Translation:Manifesto on integral education

by Paul Robin

I. The education of children

Among the difficult problems which the current generation should resolve, one of the most important is the education of children.

For many people, we seem to have found the solution to this vast question in the development of popular education as it exists. Socialism should necessarily establish a new point of view.

What goal does popular education propose? To give the child of the people basic notions in some branches of human knowledge, notions which will always be totally useless to the wage-worker in practical life. Against this, mystical beliefs are imposed on him that will falsify his understanding and eternally abandon him to things as they are. Class distinctions, which is fundamental to social organization today, is sustained above all by the inequalities facing educational resources. For the bourgeoise, who have the capital, science; for the people, who possess nothing more than misery, work. Science and work together would free the world. Their separation prolongs our moral and material slavery. Work needs scientific discoveries, to procure for humanity all possible well-being. Since science is the humble servant of capital, too much to less isn’t more than the accomplice of the oppressors of labor.

How can we end this? Arrebatando the monopoly over science from the bourgeoise. For them it is precisely social revolution and the organization of integral education. We say the social revolution, because all the privileges of the bourgeoise are guaranteed by governments, which distribute education following the will of the privileged class, and which as a consequence, if we want them to free us from bourgeois domination, it is exactly to [suprimir] governments that serve them help; we say integral education, because only by this can each individual acquire all the scientific and professional, theoretical and practical [conocimientos?] knowledges that their aptitudes permit them to [abarcar].

How can integral education be organized?

Up to the present, this system of education hasn’t been put into practice anywhere; due to the lack of experience to help us to resolve the majority of the points in question, for example: Which are the different systems of teaching we will use? How should the interior of the school-shop be organized, where integral education will be imparted? Should there be a special establishment in each community, or various communities [aprovecharan] the same establishment? Should the costs be sustained by workers’ associations that make up the community, or only by the children's parents, obliged by the means of a contract? In what manner should the docent body be organized? Its practice will necessarily bring a mass of various questions to light.

We believe that is isn’t good to make integral education an a priori system, [because?], like in all the sciences, before establishing any positive laws it is necessary to experiment. However, some general [hints? / indications] can already be given today. We found them intending to determine the reciprocal rights of society, of the child and the parents, respect of each for one another.

Society is an organized body composed of individuals. If they [pretended] to have some [superior] [rights] to this society, the social bond would be dissolved, the individuals would free themselves [among] a bloody war maybe, and after they have destroyed the social right, the individual right would be annihilated at the same time.

The social right has its origin in solidarity, the individual right in liberty. Liberty of each one is found limited by natural laws of human solidarity. It is no more than that in society as the individual can arrive at the complete development of her faculties, as a consequence she should achieve all the liberties that the exercise of her faculties can provide her. Adopting the social pact, the man abdicates a part of his natural liberty in order to receive in exchange the protection of all and the benefits resulting from collective action. He can then, [to] observe the relations of man with society as the result of a natural contract between the individual and the collectivity. It’s nothing absolute, society doesn’t act as a power outside of man, that has its authority in a higher origin to individual freedom; on the contrary, this social contract is the product of putting into action the individual freedoms, which are voluntarily united to create a collective power destined to better secure its exercise.

We see now the relations between this collectivity and the education of children. Neither are individualities are developed, energetic, and freely expansive in all their skills, nor the action that these exercise over the aumenta together; [so], neither does society acquire power and ability to procure the moral and material well-being of all its members. Societies therefore have a clear interest in the complete development of the human faculties of the individuals that compose it. That means that it has the right to exigir each one of its members the acquisition of all the knowledges necessary to complement their social functions, so as the duty to procure them all the means possible to acquire scientific and professional, theoretical and practical knowledges, that are indispensable to each human being.

The right to education is equal for all; it would be unjust for society to concede more to some than to others. Society has to give therefore, an equal education to each one of its members; that is to say, it should colocar to each child in the possibility to develop her faculties, to acuire all the knowledges that share her skills and to learn a role following her desire.

To follow this proposition education will have to be imparted in community establishments where each child will have access, where they can simultaneously develop their mind and their muscles, to learn at the same time science and a job. It will be without a doubt the social community that puts in charge of the installation of a school-shop; as all the individuals components of this collectivity restringida have the same right to the vigilance of education of that, later will be their associates, it is the conjunto of the inhabitants of a community who regulate that which concerns the organization and the administration of the educational establishment.

