit themselves. As 1789 drew near, the antiquated, poor, barren, teaching of law, fallen into contempt and almost null,[6224] offered no sound, accredited doctrine which could impose itself on young minds, fill their empty minds and prevent the intrusion of utopic dreams. And intrude it did: in the shape of Rousseau's anti-social Utopia, in his anarchical and despotic Social Contract. To hinder it from returning, the best thing to do was not to repeat the same mistake, not to leave the lodging empty, to install in it a fixed occupant beforehand, and to see that this fixed occupant, which is science, may at all times represent its t.i.tle of legitimate proprietor, its method a.n.a.logous to that of the natural sciences, its studies of detail from life and in the texts, its restricted inductions, its concordant verifications, its progressive discoveries. This in order that, confronting every chance system and without these t.i.tles, minds may of themselves shut their doors, or only open them provisionally, and always with a care to make the intruder present his letters of credit: here we have the social service rendered by the instruction in Law as given in the German mode, as Cuvier had just described it. Before 1789, in the University of Strasbourg, in France, it was thus given; but, in this condition and to this extent, it is not suitable under the new regime, and still less than under the old one.

Napoleon, in his preparation of jurists, wants executants and not critics; his faculties must furnish him with men able to apply and not to give opinions on his laws. Hence, in the teaching of the law, as he prescribes it, there must be nothing of history, of political economy or of comparative law; there must be no exposition of foreign legislation, of feudal or custom law, or of canon law; no account of the transformations which governed public and private law in Rome down to the Digest[6225] and, after that, in France, down to the recent codes.

But nothing on remote origins, on successive forms and the diverse and ever-changing conditions of labor, property and the family; nothing which, through the law, exposes to view and brings us in contact with the social body to which it is applied. That is to say, this or that active and human group, with its habits, prejudices, instincts, dangers and necessities; nothing but two dry, rigid codes, like two aerolites fallen from the sky ready-made and all of a piece at an interval of fourteen centuries. At first, the Inst.i.tutes,[6226] "by cutting out[6227] what is not applicable to our legislation and replacing these matters by a comparison with much finer laws scattered through other books of Roman law," similar to the cla.s.ses in the humanities, where Latin literature is reduced to the finest pa.s.sages of the cla.s.sic authors. Next, the French code, with the comments on it due to the decisions of the court of appeals and the court of ca.s.sation.[6228] All the courses of lectures of the school shall be obligatory and arranged as a whole, or tacked on to each other in a compulsory order; each step the student takes shall be counted, measured and verified every three months by a certificate, and each year by an examination; at these examinations there shall be no optional matters, no estimate of collateral studies or those of complimentary or superior importance.

The student finds no attraction or benefit in studies outside of the programme, and, in this programme he finds only official texts, explained by the bill of fare, one by one, with subtlety, and patched together as well as may be by means of distinctions and interpretations, so as to provide the understood solution in ordinary cases and a plausible solution in disputed cases, in other terms, a system of casuistry.[6229]

And this is just the education which suits the future pract.i.tioner. As a celebrated professor of the second Empire says,[6230] "our young graduates need a system of instruction which enables them to pa.s.s without perplexity or discouragement from the school to the halls of justice;" to have the 2281 articles of the civil code at their fingers'

ends, also the rest, hundreds and thousands of them, of the other four codes; to find at once in relation to each case the set of pertinent articles, the general rule, neither too broad nor too narrow, which fits the particular case in question. As for law taken in itself and as a whole, they have none of that clear, full conception of it to which a comprehensive and curious mind aspires. "I know nothing of the civil code," said another professor, older and in closer proximity with the primitive inst.i.tution, "I teach only the Code Napoleon." Accordingly, with his clear-sightedness and his practical and graphic imagination, Napoleon could perceive in advance the future and certain products of his machine, the magistrates in their bonnets, seated or standing in their court-rooms, with the lawyers in their robes facing them pleading, and, farther on, the great consumers of stamped papers in their bureaus enc.u.mbered with files of doc.u.ments with the attorneys and notaries engaged in drawing them up; elsewhere, prefects, sub-prefects, prefect councilors, government commissioners and other officials, all at work and doing pretty well, all of them useful organs but mere organs of the law. The chances were small, fewer than under the ancient regime, for an erudite and independent thinker, a Montesquieu, to issue from that school.

