Un essai de monopole

An Attempt at Monopoly

Charles Péguy

We published in our previous editions and in our first five series, 1900-1904, so great a number of dispatches from abroad, and from so many countries, in particular from the French colonies, so great a number of education cahiers, and on so many kinds of education, so great a number of history and philosophy cahiers; we published there so great a number of texts and commentaries, of documents and information, of contributions, of dossiers and works bearing on all orders of education; in particular on primary education; in particular on the situation of schoolteachers; in particular the Jean Coste of Antonin Lavergne; and these cahiers of dispatches, of history and philosophy, these texts, commentaries, documents, information, contributions, dossiers, works were so considerable that we cannot think of giving here even the most succinct statement of them; to know what has appeared in the first five series of the cahiers, it suffices to send a money order for five francs to M. Andre Bourgeois, administrator of the cahiers, 8, rue de la Sorbonne, ground floor, Paris, fifth arrondissement; one will receive in return the brief analytical catalogue, 1900-1904, of our first five series.

Our longtime subscribers know, having experienced it for five years, our new subscribers will quickly recognize that our cahiers form a great free people; our successive cahiers do not follow one another in single file like the constrained numbers of the old bourgeois reviews; they do not form servile and frightened linear series; they do not tremble under the government of capitalist backers; they do not lie under the command of terrorized editors, themselves directed; they form a great and variable free people.

One can distinguish in them families, races, companies, tribes; free, autochthonous, autonomous; alliances, comradeships, friendships; free, spontaneous; kinships; profound; correspondences and communications; free; requests and responses; resonances and consonances; echoes; currents circulate; currents of thought, movements of art, movements of life, movements of philosophy, movements of science, of work, of action, of speculation; veins, in the sense in which prospectors understand the word, veins run; lodes reappear; rootstocks, old rootstocks push forth shoots; germinations continue; canopies spread out; flowerings burst forth; and from all the vegetations that push themselves into the world, we make some harvests; a whole world, a people of work moves; vegetations are born and grow; harvests ripen; forests rise; in full freedom.

Among all these families of cahiers, two families appear today in all their vigor, in all their power; the first constituted by the dispatch cahiers; the second constituted by the education cahiers.

These are among us two ancient families, families of the foundation; our first dispatch cahiers, or rather our first dispatches proper — which did not fill a whole cahier — go back, if I have not forgotten my brief analytical catalogue, to those brief and unforgettable dispatches from China, signed Lionel Landry, the first dated from Tientsin, November 13, 1900, of which we still await, in a China dispatch cahier, the continuation and conclusion; and our education cahiers go back so far that I no longer recall how far back they go; beyond that immortal Jean Coste.

All our cahiers, moreover, and in a sense, are they not dispatch cahiers; since all our cahiers, without any exception, bring to our subscribers true news from somewhere; and all our cahiers, in a sense, are they not education cahiers; since all our cahiers, without any exception, bring to our subscribers the best of teachings, the only teachings that are valid, the teachings that we receive from the knowledge of truth; whether our cahiers bring us news of geographical countries or of intellectual countries, of mental and sentimental countries, of countries of philosophy and of the poem, all our cahiers are dispatch cahiers; whether our cahiers bring us the teachings of the school or generally the essential teachings of life, all our cahiers are education cahiers; they are in one sense the former; and in another sense the latter; truth is like a geometric locus where a very great number of regards and senses, of actions and directions intersect; and it is because our cahiers are essentially cahiers of truths that they are themselves like a great geometric country where a very great number of regards and senses, of actions and directions intersect.

If one prefers, on the contrary, to confine oneself to the restricted sense, the particular sense, in this great free people of the cahiers our longtime subscribers know well, our new subscribers will soon perceive these two great dynastic families, the dispatch cahiers, the education cahiers; in this restricted sense, in this particular sense, the cahier one is about to read presents a singular interest, for it belongs equally to these two great families; it is at the junction of these two races, at the intersection of these two great lineages; it is if one likes a dispatch cahier proper; and if one likes an education cahier proper. It is obviously a dispatch cahier, a dispatch from Madagascar; in this capacity it brings us the news of this recent French colony; it is on the other hand, and no less obviously, an education cahier, a cahier on primary education of the natives in Madagascar.

