Part 9 (1/2)

Universal suffrage elects the Chamber of Deputies, the Chamber elects the Government, and the Government elects the Senate. The Senate is therefore an extremely feeble anti-democratic remedy, and if it were intended as a check on democracy, it has not been a striking success.

If we really wish to have an upper chamber as competent as possible, independent of the central authority, and relatively independent of universal suffrage, we must establish a chamber elected by the great const.i.tuent bodies of the nation, and also in my opinion, by universal suffrage, but with modifications somewhat as follows. The whole nation, divided for practical purposes into five or six large districts, should elect five or six thousand delegates who in turn should elect three hundred senators. There would then be no pressure from Government nor any manufacture by the crowd of a representation fas.h.i.+oned in its own image, and we should have a really select body composed of as much competence as could be got in the country.

It is, however, exactly the opposite of this that is done, and the French Senate is an extremely feeble, anti-democratic remedy.

It represents the rural democracy, arbitrarily guided and governed by the democratic Government.

Another remedy which has been given an equally conscientious trial is the system of compet.i.tive examination, which is supposed to be a guarantee for the ability of those who seek admission into government service. The object of these examinations, which are extremely detailed and complicated, is to test the ability of the candidate in every particular, to give employment to merit and to exclude favouritism.

--You call that an anti-democratic remedy! It is as democratic as well can be!--

Nay, pardon! It would be anti-monarchical if we lived under a monarchy, anti-aristocratic if we lived under an aristocracy, and it is anti-democratic because our lot is cast in a democracy. Compet.i.tion for public offices is a sort of co-optation. In fact it is co-optation pure and simple. When I suggested that the magistracy should be chosen by the magistrates, that is, the _Cour de Ca.s.sation_ by the magistrates and the magistrates in turn by the _Cour de Ca.s.sation_, I was of course accused of being paradoxical, as is always the case, when one suggests something contrary to the usual custom. I was, however, only carrying a little further the principle which is already applied to officials. In a certain sense and to a large extent officials recruit their numbers by co-optation.

It is true, they do not actually choose the officials, but they eliminate the candidates whom they do not wish to have. Examination is ostracism of the inefficient. The Government, of course, has to decide who may be candidates, but its selection for employment is limited to those of whom other officials (the officials who conduct the examination) can approve. It is in fact co-optation.

The committee of examiners which admits a candidate to St. Cyr appoints an officer. The committee which admits a candidate to the _ecole Polytechnique_ appoints an officer or an engineer. A committee also which refuses a candidate at either of these places is encroaching on the National Sovereignty, because it is forbidding the National Sovereignty to make of this young man an officer or an engineer. This is co-optation. This is a guarantee of efficiency. Here a wall is raised against incompetence, and against the jobbery under which incompetence would profit.

It is hardly necessary for me to add that this co-optation is limited to a very narrow field of operation. It is confined in fact to the threshold of a man's career. Once the candidate has been consecrated official, by a board of examining officials, he belongs, both as regards advancement, promotion and the reverse, to the central authority alone, except in certain cases. The co-optation of officials is merely a co-optation by elimination. The elimination is made once and for all, and the non-eliminated (_i.e._, the successful candidate) steps at once into the toils of the Government, that is, into the toils of popular electioneering and party politics, when all the abuses which I have enumerated can and do arise. To be fair I had of course to point out that we had tried to invent some slight barriers against the omnipotence of incompetence, which prevent it being absolutely supreme.

Unfortunately these prophylactic measures are very badly organised, and, far from being capable of amendment, ought to be completely revolutionised.

The examination system in our country is founded on a misconception, I mean on the confusion between knowledge and competence. We search conscientiously for competence or efficiency, and we believe that we have found it when we find knowledge, but that is an error. An examination requires from a candidate that he shall know, and compet.i.tion demands that he shall know more than the others, but that is almost all that examination and compet.i.tion require of him.

Therefrom results one of the most painful open sores of our civilisation,--preparation for examinations.

Preparation for examination is responsible for intellectual indigestion, for minds overloaded with useless information, and for a system of cramming, which at once takes the heart out of men, perhaps with good ability, just at the age when their mental activity is most keen; which, further, as the result of this surfeit, disgusts for the rest of his life and renders impotent for all intellectual effort, the unfortunate patient who has been condemned to undergo this treatment for five, eight, and sometimes ten years of his youth.

I am satisfied, if I may be allowed to speak of myself in order to support my argument by an instance well known to me, that, if I have been able to work from the age of twenty-five to that of sixty-three, it is because I have never succeeded except very moderately, and I am proud of it, in compet.i.tive examinations. Being of a curious turn of mind I have been interested in the subject set in the syllabus, but in other matters also, and the syllabus has been neglected. I sometimes pa.s.sed, more often I failed, with the result that at twenty-six I was behind my contemporaries, but I was not overworked, broken down, and utterly sick of all intellectual effort. I admit that some of my contemporaries who never failed in an examination, and who pa.s.sed them all with great brilliance, have worked as hard as I have up to sixty, but they are extremely few.

The curious thing is that the results, not perhaps disastrous, but obviously very unsatisfactory, of this examination system do not lead us to abandon it (that perhaps would be an extreme measure), but make us aggravate and complicate it. Legal and medical examinations are much ”stiffer” than they used to be, and they require a greater physical effort, but without requiring or obtaining any greater intellectual value. In truth, one might say, examination is nothing more than a test of good health, and it is a very searching test, for it often succeeds in destroying it.

