He has spoken but little with his teachers, except to contest an injunction or grumble aloud against reproof.

Of real conversation, the acquisition and exchange of ideas, he has enjoyed none, except with his comrades: if, like him, all are internes, they can communicate to each other only their ignorance.

If day-scholars are admitted, they are active smugglers or willing agents who bring into the house and circulate forbidden books and obscene journals, along with the filthy provocative and foul atmosphere of the streets .-- Now, with excitement of this kind or in this manner, the brains of these captives, as puberty comes on and deliverance draws near, work actively and we know in what sense[6359] and in what counter-sense, how remote from observable and positive truth, how their imagination pictures society, man and woman, under what simple and coarse appearances, with what inadequacy and presumption, what appetites of liberated serfs and juvenile barbarians, how, as concerns women, their precocious and turbid dreams first become brutal and cynical,[6360] how, as concerns men, their unballasted and precipitous thought easily becomes chimerical and revolutionary.[6361] The downhill road is steep on the bad side, so that, to put on the brake and stop, then to remount the hill, the young man who takes the management of his life into his own hands, must know how to use his own will and persevere to the end.
But a faculty is developed only by exercise, and the French internat is the engine the most effective for hindering the exercise of this one .-- The youth, from the first to the last day of his internat, has never been able to deliberate on, choose and decide what he should do at any one hour of his schooldays; except to idle away time in study-hours, and pay no attention at recitations, he could not exercise his will.

Nearly every act, especially his outward attitudes, postures, immobility, silence, drill and promenades in rank, is only obedience to orders.

He has lived like a horse in harness, between the shafts of his cart; this cart itself, kept straight by its two wheels, must not leave the rectilinear ruts hollowed out and traced for it along the road; it is impossible for the horse to turn aside.