thing is Latin. The youth who has gone through the course of philosophy has learnt Latin for seven years, Greek for five years and a half, but, knowing that his Latin will be of no service to him after he has passed his baccalauréat, as soon as he thinks he knows enough for that examination—and he thinks so at an early hour—he flings his Latin books at the head of his professor or recklessly goes to sleep upon them, if he be working merely for place as a bureaucrat; and I, for one, have not the heart to blame him. Unfortunately, it is the same thing for German, and English, and everything else. Amongst a hundred young men in the philosophy class, not more than two will understand or speak German, and never more than one will speak English. Amongst a hundred French youths speaking German or English you will find that ninety-nine have spent some years in Germany or England; the hundredth is a phenomenon. Besides, it is fashionable to-day in France not to know a word of a foreign tongue. The scientific method is less general than the literary method. It comprises chiefly sciences and modern languages—German, English, Spanish, and Italian. It is certainly more serious than the other. There is a baccalauréat, too, but unlike the literary baccalauréat, which is an aim, the scientific baccalauréat is only the means of arriving at an aim. The literary baccalauréat
