The Psychology of Socialism
Book 3: Socialism As Affected By Race
Chapter 5: The Latin Concepts of Education and Religion
Gustave Le Bon
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I. The Latin conceits of education and instruction:-The conception of education prevalent among the Latins arises from their conception of the State-The basis of our university system-How it causes banality of thought and weakness of character in entire classes of individuals-The normal school-Why the university is a stronghold of levelling State Socialism-Modern attacks on the noxious effects of our system of classical education-Comparison of the principles of education and instruction found among the Anglo-Saxons and the Latins respectively-The general misunderstanding on this subject- It is not what is taught that signifies, but the manner of teaching - Various examples of the results of our methods of teaching. 2. The Latin concept of religion :-The religious concept of the Latins, after having played, for a long time, a very useful part, has now become hurtful to them-How the Anglo-Saxons have succeeded in putting their religious beliefs in agreement with modern necessities-Indocility of the religious dogmas of the Latins, and its results-General consequences of the Latin ideas from a Socialist point of view.
I. THE LATIN CONCEPTS OF EDUCATION AND INSTRUCTION.
THE Latin concept of education is the consequence of the Latin concept of the State. Since the State ought to direct everything it ought also to direct education, and since the State ought to think and act for the citizen it must take care to imbue his mind with the sentiment of obedience, respect for all the hierarchies, and severely repress all signs of initiative and independence. The pupil should limit himself to learning
(150) by heart the manuals informing him of the decisions of political, religious, philosophic, and scientific authority on all imaginable questions. This was the old ideal of the Jesuits, and it was skilfully completed by Napoleon. The University, as it was created by this great despot, is a most excellent example of the methods to be employed in order to enslave the intelligence, weaken the character, and transform the Latin youth into slaves or rebels.
The times have progressed, but our University has hardly changed. On her, above all, lies the imperious yoke of the dead. The State, the exclusive director of instruction, has preserved a system of education which might be called fair in the Middle Ages, when professorial chairs were filled by theologians. This system leaves its corroding imprint on every Latin mind. It no longer actually proposes to itself, as it did of old, to enslave the intelligence, to silence reason, to destroy initiative and independence ; but as its methods have not changed the effects produced by it are the same as ever. We possess institutions which, regarded solely with regard to their psychologic action, might be qualified as admirable, when. we perceive with what ingenuity they turn out whole batches of individuals, perfect in their banality of thought and ineptness of character. What, for example, could be more astonishing than our École normale supérieure, with its prodigious system of examinations? Where but in the depths of China could we find anything comparable to it? The greater number of the young men who leave it have identical ideas on every subject, and a not less identical fashion of expressing them. A page begun by one of them might be continued by another indifferently, without any change of idea or (f style Only the Jesuits, Have succeeded in inventing an equally perfect order of discipline. As the professors who come from this college possess
151) almost exclusively the right of giving superior instruction to the youth of France, we may be perfectly certain that they will everywhere spread identical ideas, ideas as fatuous as they are official. As a certain Minister of Instruction remarked, taking his watch in his hand, we know exactly, at any given moment, the exercise or translation on which all budding Frenchmen, lashed to their Procrustean beds, are employed.
Accustomed, by minute regulation, to forecast, to a minute almost, the manner in which their time is employed, these pupils are suitably prepared, for the rest of their lives, for the uniformity of thought and action necessitated by State Socialism. They will always have an intense horror of originality, of all personal effort, a profound suspicion of all that is not specialised and catalogued, and a somewhat envious but always reverent admiration of hierarchies and of gold braid. All tendencies to initiative or to individual effort will in them be utterly extinguished. They may succeed in rebelling now and again, just as they rebelled at college when their preceptors were too severe, but they will never, as rebels, be either disquieting or persistent. The Ecole normale, the lycées, and other analogous institutions are thus the most admirable schools of State Socialism of the equalising and levelling kind.[1] It is thanks to such a system that we are tending more and more towards this form of government.
It is only by studying our Latin system of education that we can well understand the present success of Socialism among the Latins, and for this reason we are obliged to enter into details which might seem, at first sight, to be outside the scope of this volume.
