"This was what was then done whenever possible."[6390] Naturally, and through contagion, the obligation of possessing more knowledge descended to secondary instruction.

In effect, after this date, we see neo-Kantian philosophy descending like hail from the highest metaphysical ether down upon the pupils in the terminal class of the lycees, to the lasting injury of the seventeen-year old brains.

Again, after this date, we see in the class of special mathematics[6391] an abundance of complicated, confusing problems so that, today, the candidate for the Polytechnic School must, to gain admission, expound theorems that were only mastered by his father after he got there .-- Hence, "boxes" and "ovens", private internats, the preparatory secular or ecclesiastical schools and other "scholastic cramming-machines"; hence, the prolonged mechanical effort to introduce into each intellectual sponge all the scientific fluid it can contain, even to saturation, and maintain it in this extreme state of perfection if only for two hours during an examination, after which it may rapidly subside and shrink.

Hence, that mistaken use, that inordinate expenditure, that precocious waste of mental energy, and that entire pernicious system which overburden for a substantial period the young, not for their advantage, but, on reaching maturity, to their intellectual detriment.
To reach the uncultivated masses, to address popular intellect and imagination, one must use absolute, simple slogans.

In the matter of primary instruction, the simplest and most absolute slogan is that which promises and offers it to all children, boys and girls, not merely universal, but again, complete and gratuitous.