380 THE LATEST REFORM IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 



bility ; they must have confidence in their own authority ; they 

 must know how to speak up for themselves and to say what they 

 want, and why they want it. Thus a sufficient impulse must be 

 called into existence, morally to coerce the administrative powers 

 to yield and follow suit. If the old faculties, deeply sunk as they 

 were into their old ruts, where they felt pretty comfortable, had 

 been left to follow their natural evolution, it is quite possible, 

 that of their own accord, they would never have struck into the 

 new paths, nor ever made a new departure. But after the incen- 

 tive had been given by the upper quarters, and when the inevit- 

 able wavering-s and hesitancies had been overcome, they all 

 marched briskly and cheerily towards the proposed ideal, which 

 the majority of their members had been fostering in their inmost 

 hearts, for a long time already. 



When the scientific renascence of the facultds had become a 

 self-accomplished fact, the moment for granting them certain 

 rights seemed to have come. To begin with, their legal status 

 with its attendant rights, which had been arbitrarily taken from 

 them, or rather had been tacitly confiscated by the State, was 

 restored to them in 1885, without any restriction or reserve what- 

 soever. Moreover, it was stipulated, according to the decision 

 of the 28th of December of that same year, that in every academic 

 centre, there should be a " conseil general des Facultds, consisting 

 of the Rector, who was to act as its chairman, while being at the 

 same time the representative of the State, the doven and two 

 delegates, chosen among the members of each of the facultSs. 

 The task of this Council was to aim at appropriate and har- 

 monious arrangement of the whole. It had to shape into a 

 uniform enseynhle the divers curricula of all the facultds, by 

 grouping them together, in such a manner as eoually to serve 

 the interests of science and of study ; by drawing up regulations 

 for the free courses and scholarships, by expressing their judg- 

 ments and opinions on the eventual transformations of vacant 

 chairs, by judiciously dividing among the various facultSs the 

 amounts of the common credits, and by assuming jurisdiction 

 over all the students from a point of view of discipline. 



In the course of the ten following years, these oreliminary 

 measures acquired a god deal of precision ; and the rougn outline 

 was got into distinct shape. The Financial Act of i8qo trans- 

 formed into subsidies or grants, the annual credits, which the 

 State allowed to each of the facultSs for defraying its expenses, 

 and entrusted them individually with the direct management of 

 these sums. The Act of the 28th of April, 1893 conferred legal 

 status upon bodies, formed bv the welding toe'ether of ♦he several 

 facultis de I'etat into one academic centre. The Act of July loth, 

 1806 finally gave to those bodies, along with the name of 

 " university," a sphere of competence more sharply outlined and 

 a more extensive autonomy. The author of the report of the 

 Conncil of the University of Par's for the scholastic vear 1897- 

 1898, records in the following terms the definite victorv : — 



" L'universitl existe ; la discussion et la libre disnosition d'un 

 buds;et en commun, relient les differentes facultis. Nous n'avons 

 plus le droit de nous desinteresser les uns des antres. N os responsa- 

 bilites sont communes et nos devoirs ont augment^ " 



