History of Education Society

Architects of the New Sorbonne: Liard's Purpose and Durkheim's Role

Author(s): Louis M. Greenberg
Source: History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring, 1981), pp. 77-94
Published by: History of Education Society
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Architects of the New Sorbonne:
Liard's Purpose and
Durkheim's Role

LOUIS M. GREENBERG

IN THOSE DECADES immediately preceding World War I, referred to

nostalgically as "La Belle Epoque," higher education returned to France.
The Third Republic restored it to life, although its heartland remained
the old Latin Quarter where there now arose in dominion architect Paul
Nenot's "University Palace:" a giant rectangular building one hundred
yards in breadth and almost three hundred yards long, a concentration of
auditoriums, exam rooms, lecture halls, laboratories, offices, libraries
and museums that then made of the New Sorbonne the nation's greatest
institution of higher learning. A three-fold expansion and reconstruction
by the republic of the original structure, its massive grey walls, never-
theless, appeared more hewn to the form of some ancient bastille than to
any suitable republican symbol. (1)
It was before a distinguished Sorbonne assemblage that in the spring of
1883, Jules Ferry, Minister of Education, President of the Council, and
the political light behind educational reform, reviewed the relationship
between higher education and the new republic. By the close of that
decade, republican generosity would devote to higher education more
than double the budgetary allotment the Second Empire had allowed, but
the minister's emphasis was clearly not upon payments rendered for ser-
vice to liberal values. Rather, a university represented an instrument of
the state that would for France's honor, further the goals of science while
delivering lessons in cultural and moral idealism, self-discipline, and
social constraint to a growing but untutored republic. "The more you
have an industrious, and egalitarian society," declared Ferry, "the more
important it is that the State assume the function not only of adminis-
trator, of policeman, of society's keeper, but that of tutor of higher
studies, and, allow me to say it, that of guardian of the ideal....
Gentlemen," he concluded, "mark my words, in the modern world science
will be the true and all-powerful pacifier." (2)
Louis Liard later recalled his patron's speech, given on the eve of

Mr. Greenbergis a memberof the Departmentof History, University of Maryland.

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Liard's appointment to the directorship of higher education. He ap-
preciated a political figure whose policies derived from a sound
philosophical premise. The philosophy that Ferry professed drew upon
Auguste Comte, and thereby enabled the minister to render great
service. (3) Positive science served the state as it replaced clerical in-
terests in the education of the young republic. To protest that, as advanced
by Comte, it also encouraged authoritarianism entirely missed the point,
inasmuch as precisely this aspect of constraint gave it value to those who
saw the republic's future dependent upon a schooling untainted by
nostalgia for either Rousseau or revolution. (4)
Jules Ferry had not been the first to sense France's need for a more
symbiotic relationship between science and the state. Victor Duruy in
1867 had already signaled the impoverished condition of French higher
education. Moreover, he had as imperial Minister of Public Instruction
founded the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, an institution devoted to advanced
studies. But Duruy had striven in vain to establish a nationwide system of
schools for the training of secondary school teachers. Similarly, his efforts
in behalf of a scholarship program that could provide students at once
able and eager to embrace advanced work had met with frustration,
although both reforms seemed obvious pre-conditions for the expansion of
university facilities. (5)
Under the Second Empire, an eloquent professor with the ability to
vulgarize his material, and a professional conscience sufficiently flexible
to do so, could become the fashion of the hour. At his occasional lectures
open to any who cared to attend, there crowded those who had an idle
hour to spend and the desire to be seen within the formal precincts of high
culture. Yet upon such individuals, of various ages and diverse social
backgrounds, united by dubious academic motives, it seemed difficult to
pin the label of student, at least when one had presented as alternative
models those serious and dedicated young men who filled the laboratories
and lecture halls of the universities across the Rhine.
It would require Germany's victory in 1870 to provide the needed
shock, and then the readiness of the Third Republic to associate defeat
with the neglect of science. Here was the Sputnik trauma of another age
and society. The republic could scarcely accomplish what had to be done
overnight inasmuch as its own survival was several years in question.
Nevertheless, the day of reform had clearly come. Although in 1874, Jules
Simon, as Duruy before him, still played the role of a lone ministerial
Cassandra bemoaning the status of higher education, the following year
found the Conseil Superieur de l'Instruction Publique without its bishop's
bench. Reflections of a new spirit now emanated from changes in person-
nel at every level: from those elected faculty who replaced clerics on the
highest educational council, to the maitres de conference created in 1877
for the faculties of letters and sciences, to finally those freshest of licence

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students now enabled through scholarships to start their studies. Un-
doubtedly the change that the public most noticed was Jules Ferry's ap-
pointment to the ministry of public instruction, for Ferry took office in
February, 1879 as his share of the spoils of a spectacular republican vic-
tory which saw MacMahon forfeit the presidency of France, and Leon
Gambetta capture that of the Chamber of Deputies. But even more prom-
ising than republican largesse and Ferry's political leadership was the
presence about the new minister of such figures as Albert Dumont,
Charles Zevort, Ferdinand Buisson and Octave Greard, collaborators im-
bued with the desire for reform. These were administrators rather than
political men, and the republic meant for them an opportunity at hand
rather than a goal in itself. Liard's own appointment in September of 1884
to the directorship, a post vacated by the sudden death of Dumont, met
with the plaudits of a number whose political past a republican might
question but whose professional dedication to reform no one disputed. (6)
Louis Liard draws our attention because he was the dominant figure in
French higher education from the date of his appointment as director un-
til his death in 1917. He at that time, as vice rector, governed the ad-
ministration of all public instruction in Paris. Dumont had singled Liard
out as his successor, and Ferry had furthered his advancement. (7)
Royalists opposed the promotion of one whom they could only identify as
a devoted republican and freethinker. (8) While it would be wrong,
however, to belittle the republicanism of this poor widow's son, raised by
her harsh standard of work and duty, it was as an administrator that
Liard ruled and not as a political man. Paradoxically, this former profes-
sor of philosophy, educated in the world of ideas, had early discovered
that he was a born administrator, made "to realize ideas through acts, to
convert them into building blocks, to organize things, to command
men." (9) He was a man consistent unto himself in thought, word and
action. "A rugged Norman, athletic and a blunt speaker," his image was
that of strength and authority whether conveyed by reminiscences of
Liard at home, the patriarch bellowing for his pipe and slippers, or in his
ministry office brusquely showing a chastened academic to the door. (10)
Few would challenge the observation that it was the directors who
determined educational policy under the Third Republic. While no
republican minister matched the naivete of the Vicomte de Cumont, who
upon an official visit to the College de France asked to be shown its dor-
mitories, the generalization holds that it was the director who supervised
the daily operation of affairs. Although the Conseil Superieur de 1'Instruc-
tion Publique had continuity, it consisted largely of specialists who lacked
a broader view. Minister Leon Bourgeois freely acknowledged that
whatever policies were adopted, the entire weight of the movement for
educational reform rested upon the directors. (11) The minister's name
changed, Rene Goblet, Philippe Berthelot, Leon Bourgeois, Georges

