In the matter of education, not only at this third stage but again for the first two stages, public opinion so far as aims, results, methods and limitations is concerned, was apathetic. That wonderful science which, in the eighteenth century, with Jean-Jacques, Condillac, Valentin, Hally, Abbé de l'Epée and so many others, sent forth such powerful and fruitful jets, had dried up and died out; transplanted to Switzerland and Germany, pedagogy yet lives but it is dead on its native soil.[6327] There is no longer in France any persistent research nor are there any fecund theories on the aims, means, methods, degrees and forms of mental and moral culture, no doctrine in process of formation and application, no controversies, no dictionaries and special manuals, not one well-informed and important Review, and no public lectures. Now an experimental science is simply the summing-up of many diverse experiences, freely attempted, freely discussed and verified. Through the forced results of the university monopoly there are no actual universities: among other results of the Napoleonic institution, one could after 1808 note, the decadence of pedagogy and foresee its early demise. Neither parents, nor masters nor the young cared anything about it; outside of the system in which they live they imagine nothing; they are accustomed to it the same as to the house in which they dwell. They may grumble sometimes at the arrangement of the rooms, the low stories and narrow staircases, against bad lighting, ventilation and want of cleanliness, against the exactions of the proprietor and concierge; but, as for transforming the building, arranging it otherwise, reconstructing it in whole or in part, they never think of it. For, in the first place, they have no plan; and next, the house is too large and its parts too well united; through its mass and size it maintains itself and would still remain indefinitely if, all at once, in 1848, an unforeseen earthquake had not made breaches in its walls. II. Educational monopoly of Church and State. Law of 1850 and freedom of instruction.--Its apparent object and real effects.--Alliance of Church and State.--The real monopoly.--Ecclesiastical control of the University until 1859.--Gradual rupture of the Alliance.--The University again becomes secular.--Lay and clerical interests. --Separation and satisfaction of both interests down to 1876. --Peculiarity of this system.--State motives for taking the upper hand.--Parents, in fact, have no choice between two monopolies.--Original and forced decline of private institutions.--Their ruin complete after 1850 owing to the too-powerful and double competition of Church and State. --The Church and the State sole surviving educators. --Interested and doctrinal direction of the two educational systems.--Increasing divergence in both directions.--Their effect on youth.