the administrative service which is the most qualified to sympathise with Positivism, for the regime which it proclaims not only does not suppress the class, but will raise it in the estimation of the patricians, as their permanent auxiliary in the discharge of their political functions. These modest and laborious servants, on whom rests at the present day the uninterrupted maintenance of public order in the midst of spiritual disorder, well deserve the infusion of new power they will get, when they draw from the Positive schools, by free competition, the recruits they want, as sub-prefects, commissioners of police, and clerks.

After all however, both from the general and the special point of view, it is the physicians who will be most benefited by the institution, as having, since we shook off the yoke of Theocracy, become, more and more, the natural precursors of the Sociocratic priesthood. The tendency of modern science to degenerate into academical pedantry shocks at once their social aspirations and their predisposition to synthesis, as it transfers to the cosmologists, and more especially to the geometricians, that leadership in science, which, as the result of the Middle Ages, normally devolved on the biologists. More fully emancipated, more progressive than any other class, the physicians, though a provisional class, alone knew how to use aright the just censure of Molière, being stimulated by it to shake off the fetters of Metaphysics and literature, with the result of becoming the best support of nascent Positivism. Though I have always spoken freely of the materialism and the venality of the profession, I always found there valuable sympathies with the Positive teaching, as a doctrine which raises its social importance and its scientific independence by incorporating its function into those of the priesthood of Humanity. In this historical judgment, it is not solely nor even chiefly the pure biologists that I have in view; they are already too deteriorated by the academical indiscipline to be qualified for hearty cooperation in the work of mental and moral reorganisation. I have more confidence in the higher order of practitioners, whose apparent contempt of medical theories is but the expression of their instinctive sense of the futility of partial syntheses. At bottom, they are the most predisposed of all to promote the regeneration of their profession, one in

The School value in

of most

Medicine.

Measures for the regene

medical pro

fession.

which the higher minds have constantly to strive against imminent degradation.

Such considerations as these led me, when planning the ration of the transitional institution of Positive schools, to treat them as especially meant for the medical profession in the ordinary sense of the term. Such schools may act directly on the doctors, on whom the government confers a legal status by entrusting them with a sanitary office, such trust justifying it in exacting certain intellectual and moral conditions. The intellectual guarantee will be a consequence of their encyclopædic training, the type of which is given in the Positive school; to satisfy the moral will consist in their formally renouncing all private practice, in order to devote themselves properly to the service of the public, such service of course to be suitably remunerated. Three grades in succession, determined, as in other cases, by competition, seniority, and choice, will receive annual salaries of three thousand, six thousand, and twelve thousand francs, the same scale as the priesthood. To encourage hierarchical subordination in a class which, in its own nature, is averse to discipline, each functionary will superintend the practice, whether it be the treatment of persons or the service of public health, of the two physicians beneath him in rank who shall be specially attached to him. Hospitals are an institution exclusively adapted to the Middle Ages and destined to disappear utterly, in proportion as the increase of material comfort, coinciding with increased selfrespect in the working classes, shall allow us to substitute for a degrading assistance the careful attention of the family. But the change must be gradual, and it is desirable to further it by establishing on a large scale, during the whole course of the transitional period, public physicians with the duty of directing gratuitously the medical treatment of patients at their own homes.

Hospitals.

Degrees

abolished,

cal corpora

tions, nursing institutions included.

To complete the regeneration of the medical profession we and all medi- must rid it of a mischievous monopoly, and of alien assistants. The legal privilege conferred by the doctor's degree really only benefits the charlatan from whom it apparently protects the public, whereas there is no real protection for it against the practical consequences of our intellectual anarchy, aggravated as it is by ignorance and credulity. This legal sanction is the main support of an useless course of instruction, which would ere this have fallen into discredit, were it not for this

power of conferring a monopoly of medical advice. At issue alike with the dignity of the priesthood and with spiritual freedom, the rule is a clog at once on the affectionate care of women and the generosity of the patrician class. But whilst we put an end to this oppressive influence at headquarters, we must not respect it in the subalterns, with whom its evils are often increased by superstition and hypocrisy. Involved in the general suppression of the ecclesiastical budget, the corporations, above all those of women, on which the reactionary movement conferred the monopoly of nursing, will thus lose, without hope of recovery, a privilege of which all physicians feel the inconveniences, both in public and private life. If any one wishes to devote himself to the service of the sick, for a time or for a permanence, he should be able to do so freely, without joining or being dependent on any brotherhood or sisterhood, where pride and vanity are fostered under the cloke of a selfdevotion more apparent than real.

