When the proportion of postponements reaches between 50 and 555 the examiners admit with groans, considering the hard times, candidates of which they would reject at least one half their hands were not tied." (This was 100 years ago, today less than 30% on the average, but more than 70% in certain bad areas, fail their Baccalaureat.

The curriculum has, however, been lightened so that about 50% of the population may end up passing their baccalaureat.

Democracy oblige.

(SR.))] [Footnote 6377: A machine for the forced feeding of ducks and geese to make their liver grow to excessive proportions.] [Footnote 6378: An old professor, after thirty years of service, observed to me by way of summing up: "One half, at least, of our pupils are not fitted to receive the instruction we give them."] [Footnote 6379: Lately, the director of one of these schools remarked with great satisfaction and still greater naivete: "This school is superior to all others of its kind in Europe, for nowhere else is what we teach taught in the same number of years."] [Footnote 6380: But what if Taine was mistaken?
What if he, like so many other highly talented and intelligent men, took his own superb intelligence and imagination for granted?
What if the talent of such men is inherited?
We know from identical twins how many of our particularities have been given to us at birth.

What if most men are lazy and especially intellectually so, what if we can only be made to learn and think when under great stress, the stress introduced by fear of dismissal or hope of promotion or riches?
Then the French system is perhaps hard, perhaps expensive but certainly useful in producing the great number of hardworking and competent and passively obedient supervisors and civil servants that any large organization needs.