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Leygues, Raymond Poincare, but Liard remained the single common
force urging passage of the reform laws of 1883, 1885, and 1896, the
legislation that gave French higher education its modern form. Even
within the political arena of the Chamber, where the elected deputies
debated, he sat a silent but strongly felt presence. "In vain did he stay in
the background, behind his Minister. His strong personality dominated
the oratorical struggle. Invisible and present. It was the all-powerful soul
of the debate!" (12)
There were public occasions enough, however, for an administrator to
declare his purpose. In an "Explanatory Statement" presented before the
Conseil superieur following passage of the University Law of 1896, Louis
Liard made his emphasis clear. "The function of the universities is a scien-
tific one. From the first to the highest level of studies, science, the spread
of science, the growth of science is the goal for which every teaching
system ought to be coordinated." Political considerations were secondary;
republican liberty had value for education because "by its nature, scien-
tific research is free; it could only be furthered by liberty." One perceives a
distinction between Liard's concern for scientific creativity and the view
that Minister Ferry had earlier expounded of higher education's respon-
sibility to the state. Science recognized rules and constraints, but "it was
not the public authority's task to define them." Inasmuch as education was
primarily a state function and teachers were, therefore, its agents, it
followed that the nation's universities were organs of the state. Neverthe-
less, they existed as "more supple organs than before, with a life of their
own that provided better means to realize their scientific function." (13)
At the inaugural session of the International Congress of Higher
Education meeting in the Sorbonne's Richelieu amphitheatre, Director
Liard greeted his guests. This gala academic event of the Exposition Year
offered an occasion to review past achievements and indicate future direc-
tions. Liard welcomed the opportunity to voice his faith in science, a con-
fidence in which he felt his audience fully shared. He elaborated upon his
favorite maxim that the many were but parts of a larger whole. This same
vision had guided Liard's administrative efforts in behalf of the unification
of France's scattered faculties into universities. He had long accepted as
axiomatic that "science despite the diversity of its aspects is one." (14) The
university, where many disciplines and faculties functioned under a com-
mon roof, institutionally expressed this idea. Now before an international
assemblage of sympathetic colleagues, Liard used the same model of
thought within which, however, he cast the national state in the lesser role
of a component part. Doubtless, public higher education had an impor-
tant responsibility to help develop within each nation its personality
through a proper attention to its history and culture. But then there re-
mained the solemn duty:

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To work for the development of those impersonal sciences whose truths, as soon as they are
born, cease to belong to one people in order to become everyone's patrimony, math-
ematical sciences, physical sciences, biological sciences, social sciences, laws of numbers,
laws of size, laws of movements, laws of the infinitely large, laws of the infinitely small,
laws of the moral man, laws of conciences. (15)

Liard's statement of his scientific credo reflected an idealist's enthusi-

asm, although he found such a label flattering neither to himself nor to the
goal he set for higher education. He remarked upon the poor reputation
in which their more empirical English neighbors held the French for being
a race of metaphysicians, philosophers, and systematizers. The French
had worshipped too long at the altar of classical idealism. They had made
gods of the men of antiquity, and of their seventeenth century derivatives
so honored by the Jesuits. What we must now teach, Liard would insist,
was the "truly real man." The classical ages were past, their values mori-
bund and ill-suited to the modern era. (16) More succinctly, and blunt-
ly, he later offered his prescription: "This country, which possesses above
all an idealistic and deductive genius, needs a great bath in realism!" (17)
There was room to doubt the idol science, and thus the role assigned
France's new universities as its sanctuaries. A true Kantian, Liard himself
had once written that science "contains neither in its matter nor in its form
anything that would permit one to define positively the absolute," and his
doctoral thesis had concluded that the social role of metaphysics was "to
support faith in the ideal." (18) This statement had echoed the sober esti-
mate of the chemist Marcelin Berthelot who, in a famed exchange with
Ernest Renan, argued that positive science pursues neither first causes
nor final ends. (19) Such an appraisal appeared tame to educational
modernists who earnestly sought an alternative basis for culture to that
which the Church had provided. Even more disquieting must have been
the absence of strong support from that very segment of the middle class
associated with France's industrial growth and supposedly committed to
the nation's progress. Nevertheless, while the upper-middle class proved
responsive to Ferry's appeal in behalf of educational reform for political
and social reasons, and while it also recognized that national honor,
which was translated as victory over Germany, depended upon scientific
advancement, it made no strong correlation between the desired goal and
a shift in its own cultural or social values. It refused to draw the logical
conclusion from the argument that a psychological affinity existed be-
tween the scientific mind and capitalism with its concomitant mental atti-
tudes of rational calculation, and the quantification of all qualities. (20)
Herein, perhaps, lies one source of the epithet "La Belle Epoque," the
depiction of an era when the middle classes' directing element still clung to
pre-capitalist attitudes and to a non-utilitarian education. To the reform-
ers' discomfort, it, for the most part, continued to educate its sons in clas-

