' 886 . JOSEPH FOURIER. 
ideas of order, civilization, and internal prosperity, re- 
solved upon organizing a system of public instruction, 
but a difficulty arose in finding professors. ‘The mem- 
bers of the corps of instruction had become officers of 
artillery, of engineering, or of the staff, and were com- 
bating the enemies of France at the frontiers. Fortu- 
nately at this epoch of intellectual exaltation, nothing 
seemed impossible. Professors were wanting; it was 
resolved without delay to create some, and the Normal 
School sprung into existence. Fifteen hundred citizens 
of all ages, despatched from the principal district towns, 
assembled together, not to study in all their ramifications 
the different branches of human knowledge, but in order 
to learn the art of teaching under the greatest masters. 
Fourier was one of these fifteen hundred pupils. It 
will, no doubt, excite some surprise that he was elected 
at St. Florentine, and that Auxerre appeared insensible 
to the honour of being represented at Paris by the most 
illustrious of her children. But this indifference will be 
readily understood. The elaborate scaffolding of calumny 
which it has served to support will fall to the ground as 
soon as I recall to mind, that after the 9th Thermidor 
the capital, and especially the provinces, became a prey 
to a blind and disorderly reaction, as all political reactions 
invariably are ; that crime (the crime of having changed 
opinions—it was nothing less hideous) usurped the place 
of justice ; that excellent citizens, that pure, moderate, 
and conscientious patriots were daily massacred by hired 
bands of assassins in presence of whom the inhabitants 
remained mute with fear. Such are, Gentlemen, the 
formidable influences which for a moment deprived 
Fourier of the suffrages of his countrymen; and ecarica- 
tured, as a partisan of Robespierre, the individual whom 