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This great problem of education and instruction I cannot, assuredly, treat briefly. I will permit myself to refer the reader to the long chapter which I devoted to the subject, eighteen years ago, in the second volume of my l'Homme et les Sociétés. There he will find exposed at length all the projects of reform which are to-day put forward as novelties. Even before that time many illustrious spirits had pointed out the dangers of our educational system, but their voices were heard as little as mine. Of our primary instruction it was then said by Michel Bréal: "The half-knowledge given by these schools recruits soldiers for disorder as surely as ignorance." Far more surely, one should say ; the increase of criminality, alcoholism, and anarchy among the young men turned out by these colleges is a proof in point. As for our University education, it was then qualified by Renan in the following words: "The University of France is too reminiscent of the orators of the Decadence. The French disease of peroration,` the tendency to let everything degenerate into declamation-why, one party of the University actually fosters it by its obstinacy in disdaining the fountain-heads of knowledge, and esteeming nothing but style and talent." " I have no hesitation in saying," wrote Paul Bert, "that the fundamental ignorance of our bourgeoisie, which leaves our colleges all petrified with impotent presumption, is as injurious to the progress of the public spirit, and to the future of our country, as the ignorance of the children of the people who have never crossed the threshold of a school.
Nothing has changed since then ; the same complaints are still heard, couched in almost identical terms.
"Our education," wrote M. C. Lauth recently, "has taken a wrong path; the Abstract has invaded everything, and has stifled the sense of application . . . . It is the
153) spirit of our professors, the tendency of our education, the very root of our methods that must be transformed . . . . This education is bad from top to bottom ; it consists entirely of the worst methods of mediaeval scholasticism, and seems established for no other purpose than to produce failures, rhetoricians, and shuttlecocks."
We must, however, point out, as a happy symptom, that a small number of University functionaries-so far, a very small number-are beginning to see the absurdity of our classical education. One of the most eminent, M. Jules Lemaitre, expressed himself recently as follows: --
"Despite the groping, contradictory modifications introduced, these twenty-five years, into our programmes, despite the additions and renovations, our secondary classical instruction remains at root what it was under the ancien régime. It is given more badly; that is all.
"What does this mean ? Everything is altered ; the discoveries of applied science have profoundly modified the conditions of life, both for the individual and the nation; have altered even the face of the earth. The universal reign of industry and commerce has begun ; we form a democratic and industrial society, already menaced, or rather half undermined, by the competition of powerful nations, and the children of our petite bourgeoisie, and many children of the lower classes, spend eight years in learning-very badly-the very things that were formerly taught-very well-by the Jesuit fathers, in a monarchical society, in a France whose supremacy was recognised by Europe, at a period when Latin was an international language, to the sons of the nobles, the magistrates, and the privileged classes.
" Is this not a shameless anachronism ? And is not this belief in the present utility of such an education a monstrous prejudice ?
"One is stupefied at the poverty of the arguments
154) employed by the partisans of Greek and Latin, which invariably amount to the assertion that an apprenticeship to these languages constitutes an admirable intellectual gymnastic ; notwithstanding the fact that this absurd triviality has long been refuted by the most competent observers. One of the most illustrious of modern British scientists, Professor Bain of Aberdeen, treated of this question at length more than twenty years ago, and proved that the study of these languages does nothing but exercise the memory. In conclusion he proposed that the teaching of Greek and Latin should be limited to one hour a week for two years. This would indeed be the best solution to adopt in order not too greatly to offend the prejudices of worthy middle-class folk who imagine that a classical education confers a kind of aristocratic superiority on their offspring."
"Our language is Latin," wrote recently one of the most remarkable ministers our University has ever had at its head, M. Léon Bourgeois-" our language is Latin, but to make the Latin heritage the sole treasure of our race-would that not be indeed to stultify it?"
The only serious argument that the professors of the University can invoke in defence of classical education is that it permits them to make a living, and that apart from their duties of instruction they are absolutely good for nothing ; they could not even serve as translators. M. Jules Lemaitre having declared that the professors of the University of France had a very imperfect knowledge of the Greek they taught, a certain professor came to the rescue of his colleagues, and wrote the following lines, which throw a strange light on the value of the methods of our University :
"The professor-, are Billy competent if they have enough Greek to decipher patiently, at home, with the aid of the lexicon and standard annoted editions, the complete sense
(155) of their text, which they then help their pupils to elucidate in class."
A German or an Englishman reading these lines would be confounded. In England or Germany a person who should propose to teach a foreign language while admitting that he could only " decipher it patiently with the aid of a lexicon " would be ignominiously shown the door of the establishment at which he should present himself.[2]
The Anglo-Saxon peoples succeeded long ago in ridding themselves of our odious educational system, and it is in part because they have done so that they are now in the front rank of civilisation, and have left the Latin nations so far behind them.
