LECTURES AT THE NORMAL SCHOOL. 389 
indicates the commencement of a veritable revolution in 
the study of pure mathematics ; with it demonstrations, 
methods, and important theories, buried in academical 
collections, appeared for the first time before the pupils, 
and encouraged them to recast upon new bases the works 
_ destined for instruction. 
With some rare exeeptions, the philosophers engaged 
in the cultivation of science constituted formerly in 
France a class totally distinct from that of the professors. 
By appointing the first geometers, the first philosophers, 
and the first naturalists of the world to be professors, 
the Convention threw new lustre upon the profession of 
teaching, the advantageous influence of which is felt in 
the present day. In the opinion of the public at large 
a title which a Lagrange, a Laplace, a Monge, a Ber- 
thollet, had borne, became a proper match to the finest 
titles. If under the empire, the Polytechnic School 
counted among its active professors councillors of state, 
ministers, and the president of the senate, you must look 
for the explanation of this fact in the impulse given by 
the Normal School. 
You see in the ancient great colleges, professors con- 
cealed in some degree behind their portfolios, reading as 
from a pulpit, amid the indifference and inattention of 
their pupils, discourses prepared beforehand with great 
labour, and which reappear every year in the same form. 
Nothing of this kind existed at the Normal School; oral 
lessons alone were there permitted. The authorities 
even went so far as to require of the illustrious savans 
appointed to the task of instruction the formal promise 
never to recite any lectures which they might have 
learned by heart. From that time the chair has become 
a tribune where the professor, identified, so to speak, 
