different institutions, of different types: at the Collège de France, in the Faculties of Letters, and in the "special schools," such as the École normale supérieure and the École des chartes.
The Collège de France was a relic of the institutions of the ancien régime. It was founded in the sixteenth century in opposition to the scholastic Sorbonne, to be a refuge for the new sciences, and had the glorious privilege of representing historically the higher speculative studies, the spirit of free inquiry, and the interests of pure science. Unfortunately, in the domain of the historical sciences, the Collège de France had allowed its traditions to be obliterated up to a certain point. The great men who taught history in this illustrious institution (J. Michelet, for example), were not technical experts, nor even men of learning, in the proper sense of the word. The audiences which they swayed by their eloquence were not composed of students of history.
The Faculties of Letters formed part of a system established by the Napoleonic legislator. This legislator, in creating the Faculties, by no means entertained the design of encouraging scientific research. He had no great love for science. The Faculties of Law, of Medicine, and so on, were intended by him to be professional schools supplying society with the lawyers, physicians, and so on, which it needs. But three of the five Faculties were unable, from the beginning, to perform the part allotted them, while the other two, Law and Medicine, successfully performed theirs. The Faculties of Catholic Theology did not train the priests needed by society, because the State consented to the education of the priests being conducted in the diocesan seminaries. The Faculties of Sciences and of