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, Abbe de l'Epee 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.[6327] 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.

Now an experimental science is simply the summing-up of many diverse experiences, freely attempted, freely discussed and verified.

Through the forced results of the university monopoly there are no actual universities: among other results of the Napoleonic institution, one could after 1808 note, the decadence of pedagogy and foresee its early demise.