rimary
instruction, the State has maintained 173 normal schools for teachers,
male and female, 736 schools and courses of lectures in primary,
superior and professional instruction, 66,784 elementary schools, 3,597
maternal schools, and about 115,000 functionaries, men and women.[63105]
Through these 115,000 officials, representatives and megaphones,
Secular Reason, which is enthroned at Paris, sends its voice even to
the smallest and most remote villages. It is this Reason, as our rulers
define it, with the inclinations, limitations and prejudices they have
need of, the near-sighted and half-domesticated grand-daughter of that
other formidable sightless, brutal and mad grandmother, who, in 1793
and 1794, sat under the same name and in the same place. With less of
violence and blundering, but by virtue of the same instinct and with
the same one-sidedness, the latter employs the same propaganda. She
too wants to seize the new generations, and through her programs and
manuals, her insinuations and summaries of the Ancient Regime, the
Revolution and the Empire, by her perceptions of recent or contemporary
matters, through her formulae and suggestions in relation to moral,
social and political affairs, it is of her and she alone, that she
preaches and glorifies.

VI. Summary.

Total and actual effect of the system.--Increasing
unsuitableness between early education and adult life.
--Change for the worse in the mental and moral balance of
contemporary youth.

In this manner does the education by the State end. (in 1890) When a
matter is taken out of the hands of those who are concerned and handed
over to a third and differently motivated party, it cannot end well;
sooner or later, this basic defect will dominate and lead to unexpected
results. In this case a growing disparity between education and life.
On the three levels of instruction, infancy, adolescence and youth, the
actual theoretical and direct instruction is extended and overloaded
with the examination, the grade, the diploma and the certificate in view
only. To this end any and all means is used; through the application of
an unnatural and anti-social system competition, through excessive delay
in practical apprenticeship, through the internat, through artificial
stimulation and mechanical cramming, and through overwork. There is no
consideration of the future, of the adult epoch and the duties of the
complete man. The real world in w