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 FRANCISCO FERRER. 
 FROM A PHOTOGRAPH REPRODUCED FROM " THE LITERARY GUIDE.'
 
 The 
 
 Origin and Ideals 
 
 of the 
 
 Modern School 
 
 By 
 Francisco Ferrer 
 
 Translated by Joseph McCabe 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York and London 
 
 Gbe fmfcfcerbocker tueee 
 
 1913
 
 Copyright, 1913 
 
 BY 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 tTbe Ifcnfcfterbocfeer press, "flew ISorfe
 
 LA 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 On October 12, 1909, Francisco Ferrer y 
 Guardia was shot in the trenches of the Mont- 
 juich Fortress at Barcelona. A Military- 
 Council had found him guilty of being "head 
 of the insurrection" which had, a few months 
 before, lit the flame of civil war in the city 
 and province. The clergy had openly peti- 
 tioned the Spanish Premier, when Ferrer was 
 arrested, to look to the Modern School and 
 its founder for the source of the revolutionary 
 feeling; and the Premier had, instead of 
 rebuking them, promised to do so. When 
 Ferrer was arrested, the prosecution spent 
 many weeks in collecting evidence against 
 him, and granted a free pardon to several men 
 who were implicated in the riot, for testifying 
 against him. These three or four men were 
 the only witnesses out of fifty who would have 
 been heard patiently in a civil court of justice, 
 and even their testimony would at once 
 have crumbled under cross-examination . But 
 iii 

 
 iv Introduction 
 
 there was no cross-examination, and no wit- 
 nesses were brought before the court. Five 
 weeks were occupied in compiling an enor- 
 mously lengthy indictment of Ferrer; then 
 twenty-four hours were given to an inexperi- 
 enced officer, chosen at random, to analyse it 
 and prepare a defence. Evidence sent in 
 Ferrer's favour was confiscated by the police; 
 the witnesses who could have disproved the 
 case against him were kept in custody miles 
 away from Barcelona; and documents which 
 would have tended to show his innocence 
 were refused to the defending officer. And 
 after the mere hearing of the long and hope- 
 lessly bewildering indictment (in which the 
 evidence was even falsified), and in spite of 
 the impassioned protest of the defending 
 officer against the brutal injustice of the pro- 
 ceedings, the military judges found Ferrer 
 guilty, and he was shot. 
 
 Within a month of the judicial murder of 
 Ferrer, I put the whole abominable story 
 before the British public. I showed the deep 
 corruption of Church and politics in Spain, 
 and proved that clergy and politicians had 
 conspired to use the gross and pliable machin- 
 ery of "military justice" to remove a man
 
 Introduction v 
 
 whose sole aim was to open the eyes of the 
 Spanish people. A prolonged and passionate 
 controversy followed. That controversy has 
 not altered a line of my book. Mr. William 
 Archer, in a cold and impartial study of the 
 matter, has fully supported my indictment 
 of the prosecution of Ferrer; and Professor 
 Simarro, of Madrid University, has, in a 
 voluminous study of the trial {El Proceso 
 Ferrer — two large volumes), quoted whole 
 chapters of my little work. When, in 191 2, 
 the Supreme Military Council of Spain was 
 forced to declare that no single act of violence 
 could be directly or indirectly traced to Ferrer 
 (whereas the chief witness for the prosecu- 
 tion had sworn that he saw Ferrer leading a 
 troop of rioters) , and ordered the restoration 
 of his property, the case for his innocence was 
 closed. It remains only for Spain to wipe 
 the foul stain from its annals by removing 
 the bones of the martyred teacher from the 
 trenches of Montjuich, and to declare, with 
 real Spanish pride, that a grave injustice has 
 been done. 
 
 Meantime, the restoration of Ferrer's pro- 
 perty enabled his trustees to resume his work. 
 Among his papers they found a manuscript
 
 vi Introduction 
 
 account, from his own pen, of the origin and 
 ideals of the Modern School, and their first 
 act is to give it to the world. In 1906, Ferrer 
 had been arrested on the charge of complicity 
 in the attempt of Morral to assassinate the 
 King. He was kept in jail for a year, and 
 the most scandalous efforts were made, in 
 the court and the country, to secure a judicial 
 murder; but it was a civil (or civilised) trial, 
 and the charge was contemptuously rejected. 
 Going to the Pyrenees in the early summer 
 of 1908 to recuperate, Ferrer determined to 
 write the simple story of his school, and it is 
 this I now offer to English readers. 
 
 In this work Ferrer depicts himself more 
 truly and vividly than any friend of his has 
 ever done. For my part, I had never seen 
 Ferrer, and never seen Spain; but I was ac- 
 quainted with Spanish life and letters, and 
 knew that there had been committed in the 
 twentieth century one of those old-world 
 crimes by which the children of darkness seek 
 to arrest the advance of man. I interpreted 
 Ferrer from his work, his letters, a few jour- 
 nalistic articles he had written — he had 
 never published a book — and the impressions 
 of his friends and pupils. In this book the
 
 Introduction vii 
 
 man portrays himself, and describes his aims 
 with a candour that all will appreciate. The 
 less foolish of his enemies have ceased to 
 assert that he organised or led the riot at Bar- 
 celona in 1909. It was, they say, the ten- 
 dency, the subtle aim, of his work which made 
 him responsible. It may be remembered 
 that the Saturday Review and other journals 
 published the most unblushingly mendacious 
 letters, from anonymous correspondents, say- 
 ing that they had seen posters on the walls of 
 Ferrer's schools inciting children to violence. 
 As the very zealous police did not at the trial 
 even mention Ferrer's schools, or the text- 
 books used in them, these lies need no further 
 exposure. But many persist in thinking, 
 since there is now nothing further to think 
 to the disadvantage of Ferrer, that his schools 
 were really hotbeds of rebellion and were 
 very naturally suppressed. 
 