But, if we will say, and the right of parents?

Giving birth to a child, a mother and father give to society a new member: desde then this child should have a superior right to the parents, for all that concerns the social education of the recently born. From the same form that an individual, prevalenciendo in her natural liberty, refusing the moral and material aid of society, prejudices the collectivity, quiebra therefore the social pact; also a mother a father who, taking refuge in the natural rights that they have over their child, negate from society the right to instruct this child breaking the same manner the social pact.

But if a parent wants to educate her own child outside of the public establishments, do they not have a right to do so? We respond that the integral education, that tries to give to the child isn’t possible except through collective action; and that a special education, such as today a millionaire can give his children, is far inferior to that which will be received in the educational establishments of regenerated society to each of the pueblo’s children.

It remains clear that the affection of parents and children should be scrupulously respected, and nobody traba should be interposed for its free manifestation.

Here are our conclusions:

Society has the right and the duty to give each one of its members as complete an education as possible.

This education cannot be anything but integral education.

The most practical mode of organization appears to us to be the creation of an establishment in each social community, that would support the expenses and would reglamentaria everything concerning its administration.

The teaching programs will be established by competent people and modified following the experiences llevadas a cabo.

The organization of integral education should be one of the principal tasks that will occupy primarily the people called on to reconstruct the social edifice, after the revolution has made a blank slate out of today’s institutions.

Manifesto

I

The century which is ending will not have passed in vain. A furrow has opened in history which nobody will erase. A revolution has eben accomplished, deeper than those which shook empires: something has changed in the form of happening of the human spirit. It is thought of in a different way than in previous times. And this is certain, that those who relive the past through history are always obliged to make personal efforts to understand men and the events of those times so near in time, but distant in the distance covered. You seem to be transported to another world in the midst of beings of a different nature.

This great historical phenomenon, the birth of science, to which no others can compare, belongs to our epoch. The geniuses of other times have been no more than precursors, their great discoveries only sparks. Today, science is established. It possesses, furthermore, its tools, its methods; it makes its analyses in depth; constructs great syntheses; at the same time, it recreates the human brain under a new form opposed to the old world. Science and the spirit of science are everywhere. Whoever thinks, does so according to its formulas and those who want to combat it are forced to adopt its language(1). Its influence even penetrates to the social [capas] deep, although indirectly, and through its material productions, its machines, its railroads and telegraph it changes ways of life and the direction of ideas. Irresistible transformation: to put on the brakes is as impossible as stopping a planet in its orbit.

All relates to it, all is entwined with it: our worldview as such of the universe and of its laws, of man and society, morality as such, and teaching as well. The old world had [lo suyo de] its own worldview authoritarian, limited, negative, tending to belittle life, in perfect agreement with its vapid philosophy and its morality built in a vacuum. With a no less rigorous logic, the modern spirit, the spirit of science imposes a completely opposed ideal of education; of a positive, emancipatory and extensive [broader than usual] education, its goal being the enlargement of the being and the development of all its activities, an irrefutable consequence of a new concept of the natural[ness] of life, of human destiny and of the social organism. It imposes this. To save in teaching that which isn't in ideas, nor in customs, to educate children of the twentieth century as if they had to live in the thirteenth, is a contradictory and violent state that cannot be endured: nothing lasts against logic.

Our epoch has been one of doubt and transition. Beyond the sadness which all have felt, and which either hasn't been understood or nobody wants to say the deep reason for. Each one of us, in her own being and on her own account, has had to remake this labrious history of the century. We have received from our parents, not only an obscure cerebral inheritance, but all the symbols of the old world, the deeply distinctive character of pre-scientific ideas. Therefore it is necessary for us, entering an epoch where thought is predominant, to forget before we learn, to destroy before we build, and on another plane, to remake stone by stone the edifice of our education. Difficult and thankless work, which cannot be done without personal suffering. More than one has been left destroyed, and many have stopped midway, associating in their mind, it isn't known how, disparate ideas, irreconcilable, resuming in themselves all the intellectual disorder of their time.

