Nevertheless the Academy, in breaking so rudely with its
intuitions, seems to have felt some remorse. In place of a
theory of association in which, after reflection, it no longer
believes, it asks for a "Critical examination of Pestalozzi's
system of instruction and education, considered mainly in its
relation to the well-being and morality of the poor classes."
Who knows? perchance the relation between profits and wages,
association, the organization of labor indeed, are to be found at
the bottom of a system of instruction. Is not man's life a
perpetual apprenticeship? Are not philosophy and religion
humanity's education? To organize instruction, then, would be to
organize industry and fix the theory of society: the Academy,
in its lucid moments, always returns to that.
"What influence," the Academy again asks, "do progress and a
desire for material comfort have upon a nation's morality?"
Taken in its most obvious sense, this new question of the Academy
is commonplace, and fit at best to exercise a rhetorisian's
skill.
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