 Here is the full story of the Modern School 
 told in transparently simple language. Here 
 is the whole man, with all his ideals, aims, and 
 resentments. It shows, as we well knew, and 
 could have proved with overwhelming force 
 at his trial had we been permitted, that he 
 was absolutely opposed to violence ever
 
 viii Introduction 
 
 since, in his youth, he had taken part in 
 an abortive revolution. It tells how he came 
 to distrust violence and those who used it; 
 how he concluded that the moral and intel- 
 lectual training of children was to be the sole 
 work of his career; how, when he obtained the 
 funds, he turned completely from politics, 
 and devoted himself to educating children 
 in knowledge of science and in sentiments of 
 peace and brotherhood. 
 
 It tells also, with the same transparent 
 plainness, why his noble-minded work in- 
 curred such violent enmity. He naively 
 boasts that the education in the Modern 
 School was free from dogmas. It was not, 
 and cannot be in any school, free from dog- 
 mas, for dogma means "teaching," and he 
 gave teaching of a very definite character. 
 Mr. Belloc's indictment of his schools is, like 
 Mr. Belloc's indictment of his character and 
 guilt, evidently based on complete ignorance 
 of the facts and a very extensive knowledge 
 of the recklessly mendacious literature of his 
 opponents. Even Mr. Archer's account of 
 his school is grossly misleading. The Modern 
 School was "avowedly a nursery of rebellious 
 citizens" only in the same sense as is any
 
 Introduction ix 
 
 Socialist Sunday-school in England or Ger- 
 many; and the Spanish Government has 
 never claimed, and could not claim, for a 
 moment the right to close it, except in so far 
 as it falsely charged the founder with crime 
 and confiscated his property. 
 
 Ferrer's school was thoroughly rationalistic, 
 and this embittered the clergy — for his system 
 was spreading rapidly through Spain — with- 
 out in the least infringing Spanish law. 
 Further, Ferrer's school explicitly taught 
 children that militarism was a crime, that 
 the unequal distribution of wealth was a 
 thing to be abhorred, that the capitalist 
 system was bad for the workers, and that 
 political government is an evil. He had a 
 perfect right under Spanish law to found a 
 school to teach his ideas; as any man has 
 under English or German law. The pro- 
 hibited and damnable thing would be even 
 to hint to children that, when they grew up, 
 they might look forward to altering the 
 industrial and political system by violence. 
 This Ferrer not only did not teach, but strenu- 
 ously opposed. We have overwhelming 
 proof of this at every step of his later career. 
 But he was a child of the workers, and he had
 
 x Introduction 
 
 a passionate and noble resentment of the 
 ignorance, poverty, and squalor of the lives 
 of so large a proportion of the workers. He 
 was also an Anarchist, in the sense of Tolstoi ; 
 he believed that liberty was essential to the 
 development of man, and central government 
 an evil. But, as rigorously as Tolstoi, he 
 relied on persuasion and abhorred violence. 
 I would call attention to. Chapter VI of this 
 book, in which he pleads for "the co-educa- 
 tion of the rich and poor"; and there were 
 children of middle-class parents, even of 
 university professors, in his school. Most 
 decidedly he preached no class-hatred or 
 violence. I do not share his academic and 
 innocent Anarchist ideal — which is far nearer 
 to Conservatism than to Socialism — but I 
 share to the full that intense and passionate 
 longing for the uplifting and brightening of 
 the poor, and for the destruction of supersti- 
 tion, which was the supreme ideal of his life 
 and of his work. For that he was shot. 
 
 Finally, the reader must strictly bear in 
 mind the Spanish atmosphere of this tragedy. 
 When Ferrer describes "existing schools," 
 he means the schools of Spain, which are, for 
 the most part, a mockery and a shame.
 
 Introduction xi 
 
 When he talks of "ruling powers," he has in 
 mind the politicians of Spain, my indictment 
 of whom, in their own language, has never 
 been questioned. When he talks of "super- 
 stition, " he means primarily Spanish super- 
 stition; he refers to a priesthood that still 
 makes millions every year by the sale of 
 indulgences. If you remember these things, 
 you will, however you dissent from his teach- 
 ing in parts, appreciate the burning and 
 unselfish idealism of the man, and understand 
 why some of us see the brand of Cain on the 
 fair brow of Spain for extinguishing that 
 idealism in blood. 
 
 J. M. 
 February, IQ13.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 [APTER PAGE 
 
 I. — The Birth of My Ideals . i 
 
 II. — Mlle. Meunier ... 9 
 
 III. — I Accept the Responsibility . 16 
 
 IV. — The Early Programme . . 25 
 
 V. — The Co-Education of the Sexes 33 
 
 VI. — Co-Education of the Social 
 Classes 
 
 VII. — School Hygiene 
 
 VIII.— The Teachers . 
 
 IX. — The Reform of the School 
 
 X. — No Reward or Punishment 
 
 44 
 52 
 55 
 59 
 75 
 
 XI. — The General Public and the 
 
 Library .... 81 
 
 XII. — Sunday Lectures ... 96 
 
 XIII.— The Results . . . .101
 
 xiv Contents 
 
 XIV. — A Defensive Chapter . . 108 
 
 XV. — The Ingenuousness of the 
 
 Child 119 
 
 XVI— The "Bulletin" . . .129 
 
 XVII. — The Closing of the Modern 
 
 School . . . . 137 
 
 Epilogue . . . .145
 
 The Origin and Ideals of the 
 Modern School
 
 The Origin and Ideals of 
 The Modern School 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE BIRTH OF MY IDEALS 
 
 The share which I had in the political 
 struggles of the last part of the nineteenth 
 century put my early convictions to a severe 
 test. I was a revolutionary in the cause of 
 justice ; I was convinced that liberty, equality, 
 and fraternity were the legitimate fruit to 
 be expected of a republic. Seeing, therefore, 
 no other way to attain this ideal but a po- 
 litical agitation for a change of the form 
 of government, I devoted myself entirely to 
 the republican propaganda. ' 
 
 1 This was in the early eighties, when Ferrer, then in his 
 early twenties, was secretary to the republican leader Ruiz 
 Zorrilla. To this phase of his career, which he rapidly 
 
 I
 
 2 The Modern School 
 
 My relations with D. Manuel Ruiz Zor- 
 rilla, who was one of the leading figures in 
 the revolutionary movement, brought me 
 into contact with a number of the Spanish 
 revolutionaries and some prominent French 
 agitators, and my intercourse with them led 
 to a sharp disillusion. I detected in many 
 of them an egoism which they sought hypo- 
 critically to conceal, while the ideals of others, 
 who were more sincere, seemed to me inade- 
 quate. In none of them did I perceive a 
 design to bring about a radical improvement 
 — a reform which should go to the roots of 
 disorder and afford some security of a per- 
 fect social regeneration. 
 
