Guizot, the minister, propose to remove it:
"I did not find," says he,[26] "any strong public opinion which
induced me to carry out any general and urgent measure in higher
instruction. In the matter of superior instruction the public, at
this time, . . . was not interested in any great idea, or prompted by
any impatient want. . . . Higher education as it was organized and
given, sufficed for the practical needs of society, which regarded it
with a mixture of satisfaction and indifference."
In the matter of education, not only at this third stage but again for
the first two stages, public opinion so far as aims, results, methods
and limitations is concerned, was apathetic. That wonderful science
which, in the eighteenth century, with Jean-Jacques, Condillac,
Valentin, Hally, Abb? de l'Ep?e and so many others, sent forth such
powerful and fruitful jets, had dried up and died out; transplanted to
Switzerland and Germany, pedagogy yet lives but it is dead on its
native soil.[27] There is no longer in France any persistent research
nor are there any fecund theories on the aims, means, methods, degrees
and forms of mental and moral culture, no doctrine in process of
formation and application, no controversies, no dictionaries and
special manuals, not one well-informed and important Review, and no
public lectures.
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