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sical studies that formed a gentleman according to a pattern favored since
the seventeenth century. Science had its function but also its place, and
that place was as a tool or as a laborer, and not to provide values, there
being more than a modicum of truth in the socialist charge that the bour-
geoisie treasured its Latin studies as a badge of social honor marking it off
from the lower classes. (21) Many teachers as well, especially those in sec-
ondary education, of whom almost three-quarters came from the lower
rungs of the social ladder, found their pride in the acquisition of a tradi-
tional classical culture reinforced by a similar motive. (22)
Support, therefore, for reform was weaker than appearances suggest.
The crusading spirit of a few, a highly centralized educational system,
and the activity of its semi-official, professional journals veiled this real-
ity. The upper-middle class lacked any burning desire to train a future
generation of scientists, once that generation assumed the specific form of
its own offspring, nor did many educators, by virtue of either personal
taste or for the sake of their social mobility, desire to abandon the tradi-
tional curriculum. Meanwhile, within the universities, science's more em-
pirical devotees held to a modest sense of the limits of their knowledge,
while the philosophical doubt that Liard had himself once harbored quite
naturally permeated France's faculties of letters.
Who then sustained the glowing statements of a renewed faith in "scien-
tism." and from where then came the backers for an almost doctrinnaire
confidence in the power of positive science? While during this period the
influence of the working or agricultural classes remained nil in the realm
of French secondary education, it was from the lower ranks of the middle
class that reform appeared to attract adherents. Politically now on the
rise, although often individually in a precarious economic position, the
lower-middle class could ill afford culture's price, but found a scientific
course of study attainable and useful. The democratic mind, moreover,
proved hospitable to a scientific spirit that stressed effort over inborn sen-
sibility, and concerned itself with an outer world that man's common fac-
ulties could master rather than with a universe that still contained myster-
ies which only genius or the refinement of an elite might fathom. (23)
The Educational Reform of 1902 was the last major legislative accom-
plishment of the early reform movement. Labelled at best a partial victory
for the petit bourgeois, since it recognized the coexistence of both a tradi-
tional and scientific orientated curriculum, it nevertheless remained the
best the modernists could achieve before World War I. Although the act
related entirely to secondary education, the fact that Louis Liard had
again provided the major impetus for its passage indicated the scope of his
authority and energies. Nor was this the only area of Liard's impact upon
secondary education, for there had existed an intimate relationship since
1808 between the two upper levels of public instruction. Most agreges,
those awarded the state's highest certificate of learning short of the doctor-

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al degree, spent perforce their entire careers in the academic trenches of
secondary education. (24) Within the public system's rigid hierarchy,
the Director of Higher Education appointed the academic inspectors who
in turn reviewed the performances of each of these faculty members to de-
termine who taught what, when, and where. Leon Deries recalled when
on a winter's day in 1891, as a young professor from a provincial lycee, he
timidly appeared before Liard to seek appointment to the post of inspec-
tor.

(Deries)-That small lycee depresses me.

(Liard)-Ah good! You are not as the others, you!
They find that they always have too much to do. You want work. You don't know what
work awaits you. We'll give you it. I am preparing at this moment a movement but you
don't figure in that. I say to you even so from this day on 'Good-bye Mr. Inspector!' (25)

By 1902 what remained to be done were primarily changes in person-

nel, and the implementation of reforms already secured. There was room
for neither philosophical doubt nor debate when Liard, official spokesman
for the Third Republic but also product of the lower-middle class and an
exemplar of a masculine propensity for action, addressed the Conseil
Academique de Paris. "A national teaching which refused to be
thoroughly modern in substance and spirit would not be simply an inof-
fensive anachronism; it would become a national danger." (26) Liard
spoke as the new Vice Rector of the Academy of Paris, a post that he had
sought because it offered the best vantage point from which to oversee, in
the principal academic region, the execution of the reforms that he and his
associates had secured.
It was the vice rector's attendant capacity as "head of the first university
of the Republic," that the former director most prized for it provided the
opportunity to show what "in practice the new organization of higher edu-
cation could achieve." (27) The decentralist tendency of the University
Law of 1896 that had created institutions of higher learning throughout
France had in no way diminished the Sorbonne's preponderant position.
The nine thousand students registered for university courses in 1870
numbered forty-one thousand by 1913, but as France turned the century
Paris still claimed over half of this total. (28) As the center of France's
academic world remained the capital, so too the New Sorbonne continued
as its nucleus. Liard's appointment to head the Academy underscored this
predominance which was reinforced in 1903 when the government joined
to the University of Paris the Ecole Normale Superieure. Henceforth, only
the New Sorbonne prepared agreges in the Paris area. It seemed entirely
appropriate that, under Liard's personal aegis and ever more closely iden-
tified with the reform movement, the Sorbonne should flourish as the
state's foremost institution of higher learning, and indeed as one of the
world's great universities.

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 Whatever second thoughts provincial faculties entertained with respect
to the creation in Paris of this palace of science, such criticisms were
muted within the Sorbonne itself. The dean of its faculty of letters, Alfred
Croiset, spoke of science as "the indispensable foundation which ought to-
day to support and to control all other means of knowledge." (29) Its
most eminent literary scholar, Gustave Lanson, vaunted the desire of
French education to "march in the way of science and democracy." (30)
1902, the year of Liard's appointment, witnessed important although less
heralded changes within the Sorbonne's philosophy section. That once
leading discipline of the humanities, from which an ideological challenge
to the university's current direction might have arisen, had clearly capitu-
lated to the modernists. The bust of Auguste Comte now stood in the
Place de la Sorbonne when in December, the Revue Internationalean-
nounced that the Sorbonne's renowned philosopher the Kantian but very
Catholic Emile Boutroux had been appointed Director of the Fondation
Thiers, a largely honorific post, while Lucien Levy-Bruhl was henceforth
to present Boutroux's classes on the history of modern philosophy. An-
other item observed that Emile Durkheim had arrived from Bordeaux to
replace Ferdinand Buisson, who had offered the course on the science of
education. (31) Both of these shifts indicated the modernists' entrench-
ment within the philosophy section of the faculty of letters. Let us focus
particular attention, however, upon this last report, for Emile Durkheim's
role best illustrates what the New Sorbonne had come to mean to France
and higher education.
While at the political level Jules Ferry led those who for social reasons,
as well as for national honor, recreated public higher education in France,
and Louis Liard, the administrator, stands in the forefront of those who
impressed upon the system their dedication to science, Durkheim belongs
to those whose responsibility it became to translate these aims into class-
room lessons. In his thought, style and character, Durkheim served not as
the sociologist of international repute, but rather as the model professor
and exponent of that for which the New Sorbonne and the reform move-
ment stood.
The more apparent aspects of Durkheim's person admirably fitted the
stereotype suggested by his origins. Although sociable, he remained
serious and simple in tastes with a hatred "for all affectations." He was the
provincial in Paris, a petit bourgeois at the University who refused defer-
ence to the capital's conception of the cultured gentleman, the dilletante
whose every utterance flaunted skepticism and wit. Durkheim spoke
energetically and with precision, but he disliked wordiness or chatter. His
speech drew its strength from his thought and the tenacity with which he
professed his convictions. He had neither the breadth of interests nor the
mental flexibility that might have encouraged self-doubt. On the con-
trary, his appeared a relatively untroubled mind prone only to the danger

