diplomas, by the preoccupations of examinations, by the limitations of age; he has no time to lose in experiments, in mental excursions, in pure speculations. Henceforth, our system allows him only the régime to which we see him subject, namely the rush, the puffing and blowing, the gallop without stopping on a race-course, the perilous jumps at regular distances over previously arranged and numbered obstacles. Instead of being restricted and attenuated, the disadvantages of the Napoleonic institution spread and grow worse, and this is due to the way in which our rulers comprehend it, the original, hereditary way of the Jacobin spirit. When Napoleon built his University he did it as a statesman and a man of business, with the foresight of a contractor and a practical man, calculating outlay and receipts, means and resources, so as to produce at once and with the least expense, the military and civil tools which he lacked and of which he always had too few because he consumed too many: to this precise, definite purpose he subjected and subordinated all the rest, including the theory of the educational State; she was for him simply a résumé, a formula, a setting. On the contrary, for the old Jacobins, she was an axiom, a principle, an article in the Social Contract; by this contract, the State had charge of public education; it had the right and its duty was to undertake this and manage it. The principle being laid down, as convinced theorists and blindly following the deductive method, the derived consequences from it and rushed ahead, with eyes shut, into practical operation, with as much haste as vigor, without concerning themselves with the nature of human materials, of surrounding realities, of available resources, of collateral effects, nor of the total and final effect. Likewise with the new Jacobins of the present day, according to them, since instruction is a good thing,[6386] the broader and deeper it is the better; since broad and deep instruction is very good, the State should, with all its energy and by every means in its power, inculcate it on the greatest possible number of children, boys and adolescents. Such, henceforth, is the word of command from on high, transmitted down to the three stages of superior, secondary and primary instruction.[6387]