candid person
will exclaim, given the difficult and scandalous situation in which they
are put by the hand which appoints them, they ought at least to have the
guarantee and assurance, very relative and ineffectual though it be, of
irremovability. But they have not got it. The professors of higher
education who do not require it have got it, the professors of secondary
education have it to all intents and purposes. The elementary school
teacher has it not.

He is, therefore, delivered over to the politicians who make of him an
electioneering agent, who reckon him as such, and who would never pardon
him if he failed them.

The result is that the majority of school teachers are demagogues
because they like it, and with magnificent enthusiasm and passion. The
minority who have no turn for demagogy are demagogues though they do not
like it, and because they are forced by necessity.

Even those who have no disposition that way become demagogues in the
end, for that is the way of the world. "In the heat of the _melee_,"
said Augier, "there are no mercenaries." Our school teachers, thrown,
sometimes against their will, into the battle, forced at least to appear
to be fighting, receive knocks and when they have received them, they
become attached to the cause on whose behalf they have suffered. We
always end by having the opinions which are attributed to us, and being
taken for a demagogue the moment he arrives at his village, the young
school teacher, not daring to say anything to the contrary, and being
very ill received by all other parties, naturally becomes a demagogue
with some show of conviction the very next year.

* * * * *

So the democracy receives no instruction that does not confirm and
strengthen it in its errors.

For its good some one ought to teach it not to believe itself
omnipotent, to have scruples as to its omnipotence, and to believe that
this omnipotence should have defined limits; it is taught without
reserve the dogma of the unlimited sovereignty of the people.

For its good it should believe that equality is so contrary to nature
that we have no right to torture nature in order to establish real
equality among men, and that the people which has established such a
state of things, which is quite possible, must succumb to the fate of
those who try to live exactly in opposition to the laws of nature.
Instead, it is taught, and it is true enough, that equality