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of dogmatism due to a prevailing sense of being ever "in the right." (32)
Durkheim flourished, as did his type, within the New Sorbonne; he
distinguished himself in its classes and councils by the strength of his
mind, his dialectical skill, and the passion for arguments always encased
within "a firmly maintained objective and intellectual posture." (33) He
was a true representative of that new breed of intellectual being brought
forth by the university system, and "whose social rise derived from a
knowledge whose most explicit aspect was its scientific credentials." (34)
It was difficult, certainly for his students, to come to terms with the
man's deeper values, as distinguished from the more obvious aspects of
his personality or his formal teachings. At the New Sorbonne a student
might assume his professor's devotion to science, but whether or not the
mentor's value system reflected a religious or metaphysical commitment
was not something that a student was supposed to derive from either his
teaching or his written work. (35) Science encouraged even philosophy
to adhere to special disciplines; it swept away metaphysics, as it did reli-
gion, to leave a vacant place ready to be occupied by those clever enough
to propose another system furnished with the appropriate scientific
credentials. In place of those spiritualist doctrines that had provided the
earlier Sorbonne with its official philosophy, Durkheim would offer a sub-
stitute. (36)
Sociology was his system, fiercely defended over the years against all
other theories or beliefs that refused due homage. In effect, Durkheim
presented his system as the objective, scientific replacement for philo-
sophy as well as religion. In the eyes of at least one disciple, he succeeded.
Sociology, claimed Francois Simiand, had become the academic fashion
for modern democratic society. " 'Sir, are you a philosopher?' one asked in
the last century. 'Sir, are you a sociologist?' one would ask today. And in-
deed why not? The advent of the democracies has turned public attention
and curiosity towards crowds, masses, society. . ." (37)
Philosophers sensitive to the proposed usurpation admitted that Durk-
heim might legitimately reduce philosophy to the "logic of the Sciences,"
but questioned how he could then conceive of ever teaching philosophy
"as purely sociological and practical." To editors of the Revue de metaphy-
sique et de moralesuch an approach made of philosophy nothing more than
a series of history lessons. Even then they wondered how Mr. Durkheim
would teach philosophy students:

To reflect on the necessary principles behind the formation of the humane sciences: ideas
of value, of obligation, of responsibility, without raising other problems that Mr. Durk-
heim also wishes to exclude from the philosophy class? (38)

Just as the administrator Liard thought it best to ignore such questions,

so too the mind of Emile Durkheim was unlikely to raise them. The
latter's outlook admirably served the former's purpose. When still a recent

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graduate in philosophy from the Ecole Normale, Durkheim had used an
academic leave for the year 1885-86 to study in Germany. Whatever
doubts Durkheim expressed concerning the value of his trip abroad, Di-
rector Liard had appreciated its immediate result, articles in leading re-
views on the development of the social sciences in that country. Durkheim
"was appointed without delay, from the lycee at Troyes to the Faculty of
Letters of Bordeaux as 'charge de cours' in sociology and pedagogy."
Liard had retained a fondness for Bordeaux, treating the first faculty
where he had taught philosophy as an experimental station for courses or
professors considered still too advanced for Paris. The appointment in-
dicated Durkheim's favored status as Liard's protege, and the ministry ap-
proved a course in social science expressly for him. (39)
The young professor now enjoyed a series of happy years, a period dur-
ing which he carefully developed his doctrine and method. Piece by piece,
with painstaking care, Durkheim constructed before his students his
science of sociology. He formed together with his close friends and col-
leagues Octave Hamelin and Georges Rodier, a team of philosophy in-
structors who, while pursuing different interests, remained firmly joined
by "a hostility against the philosophers of life and action whom they ac-
cuse[d] of beclouding intelligence." (40) Their complete devotion to ra-
tionalism and science set a tone to the philosophy section at Bordeaux that
Liard might well have welcomed in Paris. Nevertheless, of more immedi-
ate importance to the director was the obligation by which he bound
Durkheim to devote a portion of his teaching to pedagogy.
Durkheim lacked enthusiasm for the subject, and his principal pub-
lished work in this area were posthumous collections of lectures gathered
by former students. Although one could demonstrate a narrow tie be-
tween his sociological doctrines and his pedagogy, since to make the best
of the situation Durkheim used the course to demonstrate his sociological
method, it was only ministerial pressure that induced him to teach the
"science of education" throughout his university career. The subject's suc-
cess deeply interested Liard and the modernists, particularly in the after-
math of the Reform Act for Secondary Education, and when Durkheim
received his invitation in 1902 to come to Paris, it was to offer a course on
education. Durkheim's lectures treating the evolution of French teaching
functioned officially to reinforce the act's message. (41) It was also
Liard's message, for their attitudes and backgrounds were similar. Of the
two erstwhile philosophers, Durkheim displayed the greater impatience
with metaphysics, and his statements sounded even more abruptly to the
point than those of his administrative superior. "Today, that general
culture so boasted of in the past affects us only as a slack and feeble
discipline." (42)
Durkheim sought to ground his lectures on the history of secondary
teaching firmly in historical relativism. A society's teachers bore the re-

