submitted to a process of selection. Nurserymen sort and select seeds
in much the same way. To this process the Government brings
professional appraisers of talent, men who can assay brains as experts
assay gold at the Mint. Five hundred such heads, set afire with hope,
are sent up annually by the most progressive portion of the
population; and of these the Government takes one-third, puts them in
sacks called the Ecoles, and shakes them up together for three years.
Though every one of these young plants represents vast productive
power, they are made, as one may say, into cashiers. They receive
appointments; the rank and file of engineers is made up of them; they
are employed as captains of artillery; there is no (subaltern) grade
to which they may not aspire. Finally, when these men, the pick of the
youth of the nation, fattened on mathematics and stuffed with
knowledge, have attained the age of fifty years, they have their
reward, and receive as the price of their services the third-floor
lodging, the wife and family, and all the comforts that sweeten life
for mediocrity. If from among this race of dupes there should escape
some five or six men of genius who climb the highest heights, is it
not miraculous?

This is an exact statement of the relations between Talent and Probity
on the one hand and Government and Society on the other, in an age
that considers itself to be progressive. Without this prefatory
explanation a recent occurrence in Paris would seem improbable; but
preceded by this summing up of the situation, it will perhaps receive
some thoughtful attention from minds capable of recognizing the real
plague-spots of our civilization, a civilization which since 1815 as
been moved by the spirit of gain rather than by principles of honor.