matters, languages, literature and
mathematics. He has spoken but little with his teachers, except
to contest an injunction or grumble aloud against reproof. Of real
conversation, the acquisition and exchange of ideas, he has enjoyed
none, except with his comrades: if, like him, all are internes, they
can communicate to each other only their ignorance. If day-scholars are
admitted, they are active smugglers or willing agents who bring into the
house and circulate forbidden books and obscene journals, along with
the filthy provocative and foul atmosphere of the streets.--Now, with
excitement of this kind or in this manner, the brains of these captives,
as puberty comes on and deliverance draws near, work actively and we
know in what sense[6359] and in what counter-sense, how remote from
observable and positive truth, how their imagination pictures society,
man and woman, under what simple and coarse appearances, with what
inadequacy and presumption, what appetites of liberated serfs and
juvenile barbarians, how, as concerns women, their precocious and turbid
dreams first become brutal and cynical,[6360] how, as concerns men,
their unballasted and precipitous thought easily becomes chimerical
and revolutionary.[6361] The downhill road is steep on the bad side, so
that, to put on the brake and stop, then to remount the hill, the young
man who takes the management of his life into his own hands, must know
how to use his own will and persevere to the end.

But a faculty is developed only by exercise, and the French internat
is the engine the most effective for hindering the exercise of this
one.--The youth, from the first to the last day of his internat, has
never been able to deliberate on, choose and decide what he should do
at any one hour of his schooldays; except to idle away time in
study-hours, and pay no attention at recitations, he could not exercise
his will. Nearly every act, especially his outward attitudes, postures,
immobility, silence, drill and promenades in rank, is only obedience to
orders. He has lived like a horse in harness, between the shafts of his
cart; this cart itself, kept straight by its two wheels, must not leave
the rectilinear ruts hollowed out and traced for it along the road; it
is impossible for the horse to turn aside. Besides, every morning he is
harnessed at the same hour, and every evening he is unharnessed at the
same hour; every day, at other hours, he has to rest and take his ration