Few persons, above all among professors, are yet able to understand wherein the Anglo-Saxon conception of education differs from the corresponding conception among the Latins. It will therefore be useful to consider, in some detail, the fundamental principles which
(156) form the basis of education and instruction in the two races.
The principles of Anglo-Saxon education are as different from those of the Latin system of education as the principles which form the bases of instruction. A few lines will make this evident.
Civilised man cannot live without discipline. This discipline may be internal-that is to say, in the man himself. It may be external, or outside the man himself ; and in that case, necessarily, enforced by others. The Anglo-Saxon, having, amongst his hereditary characteristics, which are confirmed by his education, this internal discipline, is able to direct and control himself, and has no need of the direction of the State. The man of Latin race, having, through his heredity and his education, very little internal discipline, requires an external discipline. This is imposed on him by the State, and it is for this reason that he is imprisoned in a network of regulations, which are innumerable, because they have to direct him in all the circumstances of his life.
The principle of Anglo-Saxon education is this : the child goes through his school life not to be disciplined by others, but to learn to make use of his own independence. He has to discipline himself, and by this means acquire self-control, from which self-government is derived. The young Englishman may possibly leave college knowing little of Greek, Latin, or theoretical science ; but he leaves it a man, able to guide himself in life, and to rely on himself alone. The methods which help him to this result are wonderfully simple. They will be found explained in detail in all the works dealing with education written by Englishmen.
The Latin system of education has a precisely contrary object. Its dream is to crush the initiative, independence, and will of the pupil by severe and minute regulations.
(157) His only duty is to learn, to recite, to obey. His least acts are foreordained. The employment of his time is regulated minute by minute. After seven or eight years of this galley discipline all traces of initiative and willpower are eradicated. Then, when the young man is left to himself, how will he be able to do what he has never learnt to do-to conduct himself ? Can we be astonished that the Latin peoples understand so ill how to govern themselves, and show themselves so incapable in the commercial and industrial struggles that the modern development of the world has engendered ? Is it not natural that Socialism, which will merely multiply the fetters with which the State envelopes them, should be cordially welcomed by all those who have been so well prepared for servitude by their college training ?
Are we to hold our professors responsible for the lamentable results of our education ? Certainly not. Our college professors, equally with their pupils, are hampered by a perfect network of regulations, which they must obey to the letter under the penalty of being promptly cast aside. They are subordinates, timid and needy, exposed to a thousand indignities from their superiors, and always sensible of the Aveight of the bureaucratic and pedagogic yoke. Their one dream is of being able to give up what all consider a horrible trade. They do not declare themselves disciples of Socialism, but there are very few among them who do not, in their hearts, long for the triumph of the new doctrines. In this case they might perhaps better their lot, and in any case they could not make their yoke heavier or bitterer than it is to-day.
Now, having considered the respective principles of Anglo-Saxon and Latin education, Ave will consider those of instruction. The discussions recently raised on the teaching of Greek and Latin, apropos of the remarks of
(158) the author I last quoted, show how general and how intense is the incomprehension of this subject.
Indeed, the arguments exchanged by the two sides prove to what an extent the fundamental side of the question is misunderstood in France. No one seems to understand that it is not what is taught, but the manner of teaching it, that must be changed from top to bottom. Above all must we change this dreadful system of concours and examinations, which, as a writer recently remarked, "forms the most powerful means of compression ever used by any European nation for the purpose of confining the energies of youth, and its natural impulse towards life." Instruction has, or at least should have for its aim, the development of judgment, initiative, and reflection, and these qualities are developed only by teaching (no matter what is taught) in a certain fashion.
Whether it be a question of teaching a language, a science, or the general knowledge necessary to a profession, there are two methods of instruction which are totally different, and which create equally different methods of thought, reason, and conduct in the mind of the pupil.
The one, which is purely theoretical, consists in teaching orally or from books ; the other first of all puts the pupil in contact with the realities and only exposes the theory of these realities afterwards.
The consequences of these two methods may be judged by the results they produce. Our bachelors, licentiates, or engineers are good for nothing but theoretical demonstrations. A few years after the termination of their education they have completely forgotten all their useless science. Unless the State finds them appointments they are outcasts. If they fall back upon industry they will not be accepted in any but the
(159) lowest capacities until they have found time to educate themselves all over again, which they scarcely ever succeed in doing. If they take to writing books their books will be nothing but feeble echoes of their college manuals, equally deficient in originality of form and thought.