 The experience I acquired during my fif- 
 teen years' residence at Paris, in which I 
 witnessed the crises of Boulangism, Drey- 
 fusism, and Nationalism, and the menace 
 they offered to the Republic, convinced me 
 that the problem of popular education was 
 not solved; and, if it were not solved in 
 France, there was little hope of Spanish 
 republicanism settling it, especially as the 
 
 outgrew, belongs the revolutionary document which was 
 malignantly and dishonestly used against him twenty- 
 five years afterwards. — J. M.
 
 The Birth of My Ideals 3 
 
 party had always betrayed a lamentable 
 inappreciation of the need of a system of 
 general education. 
 
 Consider what the condition of the present 
 generation would be if the Spanish republican 
 party had, after the banishment of Ruiz 
 Zorrilla [1885], devoted itself to the establish- 
 ment of Rationalist schools in connection 
 with each committee, each group of Free- 
 thinkers, or each Masonic lodge; if, instead 
 of the presidents, secretaries, and members 
 of the committees thinking only of the office 
 they were to hold in the future Republic, they 
 had entered upon a vigorous campaign for 
 the instruction of the people. In the thirty 
 years that have elapsed, considerable progress 
 would have been made in founding day- 
 schools for children and night-schools for 
 adults. 
 
 Would the general public, educated in this 
 way, be content to send members to Parlia- 
 ment who would accept an Associations Law 
 presented by the monarchists? Would the 
 people confine itself to holding meetings to 
 demand a reduction of the price of bread, 
 instead of resenting the privations imposed 
 on the worker by the superfluous luxuries of
 
 4 The Modern School 
 
 the wealthy? Would they waste their time 
 in futile indignation meetings, instead of 
 organising their forces for the removal of all 
 unjust privileges? 
 
 My position as professor of Spanish at the 
 Philotechnic Association and in the Grand 
 Orient of France brought me into touch 
 with people of every class, both in regard 
 to character and social position; and, when 
 I considered them from the point of view 
 of their possible influence on the race, I 
 found that they were all bent upon making 
 the best they could of life in a purely individ- 
 ualist sense. Some studied Spanish with a 
 view to advancing in their profession, others 
 in order to master Spanish literature and 
 promote their careers, and others for the 
 purpose of obtaining further pleasure by 
 travelling in countries where Spanish was 
 spoken. 
 
 No one felt the absurdity of the contradic- 
 tions between belief and knowledge; hardly 
 one cared to give a just and rational form to 
 human society, in order that all the members 
 of each generation might have a proportion- 
 ate share in the advantages created by earlier 
 generations. Progress was conceived as a 

 
 The Birth of My Ideals 5 
 
 kind of fatalism, independent of the know- 
 ledge and the goodwill of men, subject to 
 vacillations and accidents in which the con- 
 science and energy of man had no part. The 
 individual, reared in a family circle, with 
 its inveterate atavism and its traditional 
 illusions maintained by ignorant mothers, 
 and in the school with something worse than 
 error — the sacramental untruth imposed by 
 men who spoke in the name of a divine 
 revelation — was deformed and degenerate at 
 his entrance into society; and, if there is any 
 logical relation between cause and effect, 
 nothing could be expected of him but irra- 
 tional and pernicious results. 
 
 I spoke constantly to those whom I met 
 with a view to proselytism, seeking to ascertain 
 the use of each of them for the purpose of my 
 ideal, and soon realised that nothing was to 
 be expected of the politicians who surrounded 
 Ruiz Zorrilla; they were, in my opinion, with 
 a few honourable exceptions, impenitent 
 adventurers. This gave rise to a certain 
 expression which the judicial authorities 
 sought to use to my disadvantage in circum- 
 stances of great gravity and peril. Zorrilla, 
 a man of lofty views and not sufficiently on
 
 6 The Modern School 
 
 his guard against human malice, used to call 
 me an "anarchist" when he heard me put 
 forward a logical solution of a problem; at 
 all times he regarded me as a deep radical, 
 opposed to the opportunist views and the 
 showy radicalism of the Spanish revolution- 
 aries who surrounded and even exploited 
 him, as well as the French republicans, who 
 held a policy of middle-class government and 
 avoided what might benefit the disinherited 
 proletariate, on the pretext of distrusting 
 Utopias. 
 
 In a word, during the early years of the 
 restoration there were men conspiring with 
 Ruiz Zorrilla who have since declared them- 
 selves convinced monarchists and conserva- 
 tives; and that worthy man, who protested 
 earnestly against the coup oVEtat of January 
 3, 1874, confided in his false friends, with the 
 result, not uncommon in the political world, 
 that most of them abandoned the republican 
 party for the sake of some office. In the 
 end he could count only on the support of 
 those who were too honourable to sell them- 
 selves, though they lacked the logic to develop 
 his ideas and the energy to carry out his work. 
 
