generation demand
a reform in the practical working of these institutions? The duty
of culling from all France during each generation the choice minds
destined to become the learned and the scientific of the nation is
a sacred office, the priests of which, the arbiters of so many
fates, should be trained by special study. Mathematical knowledge
is perhaps less necessary to them than physiological knowledge.
And do you not think that they need a little of that second-sight
which is the witchcraft of great men? As it is, the examiners are
former professors, honorable men grown old in harness, who limit
their work to selecting the best themes. They are unable to do
what is really demanded of them; and yet their functions are the
noblest in the State and demand extraordinary men.

Do not think, dear sir and friend, that I blame only the Ecole
itself; no, I blame the system by which it is recruited. This
system is the _concours_, competition,--a modern invention,
essentially bad; bad not only in science, but wherever it is
employed, in arts, in all selections of men, of projects, of
things. If it is a reproach to our great Ecoles that they have not
produced men superior to other educational establishments, it is
still more shameful that the _grand prix_ of the Institute has not
as yet furnished a single great painter, great musician, great
architect, great sculptor; just as the suffrage for the last
twenty years has not elected out of its tide of mediocrities a
single great statesman. My observation makes me detect, as I
think, an error which vitiates in France both education and
politics. It is a cruel error, and it rests on the following
principle, which organizers have misconceived:--

_Nothing, either in experience or in the nature of things, can
give a certainty that the intellectual qualities of the adult
youth will be those of the mature man._

At this moment I am intimate with a number of distinguished men
who concern themselves with all the moral maladies which are now
afflicting France. They see, as I do, that our highest education
is manufacturing temporary capacities,--temporary because they
are without exercise and without future; that such education is
without profit to the State because it is devoid of the vigor of
belief and feeling. Our whole system of public education needs
overhauling, and the work should be presided over by s