In fact, it is for himself that he works, for himself alone, and not
at all for the Church whose ascendancy would prejudice his own; much
better, in private conversation, he declares that he had wished to
supplant it: his object in forming the University is first and
especially "to take education out of the hands of the priests.[54]
They consider this world only as a vehicle for transportation to the
other," and Napoleon wants "the vehicle filled with good soldiers for
his armies," good functionaries for his administrations, and good,
zealous subjects for his service. - And, thereupon, in the decree
which organizes the University, and following after this phrase
written for effect, he states the real and fundamental truth.
"All the schools belonging to the University shall take for the basis
of their teaching loyalty to the Emperor, to the imperial monarchy to
which the happiness of the people is confided and to the Napoleonic
dynasty which preserves the unity of France and of all liberal ideas
proclaimed by the Constitutions."
In other terms, the object is to plant civil faith in the breasts of
children, boys and young men, to make them believe in the beauty,
goodness and excellence of the established order of things, to
predispose their minds and hearts in favor of the system, to adapt
them to this system,[55] to the concentration of authority and to the
centralization of services, to uniformity and to "falling into line"
(encadrement), to equality in obeying, to competition, to enthusiasm,
in short, to the spirit of the reign, to the combinations of the
comprehensive and calculating mind which, claiming for itself and
appropriating for its own use the entire field of human action, sets
up its sign-posts everywhere, its barriers, its rectilinear
compartments, lays out and arranges its racecourses, brings together
and introduces the runners, urges them on, stimulates them at each
stage, reduces their soul to the fixed determination of getting ahead
fast and far, leaving to the individual but one motive for living,
that of the desire to figure in the foremost rank in the career where,
now by choice and now through force, he finds himself enclosed and
launched.
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