The Modern Regime Volume II Part 17

pp.307-309]

[Footnote 6218: Two prisons at the time.(SR.)]

[Footnote 6219: Comte Chaptal, "Notes."--Chaptal, a bright scholar, studied in his philosophy cla.s.s 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 n.o.blesse, the full chapter attended at these scholastic game-c.o.c.k 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 pa.s.sion for caviling."]

[Footnote 6220: Useful qualities for an administrator, anytime anywhere.

(SR.)]

[Footnote 6221: 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.)]

[Footnote 6222: Louis Liard, "Universites et Facultes," pp. 1-12.]

[Footnote 6223: Pelet de la Lozere, 176 (Session of the Council of State, May 21, 1806).]

[Footnote 6224: Liard, "L'Enseignement superieur 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,"

Expose 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 t.i.tles bought without study or trouble."--Cf the "Memoires"

of Brissot and the "Souvenirs of d'Audifret-Pasquier," both of them law students before 1789.--M. Leo de Savigny, in his recent work, "Die franzosischen Rechts facultaten" (p.74 et seq.) refers to other authorities not less decisive.]

[Footnote 6225: Reference is made to the synopsis of the Just.i.tian code of civil and other Roman laws. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6226: Treaty of law written Roman jurists under Just.i.tian in 533. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6227: Decree of March 19, 1807, articles 42, 45.]

[Footnote 6228: The French Supreme Court. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6229: Courcelle-Seneuil, "Preparation a l'etude du droit"

(1887), pp. 5, 6 (on the teaching of law by the Faculty of Paris).]

[Footnote 6230: Leo de Savigny, ibid., p. 161.]

[Footnote 6231: Breal, "Quelques mots sur l'instruction publique"

(1892), pp. 327, 341.--Liard, "Universites et Facultes," p.13 et seq.]

[Footnote 6232: Act of Jan.23, 1803, for the organization of the Inst.i.tute.]

[Footnote 6233: Voltaire's "Essai sur les moeurs" is of 1756; "L'Esprit des Lois" by Montesquieu also, in 1754, and his "Traite des Sensations."

The "Emile" of Rousseau is of 1762; the "Traite de la formation mecanique des langues," by de Brosses, is of 1765; the "Physiocratie" by Quesnay appeared in 1768, and the "Encyclopedie" between 1750 and 1765.]

[Footnote 6234: 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.]

[Footnote 6235: What an impression Taine's description of Napoleon's set-up must have had on Hitler, Lenin and, possibly Stalin and their successors. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6236: Cf. Liard, "L'Enseignement superieur en France," vol.

I., in full.--Also the law of Brumaire 3, year Iv. (Oct.25, 1795), on the primitive organization of the Inst.i.tute.]

[Footnote 6237: Decree of Jan. 23, 1803.]

[Footnote 6238: Decree of March 21, 1816]

[Footnote 6239: "Correspondance de Napoleon," 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 pa.s.sed on that occasion."]

[Footnote 6240: De Segur, "Memoires," 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 Chenier to Milton and remarked that, for forty years, the same silence had been observed in England with reference to Milton.]

[Footnote 6241: Edmond Leblanc, "Napoleon 1ere et ses inst.i.tutions civiles eL administratives," pp. 225-233.--Annuaire de l'Inst.i.tut for 1813]

[Footnote 6242: Law of Oct. 25, 1795, and act of Jan. 23, 1803.]

[Footnote 6243: Roederer, III., 548.--Id., III., 332 (Aug. 2, 1801).]

[Footnote 6244: Welschinger, "La Censure sous le premier Empire," p.440.

(Speech by Napoleon to the Council of State, Dec.20, 1812.)--Merlet, "Tableau de la litterature francaise de 1800 a 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."]

[Footnote 6245: Mignet, "Notices et Portraits." (Eulogy of M. de Tracy.)]

[Footnote 6246: J.-B. Say, "Traite d'economie-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."]

[Footnote 6247: 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 Langles, 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 pa.s.sages, but added others which they believed helped along his plans."]

[Footnote 6248: 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 att.i.tudes. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6249: Merlet, ibid. (According to the papers of M. de Fontanes, II. 258.)]

[Footnote 6250: 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."]

[Footnote 6251: 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."]

[Footnote 6252: Welschinger, ibid., p.30. (Session of the Council of State, Dec.12, 1809)]

[Footnote 6253: 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.)]

[Footnote 6254: 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.]

[Footnote 6255: Welschinger, ibid., pp. 173, 175.]

[Footnote 6256: 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 Theatre Francais.)--Id., ibid., p 244. (Letter of the secretary-general of the police to the weekly managers of the Theatre Francais, 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': Deposez un moment ce fer toujours vainqueur, Cher Hector, et craignez de laisser le bonheur."]

[Footnote 6257: 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.)]

[Footnote 6258: Id.. ibid., pp.196, 201.]

[Footnote 6259: "Revue critique," ibid., pp.142, 146, 149.]

[Footnote 6260: Welschinger, ibid., p. 251.]

[Footnote 6261: "Correspondance de Napoleon Iere." (Letter of the Emperor to Cambaceres, Nov.21, 1806.)--Letters to Fouche, Oct.25 and Dec. 31, 1806.)--Welschinger, ibid., pp.236, 244.]