So whether we do or do not suppress the teaching of Latin in our colleges, or whether we substitute the teaching of science, or of any other subject, does not matter ; the final result will always be the same, for the methods will not have changed. We shall still be creating nothing but outcasts, stuffed with useless and soon forgotten formula, incapable of judgment, reason, or self-guidance. Are we to believe that a method of instruction can become practical simply because it is called so ? Does no one see that our professors cannot change their natures and teach what they do not know ?
Any one who does not see how thoroughly detestable our methods of instruction are has only to consider the results given by the most practical of our colleges. He will find that under their deceptive label they preserve the same exclusively bookish and theoretical character.
Let us take as example a branch of instruction which at first sight would certainly seem the most practical of all-that of agriculture. A report by M. Méline, recently inserted in the Officiel, contains some very interesting inquiries into the results obtained, which show how completely our general methods of instruction are based on the same principles.
Without counting the Institut agronomic established in Paris, France possesses eighty-two so-called schools of agriculture which cost more than £160,000 annually. They count 659 professors and 2,850 pupils, which gives just over four pupils per professor. Thus each
(160) pupil costs the State rather more than £56 per annum. " In many establishments there are scarcely any but holders of bursaries, and without them it would almost be necessary to close the school."
It is often difficult to render instruction practical when that instruction has to 'be given to a large number of pupils. This is no longer the case when a professor has an average of four pupils. We might hope, accordingly, that the agricultural training of these numerous schools would be of a really useful character, and that the young agriculturists so expensively trained might be of some service. They have not been so, alas! and a psychologist knowing a little of our methods of instruction might have foreseen the fact. The education of these pupils has remained so theoretical that not a single cultivator is able to make use of them, not even in the simple capacity of farmer's boy. Being absolutely good for nothing, these pupils who were to have regenerated our agriculture almost always apply for State appointments, above all as professors. There are more than 500 of these applications for 50 annual vacancies.
" Is it not grotesque ? " concludes le Temps, in summing up M. Méline's report. "This scientific education, this grand orchestra of abstract formula?, results in abstracting energies from agriculture instead of contributing them ! These schools have only one end in view : to prepare not practical men, but examinees crammed with formulae and superfluities of scientific appearance, the better to succeed in the examinations of the coicours, and to obtain administrative situations. Here, as elsewhere, every one is a mandarin."
What has just been said of the teaching of agriculture may he applied to all out schools, even to those which, in the minds of their founders, were intended only to form workmen. The principles being the same, and the pro-
161) -fessors having much the same origin, the results, from top to bottom of the scale, cannot but be identical. Here, evidently, we have a racial vice, rendered ineradicable by centuries of education. As a typical example we may cite the case of the École Boulle, founded in Paris twelve years ago at the expense of the city, with the object of supplanting the apprenticeship of the workshop and of turning out simple workmen exclusively. The results obtained are given in a report presented to the municipal council. They are lamentable. Out of 387 pupils 45 per cent.-and they were the wisest-relinquished, at the end of a year, a course of instruction of which they had perceived the total inutility. Of the pupils who followed the course of four years only thirteen were able to find situations, and then only on the condition of their becoming apprenticed after leaving the school. To arrive at this miserable result the city expended an enormous sum. Each graduate has cost it more than £280.
We are now not considering Greek and Latin merely. I have cited examples which clearly show the principles underlying our methods of instruction, and why no amount of regulations can change them. It is the ideas of the teachers that we must change, and consequently their entire education, and to some extent their nature. How are we to make them understand that theory is useful when it follows practice, but never when it precedes it ; that it is by practical exercise, and by no other means, that the judgment, initiative, and reason can be developed, and that this development should be the principal aim of education ?
One sees how difficult it would be to-day to modify our Latin system of education. This difficulty appears more than sufficiently proved by the complete futility of all that has been written and repeated on this subject
162) during the last twenty-five years. What has been the result of so many carefully studied reports, so many ingenious dissertations ? Have we modified ever so little our programmes and our systems of competitive examinations, except perhaps to make them more burdensome ? Have the seas of ink poured out in asserting the immense superiority of the English system of education had any results other than the most insignificant reforms -such, for example, as the introduction of football in our schools ? [3] Our university is too old to change, or even to understand that it should change. It will remain, in despite of all attacks on it, an immense factory of the unclassed, and therefore of Socialists. None of our institutions has ever exercised such a lamentable influence over the Latin mind.
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2. THE LATIN CONCEPTION OF RELIGION.
Their religious concept, after having played its useful part, has ended by becoming as noxious to the Latin peoples as their concepts of the State and of education, and for the same reason-that it has not progressed, has not evolved.
