In order that instruction may be useful, in order that it may
even be received, it is necessary, first of all, that the pupil
should be free, just as, before planting a piece of ground, we
clear it of thorns and dog-grass. Moreover, the best system
of education, even so far as philosophy and morality are
concerned, would be that of professional education: once more,
how reconcile such education with parcellaire division and the
service of machinery? How shall the man who, by the effect of
his labor, has become a slave,--that is, a chattel, a thing,--
again become a person by the same labor, or in continuing the
same exercise? Why is it not seen that these ideas are mutually
repellent, and that, if, by some impossibility, the proletaire
could reach a certain degree of intelligence, he would make use
of it in the first place to revolutionize society and change all
civil and industrial relations? And what I say is no vain
exaggeration. The working class, in Paris and the large cities,
is vastly superior in point of ideas to what it was twenty-five
years ago; now, let them tell me if this class is not decidedly,
energetically revolutionary! And it will become more and more so
in proportion as it shall acquire the ideas of justice and order,
in proportion especially as it shall reach an understanding of
the mechanism of property.
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