THE LATEST REFORM IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 

 By Prof. R. D. Nauta. 



Thirty-five years ago, and before the definite inauguration of 

 the rebuilt and renovated Sorbonne in 1900, higher education in 

 France was still what it had been under the Second Empire and 

 the July Monarchy : stinted, unsatisfactory, inadequate. There 

 was then at Paris no University proper ;* but there was a 

 '"College," there were " jacultes," there were " ecoles," twenty 

 distinct and isolated establishments, having amongst themselves 

 neither the same traditions nor the same origin. There were 

 even several varieties of them. First of all, there were the pro- 

 fessional schools, because society stands in need of physicians, 

 lawyers, chemists, engineers, parsons, lecturers in secondary 

 schools. The ecole or faculte de droit, the ecole or facidte de 

 medicine, the ^cole de pharmacie, the ecole poly technique, the 

 ecole normale superieure and the faculte de theologie protestante 

 were engaged in training and supplying them. Secondly, there 

 were the establishments for scientific training, because funda- 

 mental initiatory schooling in the methods of investigation and 

 original research, of which scientific progress is the outcome, is 

 one of the primary essentials of higher education. The ColUge de 

 France, founded in the i6th Century by Francis I., the Museum 

 d'histoire naturelle, created during the Revolution, and the ecole 

 des Hautes Etudes, established in 1869, had been, all of them, 

 created with the same object in view, namely encouraging study 

 for its own sake and furthering the advancement of the specula- 

 tive sciences. As for the " facultes " of science, letters, and 

 Roman Catholic theology, which three were quartered in the 

 Sorbonne, it seems likely, that they ha^d been established neither 

 for the training of lecturers (which was evidently the task of the 

 ecole normale), or of priests (the Roman Catholic clergy being 

 recruited from the diocesan seminaries) ; nor did they make the 

 rearing of erudites and scholars their speciality (the ^cole des 

 hautes etudes having been entrusted with this task ever since 

 1869). To all appearance, the main reasons for their existence 

 were the conferring of degrees, and the publishing and populariz- 

 ing of works of high importance. Several other circumstances 

 tended to increase the general confusion of the bodies called 

 " jacultes," only two distinctly owned the character of profes- 

 sional schools ; the remaining three were athenaea without regular 

 students. Besides, the teaching of some of the professional 

 schools, e.g. the icole poly technique, had taken quite a specula- 

 tive and theoretical turn, and the oldest institution for scientific 



*The history of the University of Paris may be divided into 

 four periods: I., from Philippe Augusta (1200) to the reform effected 

 by Cardinal d'Estouteville (1452); II., from 1452 to the new reform 

 in 1600; III., from 1600-17Q2, when the old universities were sup- 

 pressed by the Revolution; IV., i7Q2-igoo, when there was no univer- 

 sity proper. A new era was opened in iQoo, or rather in 180S. 



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