From the very first words one has the clear impression that it is indeed a dispatch cahier, come from far away, that one is no longer in France, that one has taken a journey, that something has changed, that one is speaking another, a new language; in Paris when our radical politicians engage in anticlericalism, in secular education and in state monopoly, when they wish to introduce everywhere the government of their official teaching, this command appears to form an excessively witty joke, because one is thinking then only of annoying the Catholics; in France all anticlericalism appears to be solely an anti-Catholicism; when one speaks of the monopoly, when one wishes to create the monopoly, one is extremely amused, because one is thinking only of annoying the Catholics.

In Madagascar, and one notices it from the very first words of the cahier, when one engages in anticlericalism, when one secularizes, when one creates a state monopoly, a government monopoly of official teaching, when one secularizes by governmental means, one equally, together and indivisibly annoys Protestantism and Catholicism.

This immediately changes the situation, the general attitude, and consequently the mutual attitude of all the interested parties; this change of relationship and so to speak of topographical situation immediately entails a change of mentality, a change of morality; or at least of the application of morality; it automatically makes the politician’s mentality, the political parliamentary immorality disappear; it automatically reveals the human, juridical mentality, the common morality.

For all work, for all work, the good reading consists in reading the work in itself, by itself, for itself.

I hasten to add, to clear all his responsibility, that this reading is the reading of the author; and it is well that it should be so; for the author must be innocent; it suffices that we readers be guilty; M. Raoul Allier wrote this cahier as a cahier of studies, as a cahier of information, as a dispatch cahier, as an education cahier, as the cahier of primary education of the natives in Madagascar.

Himself engaged, by his work, by his conscience, by all his zeal in one of the free Societies concerned, M. Raoul Allier had written in Le Siecle, from fortnight to week and half-week, a series of articles that he intended to bring the debate before the general public; soon it became evident that these articles were taking the shape of a cahier; one sees at once when by their probity, by their seriousness, newspaper articles propose to become a cahier.

These reservations made, I must say that the cahier, as often happens for cahiers thus constituted, contains a very important share of work not yet published; the author knew that our subscribers are accustomed to reading, and to loving best the most serious studies.

I go through the cahier; I wish to extract from it the most dangerous passages, and to place them here, so that subsequently in the course of reading they may not disturb the thread of the narrative:

“Why give all these details here? Quite simply because they are unknown and because any discussion, to be serious, must take account of the real facts. Outside of facts, there is only declamation. It is not a question of soliciting favors for anyone. Those whose efforts I have recalled will raise no protest against the development of official and secular education, of which they are the first to recognize the right and the necessity. They claim for themselves the whole of the common law, but they claim only this common law. It will be admitted, however, that it is disagreeable for Frenchmen to hear it always said that they have done nothing to prevent French influence from being legitimately identified with clerical influence.”

I hear in this phrase a resonance of old Dreyfusism that will not fail to attract upon the author the curses of our new-style Dreyfusists, political parliamentarians, workers of the one hundred and seventy-first hour, but that will not surprise all those who know M. Raoul Allier.

The very chapter titles lead us despite the author and despite ourselves to the closest comparisons: an error; was this error not committed in France; condemned old stuff; it is condemned in France; needless alarm; an original attempt; change of front; the art of statistics; school statistics, electoral statistics; children in the streets; against the elite; democracy; initiative forbidden; perfectly; the arbitrary; indeed; paradox of illegality; truly; just like at home, then; French lessons; for the Malagasy language; bundles and bundles; for secular schools; Ethiopianism; you will learn that this Ethiopianism is a nationalism, like everyone.