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sponsibility to convey a sense of life's realities to their students. But for
Emile Durkheim, republican professor and loyal scion of petit-bourgeois,
radical democracy, not all of the "realities" of earlier societies enjoyed
equal status. At this point his objectivity crumbled, unless one believes
that Durkheim recognized the subjective quality of his own judgement,
which was hardly likely. Thus the refined values of the Renaissance court
failed to meet his standard. Before his students, he spoke disparagingly of
it as a brilliant but effete world that had ignored the masses. Durkheim
identified far more readily with the earlier medieval scholastics whose
"culture, so disparaged, made men of action." (43)
Science was his absolute, but so too was life conceived of as a Darwin-
ian struggle that refinement might veil but never redeem. This was Durk-
heim's standard of "reality," a harsh view of existence that Louis Liard,
another provincial democrat, also shared, a conviction fostered by the
hard lot of their common social background and by their outwardly ag-
gressive, masculine mentalities. How novel and attractive it must have
seemed to the growing numbers of university students, many from similar
origins, to hear their professor extol the medieval schools not for their
Christian teachings, but for being "enlivened by a more practical, realistic
and social spirit," capable of forming "men of state, clerical dignitaries,
the administrators of that age," while pushed from his pedestal of honor
was the old Latin master Erasmus whose aristocratic humanism "did not
prepare one for life." (44)
Durkheim's definition of "reality" did not admit the presence of the
Church. Nor did the Cartesians of the eighteenth century fare much bet-
ter; they were flawed because they favored that which was universal and
uniform rather than the particular and concrete. Only toward the close of
that century did Durkheim perceive a change in French education that
now began to lend itself to the study of "the sense of reality, the sense of
things, of the place that they hold in our intellectual and moral life." (45)
Of course the trend had been perceptible elsewhere long before then. In
the sixteenth, as again later in the nineteenth century, Germany was in
the vanguard. There was much in the crudity and robust practicality of
Luther that struck a responsive chord in Emile Durkheim. Moreover, he
felt that the German Protestants possessed a sense of lay society and its
temporal interests that the Catholics lacked. From Martin Luther's con-
cern for "reality" to Leibnitz's contribution to the birth of modern science
was but a single step. (46)
France had fallen behind its neighbor by at least a century. Condorcet
then Saint Simon and his pupil Comte had helped steer pedagogy onto its
proper course. Still a great deal depended upon the political group in
power whether French education would retreat to the sterile idealism and
formalism of the past or go on to further science and democracy. After
almost another century of erratic stumblings, the decade of the 1880's had

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found politics finally clearing the way for the proper development of peda-
gogy. Durkheim indicated to his students the close relationship, often ig-
nored by an inattentive public, but which intelligent republicans readily
understood, between the elimination of Latin verses, the triumph of
positive science, and the republic's establishment. Using the historical
voice to grace his sociological hypotheses with the aura of fact, it was as
reformer rather than professor that Durkheim emphasized to his charges
the spirit and the doctrine that their own teaching would have to convey
were they to fulfill their social obligation to the republic. (47)
Whether or not Durkheim's lectures merited approval as sterling ex-
amples of"the true sociological method" (48) matters less to the historian
than to appreciate how fully they met the expectations of Vice Rector
Liard. The two-year program in education that Liard now introduced, in
which the first year's courses were mandatory for all teaching candidates
at the University of Paris, had as its centerpiece Durkheim's lectures on
"general history of secondary teaching in France." During inaugural cere-
monies held at the Musee Pedagogique in November of 1905, that institu-
tion's director, the historian and devoted "modernist" Charles Langlois
dismissed objections voiced by those traditional-minded who refused to
recognize pedagogy's legitimacy as a science. Langlois described the
variety of classes that the Sorbonne's program offered, and singled out
Durkheim's weekly lectures as the "essential course." Ernest Lavisse, who
as director of the Ecole normale followed Langlois to the podium, ex-
pounded upon how as a young teacher he had sorely missed the opportun-
ity to learn of the "history and philosophy of my profession."
What we lacked, you will not lack. In Mr. Durkheim's course you will learn, you future
teachers of the nation's secondary schools, how education began in France. . . . Begin its
study with the will of one who wants to know as well as possible his purpose as a
teacher. (49)

Durkheim's key role in the pedagogical plans of the reform movement

furthered his academic advancement. One year later he received his chair
in the science of education at the University of Paris. The nominating
committee presented Durkheim's claim to the position as "hors de pair et
en premier ligne," and the faculty of letters unanimously endorsed its se-
lection. (50)
Two professors of philosophy, Gabriel Seailles and Emile Boutroux had
presented the claims of the several candidates for the post Durkheim
received inasmuch as the appointment fell within the province of the phil-
osophy section. Although Boutroux, like Liard, was a Kantian and sym-
pathetic to science, while Seailles identified with the political left, both
belonged to the philosophy section's more conservative wing. That they
should, nevertheless, have supported Durkheim's candidacy already sug-
gested the weakness of the conservatives' position at the Sorbonne. In

