is the better; since broad and deep
instruction is very good, the State should, with all its energy and by
every means in its power, inculcate it on the greatest possible number
of children, boys and adolescents. Such, henceforth, is the word of
command from on high, transmitted down to the three stages of superior,
secondary and primary instruction.[6387]

Consequently, from 1876 to 1890,[6388] the State expends for superior
instruction, in buildings alone, 99,000,000 francs. Formerly, the
receipts of the Faculties about covered their expenses; at the present
day, the State allows them annually 6,000,000 francs more than their
receipts. It has founded and supports 221 new (professional) chairs, 168
complementary courses of lectures, 129 conferences and, to supply
the attendants, it provides, since 1877, 300 scholarships for those
preparing for the license and, since 1881, 200 scholarships for those
preparing for the aggregation. Similarly, in secondary instruction,
instead of 81 lycees in 1876, it has 100 in 1887[6389]; instead of
3,820 scholarships in 1876, it distributes, in 1887, 10,528; instead
of 2,200,000 francs expended for this branch of instruction in 1857, it
expends 18,000,000 in 1889.--This overload of teaching caused overloaded
exams: it was necessary to include more science than in the past to
curriculum of the grades delivered and determined by the State. "This
was what was then done whenever possible."[6390] Naturally, and through
contagion, the obligation of possessing more knowledge descended to
secondary instruction. In effect, after this date, we see neo-Kantian
philosophy descending like hail from the highest metaphysical ether
down upon the pupils in the terminal class of the lycees, to the lasting
injury of the seventeen-year old brains. Again, after this date, we see
in the class of special mathematics[6391] an abundance of complicated,
confusing problems so that, today, the candidate for the Polytechnic
School must, to gain admission, expound theorems that were only mastered
by his father after he got there.--Hence, "boxes" and "ovens", private
internats, the preparatory secular or ecclesiastical schools and other
"scholastic cramming-machines"; hence, the prolonged mechanical effort
to introduce into each intellectual sponge all the scientific fluid it
can contain, even to saturation, and maintain it in this extreme state
of perfection if only for two hours during an examination, after which