We don't pledge ourselves to a similar task to whom will come after us. We do, if possible, so that our children's souls can have a soul be more tranquil than our own, that they ignore our fights and contradictions. Let us leave them a happy infancy of the heart, a simple and fair spirit faced with realities, an imagination not haunted by ghosts. Let us prepare them not as is too often said, in view of the struggle to survive, but in mutual aid for life, in the hope of social reconciliation. That the generation which follows us received from us at least, something which is agreed upon: the rational and scientific education, this renewing and liberating education, essentially progressive, of form that can always add and never have anything to unmake.

II

Eliminating imaginary factors as a result of the formula, science approaches the human being in all its solidarity, with an understanding of organs, energies, faculties of a different sort, in which [the many activities] are expressed by this convergence of physical, intellectual and passionate acts which life is made up of. Understand these elements, of a different nature, as pertaining each one to the utmost highest limit of its normal development, and what at the same time is coordinated, is balanced, orchestrated in perfect harmony: this is the scientific ideal, the type of man resulting from all the conditions of perfection and happiness. To accomplish this ideal in itself, to approach as much as possible, is morality; to work reproducing it in others is education.

The first condition of the order, in all things, is integrity. Of the way that the bneing, to whom lacks a feeling, an organ; man, to which one of his essential faculties to the species has it [mermada], is an incomplete and deformed example. Thus as physical health consists of the contemplation of different organic systems and their synergetic functioning, intellectual and moral health is the outcome of normally developed faculties which all converge harmonically. It is the disproportion of faculties, some unconsciously or systematically taken away, the others exalted beyond their measure or excluded, the lack of counterweights which make all these graceless and unbalanced prejudiced organizations, and these inner battles that obscure existence, therefore like also these strange endemic illnesses of the soul, which [espantaban] in history, and of those humanity still hasn't been able to cure itself.

Societies are the result of this situation: that which men value is worth anything. How can the whole be healthy when part is [viciada]? And how will agreement be possible in that which respects to form when the disagreement lies in the depth of the spirits? History does not make itself without help. Finally, what happens depends on wills, deeds always come to model themselves according to ideas. The deep cause of the great social disorders is in the extreme inequality which has been among men since the intellectual point of view and the total divergence of its respective thoughts. This inequality, the fatal consequence of certain nautral or historical factors, has been elaborated so as to appear, consciously or unconsciously, not only by ignorance in that which the masses have been left, but more by the education which has been given, counter-education, anti-rational and immoral, differing and divergent, tending to exaggerate oppositions instead of softening them.

It seems that there are no more common ideas, nor a language to be understood. Notwithstanding, if it has been a deep common of rationality could it be hoped understanding. The agreement would arrive among beings [parecidos] so naturally, so necessarily, that discord and war would be given among essentially dissimilar beings, contradictorily organized. We speed up then in putting a little order in our brains, if we wish that it appear in our actions. We don't know precisely what form tomorrow's social formula will take. Whatever it be, if we wish that evolution, invitable, uniquely is completed by the agreement of reflexive wills—not under the blind growth of the instincts—it is time to give to men an education that [los acerque] more, instead of dividing them.

The infinite complexity of the sciences, arts, modern industries, exige of absolute form that who wishes to reach a certain degree of perfection in whatever sphere, is specialized in a given category of study and learning; on the other hand, the invididual is obliged in the bigger social body, where she plays the role of an organ, to adapt self like this to a determined way of functioning. This necessity for the division of labor can be a condition of progress and happiness for the individual, thus like for society itself. It would be exaggerated, we believe, to take integral development as the part which is in agreement with individual happiness and specialization as a sacrifice made to social reciprocities: it is certain only to some measure. Specialization can be an element of indidivual happiness, as far as it corresponds to the diversity of organizations and aptitudes; meanwhile, on the otherhand, society has a supreme interest in the balanced and normal development of all its members. For the rest, these things are not irreconcilable. It is enough that each acquire a certain degree of integral culture, with a wide base, strong and well united, about which can be superimposed wihthout disrupting the balance, functional specialization; thus as solid foundations well leveled that take, without folding, the unequal weight of the most [culminantes] parts of the building. Ut specialization to [ultranza], strict and begun too soon, without a base of general instruction, is the foremost cause of misery and social disorganization. It is the modern form of slavery. It makes instinctive beings, incapable of reasoning, with no defenses against the shocks [su'bitos] of [acontecimientos], predisposed [de antemano] to all the exploitations: they are machines and not men. Therefore pues the machine works unthinkingly, [engranada], until the day when, too overloaded, all explodes and tritura. Which can be then, the thought of those who speak of limiting the education of the people's children to learning a subject? But this is the same formula and secretive doctrine of despotism!

