Académie française

“ To fill one of the forty fauteuils of the Académie Française is the darling ambition of every eminent Frenchman of letters. There the poet, the philosopher, the historian, the man of science, sit side by side, and meet on equal ground. When a seat falls vacant, when a prize is to be awarded, when an anniversary is to be celebrated, the interest and excitement become intense. To the political, the fashionable, or the commercial world, these events are perhaps of little moment. They affect neither the Bourse nor the Budget. ”

“ L'Académie Française, L'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, L'Académie des Sciences, and L'Académie des Beaux Arts. In 1832 was added L'Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. Each academy has its own separate organisation and work, and participates besides in the advantages of the common library, archives, and funds. Election, which is in every case subject to government confirmation, is by ballot, and every member receives an annual salary of at least 1500 francs. Government votes a sum of money annually to the Institute. ”

“ The eighteenth century was pre-eminently the century of academic literature in France: far more so than the seventeenth, which had seen the foundation of the Académie Française. The word 'academy' in this sense was an invention of the Italian humanists, prompted by their Platonic, or perhaps by their Ciceronian, studies. Academies, or coteries of men of letters who united love of society with the cultivation of literature, became common in Italy during the sixteenth century, and from Italy were translated to France. ”

“ Each academy, except the Academie Française, which comprises a general reunion of all the other academies, is divided into sections for the consideration of special subjects, and is made up of members of the institute who are regarded as specialists, or acknowledged authorities in different departments of learning. ”

“ I think it not improbable, that much amusement may be found in the conversation of the members; but I [259] confine my recommendation to the advantages which the “Lycée” affords, as an easy source of profitable knowledge.
“L’Institut national,” that celebrated society, which has succeeded “l’académie française,” which is held up as the great republican repository of genius and learning, and into which admittance is solicited with so much eagerness, both at home and abroad, consists of one hundred and forty-four members resident at Paris, and of twenty-four foreign associates. ”

“ This, then, seems a not inappropriate moment for considering more closely in detail than has commonly been done, the circumstances attending the most successful experiment that the world has seen to create and sustain a public body whose duty it should be to guard the purity of a national language and to insure the permanence of its best literary forms. It will not be necessary here to do more than remind our readers that the Académie Française was not the earliest corporation in Europe, or even in France, which was formed for the purpose of carrying out these difficult and perilous designs. ”

“ Desirous of avoiding the extravagant and mystifying titles of the Italian academies, [275] they fixed on the most unaffected, "L'Académie Française; but though the national genius may disguise itself for a moment, it cannot be entirely got rid of, and they assumed a vaunting device of a laurel wreath, including their epigraph, "à l'Immortalité." The Academy of Petersburgh has chosen a more enlightened inscription, Paulatim ("little by little") , so expressive of the great labours of man—even of the inventions of genius! ”

“ Prior to the revolution not much attention was given to scientific studies in the schools. but inasmuch as the members of the academy had received the best education, both in science and in philosophy, which France could furnish, it was entirely natural that the common people should accept their opinions without hesitation. The members of the academy lived simply, gave their time to their favorite pursuits, and through their publications had large influence on the civilization of France and even of Europe. The work of the academy through the century was directed by a few able men. ”

“ The five faculties of medicine, law, science, literature and Protestant theology, and the higher school of pharmacy, form the body of faculties, the association of which is known as the University of Paris. The faculties of science and literature, together with their library, are established at the Sorbonne, which is also the seat of the académie, of which Paris is the centre, and of the École des chartes. ”

“ Academy, The French, founded in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, was the great authority in France in all matters of scholarship until it was disbanded during the French Revolution in 1793. Its members were forty of the first scholars of the country, who met three times a week. ”

“ An academy quite like the French Academy, a sovereign organ of the highest literary opinion, a recognised authority in matters of intellectual tone and taste, we shall hardly have, and perhaps ought not to wish to have. ”

“ Astier-Réhu advised me to say nothing, but to go about in Academic society. To show myself and be seen is the great point.
CHAPTER IV.
‘Don’t trust them, my dear Freydet. I know that trick; it’s the recruiting trick. The fact is, these people feel that their day is past, and that under their cupola they are beginning to get mouldy. The Académie is a taste that is going out, an ambition no longer in fashion. ”

“ Latin, Greek, and the higher mathematics, with a modicum of the physical sciences, constituted the favored curriculum of the old-time academy and college. How much some of us owe to that ancient academy and that small college can never be rightly estimated. ”

“ They have ranged themselves into four classes; the first is devoted to the improvement of natural philosophy, chemistry and mathematics, and is denominated the "Academy of Sciences;" the second makes the language and literature of France its care, and is called the "French Academy;" the third applies itself to history and ancient learning, and bears the title of the "Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres," and the fourth, the "Academy of the Fine Arts," is employed on music, painting, sculpture and architecture. ”

“ Those who looked forward to a University degree, or any career in which public examinations must play an important part, were placed on the "Collegiate" side, and trained accordingly in the necessary classics, mathematics and physics, which would fit them for matriculation, or as candidates for certain scholarships. ”

“ No ridicule can disestablish the importance of the work done by the Academy in keeping the French language pure, or the value of its Dictionary, or the incentive which it gives to good work by examining and reporting from time to time on literary, scientific, and historical works. ”

