But, it will be said, we must count as illicit every convention which is contrary to good morals. Without doubt; but it is difficult to conceive how living in common, and taking the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are opposed to good morals. Finally this position of the question betrays a voluntary confusion of the terms "convention" and "vow." A vow is not a contract, it is a resolution which one takes and in which one persists. Thus in no way does Article 1118 affect the question of associations and congregations. It is strange indeed that these sapient legislators, after declaring religious associations illicit or criminal, contradict themselves by inviting these same "criminal" associations to seek authorization; which amounts to saying that the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry wished to sanction some things which it considered as essentially wrong. Thus the new law stultifies itself almost in its opening sentences, while it makes it quite plain that the subversive intentions of its author were to affect all religious congregations without exception. Waldeck-Rousseau belonged to the same school as Jules Ferry; he believed in maintaining _provisorily_ the Concordat, but he made it plain that he intended to laicise all the public service, and especially that of teaching, in which the congregations held so large a part. In a speech at Toulouse, October 28, 1900, after arguing that the development of the monastic possessions ought to be arrested, he declared: Two classes of youth, less separated by their social condition than by the education they receive, are growing up without any mutual acquaintance, until the day comes when they shall meet and find themselves so unlike that they will not be able to understand one another. Little by little two different societies are being prepared--one of them, becoming more and more democratic as it is borne on by the great current of the Revolution, and the other, more and more imbued with doctrines which one would not have believed able to survive the great movement of the eighteenth century. In this sentence was contained his plea for compelling the teachers of the second class of youth, the congregations, to seek authorization, while at the same time he made it evident that none should be authorized whose methods should not be in accordance with the principles of the French Revolution.