. . Into what terrible struggles of pride and misery
does this mania for universal instruction plunge us! Of what use
is professional education, of what good are agricultural and
commercial schools, if your students have neither employment nor
capital? And what need to cram one's self till the age of twenty
with all sorts of knowledge, then to fasten the threads of a
mule-jenny or pick coal at the bottom of a pit? What! you have
by your own confession only three thousand positions annually to
bestow upon fifty thousand possible capacities, and yet you talk
of establishing schools! Cling rather to your system of
exclusion and privilege, a system as old as the world, the
support of dynasties and patriciates, a veritable machine for
gelding men in order to secure the pleasures of a caste of
Sultans. Set a high price upon your teaching, multiply
obstacles, drive away, by lengthy tests, the son of the
proletaire whom hunger does not permit to wait, and protect with
all your power the ecclesiastical schools, where the students are
taught to labor for the other life, to cultivate resignation, to
fast, to respect those in high places, to love the king, and to
pray to God.
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