Thus, the youth goes from the family into the school, without painful or sudden contrast, and remains under a system of things which suits his age and which is a continuation, only enlarged, of domestic life.[6352] The French college or lycee is quite the opposite.

It operates against the true spirit of the school, and has done so for eighty years being an enterprise of the State, a local extension of a central enterprise, one of the hundred branches of the great State university trunk, possessing no roots of its own and with a directing or teaching staff composed of functionaries similar to others, that is to say transferable,[6353] restless and preoccupied with promotion, their principal motive for doing well being the hope of a higher rank and of getting a better situation.

This almost separate them in advance from the establishment in which they labor and,[6354] besides that, they are led, pushed on, and restrained from above, each in his own particular sphere and in his limited duty.

The principal (proviseur) is confined to his administrative position and the professor to his class, expressly forbidden to leave it.

No professor is "under any pretext to receive in his house as boarders or day-scholars more than ten pupils."[6355] No woman is allowed to lodge inside the lycee or college walls, all,--proviseur, censor, cashier, chaplain, head-masters and assistants, fitted by art or force to each other like cog-wheels, with no deep sympathy, with no moral tie, without collective interests, a cleverly designed machine which, in general, works accurately and smoothly, but with no soul because, to have a soul, it is of prime necessity to have a living body.