required candidates for degrees to show that they had received an excellent secondary education. As it condemned those candidates, students receiving higher instruction, to exercises of the same kind as those of which they had already had their fill in the lycées, it was a simple matter to attack it. It was defended feebly, and has been demolished.
But how was it to be replaced? The problem was very complex. Is it any wonder that it was not solved at a stroke?
First of all, it was important to come to an agreement on this preliminary question: What are the capacities and what is the knowledge students should be required to give proof of possessing? General knowledge? Technical knowledge and the capacity of doing original research (as at the École des chartes and the École des hautes études)? Pedagogic capacity? It came gradually to be recognised that, considering the great extent and variety of the class from which the students are drawn, it is necessary to draw distinctions.
From candidates for the licentiate it is enough to require that they should give proof of good general culture, permitting them at the same time, if they wish, to show that they have a taste for, and some experience in, original research.
From the candidates for agrégation (licentia docendi) who have already obtained the licentiate, there will be required (1) formal proof that they know, by experience, what it is to study an historical problem, and that they have the technical knowledge necessary for such studies; (2) proof of pedagogic capacity, which is a professional necessity for this class.
The students who are not candidates for anything, neither for the licentiate nor for agrégation, and who