Sulpice; at the very least,
one became a good logician through prolonged and scientific intellectual
gymnastics. "My dear Abbe," said Turgot, smiling, to Morellet, "it is
only you and I who have taken our degree who can reason closely." Their
theological drill, indeed, was about as valuable as our philosophical
drill; if it expanded the mind less, it supplied this better with
applicable concepts; less exciting, it was more fruitful. In the
Sorbonne of the nineteenth century, the studies consist of the
speculative systems of a few isolated, divergent intellects who have
exercised no authority over the multitude, while in the Sorbonne of
the eighteenth century, the studies consisted of the creed, morality,
discipline, history and canons of a Church which had already existed
seventeen centuries and which, comprising one hundred and fifty millions
of souls, still sways one-half of the civilized world.--To a theoretical
education add practical education. A cure and with still more reason, a
canon, an archdeacon, a bishop, was not a passing stranger, endowed by
the State, wearing a surplice, as little belonging to his age through
his ministry as through his dress, and wholly confined to his spiritual
functions: he managed the revenues of his dotation, he granted leases,
made repairs, built, and interested himself in the probabilities of the
crops, in the construction of a highway or canal, while his experiences
in these matters were equal to those of any lay proprietor. Moreover,
being one of a small proprietary corporation, that is to say, a chapter
or local vestry, and one of a great proprietary corporation of the
diocese and Church of France, he took part directly or indirectly
in important temporal affairs, in assemblies, in deliberations, in
collective expenditures, in the establishment of a local budget and of
a general budget, and hence, in public and administrative matters,
his competence was analogous and almost equal to that of a mayor,
sub-delegate, farmer-general or intendant. In addition to this he was
liberal: never has the French clergy been more earnestly so, from the
latest cures back to the first archbishops.[4171]--Lastly, remark the
distribution of the clergy over the territory. There was a cure or vicar
in the smallest of the forty thousand villages. In thousands of small,
poor, remote communes, he was the only man who could readily read and
write; none other than he in many of the larger rural communes,[41