Without suddenly breaking' with the beliefs of the past, the Anglo-Saxons have been able to create a broader religion, able to adapt itself to every modern necessity. All too inconvenient dogmas have been softened down, have taken a symbolic character, a mythological value. Religion has thus been able to exist on good terms with science; at most it is not a declared enemy which has to be contended with. The Catholic dogma of the Latins, on the other hand, has preserved its rigid, absolute, intolerant form, which was useful, perhaps, of old, but which to-day is extremely pernicious. It remains what it was five hundred years ago. Without it is no salvation. It attempts to impose the most ridiculous historical absurdities on its faithful. No conciliation is possible ; one must submit to it or fight it.
Before the rebellion of reason the least advanced Latin Governments have been forced to renounce the idea of sustaining beliefs so profoundly incompatible with the evolution of ideas, and they have generally ended by abstaining from all interference in the domain of religion.
But thereupon two consequences have ensued. The old dogmas have resumed all their empire over feeble minds, and sway them by exhausted faiths which have no reference to modern requirements. Others, happy at their escape from a heavy and plainly irrational yoke, have rejected the ancient dogmas ; but as they were told in
(164) youth that the whole of morality reposed on these dogmas, and could not exist without them, they have imagined that with their disappearance the morality based on them must also disappear. Their morality was in consequence considerably relaxed, and very soon they knew no other rules of conduct than those which are registered in the codes and enforced by the hand of the gendarme.
Thus we see that three conceptions-those of religion, politics, and education-have contributed to the formation of the Latin mind, and have produced its present state. Every nation, at a certain phase of civilisation, has become subject to these conceptions, and none could avoid the subjection, for when the nations are weak, ignorant, and undeveloped, it is plainly advantageous for them, as it is for a child, that superior minds should impose their beliefs and ideas on them, should act and think for them. But in the progress of evolution the moment arrives when the nations are no longer children, but must guide themselves. Those who have not been able to acquire the ability to do so find themselves by this fact alone far in the rear of those who do possess it.
The Latin peoples have not yet succeeded in acquiring this ability. Because they have not learned to think and act for themselves they are to-day defenceless in the industrial, commercial, and colonial struggle ensuing on the conditions of modern existence, in which the Anglo-Saxons have so quickly triumphed. Victims of their hereditary conceptions, the Latin nations turn towards Socialism, which promises to think and act for them, but in coming under its rule they will only be submitting to new masters, and Will thus still further retard the acquisition of the qualities they lack.
To be a little more explicit, I should have to follow,
165) in the various branches of civilisation-literature, art, industry, &c.-the consequences, beneficial or noxious, according to their period, of those fundamental conceptions whose functions I have just very briefly delineated. Such a vast enterprise cannot be undertaken here. It is enough to show how the present progress of Socialism among the Latin peoples is the consequence of their conceptions, and to determine the formation of these conceptions. We shall perceive their influence in every page of this book, and notably when we have occasion to consider the commercial and industrial struggles to which all the nations are condemned by the modern developments of economics. The reader who will apply my principles to any element whatever of civilisation, will be struck with the light they throw on history. Of course they are not sufficient to explain everything, but they give significance to many facts inexplicable without them. Above all, they explain that need of guidance which leaves the Latin races so disconcerted and timid before responsibilities, and which prevents them from succeeding in any enterprise in which they are not firmly conducted by their leaders ; it explains, too, their present leaning towards Socialism. When they have great statesmen, great generals, great diplomatists, great thinkers, great artists at their head, they show themselves capable of the greatest efforts. But leaders of genius are not always to be found, and in default of such the Latin peoples are insecure. With Napoleon they dominated the world. Later, commanded by incapable generals, they were the victims of the most lamentable catastrophes, and were powerless to resist those they had formerly so easily vanquished.[4] It is not without reason that these
166) nations are so ready to throw the responsibility of their reverses on their chiefs. They are worth what their masters are worth, and they know it. But it is always a misfortune for a nation to depend on a few personalities.
The Latin races must learn to walk alone. For the battle-fields of to-day, whether military or industrial, are so vast that no handful of men, however eminent, can direct all the combatants. In the present phase of the world the influence of men of great capacity is not indeed vanishing, but is becoming less and less a directing force. Authority is so dispersed that it must vanish. The modern man must no longer rely on any guardianship whatever, still less on that of Socialism than on any other. He must learn to count on no one but himself. It is for this fundamental necessity that education should prepare him, and it is for this reason that this education must be changed in entirety.
