ndergo the internat, ecclesiastic or secular. This is peculiar to
France, and is due to the way in which Napoleon, in 1806, seized on and
perverted all school enterprises.[6347]

Before 1789, in France, this enterprise, although largely trammeled and
impeded by the State and the Church, was not violated in principle nor
perverted in essence; still at the present day, in Germany, in England,
in the United States, it exists and is developed in accordance with its
nature. It is admitted to be a private enterprise,[6348] the collective
and spontaneous work of several associates voluntarily bound together,
old founders, actual and future benefactors, masters and parents and
even scholars,[6349] each in his place and function, under a statute
and according to tradition, in such a way as to continue functioning
indefinitely, in order to provide, like a gas company on its own
responsibility, at its own risk and expense, a provider of services for
those who want it; in other terms, the school enterprise must, like any
other undertaking, render acceptable what it offers thereby satisfying
the needs of its clients.--Naturally, it adapts itself to these needs;
its directors and those concerned do what is necessary. With hands free,
and grouped around an important interest evidently for a common purpose,
mutually bound and veritable associates not only legally but in feeling,
devoted to a local enterprise and local residents for many years, often
even for life, they strive not to offend the profound repugnance of the
young and of families. They therefore make the necessary arrangements
internally and with the parents.[6350]

That is why, outside of France, the French internat, so artificial,
so forced, so exaggerated, is almost unknown. In Germany, out of one
hundred pupils in the gymnases, which correspond to our lycees, there
are scarcely ten boarders lodged and fed in the gymnase; the rest, even
when their parents do not live near by, remain day-scholars, private
guests in the families that harbor them, often at a very low price and
which take the place of the absent family. No boarders are found in
them except in a few gymnases like Pforta and by virtue of an ancient
endowment. The number, however, by virtue of the same endowment, is
limited; they dine, in groups of eight or ten,[6351] at the same table
with the professors lodged like themselves in the establishment,
while they enjoy for a playground a vast domain of woods, fiel