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Prophetsand Patrons, Terry Clark calls attention to the meeting of Novem-
ber 23, 1907 of the Council of the Paris Faculty of Letters because of the
lengthy debate devoted to Celestin Bougle's succession to the post of Alfred
Espinas. But the full significance of that council session for the Durkheim-
ians was that Bougle's victory proved but one of three appointments they
gained that day. When Emile Boutroux officially retired from the Univer-
sity in 1907, Lucien Levy-Bruhl replaced him as professor of the history of
modern philosophy. The public best knew Levy-Bruhl for his book on La
morale et la science des moeurs, a work heralded as a model application of
Durkheimian sociology. (51) The same session that decided in favor of
Bougle's candidacy witnessed Levy-Bruhl's appointment, and again at
this same Saturday morning meeting, prior to determining Espinas' suc-
cessor, the Council of the Faculty of Letters had discussed candidates for
the vacancy left by the death of Durkheim's close friend Octave Hamelin,
who had followed him from Bordeaux to the Sorbonne. Reading a letter
of support from a respected but absent colleague, the humanist Victor
Brochard, Durkheim, without difficulty, persuaded the council that the
appointment should go to Hamelin's former protege, their mutual friend
and colleague at Bordeaux, Georges Rodier, "who will know how if not to
surpass then at least to equal Mr. Hamelin." (52)
Second in line for Durkheim's chair in education, although at the time
offering only token opposition with a view to future consideration, had
been Celestin Bougle, perhaps the sociologist's foremost disciple. (53)
When once more upon this notable November morning, the council
sought a suitable replacement to teach Alfred Espinas' course on "Social
Economy," Bougle was one of three candidates whom the council consid-
ered. Espinas, a sociologist in his own right, who had no affection for
Bougle since the latter's scathing attack upon his "biological sociology,"
opposed the appointment, observing that Bougle was "not a historian and
his zeal for sociology has kept him, until now, pretty far from economics
and its history. He is a logician, a sociologist, a politician. . ." (54) Durk-
heim immediately arose to defend his disciple and, after again citing from
the letter of Victor Brochard, in which the latter supported Bougle and
argued that it was "a sociological philosopher who ought to be entrusted
with this course," Durkheim concluded that "if the study of doctrines
assumes the knowledge of economic realities, it above all implies the abili-
ty to analyze ideas and the knowledge of those philosophical doctrines
which are at the root of all great economic theories." (55) Bougle was ob-
viously the candidate best equipped for such a task, and Durkheim's state-
ment had further implied that so was the sociological method that Bougle
championed. By twenty-five votes to only four cast for Espinas' candidate,
Bougle won the position. The close of 1907 found Durkheim, his disciples
and friends, wielding an easy sovereignty over the philosophy section of
the New Sorbonne.

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 Although he never accepted nomination to the Institute, Durkheim
welcomed the highest national honor that Liard could arrange, the rank
of Knight in the Legion of Honor. Until his death, moreover, he sat
alongside of Gustave Lanson as one of the two representatives from the
Faculty of Letters on the Council of the University of Paris. (56) He had
attained this position of official eminence not through scholarly labors in
sociology, however meritorious these were, but rather as Charles Peguy
bitterly phrased it, for his function as "vice-regent of the Sorbonne." With-
in the philosophy section of the "palace" of the New Sorbonne, designed
by Paul Nenot but whose truer architects were Jules Ferry and Louis
Liard, Durkheim and his associates ruled. And just as the Sorbonne's
outer walls conveyed a physical impression of power and authority befit-
ting such a formidable state institution, so too within the inner sanctum of
the faculty of letters from whence had formerly emanated an eclectic
spiritualism providing doctrinal guidance for all higher education, Durk-
heim and his associates now promoted a philosophy without patience for
metaphysics but attentive instead to a conception of reality more useful to
that social class upon whom the mantle of the republican state's power
and authority had descended.

NOTES
1. Regardssur la France: 1 'universite'
de Paris et I'enseignement
superieuraiParis, 9e annee, no. 26
(Paris, Service de Propagande, Edition Information, 1965), p. 45; Pierre Villoteau,
La vie parisienne a la Belle Epoque (Geneve, 1968), pp. 460-61; Francois Picavet,
"L'universite de Paris d'apres un livre recent (fin)," Revue internationalede I'enseignement
59, no. 4 (April 1910): 327 (hereafter cited as RI.E.).
2. "Nouvelles et Information," R.I.E. 5, no. 4 (April 1883): 429-30.
3. "L'oeuvre de Jules Ferry: Discours de M. le Recteur Liard et de M. le President
Fallieres," R.I.E. 53, no. 1 (January 1907): 5-7.
4. John Eros, "The Positivist Generation of French Republicanism," The Sociological
Review, n.s. 3, no. 2 (December, 1955): 255-57; Clement Falcucci, L'humanismedans
I'enseignementsecondaireen France au xix siecle (Toulouse 1939), p. 122.
5. Edmond Dreyfus-Brisac, "Les reformes de l'enseignement superieur en France,"
R.I.E. 1, no. 2 (February 1881): 121-22.
6. "L'oeuvre de Jules Ferry," R.I.E. 53, no. 1 (January 1907): 8-10; Victor Duruy to
Louis Liard, December 10, 1884, Ernest Lavisse to Louis Liard, October 23, 1884,
Collection of Mme. and Mlle. Liard.
7. Carbon copy of letter from Auguste Gerreres of October 13, 1971, Collection of Mme.
and Mile. Liard; Gaston Bonnier, "Louis Liard," Revue hebdomadaire27, no. 7
(February 1918): 336; Ernest Lavisse, "Louis Liard," Revue de Paris 25, no. 3
(February 1918): 456.
8. Andre Liard, "Mes souvenirs," Collection of Mme. and Mile. Liard.
9. Lavisse, "Louis Liard," p. 455; Bonnier, "Louis Liard," pp. 334-36.
10. Bibliotheque Nationale Mss. Lacroix 24406, VI, f. 479; Julien Luchaire, Confession
d'unFranfais moyen, 2 vols. (Florence 1965), v. 1, p. 10; Bonnier, "Louis Liard," p. 313;
Andre Liard, "Mes souvenirs," Collection of Mme. and Mile. Liard.

