y that demands long concentrations of
every faculty is not valued here. The State might pay talent as it
pays the bayonet; but it is afraid of being taken in by mere
cleverness, as if genius could be counterfeited for any length of
time.

"Ah, my dear uncle, when monastic solitude was destroyed, uprooted
from its home at the foot of mountains, under green and silent
shade, asylums ought to have been provided for those suffering
souls who, by an idea, promote the progress of nations or prepare
some new and fruitful development of science.

"September 20th.

"The love of study brought me hither, as you know. I have met
really learned men, amazing for the most part; but the lack of
unity in scientific work almost nullifies their efforts. There is
no Head of instruction or of scientific research. At the Museum a
professor argues to prove that another in the Rue Saint-Jacques
talks nonsense. The lecturer at the College of Medicine abuses him
of the College de France. When I first arrived, I went to hear an
old Academician who taught five hundred youths that Corneille was
a haughty and powerful genius; Racine, elegiac and graceful;
Moliere, inimitable; Voltaire, supremely witty; Bossuet and
Pascal, incomparable in argument. A professor of philosophy may
make a name by explaining how Plato is Platonic. Another
discourses on the history of words, without troubling himself
about ideas. One explains Aeschylus, another tells you that
communes were communes, and neither more nor less. These original
and brilliant discoveries, diluted to last several hours,
constitute the higher education which is to lead to giant strides
in human knowledge.

"If the Government could have an idea, I should suspect it of
being afraid of any real superiority, which, once roused, might
bring Society under the yoke of an intelligent rule. Then nations
would go too far and too fast; so professors are appointed to
produce simpletons. How else can we account for a scheme devoid of
method or any notion of the future?

"The _Institut_ might be the central government of the moral and
intellectual world; but it has been ruined lately by its
subdivision into separate academies. So human science marches on,
without a guide, without a system, and floats haphazard with no
road traced out.

"This vagueness and uncertainty prevails in politics as well as in
science. In the orde