Brains are not changed in a day, nor in twenty years. The sacrificed generation that moves today will complete their fates. We leave the [turbia] wave to pass. All our hope is for infancy.

It is here because the great work of our time is education. It is this that [gathers] all the strengths, all the sacrifice of whose thought goes beyond the vain attles of the moment and that isn't confused by a red aurora of a [borrascosa] afternoon.

III

This liberating and pacifying sort of education, capable of forming healthy and well-balanced organizations, a less fragmented generation, to which we could bind without temor the solution to the future's difficult problems, it would be defined by the ideal that has been proposed to reach. It can be characterized by different traits: it will be called rational, scientific education, because it is based on reason and adheres to scientific principles; universal because it should be everyone's in common, at least to the essential. We give the name integral to anything that contains its definition; education that tends towards the parallel and harmonic development of the complete being. Comprende necessarily integral instruction that will serve as a base for specialized learning, for professional training.

Its principles are established, the great tasks of the plan are agreed upon. The rest is up to the artists of the craft, vocational educators, prepared by long studies: coordinated means of final function; method, the [razado] of progressive life and of the [etapas], the mechanisms of putting object and subject into relation, the different subjects of learning, the age and attitude of the alumna, etc. The programs, elaborated in this way, may vary in details, depending on time and place; conditions, becoming better as science and intellectual habits progress. The basic [trazos] remain, [ya que X] the expression iteself of necessities of a logical and integral nature which are distinguished: don't leave more room than changes of a secondary degree.

Despite the assertion of a series in ideas, we are forced to carry on analytically. Never losing sight of the conjunto, solidarity between everything, the reciprocity of organs and functions, action and being, at the moment we [trazar] the program, we are obliged to split up the matter. So we consider, one at a time, physical education, intellectual education, which can be lumped together with technical teaching, and moral education. This [last] category must be divided again, it's in the spirit's habits and will not perturb us [en absoluto] since the moment it be well-known that it is nothing but a methodical carrying-on and that our thoughts will always turn from the specific to the general, from the analytical viewpoint to a synthesis.

In the first place, according to the order of [common-sense] logical needs, we consider physical education, in which two facets must be distinguished: the general hygenic regimen, finally having the normal development of this beautiful, organic equilibrium that we call health, in the broad, philosophical sense of the word, and the special education of the organs of relation, taken as the instruments of perception and action, as much as if we want it so. We won't pretend to get down to details to be accurate. At the root of the hygenic regimen, we put plenty of food, simple, a little rustic, but varied; a general refusal, salvo motivo, of stimulants, wine, coffee, and so on; regular mealtimes. A balance between action and relaxation, an alternation of different activities [method] and the clear order of exercises: proportion, studied distribution, following the [[edades], of the hours of intellectual work, physical exercise and sleep. Air and light to the beaches for the young human plant; country living, if possible. Class under the open sky, in gardens and the forest when time allows. Natural gymnasium, exersizes in fresh air, organized games, walks, expeditions, bathing sessions in the ocean; a methodical gymnasium to complete and balance the effects of spontaneous motion; applied exercises, running, jumping, swimming, which develop physical courage allow make people to escape danger, or free her to rush to help peers; eurythmic gymnasia which gives flexibility and grace. [Vestuario] adheres to hygenic prescriptions, at once simple yet not without elegance. Guarded [aseo], baths, frequent showers. All under the control of anthropometric [mediciones], which make it possible to follow children's physical development.

Between the hygienic education of the crianza, and intellectual education, in addition to having many intersections, is logically seated what we call, lacking an already chosen word, organic education, which tends to develop sharpness, accuracy, sensitivity of the senses; to [refine] the tools of expression and of labor, particularly this marvelously universal tool, the hand. [Sin embargo], all the special exercises are necessary to some measure, of a general sort, as sensory education and manual ability that both lay at the base of the practice of observation and manipulation, the study of art and of manual labor. Elements that weren't paid attention to by previous pedagogy, which ours to the contrary considers to be an important part.