The destination of the Positive schools during the transition having been sufficiently explained, we must give the general plan of their organisation, which will most differ from that of the normal state in that the pupils are secluded during the three years of their encyclopædic noviciate. This exceptional measure rests on the necessity of withdrawing a picked body of young men from the influences of the sceptical and corrupt milieu which they are to be one great means of regenerating. If magistrates, diplomatists, administrators, and above all physicians are to become, by training, the auxiliaries or precursors of the Positive priesthood, it is allimportant that during their intellectual and moral instruction they be not exposed to the disturbing influences of such milieu. But the risks of the scholastic cloister-life will be diminished by the age of the pupils, an age allowing in all cases the previous careful cultivation of the domestic affections, none being admitted till after the completion of their twentieth year. A competent governor, usually chosen from the, retired practicians, will make it his especial aim to encourage in the school the continual subordination of the intellect to the heart, in view of a social mission with no alloy of monopoly, with the further aid derived from the diversity of callings and classes.

The better to attain the grand object of the institution, it is urgent that the French nation, which is to bear the whole ex

General orthe Positive

ganisation of

schools.

The School the Western

open to all

Nations.

All will be able to uti

lise their final certificate.

The languages to be learnt.

A school in each of the

17 governments.

pense, should use it to evidence the Occidental character of its action, by throwing it open within due limits to each of its immediate neighbours. During the whole of their existence, however, and it has a natural limit in the organic transition, the schools must not admit candidates from nations not included in the advanced guard of Humanity, a restriction intended to preserve the homogeneous character requisite for their success. But, as the instruction will always be public, the Eastern populations may be represented by out-pupils, most frequently volunteers, but at times specially nominated in accordance with the wishes of the government whose subjects they are.

There is no reason to fear that the want of a direct social mission will isolate the other pupils from the French, in such a way as to diminish energy and the continuity of exertions, from a disparity in zeal in two groups of invariably equal numbers. The non-existence of any monopoly places both on an equality of uncertainty in reference to their future career, any claims they may have being derived exclusively from an education and a reputation which they share in common. the particular grounds on which the encyclopædic institution rests for its justification are of universal application, the pupils from the other Western nations, admitted, educated, and judged in the same way as the French, will turn to as good purpose as these last their final diploma.

As

To give freer play to the intellectual and moral influences of such intermixture of the nations, the French candidates are to know two Western languages, one Southern, the other Northern, and all the pupils will be bound to acquire by their own efforts, during their noviciate of three years, the Western languages they do not know. This regulation includes also the two sources of Western unity, as a consequence of the obligation to bring with them a knowledge of Latin and to acquire that of Greek. By putting the heavier pressure on the nation, which least recognises the common duty, to make it learn the languages of its neighbours, the law will be a wholesome stimulus to it to promote the formation of one universal language, a process at once spontaneous and systematic.

Considering the nature and aim of the Positive school, its normal type must be established at Paris, a hundred French candidates being annually admitted, with twenty-five from each of the other populations, Italian, Spanish, British and German.

At no great interval, however, the central dictatorial government should form a similar school in each provincial capital, with half the above numbers, but in all cases with a total of the Western pupils equal to the total of the French. The permanent need of unity of direction and of discipline in these seventeen nurseries will naturally induce the executive power to entrust their government and the choice of all their functionaries to the head of the Positive priesthood, alone competent to the task. The first recognition by the State of the High Priest of Humanity will consequently be in his quality of Director-General of the Positive schools. By discharging the office gratuitously, he will maintain the independence which his nomination to this post implies and facilitates, not letting himself be drawn by any seduction to depend for his subsistence on aught but the voluntary contributions of the true believers.

study.

I may here dispense with any explanations as to the ency- Course of clopædic teaching, the only difference between the transitional and the final state, in regard to it, being the reduction of the noviciate to three years, each year devoted to one of the three pairs of abstract sciences. The last year alone will have three courses of lectures, the object being that Biology and Sociology may lead up to and end in Morals, first as science, then as art. Each of the seven courses, which are always in succession, never simultaneous, will consist, as in the normal state, of forty lectures, three a week, with a month for preparation and examination between the two subjects of each year, so as to leave three months' vacation after devoting ten weeks to the final examinations. But in the last year it will be necessary to have four lectures in the week, and to suppress the usual interval, for which there is not the same necessity, as the period of leaving is at hand. In regard to the first pair of 'sciences, the exceptional duplication of lectures is not necessary, owing to the knowledge previously acquired by the candidates, who are bound to know all the theories of geometry and mechanics which are fairly independent of the transcendental calculus. The better to ensure the synthetical character of the teaching, the courses of lectures, which begin each year after the festival of Humanity, will be preceded, in the case of the new students, by seven lectures on the First Philosophy. The great guarantee, however, that the teaching will not degenerate into mere academical pedantry, will, as in the normal state, be the obli