III. On Science, Reason and Truth.

Crowning point of the university edifice.--Faith based on criticism.--How it binds men together and forms a lay Church.--Social power of this Church.--Scientific and literary authorities.--How Napoleon enrolls them.--The Inst.i.tute, an appendage of the State.

Everywhere else, the direction and reach of superior instruction are similar. In the Faculties of Science and Literature, much more than in the Faculties of Medicine and of Law, the princ.i.p.al employment of the professors is the awarding of grades.--They likewise confer the t.i.tles of bachelor, licentiate and doctor; but the future bachelor is not prepared by them; the lycee furnishes him for the examination, fresh from its benches; they have then no audience but future licentiates, that is to say a few schoolmasters and a licentiate at long intervals who wants to become a doctor in order to mount upward into the university hierarchy. Besides these, occasional amateurs, nearly all of ripe age, who wish to freshen their cla.s.sic souvenirs, and idlers who want to kill time, fill the lecture-room. To prevent empty benches the lecture course becomes a conference d'Athenee, which is pleasant enough or sufficiently general to interest or, at least, not to repel people of society.[6231] Two establishments remain for teaching true science to the workers who wish to acquire it; who, in the widespread wreck of the ancient regime have alone survived in the Museum of Natural History, with its thirteen chairs, and the College of France, with nineteen. But here, too, the audience is spa.r.s.e, mixed, disunited and unsatisfactory; the lectures being public and free, everybody enters the room and leaves as he pleases during the lecture. Many of the attendants are idlers who seek distraction in the tone and gestures of the professors, or birds of pa.s.sage who come there to warm themselves in winter and to sleep in summer. Nevertheless, two or three foreigners and half a dozen Frenchmen thoroughly learn Arabic or zoology from Silvestre de Sacy, Cuvier or Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. That answers the purpose; they are quite enough, and, elsewhere too in the other branches of knowledge. All that is required is a small elite of special and eminent men--about one hundred and fifty in France in the various sciences,[6232] and, behind them, provisionally, two or three hundred others, their possible successors, competent and designated beforehand by their works and celebrity to fill the gaps made by death in the t.i.tular staff as these occur. The latter, representatives of science and of literature, provide the indispensable adornment of the modern State. But, in addition to this, they are the depositaries of a new force, which more and more becomes the princ.i.p.al guide, the influential regulator and even the innermost motor of human action. Now, in a centralized State, no important force must be left to itself; Napoleon is not a man to tolerate the independence of this one, allowing it to act apart and outside of limitations; he knows how to utilize it and turn it to his own advantage. He has already grasped another force of the same order but more ancient, and, in the same way, and with equal skill, he also takes hold of the new one.

In effect, alongside of religious authority, based on divine revelation and belonging to the clergy, there is now a lay authority founded on human reason, which is exercised by scientists, erudites, scholars and philosophers. They too, in their way, form a clergy, since they frame creeds and teach a faith; only, their preparatory and dominant disposition is not trust and a docile mind, but distrust and the need of critical examination. With them, nearly every source of belief is suspicious. At bottom, among the ways of acquiring knowledge, they accept but two, the most direct, the simplest, the best tested, and again on condition that one proves the other, the type of the first being that process of reasoning by which we show that two and two make four, and the second that experience by which we demonstrate that heat above a certain degree melts ice, and that cold below a certain degree freezes water. This is the sole process that is convincing; all others, less and less sure in proportion as they diverge from it, possess only a secondary, provisional and contestable value, that which it confers on them after verification and check.--Let us accordingly avail ourselves of this one, and not of another, to express, restrain or suspend our judgment. So long as the intellect uses it and only it, or its a.n.a.logues, to affirm, set aside or doubt, it is called reason, and the truths thus obtained are definitive acquisitions. Acquired one by one, the truths thus obtained have for a long time remained scattered, in the shape of fragments; only isolated sciences have existed or bits of science. About the middle of the eighteenth century these separate parts became united and have formed one body, a coherent system. Out of this, formerly called philosophy, that is to say a view of nature as a whole, consisting of perfect order on lasting foundations, a sort of universal network which, suddenly enlarged, stretches beyond the physical world to the moral world, taking in man and men, their faculties and their pa.s.sions, their individual and their collective works, various human societies, their history, customs and inst.i.tutions, their codes and governments, their religions, languages, literatures and fine arts, their agriculture, industries, property, the family and the rest.[6233]

