Distribution of Time, 131 THE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL AT PARIS[8] [Footnote 8: Compiled from “_Report and Appendix of English Commissioners on Military Education_.” 1857.] I. FOUNDATION AND HISTORY. The origin of the _Ecole Polytechnique_ dates from a period of disorder and distress in the history of France which might seem alien to all intellectual pursuits, if we did not remember that the general stimulus of a revolutionary period often acts powerfully upon thought and education. It is, perhaps, even more than the Institute, the chief scientific creation of the first French Revolution. It was during the government of the committee of public safety, when Carnot, as war minister, was gradually driving back the invading armies, and reorganizing victory out of defeat and confusion, that the first steps were taken for its establishment. A law, dating the 1st Ventose, year II., the 12th of March 1794, created a “Commission des Travaux Publics,” charged with the duty of establishing a regular system for carrying on public works; and this commission ultimately founded a central school for public works, and drew up a plan for the competitive examination of candidates for admission to the service. It was intended at first to give a complete education for some of the public services, but it was soon changed into a preparatory school, to be succeeded by special schools of application. This was the Ecole Polytechnique. The school and its plan were both owing to an immediate and pressing want. It was to be partly military and partly civil. Military, as well as civil education had been destroyed by the revolutionists. The committee of public safety had, indeed, formed a provisional school for engineers at Metz, to supply the immediate wants of the army on the frontier, and at this school young men were hastily taught the elements of fortification, and were sent direct to the troops, to learn as they best could, the practice of their art. “But such a method,” says the report accompanying the law which founded the school, “does not form engineers _in any true sense of the term_, and can only be justified by the emergency of the time. The young men should be recalled to the new school to complete their studies.” Indeed no one knew better than Carnot, to use the language of the report, “that patriotism and courage can not always supply the want of knowledge;” and in the critical campaigns of 1793-4, he must often have felt the need of the institution which he was then contributing to set on foot. Such was the immediate motive for the creation of this school. At first, it only included the engineers amongst its pupils. But the artillery were added within a year.