Five or six years are necessary.

Two years are necessary between the baccalaureat es-lettres and the various licenses es-lettres or sciences, and from these to the corresponding aggregations two, three years, and often more.

Three years of preparatory studies in mathematics and of desperate application lead the young man to the threshold of the Ecole Polytechnique; after that, after two years in school and of no less sustained effort, the future engineer passes three not less laborious years at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees or des Mines, which amounts to eight years of professional preparation.[6367] Elsewhere, in the other schools, it is the same thing with more or less excess.

Observe how days and hours are spent during this long period.[6368] The young men have attended lecture-courses, masticated and re-masticated manuals, abbreviated abridgments, learned by heart mementos and formulae, stored their memories with a vast multitude of generalities and details.

Every sort of preliminary information, all the theoretical knowledge which, even indirectly, may serve them in their future profession or which is of service in neighboring professions, are classified in their brains, ready to come forth at the first call, and, as proved by the examination, disposable at a minute; they possess them, but nothing otherwise or beyond.