Without being as widespread as it might be, and as it will be, education is very, much in vogue. We live less and less, and we learn more and more. Sensibility surrenders to intelligence. I have seen a man laughed at because he examined a dead leaf attentively and with pleasure. No one would have laughed to hear a string of botanical terms muttered with regard to it; but there are some men who, while not ignorant of the handbooks, believe that true science should be felt first as a pleasure. It is not the fashion. The fashion is to learn in books alone, and from the lips of those who recite books. Cornelius Agrippa, who possessed all the learning of his time, and more, amused himself by writing a "Paradox on the uncertainty, vanity, and abuse of the sciences."[1] This might be rewritten to-day, but on another note. For a science does not have to be uncertain, vain and abusive in order to be useless to one who cultivates it; and, on the other hand, the certainty of a science, its interest and its legitimacy, do not confer upon it an absolute right to mental governance. We would even gladly agree as to the absurdity of a debate upon the certainty or uncertainty of the sciences. Some are aleatory, but the light-minded or interested alone call them so. The word science involves, by definition, the idea of objective truth, and we must abide by that, without further dispute, even conceding this objective truth, whatever repugnance may be felt for the indissoluble union of two words which then become ironical. It is, moreover, a question not of science, but of education, for which science furnishes the matter or the pretext. What is the value of education? What sort of superiority can it confer upon an average intelligence? If education be sometimes a ballast, is it not more often a burden? Is it not also, and still more often, a sack of salt which melts upon the ass's shoulders in the first storms of life? And so on. Education is of two sorts, according as it is useful or decorative. Even astrology can become a practical science, if the astrologer finds his daily bread in it; but what good can it do a magistrate to know geometry if not perhaps to warp his mind? Everything that concerns his trade--draughtsmanship and archaeology, even, and all notions of this order--will prove profitable to an intelligent carpenter; but of what use could an aesthetic theory be to him if not perhaps to hamper his activity? When it does not find some practical application or turn itself into cash, education is an ingot sleeping in a glass case. It is useless, not very interesting, and quite devoid of beauty.