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11. Chamber of Deputies, Commission de l'Enseignement, Enquetesur l'enseignementsecon-
daire, Proces-verbauxdes depositions, 7th leg. sess. of 1899, No. 866, 2 vols. (Paris, 1899),
p. 686.
12. Georges Lyon, "La formation et la croissance des universites francaises," R.I.E. 67,
no. 4 (April 1914): 264.
13. Louis Liard, "L'organisation des universites francaises," R.I.E. 34, no. 1 (July 1897):
48.
14. Louis Liard, "Les universites francaises," R.I.E. 25, no. 5 (May 1895): 410.
15. "Congres International d'Enseignement," R.I.E. 40, no. 10 (October 1900): 325.
16. Louis Liard et al., "Les universites francaises en Angleterre," R.I.E. 51, no. 6 (June
1906): 562.
17. Speech of Louis Liard delivered at the opening of a series of lectures devoted to the
teaching of sciences at the Musee Pedagogique, 1904, cited byJ[acques] Hadamard,
"A propos d'enseignement secondaire," R.I.E. 75, nos. 9-10 (September-October
1921): 291-92.
18. Louis Liard, La sciencepositive et la metaphysique(Paris 1879), pp. 352, 485.
19. M. Berthelot to E. Renan, November, 1863, reproduced in M. Berthelot, Scienceet
philosophie (Paris 1886), pp. 4, 17.
20. Max Leclerc, "La reforme des programmes de 1902" Revue universitaire 30, no. 2
(February 1921): 189-91; Phyllis H. Stock, "New Quarrel of Ancients and Moderns:
The French University and its Opponents 1899-1914" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University,
1965), pp. 196-97; Andre Bellessort, Les intellectuelset I'avenementde la TroisiemeRepub-
lique (Paris 1931), p. 62; Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Characterand Social Structure
(New York 1964), p. 214.
21. Pascale Gruson, "Du monopole napoleonien a la 'Republique des Professeurs' " (Doc-
torat de III eme cycle, University of Paris-V, 1970), p. 252; Edmond Goblot, Le
barriereet le niveau (1925; 1967), p. 79.
22. Gerard Vincent, "Les professeurs du second degre au debut de xxe siecle," Le
mouvementsocial no. 55 (April-June 1966): 52.
23. Henri Wallon, "The Philosophy of Education in France," in Philosophical Thought in
France and the United States, ed. Marvin Farber, 2nd ed. (Albany 1968), p. 329; Jean
Fiolle, Scientismeet science(Paris 1936), pp. 81-83, 85-86, 88-89.
24. Archives Nationales, Conseil superieur de l'instruction publique, morning session of
July 4, 1924, F'7 13648; Falcucci, L'humanismedans I'enseignement secondaire,pp. 114-15.
25. Leon Deries, Sous la toge universitaire(Saint-Lo 1931), p. 63.
26. Speech delivered at the opening of the Conseil Academique de Paris, November 26,
1902, cited in Falcucci, L'humanismedans I'enseignement secondaire,p. 510.
27. "Chronique de l'enseignement-France," R.I.E. 44, no. 10 (October 1902): 347;
Charles Dupuy to Louis Liard, October 5, 1902, Collection of Mme. and Mile.
Liard.
28. Petit deJulleville, "La statistique de l'enseignement superieur en 1889," R.I.E. 19, no.
3 (March 1890): 235; Michel Glatigny, Histoire de I'enseignement en France(Paris 1949),
pp. 108-9.
29. Alfred Croiset et al., L'educationde la democratie(Paris, 1903), p. 44.
30. Extract from Le Figaro,January 26, 1901 cited in "Echos et nouvelles-opinions sur les
projets de reformes," Revue universitaire10, no. 2 (February 1901): 176.
31. "La Faculte des Lettres de l'Universite de Paris en 1901-1902 - Personnel Enseigne-
ment," R.I.E. 44, no. 12 (December 1902): 525.

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32. Harry Alpert, Emile Durkheim and His Sociology (New York 1939), p. 22; H. Stuart
Hughes, Consciousnessand Society(New York 1958), p. 288.
33. Andre Lalande recalled the character of his former colleague in a commemorative ad-
dress at the Sorbonne, Annales de I'Universitede Paris XXX, no. 1 (January-March
1960): 23.
34. Gruson, "Du monopole napoleonien," p. 97.
35. Etienne Gilson, The Philosopherand Theology(New York 1962), pp. 35-36.
36. Pierre Leguay, Uniuersitairesd'aujourd'hui(Paris 1912), p. 265.
37. Francois Simiand, "L'annee sociologique francaise 1896," Revue de metaphysiqueet de
moraleV (1897): 519.
38. "Enseignement," Revue de metaphysique et de morale III (1895). 231-33. Although
Durkheim won the support of the amiable chief editor Xavier Leon, neither Elie
Halevy nor Leon Brunschvicg was sympathetic to his sociological approach.
39. Archives Nationales, Dossier Durkheim, Emile, F17 25768; Georges Davy,
"Durkheim," Annuaire de lassociation amicale de secoursdes anciens eleves de I'EcoleNormale
Superieure-1919,p. 63; Georges Davy, "Allocution," Annales de I'Universitede Paris XXX,
no. 1 U(January-March 1960): 19. Alfred Espinas attributed the course's creation to the
minister, which in effect meant Louis Liard. In November of 1888, Dean Espinas had
addressed the Faculty of Letters of Bordeaux as follows: "It is probable then that
sociology, since one must call it by its name, far from disappearing from the Faculty of
Letters for assignment to the Faculty of Law, will take an increasingly important place
among our studies, and will be more and more closely tied to each of them. The in-
itiative for this creation belongs to the minister, desirous of encouraging those studies
in which foreigners have gone ahead of us, and which promise to bear the same fruit
for us as they have for them." Archives Faculte des Lettres de Bordeaux, Dossier
Espinas.
40. Rene Lacroze, "Allocution," Annales de I'Universitede Paris XXX, no. 1 U(January-
March 1960): 27-29.
41. Benrubi, J. [Isaac], Les sourceset les courantsde la philosophie contemporaineen France, 2
vols. (Paris 1933) 2:163; Steven Lukes, Emile DurkheimHis Life and Work(New York
1972), pp. 109-10. Translations of both collections of Durkheim's lectures on educa-
tion exist in English: Moral Education(New York 1961) and The Evolution of Educational
Thought(London 1977). Durkheim's reluctance to offer a course in pedagogy and the
ministry's insistence upon its importance are indicated in these passages from official
university proceedings at Bordeaux and Paris. In the first, Dean Paul Stapfer reports
that the ministry "was prepared to promote the social science course taught by Mr.
Durkheim to the level of a chair, on the condition that pedagogy continue to be taught
without any additional expense." He notes to the council that the ministry could be
easily reassured about this matter because "indeed, for the past two years, as a conse-
quence of a personal understanding approved by the Rector, it is no longer Mr.
Durkheim, but Mr. Rodier who has given the course in pedagogy." Archives Faculte
des Lettres de Bordeaux, Proces-verbauxdu Conseil de la Faculte des Lettres, I, May 18,
1896. When the Council of the Faculty of Letters of Paris considered the change in ti-
tle of Durkheim's chair from that of the "Science of Education" to "Sociology and
Science of Education," Rector Liard asked "that the holder of the chair, Mr.
Durkheim, who has agreed, not relegate to a subordinate position in the chair's title
the science of education which until now has been its entire purpose; on his motion,
the Council of the University offers its judgment that the title of this chair be changed

