After such a novitiate, he was competent to form a judgment in civil or criminal cases with experience, competency and authority.

From the age of twenty-five, he was prepared for and capable of serious duties.

He had only to live and perfect himself to become an administrator, deputy or minister, a dignitary as we see under the first Empire, under the Restoration, under the July monarchy, that is to say the best informed, well-balanced, judicious political character and, at length, the man of highest consideration of his epoch.[6373] Such is also the process which, still at the present day (1890), in England and in America secures future ability in the various professions.

In the hospital, in the mine, in factories, with the architect, with the lawyer, the pupil, taken very young, goes through his apprenticeship and subsequent stages about the same as a clerk with us in an office or an art-student in the studio.

Preliminarily and before entering it, he has attended some general seminary lecture which serves him as a ready-made basis for the observations he is about to make.