 In consequence of this I restricted myself
 
 The Birth of My Ideals 7 
 
 to my pupils, and selected for my purposes 
 those whom I thought more appropriate and 
 better disposed. Having now a clear idea 
 of the aim which I proposed to myself, and a 
 certain prestige from my position as teacher 
 and my expansive character, I discussed 
 various subjects with my pupils when the 
 lessons were over; sometimes we spoke of 
 Spanish customs, sometimes of politics, re- 
 ligion, art, or philosophy. I sought always 
 to correct the exaggerations of their judg- 
 ments, and to show clearly how mischievous 
 it is to subordinate one's own judgment to 
 the dogma of a sect, school, or party, as is so 
 frequently done. In this way I succeeded in 
 bringing about a certain agreement among 
 men who differed in their creeds and views, 
 and induced them to master the beliefs which 
 they had hitherto held unquestioningly by 
 faith, obedience, or sheer indolence. My 
 friends and pupils found themselves happy 
 in thus abandoning some ancient error and 
 opening their minds to truths which uplifted 
 and ennobled them. 
 
 A rigorous logic, applied with discretion, 
 removed fanatical bitterness, established in- 
 tellectual harmony, and gave, to some extent
 
 8 The Modern School 
 
 at least, a progressive disposition to their 
 wills. Freethinkers who opposed the Church 
 and rejected the legends of Genesis, the im- 
 perfect morality of the Gospels, and the 
 ecclesiastical ceremonies ; more or less oppor- 
 tunist republicans or radicals who were con- 
 tent with the futile equality conferred by the 
 title of citizen, without in the least affecting 
 class distinctions; philosophers who fancied 
 they had discovered the first cause of things 
 in their metaphysical labyrinths and estab- 
 lished truth in their empty phrases — all were 
 enabled to see the errors of others as well as 
 their own, and they leaned more and more to 
 the side of common sense. 
 
 When the further course of my life separated 
 me from these friends and brought on me an 
 unmerited imprisonment, I received many 
 expressions of confidence and friendship from 
 them. From all of them I anticipate useful 
 work in the cause of progress, and I congratu- 
 late myself that I had some share in the 
 direction of their thoughts and endeavours.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MLLE. MEUNIER 
 
 Among my pupils was a certain Mile. Meu- 
 nier, a wealthy old lady with no dependents, 
 who was fond of travel, and studied Spanish 
 with the object of visiting my country. She 
 was a convinced Catholic and a very scrupu- 
 lous observer of the rules of her Church. To 
 her, religion and morality were the same 
 thing, and unbelief — or "impiety," as the 
 faithful say — was an evident sign of vice and 
 crime. 
 
 She detested revolutionaries, and she 
 regarded with impulsive and undiscriminat- 
 ing aversion every display of popular ignor- 
 ance. This was due, not only to her education 
 and social position, but to the circumstance 
 that during the period of the Commune she 
 had been insulted by children in the streets 
 of Paris as she went to church with her mother. 
 Ingenuous and sympathetic, without regard 
 
 9
 
 io The Modern School 
 
 to antecedents, accessories, or consequences, 
 she always expressed her dogmatic convic- 
 tions without reserve, and I had many oppor- 
 tunities to open her eyes to the inaccuracy of 
 her opinions. 
 
 In our many conversations I refrained 
 from taking any definite side; so that she 
 did not recognise me as a partisan of any 
 particular belief, but as a careful reasoner 
 with whom it was a pleasure to confer. 
 She formed so flattering an opinion of me, 
 and was so solitary, that she gave me her 
 full confidence and friendship, and invited 
 me to accompany her on her travels. I 
 accepted the offer, and we travelled in various 
 countries. My conduct and our constant 
 conversation compelled her to recognise the 
 error of thinking that every unbeliever was 
 perverse and every atheist a hardened 
 criminal, since I, a convinced atheist, mani- 
 fested symptoms very different from those 
 which her religious prejudice had led her to 
 expect. 
 
 She thought, however, that my conduct 
 was exceptional, and reminded me that the 
 exception proves the rule. In the end the 
 persistency and logic of my arguments forced
 
 Mile. Meunier n 
 
 her to yield to the evidence, and, when her 
 prejudice was removed, she was convinced 
 that a rational and scientific education would 
 preserve children from error, inspire men 
 with a love of good conduct, and reorganise 
 society in accord with the demands of jus- 
 tice. She was deeply impressed by the re- 
 flection that she might have been on a level 
 with the children who had insulted her if, at 
 their age, she had been reared in the same 
 conditions as they. When she had given up 
 her belief in innate ideas, she was greatly 
 preoccupied with the following problem: If 
 a child were educated without hearing any- 
 thing about religion, what idea of the 
 Deity would it have on reaching the age of 
 reason? 
 
 After a while, it seemed to me that we were 
 wasting time if we were not prepared to go 
 on from words to deeds. To be in possession 
 of an important privilege through the imper- 
 fect organisation of society and by the 
 accident of birth, to conceive ideas of reform, 
 and to remain inactive or indifferent amid 
 a life of pleasure, seemed to me to incur a 
 responsibility similar to that of a man who 
 refused to lend a hand to a person whom he
 
 12 The Modern School 
 
 could save from danger. One day, therefore. 
 I said to Mile. Meunier: 
 
 "Mile., we have reached a point at which 
 it is necessary to reconsider our position. 
 The world appeals to us for our assistance, 
 and we cannot honestly refuse it. It seems 
 to me that to expend entirely on comforts 
 and pleasures resources which form part of 
 the general patrimony, and which would 
 suffice to establish a useful institution, is to 
 commit a fraud ; and that would be sanctioned 
 neither by a believer nor an unbeliever. I 
 must warn you, therefore, that you must not 
 count on my company in your further travels. 
 I owe myself to my ideas and to humanity, 
 and I think that you ought to have the same 
 feeling now that you have exchanged your 
 former faith for rational principles." 
 
 She was surprised, but recognised the 
 justice of my decision, and, without other 
 stimulus than her own good nature and fine 
 feeling, she gave me the funds for the estab- 
 lishment of an institute of rational education. 
 The Modern School, which already existed 
 in my mind, was thus ensured of realisation 
 by this generous act. 
 
