Two conflicting types of educational systems spring from these conflicting aims.  One is public and common to many, the other private and domestic.

If you wish to know what is meant by public education, read Plato’s Republic.  Those who merely judge books by their titles take this for a treatise on politics, but it is the finest treatise on education ever written.

In popular estimation the Platonic Institute stands for all that is fanciful and unreal.  For my own part I should have thought the system of Lycurgus far more impracticable had he merely committed it to writing.  Plato only sought to purge man’s heart; Lycurgus turned it from its natural course.

The public institute does not and cannot exist, for there is neither country nor patriot.  The very words should be struck out of our language.  The reason does not concern us at present, so that though I know it I refrain from stating it.

I do not consider our ridiculous colleges [Footnote:  There are teachers dear to me in many schools and especially in the University of Paris, men for whom I have a great respect, men whom I believe to be quite capable of instructing young people, if they were not compelled to follow the established custom.  I exhort one of them to publish the scheme of reform which he has thought out.  Perhaps people would at length seek to cure the evil if they realised that there was a remedy.] as public institutes, nor do I include under this head a fashionable education, for this education facing two ways at once achieves nothing.  It is only fit to turn out hypocrites, always professing to live for others, while thinking of themselves alone.  These professions, however, deceive no one, for every one has his share in them; they are so much labour wasted.

Our inner conflicts are caused by these contradictions.  Drawn this way by nature and that way by man, compelled to yield to both forces, we make a compromise and reach neither goal.  We go through life, struggling and hesitating, and die before we have found peace, useless alike to ourselves and to others.

There remains the education of the home or of nature; but how will a man live with others if he is educated for himself alone?  If the twofold aims could be resolved into one by removing the man’s self-contradictions, one great obstacle to his happiness would be gone.  To judge of this you must see the man full-grown; you must have noted his inclinations, watched his progress, followed his steps; in a word you must really know a natural man.  When you have read this work, I think you will have made some progress in this inquiry.

What must be done to train this exceptional man!  We can do much, but the chief thing is to prevent anything being done.  To sail against the wind we merely follow one tack and another; to keep our position in a stormy sea we must cast anchor.  Beware, young pilot, lest your boat slip its cable or drag its anchor before you know it.