in all year and for several years in succession, in
order to pass the final test, without thinking of any but the barriers
in front of them on the race-course at the appointed date, and which
they must spring over to get ahead of their rivals.

At the present day[6366], after the complete course of classical
studies, four years in school no longer suffice for obtaining the
degrees of a doctor in medicine or doctor in law. Five or six years are
necessary. Two years are necessary between the baccalaureat es-lettres
and the various licenses es-lettres or sciences, and from these to the
corresponding aggregations two, three years, and often more. Three years
of preparatory studies in mathematics and of desperate application lead
the young man to the threshold of the Ecole Polytechnique; after that,
after two years in school and of no less sustained effort, the future
engineer passes three not less laborious years at the Ecole des Ponts
et Chaussees or des Mines, which amounts to eight years of professional
preparation.[6367] Elsewhere, in the other schools, it is the same thing
with more or less excess. Observe how days and hours are spent during
this long period.[6368] The young men have attended lecture-courses,
masticated and re-masticated manuals, abbreviated abridgments, learned
by heart mementos and formulae, stored their memories with a vast
multitude of generalities and details. Every sort of preliminary
information, all the theoretical knowledge which, even indirectly,
may serve them in their future profession or which is of service in
neighboring professions, are classified in their brains, ready to come
forth at the first call, and, as proved by the examination, disposable
at a minute; they possess them, but nothing otherwise or beyond. Their
education has all tended to one side; they have undergone no practical
apprenticeship. Never have they taken an active part in or lent a hand
to any professional undertaking either as collaborators or assistants.

* The future professor, a new aggrege at twenty-four years of age, who
issues from the Ecole Normale, has not yet taught a class, except for a
fortnight in a Paris lycee.

* The future engineer who, at twenty-four or twenty-five years of age
leaves the Ecole Centrale, or the Ecole des Ponts, or Ecole des Mines,
has never assisted in the working of a mine, in the heating of a blast
furnace, in the piercing of a tunnel, in the laying-out of a dike, of
a bridge or o