“ A point of considerable interest is the degree in which, since its foundation, the French Academy has or has not represented the best literary life of France. It appears from an examination of the lists of members that a surprising number of authors of the highest excellence have, from one cause or another, escaped the honour of academic ``immortality.'' When the academy was founded in 1634, the moment was not a very brilliant one in French letters. ”

“ It has substituted pomp for grandeur, school routine for individual inspiration, elaborateness for simplicity, fadeur and the monotony of literary orthodoxy for variety, the source and spring of intellectual life; and in the works produced under its auspices we discover the rhetorician and the writer, never the man. By all its traditions the academy was made to be the natural ornament of a monarchical society. ”

“ An Academician was a great man in embryo. And if every Vendome scholar would speak the truth, he would confess that, in later life, an Academician of the great French Academy seemed to him far less remarkable than the stupendous boy who wore the cross and the imposing red ribbon which were the insignia of our "Academy." ”

“ But generally it is admitted that college training is one thing, and work in a university is another; that thorough instruction in language, history, mathematics, natural and physical sciences, and in morals, should precede the discipline of professional schools and the pursuit of the higher and more advanced studies in letters and science. In a complete university provision should be made, according to ancient and widespread usages, for the study of law, medicine and theology ”

“ Some of these opponents have gone so far as to assert that the customary college degree, Bachelor of Arts, stands as definitely for Latin and Greek as the degree M.D. stands for the study of medicine. Now, inasmuch as the college is the school in which, according to the best authorities, our young people are expected to gain a higher degree of education than the lower schools, academies, and high-schools can give them, the question. What constitutes the basis of higher education? ”

“ The French and German, and for that matter the English, too, in most of our colleges, are mere child's play, where they are not broad and ridiculous farces, the butt of students and professors alike. Let some of our colleges inaugurate the reform: lay out a "modern" course for admission and for college on the same general principle as the classical course—few subjects, but long-continued and detailed study in each of them—and insist on as thorough and vigorous work as they do in their Latin and Greek, and then, after a fair trial, compare results. ”

“ There was a chair of experimental physics at the College of Navarre of the University of Paris and at the Universities of Toulouse and Montpelier, and natural history was also taught at the more independent College of France, but, as a whole, education was dominated largely by humanism. However, with the establishment of the republic a new régime began in education, as in other matters, and science entered more largely into higher and secondary instruction. ”

“ The Collège de France is, at the present day, in this country, and perhaps in the rest of Europe, the only establishment where every branch of human knowledge is taught in its fullest extent. The object of this institution is to spread the most elevated notions of the sciences, to maintain and pave the way to the progress of literature, either by preserving the taste and purity of the ancient authors, or by exhibiting the order, lustre, and richness of the modern. ”

“ There are too many academies calling themselves 'college' or even 'university,' with high grade curriculum and low grade requirements, with long lists of pupils in preparatory classes of one sort or another and very short lists of students in so-called college classes. ”

“ Matthew Arnold’s plea for an English academy of letters to save his countrymen from the note of vulgarity and provinciality has met with no response. Academies have been supplanted, socially by the modern club, and intellectually by societies devoted to special branches of science. Those that survive from the past serve, like the Heralds’ College, to set an official stamp on literary and scientific merit. The principal academies of Europe, past and present, may be dealt with in various classes, according to the subjects to which they are devoted. ”

“ All our schools therefore are eminently classical. The University follows, as a matter of course, and then the University leads to a liberal profession, as surely as one step of a ladder conducts to another. ”

“ Not being bound up with the colleges, as the earlier Latin grammar schools had largely been, the academies became primarily independent institutions, taking pupils who had completed the English education of the common school and giving them an advanced education in modern languages, the sciences, mathematics, history, and the more useful subjects of the time, with a view to "rounding out" their studies and preparing them for business life and the rising professions. ”

“ The University was governed, the University was taught, by the graduates at large. Professor, Master, Doctor, were originally synonymous. Every graduate had an equal right of teaching publicly in the University the subjects competent to his faculty, and to the rank of his degree; nay, every graduate incurred the obligation of teaching publicly, for a certain period, the subjects of his faculty, for such was the condition involved in the grant of the degree itself." Sir William Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, etc.: Education, chapter 4. EDUCATION: Modern: European Countries. ”

“ When the term "university" first came into use is unknown. It is met with in the statutes (1215) which, among other matters, define the limits of age for teaching. A master in the arts must not lecture under twenty-one; of theology under thirty-five. Every master must undergo an examination as to qualification and moral fitness at the Episcopal Chancellor's Court. Early in the twelfth century the four faculties of Law, Medicine, [Pg 99] Arts and Theology were formed and the national groups reduced to four: French, Picards, Normans and English. ”

“ In the first draft of the new Institute, October 25, 1795, no class corresponded exactly to the old Academy of Inscriptions; but most of the members who survived found themselves re-elected either in the class of moral and political science, under which history and geography were included as sections, or more generally under the class of literature and fine arts, which embraced ancient languages, antiquities and monuments.
In 1816 the academy received again its old name. The Proceedings of the society embrace a vast field, and are of very various merits. ”

“ Those who would try to define the secondary education of this country, will not succeed, or, if they do survive and reach the other shore, will emerge from their Odyssey as exhausted as the much-travelled and much-troubled Ulysses. The French, very logically, have their primary, secondary, and tertiary, education ”