In intellectual education, the same principle: simultaneous growth, a balance of all faculties without exception; faculties of assimilation and production, of science and of art; the spirit of observation, justice, memory, imagination, the feeling of beauty. Integral instruction, reciprocally the goal and the means of education, is defined as[:] a complete conjunto, entwined, synthetical, progressive in each category of knowledge in parallel, and all despite the younger age and the first elements. In every of the great branches of human knowledge which later branch off into infinity, are at [their] origin, [at base], simple truths, primordial and fundamental, easily observable and intelligible, [even for] children: they should make up the first treasury of notions, held by the little alum, and destined to gradually enrich themselves.

We call to our aid a figure to illustrate our idea. We symbolize what is called—a beautiful metaphor—[currently known], the field of human knowledge with a fluctuating surface in extension whose limits are [apartan] without end. We represent the different sciences by radiating lines, [leaving / a partir] from a central point, growing further in every direction, dividing the expanse into contiguous sectors, with no interruptions or empty space. The central point will stand for the [zero] of departure, absolute but provisional ignorance of the small child. Now we represent, with a small extension, taken about this field of human knowledge, a small degree of understanding: let it be a small circle, a tight circle but entire, fitting its contour, that will be shown sensible to the eyes of this idea: first notions, which are at the heart of all sciences, and which by necessity serve as an introduction[,] extend equally in all [senses], without omissions over the landscape of all things intelligible. And now, imagine that this small space grows, broadening regularly in every direction, that this isolated circle progressively dilates, same as those beautiful circular waves which spread out on the surface of calm waters: this expressive and so faithful image corresponds to the concept of integral education which is none other than a translation of the word so happily encountered by our predecessors and innovators of the last century: encyclopedia, instruction in a circle ...

The program corresponding to this idea can be summed up in one word: everything. All of science and all of art, not vague [lights], but solid, precise notions, [showing] as elemental as they are.

We inscribe then [in the first line of logic], elements of the ordinary sciences of observation, mechanics, physics and chemistry, cosmology and geography, with the indispensable geological principles; mineralogy, botany, zoology, human physiology, and its application: hygiene. In parallel, the knowings of mathematical order, arithmetic and basic algebra, one with the other, one for the other; geometry with its applications, and for its applications. Simultaneously at the side of instruction we call literary, and before all studies which are the means of acquisition, tools of knowledge, better than sciences: language, mother tongue and as [much] as possible, foreign languages; with reading, ordinary and stenographic writing; grammar, applied to exercises of style and editing: [In definitive], the knowledge of general and of national literature, under its different forms of prose and poetry, [in] those accessible to young intellects. The only branch of human knowledge about which we must have reservations is history. What is generally understood by this word is [a] science of human deeds, for mature intellects and not [conviene] to children. Understood in another sense, presented from another perspective, is to the contrary access. So, [we have] History: general and national history, but the history of great human and social deeds, of labor, arts, ideas, personal life, better than political history; the history of the people before that of the kings, the history of humanity's evolution before that of dynasties and battles.

Now, we consider the other face of intellectual questions, the side of art, sculptural art, which correspond[] to the objective sciences of form, the expressive arts, in relation to the subjective science of thought and language. This aesthetic education, too long neglected, is no less important from the viewpoint of integral development and inner harmony than does scientific instruction itself; it should begin simultaneously and proceed in parallel. To all lights, drawing reclaims [asserts] an important part of the synthetic program, and as art properly said, as the translation of the idea, an element of intellectual activity and happiness, and therefore as tool to work from the utilitarian perspective: the drawing under all its forms and in its different genres, geometric drawing and lifelike drawing, painting; junto to model, as study of the complete form, theoretically before drawing itself, and susceptible to no fewer applications.

[En definitivia], in the aesthetic category, no forgetting the dictionX the artistic forms that are gathered, we put as the first [rango] of the elements of education, music, ideal disinterested art, language of pure feeling; music, that [ref] “pacifier of souls”, then the thinkers understood its calming and happy influence, unifying, at once, in such that social bond. Teaching of vocal and instrumental music, thanks to the simplification of a new method, can in the future begin early, and push, not only the specially spoiled organisms, but the masses to a degree of perfection, that permits this art to develop the means and exercise its influence.

An essential element of integral education, manual X comes to make of balance of intellectual instruction, to which it is in a constant relation of change and reciprocity. Manual labor can also be considered from two different viewpoints: as an exercise meant to perfect the machinery of the senses and to develop manual dexterity—this is the aspect of organic education—and as a study of the means and doings of work—the aspect of technical training.