 All the malicious statements that have been
 
 Mile. Meunier 13 
 
 made in regard to this matter — for instance, 
 that I had to submit to a judicial interroga- 
 tion — are sheer calumnies. It has been said 
 that I used a power of suggestion over Mile. 
 Meunier for my own purposes. This state- 
 ment, which is as offensive to me as it is 
 insulting to the memory of that worthy and 
 excellent lady, is absolutely false. I do not 
 need to justify myself; I leave my vindica- 
 tion to my acts, my life, and the impartial 
 judgment of my contemporaries. But Mile. 
 Meunier is entitled to the respect of all men 
 of right feeling, of all those who have been 
 delivered from the despotism of sect and 
 dogma, who have broken all connection with 
 error, who no longer submit the light of 
 reason to the darkness of faith, nor the dignity 
 of freedom to the yoke of obedience. 
 
 She believed with honest faith. She had 
 been taught that between the Creator and 
 the creature there is a hierarchy of inter- 
 mediaries whom one must obey, and that one 
 must bow to a series of mysteries contained in 
 the dogmas imposed by a divinely instituted 
 Church. In that belief she remained per- 
 fectly tranquil. The remarks I made and 
 advice I offered her were not spontaneous
 
 14 The Modern School 
 
 commentaries on her belief, but natural re- 
 plies to her efforts to convert me; and, from 
 her want of logic, her feeble reasoning broke 
 down under the strength of my arguments, 
 instead of her persuading me to put faith 
 before reason. She could not regard me as a 
 tempting spirit, since it was always she who 
 attacked my convictions; and she was in 
 the end vanquished by the struggle of her 
 faith and her own reason, which was aroused 
 by her indiscretion in assailing the faith of 
 one who opposed her beliefs. 
 
 She now ingenuously sought to exonerate 
 the Communist boys as poor and uneducated 
 wretches, the offspring of crime, disturbers of 
 the social order, on account of the injustice 
 which, in face of such a disgrace, permits 
 others, equal disturbers of the social order, 
 to live unproductive lives, enjoy great wealth, 
 exploit ignorance and misery, and trust that 
 they will continue throughout eternity to 
 enjoy their pleasures on account of their 
 compliance with the rites of the Church and 
 their works of charity. The idea of a 
 reward of easy virtue and punishment of 
 unavoidable sin shocked her conscience and 
 moderated her religious feeling, and, seeking
 
 Mile. Meunier 15 
 
 to break the atavistic chain which so much 
 hampers any attempt at reform, she decided 
 to contribute to the founding of a useful 
 work which would educate the young in a 
 natural way and in conditions which would 
 help them to use to the full the treasures of 
 knowledge which humanity has acquired by 
 labour, study, observation, and the method- 
 ical arrangement of its general conclusions. 
 In this way, she thought, with the aid of 
 a supreme intelligence which veils itself in 
 mystery from the mind of man, or by the 
 knowledge which humanity has gained by 
 suffering, contradiction, and doubt, the 
 future will be realised; and she found an 
 inner contentment and vindication of her 
 conscience in the idea of contributing, by the 
 bestowal of her property, to a work of tran- 
 scendent importance.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 I ACCEPT THE RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 Once I was in possession of the means of 
 attaining my object, I determined to put my 
 hand to the task without delay. * It was now 
 time to give a precise shape to the vague 
 aspiration that had long haunted my imag- 
 ination; and to that end, conscious of my 
 imperfect knowledge of the art of pedagogy, 
 I sought the counsel of others. I had not a 
 great confidence in the official pedagogists, 
 as they seemed to me to be largely hampered 
 by prejudices in regard to their subject or 
 other matters, and I looked out for some com- 
 petent person whose views and conduct would 
 accord with my ideals. With his assistance 
 I would formulate the programme of the Mod- 
 ern School which I had already conceived. 
 
 1 Mile. Meunier died, leaving about £30,000 uncon- 
 ditionally to Ferrer, before he returned to Spain in 1900. 
 — J. M. 
 
 16
 
 I Accept the Responsibility 17 
 
 In my opinion it was to be, not the perfect 
 type of the future school of a rational state 
 of ' society, but a precursor of it, the best 
 possible adaptation of our means; that is to 
 say, an emphatic rejection of the ancient 
 type of school which still survives, and a 
 careful experiment in the direction of im- 
 buing the children of the future with the 
 substantial truths of science. 
 
 I was convinced that the child comes into 
 the world without innate ideas, and that dur- 
 ing the course of his life he gathers the ideas 
 of those nearest to him, modifying them 
 according to his own observation and read- 
 ing. If this is so, it is clear that the child 
 should receive positive and truthful ideas of 
 all things, and be taught that, to avoid error, 
 it is essential to admit nothing on faith, but 
 only after experience or rational demonstra- 
 tion. With such a training the child will 
 become a careful observer, and will be pre- 
 pared for all kinds of studies. 
 
 When I had found a competent person, and 
 while the first lines were being traced of the 
 plan we were to follow, the necessary steps 
 were taken in Barcelona for the founding of 
 the establishment; the building was chosen
 
 1 8 The Modern School 
 
 and prepared, and the furniture, staff, 
 advertisements, prospectuses, leaflets, etc., 
 were secured. In less than a year all was 
 ready, though I was put to great loss through 
 the betrayal of my confidence by a certain 
 person. It was clear that we should at once 
 have to contend with many difficulties, not 
 only on the part of those who were hostile to 
 rational education, but partly on account of 
 a certain class of theorists, who urged on 
 me, as the outcome of their knowledge and 
 experience, advice which I could regard only 
 as the fruit of their prejudices. One man, for 
 instance, who was afflicted with a zeal for 
 local patriotism, insisted that the lessons 
 should be given in Catalan [the dialect of the 
 province of Barcelona], and would thus con- 
 fine humanity and the world within the 
 narrow limits of the region between the 
 Ebro and the Pyrenees. I would not, I told 
 the enthusiast, even adopt Spanish as the 
 language of the school if a universal language 
 had already advanced sufficiently to be of 
 practical use. I would a hundred times 
 rather use Esperanto than Catalan. 
 
