ery public ceremony, people will take pride in
seeing their rector or principal in official costume seated alongside of
the general or prefect in full uniform.[6132]
The consideration awarded to their chief will reflect on them; they will
enjoy it along with him; they will say to themselves that they too, like
him and those under him, all together, form an elite; by degrees, they
will feel that they are all one body; they will acquire the spirit of
the association and attach themselves to the University, the same as a
soldier to his regiment or like a monk to his brethren in a monastery.
Thus, as in a monastic order, one must join the University by "going
into the orders."[6133]--"I want," says Napoleon, "some solemnity
attached to this act. My purpose is that the members of the corps of
instruction should contract, not as formerly, a religious engagement,
but a civil engagement before a notary, or before the justice of the
peace, or prefect, or other (officer).... They will espouse education
the same as their forerunners espoused the Church, with this difference,
that the marriage will not be as sacred, as indissoluble.[6134]... They
will engage themselves for three, six, or nine years, and not resign
without giving notice a certain number of years beforehand." To heighten
the resemblance, "the principle of celibacy must be established, in this
sense, that a man consecrated to teaching shall not marry until after
having passed through the first stages of his career; "for example, "the
schoolmasters shall not marry before the age of twenty-five or thirty
years, after having obtained a salary of three or four thousand francs
and economized something." But, at bottom, marriage, a family, private
life, all natural and normal matters in the great world of society, are
causes of trouble and weakness in a corps where individuals, to be
good organs, must give themselves up wholly and without reserve. "In
future,[6135] not only must schoolmasters, but, again, the principals
and censors of the lycees, and the principals and rulers of the
colleges, be restricted to celibacy and a life in common."--The
last complementary and significant trait, which gives to the secular
institution the aspect of a convent, is this: "No woman shall have a
lodging in, or be admitted into, the lycees and colleges."
Now, let us add to the monastic principle of celibacy the monastic and
military principle of obedience; the latter, in Napoleon's eye
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