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 to that of the 'Science of education and sociology.' " Archives de l'Academie de Paris,
Registre des proces-uerbauxdu Conseil de 1'Universitede Paris, AJ16 2589, June 30, 1913.
42. Cited critically as a statement representative of the New Sorbonne in the Journal des
debats, August 21 and 31, 1910.
43. Emile Durkheim, L'devolution pedagogiqueen France, 2:34, 44.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., pp. 78, 100, 132, 153.
46. Ibid., pp. 147, 144, 148.
47. Ibid., pp. 136, 175. On the other hand, Durkheim did not interpret modern education
to mean a relaxation in training. He argued for the maintenance, and even a
strengthening of Latin instruction with an exception made for those whose specialized
studies did not require it. Archives Faculte des Lettres de Bordeaux, Proces-verbauxdes
reunionsmensuellesde lafaculte des lettres, I, March 22, 1888. As for the philosophers, he
willingly renounced Latin, but wanted to keep a Greek requirement, Archives Faculte
des Lettres de Paris (Sorbonne), Actes et deliberationsde la Faculte des Lettresde Paris, IV,
January 24, 1903. See also Emile Durkheim, "L'enseignement philosophique et
l'agregation de philosophie," Revue philosophique de la France et de l'etranger39, no. 2
(February 1895): 121-47.
48. Paul de Gaudemar, "E. Durkheim, sociologue de l'education," Annales de la Faculte des
Lettreset SciencesHumaines de Toulousen.s. V, fasc. 4 (October 1969): 137; Lukes, Emile
Durkheim, p. 379.
49. "Echos et nouvelles-Inauguration de l'enseignement pedagogique a 1'Universite de
Paris," Revue universitaire14, no. 10 (December 1905): 435-37.
50. Archives de l'Academie de Paris, Dossier Durkheim, Emile, AJI6 214.
51. Terry Clark, Prophets and Patrons: The French University and the Emergenceof the Social
Sciences (Cambridge 1973) p. 70; Archives Faculte des Lettres de Paris (Sorbonne),
Actes et deliberationsde la Faculte des Lettresde Paris, V, November 23, 1907.
52. Ibid.
53. Archives de l'Academie de Paris, Dossier Durkheim, Emile, AJ16 214.
54. Archives Faculte des Lettres de Paris (Sorbonne), Actes et deliberationsde la Faculte des
Lettresde Paris, V, November 23, 1907; Celestin Bougle, "La sociologie biologique et le
regime des castes," Revuephilosophique49, no. 4 (April 1900): 337-52; Celestin Bougle,
"Le proces de la sociologie biologique," Revue philosophique52, no. 8 (August 1901):
121-46.
55. Archives Faculte des Lettres de Paris (Sorbonne), Actes et deliberationsde la Faculte des
Lettres de Paris, V, November 23, 1907. Victor Brochard, who had fought for years
against the ravages of a painful disease that had left him blind and crippled, would die
within the month. A popular professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne during the Sec-
ond Empire, a frequent celebrity at the salons of Mmes. Aubernon and De Caillavet,
he had pursued a life-style and a philosophical approach that would not naturally have
drawn him to Durkheimian sociology. Nevertheless, like Liard, Brochard had come
under the influence of Charles Renouvier, and his concern for the development of a
better lay morality than his generation had either taught, or practiced, led him to en-
courage Durkheim and his followers. Baptiste Jacob recalled his last New Year's visit
to the dying philosopher: "We others, he [Brochard] told me-and he spoke of X. ..
and of other philosophers at the Sorbonne as well as of himself-we failed in our duty
to this country; we worshipped talent, personal distinction, and because we had no
care for what was socially useful, we accomplished nothing solid. We gave no vigorous

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 moral direction to the younger generation, and our punishment is the terrible anarchy
of ideas in which it flounders today." B. Jacob, Lettresd'unphilosophe(Paris, 1911), p.
188. E. Boutroux's and V. Brochard's refusal to oppose, and even willingness to aid
the Durkheimians, was of critical importance, and lends specific support to Victor
Karady's observation that Durkheim's career should be understood within the context
of the evolution of French academic philosophy. V. Karady, "Durkheim, les sciences
sociales et l'Universite: bilan d'un semi-echec," Revuefranfaise de sociologie 17, no. 2
(April-June 1976): 306 fn. 98; idem, "Strategies de reussite et modes de faire-valoir de
la sociologie chez les durkheimiens," ibid. 20, no. 1 (January-March 1979): 53, 55.
56. Archives de l'Academie de Paris, Dossier Durkheim, Emile, AJ16 214; Registre des
proces-verbauxdu Conseil de 1'Universitede Paris, AJ16 2589, February 24, 1913; Lukes,
Emile Durkheim, pp. 372-73.

* This paper is the partial result of a larger study on Bergson and Durkheim in progress
thanks principally to the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the
American Council of Learned Societies. It benefited from discussion before the Groupe
d'Etudes Durkheimiennes at the World Congress of Sociology in August, 1978. See the
issue on the school of Durkheim prepared by the Groupe for the Revuefrancaisede sociologie
20, no. 1 (January-March 1979). Of particular relevance are the articles by Victor
Karady, "Strategies de reussite et modes de faire-valoir de la sociologie chez les durk-
heimiens," 49-82 and George Weisz, "L'ideologie republicaine et les sciences sociales.
Les durkheimiens et la chaire d'histoire d'economie sociale a la Sorbonne," 83-112.

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