 The incident confirmed me in my resolution 
 not to submit the settlement of my plan to
 
 I Accept the Responsibility 19 
 
 the authority of distinguished men who, with 
 all their repute, do not take a single voluntary 
 step in the direction of reform. I felt the 
 burden of the responsibility I had accepted, 
 and I endeavoured to discharge it as my 
 conscience directed. Resenting the marked 
 social inequalities of the existing order as I 
 did, I could not be content to deplore their 
 effects; I must attack them in their causes, 
 and appeal to the principle of justice — to 
 that ideal equality which inspires all sound 
 revolutionary feeling. 
 
 If matter is one, uncreated, and eternal — 
 if we live on a relatively small body in space, 
 a mere speck in comparison with the innumer- 
 able globes about us, as is taught in the 
 universities, and may be learned by the 
 privileged few who share the monopoly of 
 science — we have no right to teach, and no 
 excuse for teaching, in the primary schools to 
 which the people go when they have the 
 opportunity, that God made the world out 
 of nothing in six days, and all the other 
 absurdities of the ancient legends. Truth 
 is universal, and we owe it to everybody. To 
 put a price on it, to make it the monopoly 
 of a privileged few, to detain the lowly in
 
 20 The Modern School 
 
 systematic ignorance, and — what is worse — 
 impose on them a dogmatic and official 
 doctrine in contradiction with the teaching of 
 science, in order that they may accept with 
 docility their low and deplorable condition, 
 is to me an intolerable indignity. For my 
 part, I consider that the most effective pro- 
 test and the most promising form of revolu- 
 tionary action consist in giving the oppressed, 
 the disinherited, and all who are conscious 
 of a demand for justice, as much truth as 
 they can receive, trusting that it will direct 
 their energies in the great work of the regen- 
 eration of society. 
 
 Hence the terms of the first announcement 
 of the Modern School that was issued to the 
 public. It ran as follows: 
 
 Programme. 
 
 The mission of the Modern School is to secure 
 that the boys and girls who are entrusted to it 
 shall become well-instructed, truthful, just, and 
 free from all prejudice. 
 
 To that end the rational method of the natural 
 sciences will be substituted for the old dogmatic 
 teaching. It will stimulate, develop, and direct 
 the natural ability of each pupil, so that he or
 
 I Accept the Responsibility 21 
 
 she will not only become a useful member of 
 society, with his individual value fully developed, 
 but will contribute, as a necessary consequence, 
 to the uplifting of the whole community. 
 
 It will instruct the young in sound social 
 duties, in conformity with the just principle 
 that "there are no duties without rights, and no 
 rights without duties." 
 
 In view of the good results that have been 
 obtained abroad by mixed education, and espe- 
 cially in order to realise the great aim of the 
 Modern School — the formation of an entirely 
 fraternal body of men and women, without 
 distinction of sex or class — children of both 
 sexes, from the age of five upward, will be 
 received. 
 
 For the further development of its work, the 
 Modern School will be opened on Sunday morn- 
 ings, when there will be classes on the sufferings 
 of mankind throughout the course of history, 
 and on the men and women who have distin- 
 guished themselves in science, art, or the fight 
 for progress. The parents of the children may 
 attend these classes. 
 
 In the hope that the intellectual work of the 
 Modern School will be fruitful, we have, besides 
 securing hygienic conditions in the institution 
 and its dependencies, arranged to have a medical 
 inspection of children at their entrance into the
 
 22 The Modern School 
 
 school. The result of this will be communicated 
 to the parents if it is deemed necessary; and 
 others will be held periodically, in order to pre- 
 vent the spread of contagious diseases during the 
 school hours. 
 
 During the week which preceded the 
 opening of the Modern School I invited the 
 representatives of the press to visit the insti- 
 tution and make it known, and some of the 
 journals inserted appreciative notices of the 
 work. It may be of historical interest to 
 quote a few paragraphs from El Diluvio- 
 
 The future is budding in the school. To build 
 on any other foundation is to build on sand. 
 Unhappily, the school may serve either the pur- 
 poses of tyranny or the cause of liberty, and may 
 thus serve either barbarism or civilisation. 
 
 We are therefore pleased to see certain patriots 
 and humanitarians, who grasp the transcendent 
 importance of this social function, which our 
 Government systematically overlooks, hasten to 
 meet this pressing need by founding a Modern 
 School; a school which will not seek to promote 
 the interests of sect and to move in the old ruts, 
 as has been done hitherto, but will create an 
 intellectual environment in which the new gen-
 
 I Accept the Responsibility 23 
 
 eration will absorb the ideas and the im- 
 pulses which the stream of progress unceasingly 
 brings. 
 
 This end can be attained only by private 
 enterprise. Our existing institutions, tainted 
 with all the vices of the past and weakened by all 
 the trivialities of the present, cannot discharge 
 this useful function. It is reserved for men of 
 noble mind and unselfish feeling to open up the 
 new path by which succeeding generations will 
 rise to higher destinies. 
 
 This has been done, or will be done, by the 
 founders of the modest Modern School which we 
 have visited at the courteous invitation of its 
 directors and those who are interested in its 
 development. This school is not a commercial 
 enterprise, like most scholastic institutions, but a 
 pedagogical experiment, of which only one other 
 specimen exists in Spain (the Free Institution of 
 Education at Madrid). 
 
