312 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



of feeling and of expression, shown in his response to the criticisms 

 showered on his ' Project ' by his colleagues of the Academy 

 sufficiently indicates how deeply he was in earnest. Conscious 

 of the social ferment which preceded the French Revolution, this 

 Genevese patrician was firmly convinced that the first necessity 

 for the orderly development of a democratic State was the civilisa- 

 tion through education of the demos. In the principles laid down 

 and the practical details set out in his proposals we shall find that 

 he often struck a surprisingly modern note. Many of them 

 have had to wait more than a hundred years for their practical 

 application. Some are still waiting at any rate, in this country. 

 If in his own lifetime his arguments fell on deaf ears, they were 

 destined, repeated by his talented daughter, to attract and impress 

 the critics, both French and Swiss, of succeeding generations. 



De Saussure on his return from Italy in August 1773, with 

 repaired health and renewed energies, resolved to make use 

 of them, not only in the fulfilment of his professorial duties and 

 the prosecution of his scientific studies, but in such action for the 

 advancement of the public welfare as lay to his hand. His 

 appointment as Rector of the Academy (1774-76) gave him an 

 opportunity to bring forward proposals on a matter he had long 

 had at heart, the reform of the system of education in the College. 



Eleven years previously he had taken education as the subject 

 of his inaugural lecture as a Professor, and had denounced the 

 undue predominance given to the dead languages . He now devoted 

 his energies to a vigorous effort to reconstruct the whole scheme 

 of instruction in the College. This was, in fact, a public school for 

 the children between the ages of six and fourteen of the upper 

 classes, and de Saussure 's own experience of it had been such that 

 he refused to send his sons to be educated there. They were brought 

 up at home, and had for a time for their tutor an uncle of the 

 historian, Merle d'Aubign6. He now proposed to use the influence 

 and position he had acquired in an endeavour to remodel the school 

 system. He was ready to fight the battle for which his inaugural 

 lecture had been only the preliminary skirmish. His attack was 

 direct and vigorous. 



' There is,' he wrote, ' a father of a family who, in common with 

 many others, feels it his duty to refuse to send his children to the 

 College so long as it remains in the state in which ours now is, but who 



