hearts. We introduce
it into the civil order of things, we take the calendar out of the hands
of the Church, we purge it of its Christian imagery; we make the new era
begin with the advent of the Republic; we divide the year according to
the metric system, we name the months according to the vicissitudes of
the seasons, "we substitute, in all directions, the realities of reason
for the visions of ignorance, the truths of nature for a sacerdotal
prestige,"[2195] the decade for the week, the decadi for Sundays, lay
festivals for ecclesiastical festivals.[2196] On each decadi, through
solemn and appropriate pomp, we impress on the popular mind one of the
highest truths of our creed; we glorify, in the order of their dates,
Nature, Truth, Justice, Liberty, Equality, the People, Adversity,
Humanity, the Republic, Posterity, Glory, Patriotism, Heroism, and other
virtues. Besides this, we honor the important days of the Revolution,
the taking of the Bastille, the fall of the Throne, the punishment
of the tyrant, the expulsion of the Girondins. We, too, have our
anniversaries, our relics, the relics of Chalier and Marat,[2197] our
processions, our services, our ritual,[2198] and the vast system of
visible pageantry by which dogmas are made manifest and propagated. But
ours, instead of leading men off to an imaginary heaven, brings them
back to a living patrimony, and, through our ceremonies as well as
through our creed, we shall preach public-spiritedness (civism).

It is important to preach this to adults, it is still more important to
teach it to children: for children are more easily molded than adults.
Our hold on these still flexible minds is complete, and, through
national education "we seize the coming generations."[2199] Naught is
more essential and naught is more legitimate.

"The country," says Robespierre, "has a right to bring up its own
children; it cannot confide this trust to family pride nor to the
prejudices of individuals, the eternal nourishment of aristocracies and
of a domestic federalism which narrows the soul by keeping it isolated."
We are determined to have "education common and equal for all French
people," and "we stamp on it a great character, analogous to the nature
of our government and the sublime doctrines of our Republic. The aim is
no longer to form gentlemen (messieurs) but citizens."[21100]

We oblige[21101] teachers, male and female, to present certificates of
civism, that is to say, of Ja