Then also, in each natural whole the simultaneous or successive parts are connected together; a knowledge of their mutual ties is important, and, in the spiritual order of things, one accomplishes this, as in the material order, through scientific distrust, through critical examination, by credible experimentation and process.[6234]

Undoubtedly, in 1789, the work in common on this ground had resulted only in false conceptions; but this is because instead of credible processes another hasty, plausible, popular, risky and deceptive method was applied. People wanted to go fast, conveniently, directly, and, for guide, accepted unreason under the name of reason. Now, in the light of disastrous experience, there was a return to the narrow, stony, long and painful road which alone leads, both, in speculation, to truth and, in practice, to salvation.--Besides, this second conclusion, like the first one, was due to recent experience. Henceforth it was evident that, in political and social matters, ideas quickly descend from speculation to practice. When anybody talks to me about stones, plants, animals and the stars I must, to listen, be interested in these; if anybody talks to me about man and society, it suffices that I am a man and a member of that society; for then it concerns myself, my nearest, daily, most sensitive and dearest interests; by virtue of being a tax-payer and a subject, a citizen and an elector, a property-owner or a proletarian, a consumer or a producer, a free-thinker or a Catholic, a father, son or husband, the doctrine is addressed to me; to affect me it has only to be within reach, through interpreters and others that promulgate it.--This office appertains to writers great or small, particularly to the educated who possess wit, imagination or eloquence, a pleasing style, the art of finding readers or of making themselves understood. Owing to their interposition, a doctrine wrought out by the specialist or thinker in his study, spreads around through the novel, the theatre and the lecture-room, by pamphlets, the newspaper, dictionaries, manuals and conversation, and, finally, by teaching itself. It thus enters all houses, knocks at the door of each intellect, and, according as it works its way more or less forcibly, contributes more or less effectively to make or unmake the ideas and sentiments that adapt it to the social order of things in which it is comprised.

In this respect it acts like positive religions; in its way and on many accounts, it is one of them. In the first place, like religion, it is a living, princ.i.p.al, inexhaustible fountain-head, a high central reservoir of active and directing belief. If the public reservoir is not filled by an intermittent flow, by sudden freshets, by obscure infiltrations of the mystic faculty, it is regularly and openly fed by the constant contributions of the normal faculties. On the other hand, confronting faith, by the side of that beneficent divination which, answering the demands of conscience and the emotions, fashions the ideal world and makes the real world conform to this, it poses the testing process which, a.n.a.lyzing the past and the present, disengages possible laws and the probabilities of the future. Doctrine likewise has its dogmas, many definitive and others in the way of becoming so, and hence a full and complete conception of things, vast enough and clear enough, in spite of what it lacks, to take in at once nature and humanity. It, too, gathers its faithful in a great church, believers and semi believers, who, consequently or inconsequently, accept its authority in whole or in part, listen to its preachers, revere its doctors, and deferentially await the decisions of its councils. Wide-spread, still uncertain and lax under a wavering hierarchy, the new Church, for a hundred years past, is steadily in the way of consolidation, of progressive ascendancy and of indefinite extension. Its conquests are constantly increasing; sooner or later, it will be the first of social powers. Even for the chief of an army, even for the head of a State, even to Napoleon, it is well to become one of its great dignitaries; the second t.i.tle, in modern society, adds a prestige to the first one: "Salary of His Majesty the Emperor and King as member of the Inst.i.tute, 1500 francs;" thus begins his civil list, in the enumeration of receipts. Already in Egypt, intentionally and for effect, he heads his proclamations with "Bonaparte, commander-in chief, member of the Inst.i.tute." "I am sure,"

he says, "that the lowest drummer will comprehend it!"