In all the first [period], what should be [obtained] is the educational question. The most important of all, therefore, is to make work [cooperar] as a means of physical, intellectual, and moral development of the being: any other distinction is secondary. In order for this condition to be fulfilled, it's necessary that the manual exercises keep their universal, synthetic, integrative character, [como] the instruction itself. Beginning at the same time as [it], for little infantile works, that the art of modern educators [will know] to be [adequate] to the [delicacy] of the age associating the artistic elements that should follow a parallel progression to the studies; finally giving itself the precious acquisition of a general ability, applicable to all things and [changing / fluctuating] work. At the same time the young alum will come into possession of diversified technical [knowledges / skills?], from [working / manejo] tools for general use, from the experience of different materials. It is then that, [provisto] this general manual ability, and put in a situation to choose, with an understanding of cause, the type of occupation to which their preferences and aptitudes predispose them, the adolescent will be able to begin, if there is a place, the [apprenticeship] properly said, the specialized apprenticeship of a concrete subject. The cycle will be completed by professional training, by [luck] what will be shorter and less difficult; but, the technical education should be fully understood and save as much as possible the spirit of generality, the integral tendency, and keep itself from this excessive, [estrecha], specialization, divided off to infinity, [maquinal], disorganized, of which we have deplored its fatal consequences.

Moral education remains. So, although of the greatest importance, we don't have room to detail a program at length. Now [ya que] that morality, [to] equal reason, is a resultant, [tiende] the conjunto. The role of teaching is a small thing here. That the child is assimilated, in the means of her individual development, in justice and in social reciprocities; but moral education is above all the work of influence, the consequence of a normal existence in a normal environment. The physiological regimen is one of its principal elements; later, in another regimen of things, the direction given to all thoughts, for the conjunto of teaching. In the first place, thexclusion of false ideas, demoralizing, [falaces] prejudices, [espantosas] impressions, en definitiva, all that which can reach the imagination outside of truth, in error and disorder; absence of unhealthy suggestions, of the arousal of vanity, suppression of occasions for rivalry and envy; the incessant view of things tranquil and ordered, natural; the simple life, busy, varied, animated, between jobs and games, the [graduado] use of a part of freedom and responsibility, the example of educators and for [encima] of all, happiness. It's necessary to also place here, at the [head/title] of this means of moralizing education, the coeducation of the sexes, in a constant, fraternal, familiar [family?] [frecuentacion] of children, boys and girls, that give to [customs] a particular serenity, and far from constituting a danger, is turned into a guarantee of preservation where it be established under prudent conditions.

It is only by such powerful [confluence / concurso] of means—expressly orchestrated to the view of the child's present happiness—that the deplorable inheritances can be fought and the influence of a corrupted outside environment; to reconstruct, to say it thus, the generation [desde] its origen, to form a majority of healthy beings, well organized, intelligent, new for life, capable of happiness and dignity of [emprender] great things.

IV

This integral education, of which we have [esbozado] the plan, logical deduction of the principles of science, hasn't remained in the [ingenuous] state of utopia, nor pure philosophical speculation. It has found firm spirits, convinced, audacious men, to translate the theory into practice and make it possible in the [dominio] of deeds.

[Attempts] have been realized: one at least has been able to be taken to its end in the field of experience, Cempuis, in the historical [sucesivo]. There, after twelve years and despite the initial difficulties and the opposition [suscitantesX], integral teaching, the coordination of instruction and manual labor, the coeducation of the two sexes has borne fruits that all have been able to [constatar], successes which [presagian] the highest hopes. In some conditions [aun/still?] better, [sharing] what we have been able to learn [from] these laborious essays, it is in right of [preveer] more perfect results.

Convidamos then, to all men, who busied by the great problem of social regeneration, by education, and convictions similar [peers?] to our own are [asocien] to our hopes and desires, in the language that [you] they correspond, to be concerted for a common action of principles, of discussion and of experimentation of the [procedimientos] and means of organization. Don't write us to determine under what form this concerted action can be produced. It is all to do: the work is vast, there is space for all collaborations; the means can be diverse, always a common bond [centralice] in certain form ideas and energies, and [impida] them to lose in the passive [mass], in what inertia almost always absorbs, [sin provecho], the individual efforts.

Ghent, 17 August 1893