Sound as many of these considerations undoubtedly are, they come from the Renan, who wrote in the years 1848-9 _L’Avenir de la Science_. He lived long enough to see that these truths had complements, that there might be, even ethically, another side. In speaking of Progress this has been noted: in his later years he forecasted the coming of an era of egoism, of national and industrial selfishness, working itself out in policies of military imperialism among the nations, and of economic greed and tyranny among the proletariat. His remarks about the virtuous action of the worker bettering his lot were inspired by the socialism of Saint-Simon. Renan did not at that time raise in his own mind the question of the workers themselves carrying their reaction so far, that it, although just at first, might reach a point where it became a dictatorship decreed by self-interest alone. It is in Renouvier that we find this danger more clearly indicated. In so far as Renan felt it, his solution was that which he suggested for the elimination of all social wickedness— namely, the increase of education. He looked upon wickedness as a symptom of a lack of culture, particularly the lack of any moral teaching.
It was precisely this point, the education of the democracy, morally no less than intellectually, which presented a certain difficulty to the French Republic when, after several unsuccessful attempts, the plan for state education of a compulsory, gratuitous and secular character was carried in 1882, largely through the efforts of Jules Ferry.[4]
[4] In 1848 Hippolyle Carnot had this plan ready. The fall of the Ministry, in which he was Minister of Education, was due partly to the discussion raised by Renouvier’s book (see p. 61 of the present work). With the fall of the Ministry, and in 1851, of the Republic, the scheme went too. France had to wait eleven years longer than England for free, compulsory education. Her educational problem has always been complicated by the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church to religious education and its hostility to “lay” schools. Brilliant as France is intellectually, there are numbers of her people who do not read or write owing to the delay of compulsory state education. The latest census, that of 1921, asked the question, “_Savez-vous à la fois lire et écrire?_” in order to estimate this number.