Instead of creating a moral force within him, the long and strict internat has maintained moral debility.

He yields to opportunity, to example; he goes with the current, he floats without a rudder, he lets himself drift.

As far as hygiene, or money, or sex, is concerned, his mistakes and his follies, great or small, are almost inevitable, while it is an average chance if, during his three, four or five years of full license, he does not become entirely corrupt.
IV.

Cramming and Exams Compared to Apprenticeship Another vice of the system .-- Starting-point of superior instruction in France .-- Substitution of special State schools for free encyclopedic universities .-- Effect of this substitution .-- Examinations and competitions .-- Intense, forced and artificial culture .-- How it reaches an extreme.
-- Excess and prolongation of theoretical studies.
-- Insufficiency and tardiness of practical apprenticeship.
-- Comparison of this system with others, between France before 1789 and England and the United States .-- Lost forces.
-- Mistaken use and excessive expenditure of mental energy .-- -- The entire body of youth condemned to it after 1889.
Let us now consider another effect of the primitive institution, not less pernicious.

On leaving the lycee after the philosophy class, the system supposes that a general education is fully obtained; there is not question of a second one, ulterior and superior, that of universities.
In place of these encyclopedic universities, of which the object is free teaching and the free progress of knowledge, it establishes special State schools, separate from each other, each confined to a distinct branch, each with a view to create, verify and proclaim a useful capacity, each devoted to leading a young man along, step by step, through a series of studies and tests up to the title or final diploma which qualifies him for his profession, a diploma that is indispensable or, at least, very useful since, without it, in many cases, one has no right to practice his profession and which, thanks to it, in all cases, enables one to enter on a career with favor and credit, in fair rank, and considerably promoted .-- On entering most careers called liberal, a first diploma is exacted, that of bachelor of arts, or bachelor of sciences, sometimes both, the acquisition of which is now a serious matter for all French youth, a daily and painful preoccupation.