Such a body, enjoying such credit, cannot remain independent. Napoleon is not content to be one of its members. He wants to hold it in his grasp, have it at his own disposition, and use it the same as a member or, at least, contrive to get effective control of it. He has reserved to himself an equally powerful one in the old Catholic Church; he has reserved to himself like equivalents in the young lay Church; and, in both cases, he limits them, and subjects them to all the restrictions which a living body can support. In relation to science and religion he might repeat word for word his utterances in relation to religion and to faith. "Napoleon has no desire to change the belief of his populations; he respects spiritual matters; he wishes simply to dominate them without touching them, without meddling with them; all he desires is to make them square with his views, with his policy, but through the influence of temporalities." To this end, he negotiated with the Pope, reconstructed, as he wanted it, the Church of France, appointed bishops, restrained and directed the canonical authorities. To this end, he settles matters with the literary and scientific authorities, gets them together in a large hall, gives them arm-chairs to sit in, gives by-laws to their groups, a purpose and a rank in the State, in brief, he adopts, remakes, and completes the "National Inst.i.tute" of France.[6235]

IV. Napoleon's stranglehold on science.

Hold of the government on the members of the Inst.i.tute.--How he curbs and keeps them down.--Circle in which lay power may act.--Favor and freedom of the mathematical, physical and natural sciences.--Disfavor and restrictions on the moral sciences.--Suppression of the cla.s.s of moral and political sciences.--They belong to the State, included in the imperial domain of the Emperor.--Measures against Ideology, philosophic or historic study of Law, Political Economy and Statistics.--Monopoly of History.

This "National Inst.i.tute," 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 a.s.semblies,[6236] in 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 t.i.tle, which a.s.signs 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 elected[6237] must 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,[6238] Monge, Carnot, Guyton de Morveau, Gregoire, 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 Inst.i.tute in check with singular rigidity, even when, outside of the Inst.i.tute and as private individuals, they fail to observe in their writings the proper rules imposed on every public body. The rod falls heavily on Jerome 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 Inst.i.tute," 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 Inst.i.tute, summoned by the minister, notify the Inst.i.tute "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 Chenier, observed that he could eulogize him only as the man of letters,[6240] and, 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 Segur, 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 Inst.i.tute.

I order you to inform it that I will not allow politics at its sessions.... If the cla.s.s disobeys I will put an end to it as an objectionable club!"

Thus warned, the members of the Inst.i.tute remain within the circle traced out for them and, for many, the circle is sufficiently large. Let the first division of the Inst.i.tute, in the mathematical, physical and natural sciences, Lagrange, Laplace, Legendre, Carnot, Biot, Monge, Ca.s.sini, Lalande, Burckardt and Arago, Poisson, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, Guyton de Morveau, Vauquelin, Thenard and Hauy, 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 Inst.i.tute, 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 Inst.i.tute, Sylvestre de Sacy publish his Arabic grammar; let Langles continue his Persian, Indian and Tartar studies; let Quatremere 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 Cora 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 t.i.tular 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, Hauy, Thenard, 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 Medecine.

Fourcroy is councillor of State, Laplace and Chaptal, after having been ministers, become senators; in 1813, there are twenty-three members of the Inst.i.tute in the Senate; the zoologist Lacepede is grand-chancellor of the Legion of Honor; while fifty-six members of the Inst.i.tute, decorated with an imperial t.i.tle, 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 pa.s.sword 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 pa.s.sword allows them to think.

In this respect, the First Consul's intentions are clear from the very first day: In his reconstruction of the Inst.i.tute[6242] he has suppressed "the division of moral and political sciences," and consequently the first four sections of this division, "a.n.a.lysis 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 cla.s.s, 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 "Dernieres 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.[6243] You 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 a.n.a.lysis 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.[6245] About the same date, the republication of the "Traite d'economie-politique" of J.--B. Say is prohibited, the first edition of which, published in 1804, was soon exhausted.[6246] In 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 "Precis 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."[6247] In 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.[6248] It 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 att.i.tude 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."