want of careful family training, nor of those common educational establishments which are so useful and indispensable.[1] But if national education is to impose some definite form on human nature, it is perfectly certain that there is actually nothing done towards preventing transgressions of law, or establishing and maintaining security. For virtue and vice do not depend on any particular form of being, nor are necessarily connected with any particular aspect of character; in regard to these, much more depends on the harmony or discordancy of all the different features of a man's character—on the proportion that exists between power and the sum of inclinations, etc. Every distinct development of character is capable of its peculiar excess, and to this it constantly tends to degenerate. If then an entire nation has adhered to some certain variety of development, it comes in time to lose all power of resisting the preponderant bias to this one peculiarity, and along with it all power of regaining its equilibrium. Perhaps it is in this that we discover the reason of such frequent changes in the constitution of ancient States. Every fresh constitution exercised an undue influence on the national character, and this, definitely developed, degenerated in turn and necessitated a new one.
Lastly, even if we admit that national education may succeed in the accomplishment of all that it proposes, it effects too much. For in order to maintain the security it contemplates, the reformation of the national morals themselves is not at all necessary. But as my reasons for this position refer to the whole solicitude for morality on the part of the State, I reserve them for the after part
- ↑ "Dans une société bien ordonnée, au contraire, tout invite les homines à cultiver leurs moyens naturels: sans qu'on s'en mêle, l'éducation sera bonne; elle sera même d'autant meilleure, qu'on aura plus laissé à l'industrie des maîtres et à l'émulation des élèves."—Mirabeau, s. l'Educ. Publ. p. 12.