 Sr. Salas Anton brilliantly expounded the pro- 
 gramme of the school to the small audience of 
 journalists and others who attended the modest 
 opening-festival, and descanted on the design 
 of educating children in the whole truth and 
 nothing but the truth, or what is proved to be 
 such. His chief theme was that the founders do 
 not propose to add one more to the number of 
 what are known as "Lay Schools," with their
 
 24 The Modern School 
 
 impassioned dogmatism, but a serene observa- 
 tory, open to the four winds of heaven, with no 
 cloud darkening the horizon and interposing 
 between the light and the mind of man.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE EARLY PROGRAMME 
 
 The time had come to think of the inaugu- 
 ration of the Modern School. Some time 
 previously I had invited a number of gentle- 
 men of great distinction and of progressive 
 sentiments to assist me with their advice and 
 form a kind of Committee of Consultation. 
 My intercourse with them at Barcelona was 
 of great value to me, and many of them 
 remained in permanent relation with me, for 
 which I may express my gratitude. They 
 were of opinion that the Modern School 
 should be opened with some display — invita- 
 tion cards, a circular to the press, a large hall, 
 music, and oratorical addresses by distin- 
 guished Liberal politicians. It would have 
 been easy to do this, and we would have 
 attracted an audience of hundreds of people 
 who would have applauded with that momen- 
 tary enthusiasm which characterises our 
 25
 
 26 The Modern School 
 
 public functions. But I was not seduced by 
 the idea. As a Positivist and an idealist I 
 was convinced that a simple modesty best 
 befitted the inauguration of a work of reform. 
 Any other method seemed to me disingenu- 
 ous, a concession to enervating conventions 
 and to the very evil which I was setting out 
 to reform. The proposal of the Committee 
 was, therefore, repugnant to my conscience 
 and my sentiments, and I was, in that and 
 all other things relating to the Modern School, 
 the executive power. 
 
 In the first number of the Bulletin of the 
 Modern School, issued on October 30, 1901, 
 I gave a general exposition of the fundamental 
 principles of the School, which I may repeat 
 here: 
 
 Those imaginary products of the mind, a priori 
 ideas, and all the absurd and fantastical fictions 
 hitherto regarded as truth and imposed as 
 directive principles of human conduct, have for 
 some time past incurred the condemnation of 
 reason and the resentment of conscience. The 
 sun no longer merely touches the tips of the 
 mountains; it floods the valleys, and we enjoy 
 the light of noon. Science is no longer the pa- 
 trimony of a small group of privileged individu-
 
 The Early Programme 2*j 
 
 als; its beneficent rays more or less consciously 
 penetrate every rank of society. On all sides 
 traditional errors are being dispelled by it; by 
 the confident procedure of experience and obser- 
 vation it enables us to attain accurate know- 
 ledge and criteria in regard to natural objects and 
 the laws which govern them. With indisputable 
 authority it bids men lay aside for ever their 
 exclusivisms and privileges, and it offers itself 
 as the controlling principle of human life, seeking 
 to imbue all with a common sentiment of 
 humanity. 
 
 Relying on modest resources, but with a robust 
 and rational faith and a spirit that will not easily 
 be intimidated, whatever obstacles arise in our 
 path, we have founded the Modern School. 
 Its aim is to convey, without concession to 
 traditional methods, an education based on the 
 natural sciences. This new method, though the 
 only sound and positive method, has spread 
 throughout the civilised world, and has innumer- 
 able supporters of intellectual distinction and 
 lofty principles. 
 
 We are aware how many enemies there are 
 about us. We are conscious of the innumerable 
 prejudices which oppress the social conscience 
 of our country. This is the outcome of a medi- 
 eval, subjective, dogmatic education, which 
 makes ridiculous pretensions to the possession of
 
 28 The Modern School 
 
 an infallible criterion. We are further aware 
 that, in virtue of the law of heredity, strength- 
 ened by the influences of the environment, the 
 tendencies which are connatural and spontaneous 
 in the young child are still more pronounced in 
 adolescence. The struggle will be severe, the 
 work difficult ; but with a constant and unwaver- 
 ing will, the sole providence of the moral world, 
 we are confident that we shall win the victory 
 to which we aspire. We shall develop living 
 brains, capable of reacting on our instruction. 
 We shall take care that the minds of our pupils 
 will sustain, when they leave the control of their 
 teachers, a stern hostility to prejudice; that 
 they will be solid minds, capable of forming their 
 own rational convictions on every subject. 
 
 This does not mean that we shall leave the child 
 at the very outset of its education, to form its 
 own ideas. The Socratic procedure is wrong, if it 
 is taken too literally. The very constitution of 
 the mind, at the commencement of its develop- 
 ment, demands that at this stage the child shall 
 be receptive. The teacher must implant the 
 germs of ideas. These will, when age and 
 strength invigorate the brain, bring forth corre- 
 sponding flowers and fruit, in accordance with 
 the degree of initiative and the characteristic 
 features of the pupil's mind. 
 
 On the other hand, we may say that we regard
 
 The Early Programme 29 
 
 as absurd the widespread notion that an educa- 
 tion based on natural science stunts the organ of 
 the idealist faculty. We are convinced that the 
 contrary is true. What science does is to correct 
 and direct it, and give it a wholesome sense of 
 reality. The work of man's cerebral energy is to 
 create the ideal, with the aid of art and philo- 
 sophy. But in order that the ideal shall not 
 degenerate into fables, or mystic and unsub- 
 stantial dreams, and the structure be not built 
 on sand, it is absolutely necessary to give it a 
 secure and unshakable foundation in the exact 
 and positive teaching of the natural sciences. 
 Moreover, the education of a man does not 
 consist merely in the training of his intelligence, 
 without having regard to the heart and the will. 
 Man is a complete and unified whole, in spite of 
 the variety of his functions. He presents various 
 facets, but is at the bottom a single energy, which 
 sees, loves, and applies a will to the prosecution 
 of what he has conceived or affected. It is a 
 morbid condition, an infringement of the laws 
 of the human organism, to establish an abyss 
 where there ought to be a sane and harmonious 
 continuity. The divorce between thought and 
 will is an unhappy feature of our time. To what 
 fatal consequences it has led! We need only 
 refer to our political leaders and to the various 
 orders of social life; they are deeply infected
 
 30 The Modern School 
 
 with this pernicious dualism. Many of them are 
 assuredly powerful enough in respect of their 
 mental faculties, and have an abundance of ideas; 
 but they lack a sound orientation and the fine 
 thoughts which science applies to the life of 
 individuals and of peoples. Their restless 
 egoism and the wish to accommodate their 
 relatives, together with their leaven of traditional 
 sentiments, form an impermeable barrier round 
 their hearts and prevent the infiltration of pro- 
 gressive ideas and the formation of that sap of 
 sentiment which is the impelling and determin- 
 ing power in the conduct of man. Hence the 
 attempt to obstruct progress and put obstacles 
 in the way of new ideas; hence, as a result of 
 these attempts, the scepticism of multitudes, 
 the death of nations, and the inevitable despair 
 of the oppressed. 
 