Here is an example which I know well. It is necessary, if a man desire to gain distinction as a professor of secondary education, that he should be a bachelor, a licentiate, an _agrege_ or a doctor. This is a qualification that counts, and it means ten examinations or compet.i.tions, two for the first half of the bachelor's degree, two for the second, two for the licentiate, two for _agrege_, two for the doctor's degree. This, moreover, does not appear to be enough. Between the second part of the bachelor's degree and the licentiate's degree there is normally an interval of two years; between the licentiate and the _agregation_ two years, and between the _agregation_ and the doctor's degree there is generally three or four years. You perceive the danger! Between the _licence_ and the _agregation_, to go no further at present, the future professor has two whole years to himself. That is to say, that during the first of these two years he will work alone. He can work freely, he can study in what direction he pleases, without thinking of an examination at the end of twelve months; he has escaped for the moment from the servitude of the syllabus. The prospect makes us shudder with apprehension. It is sadly to be feared that the young man may take a rest and draw breath, or worse still he may be carried into some extraneous study by his personal apt.i.tudes or tastes. The personality of the candidate has here an opening, a moment at which it has a possibility of a.s.serting itself. That must be stopped at all costs.

The authorities, therefore, have put in an intermediate examination between the _licence_ and the _agregation_. The examination, it is true, is on a subject chosen by the candidate himself; so much it is only fair to admit. The subject chosen, however, must be submitted to the professors. Their advice and indeed a.s.sistance must be invited. The result, if not the object, of this examination is to prevent the candidate, during this perilous year of liberty, from developing original ideas of his own and acting on them.

_One examination every year for ten years_--that is the ideal of the modern professor for the future professors who are in course of being trained. Between the second part of the bachelor's degree and the licentiate, as there is there an interval of two years, they will presently perceive that there ought to be an examination at the end of the first year, and we shall have certificates of study in intermediate, secondary, higher subjects. Between the _agregation_ and the _doctorat_, there are four years, and naturally we shall want three examinations just to see how the future professor is getting on with his theses, to enc.u.mber him with a.s.sistance and to prevent him doing them alone; first examination called the _Bibliography of the Theses for the Doctorat_, second examination called the _Methodology of the Doctorat_, third examination called the _Preparation for the Sustaining of the Thesis_, and then the examination for the doctor's degree itself.

In this way the desired object is attained. Between the ages of seventeen and twenty-seven or thirty the examinee will have had to undergo sixteen examinations. He will never have worked alone. He will always have worked, for periods of twelve months, on a syllabus, for an examination, with a view of pleasing such and such professors, modelling himself on their views, their conceptions, their general ideas, their eccentricities, aided by them, influenced by them, never knowing, and feeling he ought not to know, not wis.h.i.+ng to know, and running a great risk if he did know, and forming habits for his whole life so that he may never know what he thinks himself, what he imagines himself, what he seeks and would like to seek of his own motion, or what he ought himself to try to be. He will take up all this after he is thirty.

Not a vestige of personality or original thought till the moment when it is too late for it to appear, that is the maxim!

Whence comes this frenzy, this _examino mania_? When one comes to think of it, it seems to be a simple case of _Dandino-mania_. Dandin says with great determination ”I mean to go and judge.” The professor of a certain age means to go and examine. He no longer loves to profess, he loves to be always examining. This is very natural. Professing, he is judged; examining, he judges. The one is always much pleasanter than the other.

For a professor, to sweat in harness, to feel oneself being examined, that is, criticised, discussed, held up to judgment, and chaffed by an audience of students and amateurs, ceases at a certain age to be altogether pleasant; on the other hand to examine, to sit on the throne with all the majesty of a judge, to have only to criticise and not to produce, to intervene only when the victim stumbles, and to let him know that he has made a slip, to hold the student for the whole year under the salutary terror of an approaching examination, to remind him that he may need help and must by no means displease his professor--all this is very agreeable and makes up for many of the worries of the teaching profession. The examination mania proceeds partly from the terror of being oneself examined, and partly from the pleasure of examining others.

All this is true, but there is more than this. The precocious development of early talent and originality is the thing which strangely terrifies these examination-maniacs. They have a horror of the man who teaches himself. They have a horror of any one who ventures to think for himself and to enquire for himself at twenty-five years of age. They want, like an old hen, to mother the young mind as long as possible.

They will not let it find its own feet, till very late, and till, as the scoffer might well say, its limbs are absolutely atrophied. I do not say that they are wrong. The man who has taught himself is apt to be a vain, conceited fellow who takes pleasure in thinking for himself, and has an absolute delight in despising the thoughts of others. It is, however, no less the fact, that it is among these self-taught men that we find those vigorous spirits who venture boldly beyond the domain of human science and extend its frontier. The question then is which is best, to favour all these troublesome self-taught people in the hope of finding some good ones among them, or by crossing and worrying them to run the risk of destroying the good as well as the bad. I am myself strongly in favour of the first of these alternatives. It is better to let all go their own way, even though pretenders to originality come to grief, a thing that matters very little. Minds that are truly original will develop themselves and find room for the expansion of all their powers.

But here,--take note how the democratic spirit comes in everywhere--the question of numbers is raised. Ten times more numerous, I am told, are the pretenders to originality whom we save from themselves by discipline than the true geniuses whose wings we clip.