Science has a stronger basis than literature in modern education because it offers useful results. In France the usefully educated young men are well educated in their way. The time spent on their education is strictly economised with a view to a definite result, and the effect of it is to turn out numbers of young men from the _École Centrale_ and other schools who at once enter upon practical duties with a readiness that speaks much for the system. They are, however, so specially prepared that they have omitted the useless and the superfluous--“_le superflu, chose si nécessaire!_” In cutting away the superfluous the practical educator throws literature overboard. Well, without literature, it is still possible to sharpen the faculties and store the mind, but without literature education misses what is best and most interesting in the world. To a generation “usefully” educated Europe will be like a new continent destitute of memories and associations, a region where there are mines to be worked and railways to be made. [Sidenote: French Secondary Education.] As the French system of secondary education extends over the whole country, an account of the most important changes in it may be worth giving in a few words. [Sidenote: The Old System.] [Sidenote: The _Bifurcation_.] [Sidenote: The _Bifurcation_ did not work well.] The old system, from the time of Napoleon I. to the middle of the century, was founded on classical studies, with lighter scientific studies and those chiefly mathematical. After taking their bachelor’s degree, those students who were intended for certain Government schools (_Écoles Polytechnique_, _Centrale_, _Normale supérieure pour les sciences_) received further scientific instruction in special classes. This was the old system, but in 1853 an important change was introduced by M. Fortoul’s ministry, which invented what was long known as the _bifurcation_. On leaving the fourth class, at the age of thirteen or fourteen, pupils were required to choose between literary studies with a slight scientific supplement or the converse. Both kinds of students continued at that time to attend together the lectures on history and geography, and so much of modern languages as was then taught, besides the classes for Latin translation and the French classes. This was the system known as the _bifurcation_, but it did not work very well in practice, because the scientific students fell too far behind the literary students to follow profitably the same Latin classes. [Sidenote: The _Enseignement Spécial_.] In October 1864, under Duruy’s ministry, there was a new departure. He established the _enseignement secondaire spécial_. This scheme of teaching excluded Latin, which was replaced by a modern language, and it embraced rather an extensive programme, outside of classical studies, with such subjects as mathematical and natural science, political economy, and law. [Sidenote: Present State of the _Enseignement Spécial_.]