THE CENTENNIAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. 723 



its immoderate love for sweeping destruction. It suppressed the acad- 

 emies, which it might have modified while preserving them. It even 

 suppressed their names in the reorganization which it undertook after- 

 wards. It has been said with truth that it was afraid of words. It 

 replaced those illustrious names by common appellations of first, second, 

 and third class, and yet succeeded by these changes only in veiling all 

 historic associations. It effaced another name which should have been 

 particularly sacred to it. Having to place philosophy in the class of 

 sciences, moral and political, which it was organizing for the first time, 

 it replaced this name, which might have suggested spiritualistic beliefs, 

 by that of analysis of sensations and of ideas, which recalls only Con- 

 dillac. Chaptal, who, already in 1801, reproached the organization of 

 the institute with "having gone much too far away from what expe- 

 rience had proved to be perfection in the composition of our old acad- 

 emies," made in 1803 a new plan in which he showed himself more just 

 and more able than the convention. He even proposed to restore the 

 names of the old academies, on which France had prided herself for 

 more than a century and which had become the model of the literary 

 and scientific institutions formed successively in all parts of Europe. 

 The council of state would not consent. It approved of the bulk of 

 the proposition, but it did not restore the names of the old academies. 



The Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, founded for the first 

 time in 1795, and which formed the second class of the institute, had a 

 short existence. The First Consul had one day said to M. de Segur: 

 "You preside over the second class of the institute. I command you 

 to tell them that I do not wish to have politics discussed at their meet- 

 ings. If the class disobey I shall abolish it as a bad club." True to 

 the end to his aversion for those whom he styled ideologists, when he 

 proceeded with the reorganization of the institute in 1803, he suppressed 

 the second class by silence, suppressing its name and distributing the 

 members among the other classes. 



The first mistake of the convention was then to give up venerable 

 names and an illustrious past; it made another mistake in the mode of 

 election which it adopted. The candidates were presented by the class 

 in which a vacancy occurred, and the institute as a body was charged 

 with choosing from among the candidates thus presented. Never 

 before had fitness been treated with such contempt. An actor decided 

 the election of a mathematician. A painter judged a philosopher. 

 Here was an assembly which admitted Jews among the voters for the 

 election of Catholic bishops. Election by class or academy was only 

 established in the year 11 upon a report made by Chaptal. 



The convention committed another error. The effect of the two first 

 was to exaggerate unity, the third exaggerated and misrepresented the 

 national character of the institute. It was the institute of France, 

 and they wished it on that account to be composed partly of Parisians 

 and partly of provincials. It would have been sufficient to say that 