 We regard it as one of the first principles of our 
 pedagogical mission that there is no such dual- 
 ity of character in any individual — one which 
 sees and appreciates truth and goodness, and one 
 which follows evil. And, since we take natural 
 science as our guide in education, a further con- 
 sequence will be recognised ; we shall endeavour 
 to secure that the intellectual impressions which 
 science conveys to the pupil shall be converted 
 into the sap of sentiment and shall be intensely 
 loved. When sentiment is strong it penetrates
 
 The Early Programme 31 
 
 and diffuses itself through the deepest recesses of 
 a man's being, pervading and giving a special 
 colour to his character. 
 
 And as a man's conduct must revolve within 
 the circle of his character, it follows that a youth 
 educated in the manner we have indicated will, 
 when he comes to rule himself, recognise science 
 as the one helpful master of his life. 
 
 The school was opened on September 8, 
 1 90 1, with thirty pupils — twelve girls and 
 eighteen boys. These sufficed for the pur- 
 pose of our experiment, and we had no in- 
 tention of increasing the number for a time, 
 so that we might keep a more effective 
 watch on the pupils. The enemies of the new 
 school would take the first opportunity to 
 criticise our work in co-educating boys and 
 girls. 
 
 The people present at the opening were 
 partly attracted by the notices of our work 
 published in the press, and partly consisted 
 of the parents of the pupils and delegates of 
 various working-class societies who had been 
 invited on account of their assistance to me. 
 I was supported in the chair by the teachers 
 and the Committee of Consultation, two of 
 whom expounded the system and aim of the
 
 32 The Modern School 
 
 school. In this quiet fashion we inaugurated 
 a work that was destined to last. We 
 created the Modern, Scientific, and Rational 
 School, the fame of which soon spread in 
 Europe and America. Time may witness 
 a change of its name — the "Modern" 
 School — but the description "scientific and 
 rational" will be more and more fully 
 vindicated.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 
 
 The most important point in our programme 
 of rational education, in view of the intellec- 
 tual condition of the country, and the feature 
 which was most likely to shock current pre- 
 judices and habits, was the co-education of 
 boys and girls. 
 
 The idea was not absolutely new in Spain. 
 As a result of necessity and of primitive con- 
 ditions, there were villages in remote valleys 
 and on the mountains where some good- 
 natured neighbour, or the priest or sacristan, 
 used to teach the catechism, and sometimes 
 elementary letters, to boys and girls in 
 common. In fact, it is sometimes legally 
 authorised, or at least tolerated, by the State 
 among small populations which have not 
 the means to pay both a master and mistress. 
 In such cases, either a master or mistress 
 gives common lessons to boys and girls, as 
 3 33
 
 34 The Modern School 
 
 I had myself seen in a village not far from 
 Barcelona. In towns and cities, however, 
 mixed education was not recognised. One 
 read sometimes of the occurrence of it in 
 foreign countries, but no one proposed to 
 adopt it in Spain, where such a proposal 
 would have been deemed an innovation of 
 the most Utopian character. 
 
 Knowing this, I refrained from making any 
 public propaganda on the subject, and con- 
 fined myself to private discussion with indi- 
 viduals. We asked every parent who wished 
 to send a boy to the school if there were 
 girls in the family, and it was necessary to 
 explain to each the reasons for co-education. 
 Wherever we did this, the result was satis- 
 factory. If we had announced our intention 
 publicly, it would have raised a storm of 
 prejudice. There would have been a dis- 
 cussion in the press, conventional feeling 
 would have been aroused, and the fear of 
 "what people would say" — that paralysing 
 obstacle to good intentions — would have been 
 stronger than reason. Our project would 
 have proved exceedingly difficult, if not im- 
 possible. Whereas, proceeding as we did, we 
 were able to open with a sufficient number
 
 The Co-Education of the Sexes 35 
 
 of boys and girls, and the number steadily 
 increased, as the Bulletin of the school shows. 
 
 In my own mind, co-education was of vital 
 importance. It was not merely an indis- 
 pensable condition of realising what I regard 
 as the ideal result of rational education; it 
 was the ideal itself, initiating its life in the 
 Modern School, developing progressively 
 without any form of exclusion, inspiring a 
 confidence of attaining our end. Natural 
 science, philosophy, and history unite in 
 teaching, in face of all prejudice to the con- 
 trary, that man and woman are two comple- 
 mentary aspects of human nature, and the 
 failure to recognise this essential and impor- 
 tant truth has had the most disastrous 
 consequences. 
 
 In the second number of the Bulletin, 
 therefore, I published a careful vindication 
 of my ideas: 
 
 Mixed education [I said] is spreading among 
 civilised nations. In many places it has already 
 had excellent results. The principle of this new 
 scheme of education is that children of both 
 sexes shall receive the same lessons; that their 
 minds shall be developed, their hearts purified, 
 and their wills strengthened in precisely the same
 
 36 The Modern School 
 
 manner; that the sexes shall be in touch with 
 each other from infancy, so that woman shall be, 
 not in name only, but in reality and truth, the 
 companion of man. 
 
 A venerable institution which dominates the 
 thoughts of our people declares, at one of the 
 most solemn moments of life, when, with cere- 
 monious pomp, man and woman are united in 
 matrimony, that woman is the companion of 
 man. These are hollow words, void of sense, 
 without vital and rational significance in life, 
 since what we witness in the Christian Church, 
 in Catholicism particularly, is the exact opposite 
 of this idea. Not long ago a Christian woman 
 of fine feeling and great sincerity complained 
 bitterly of the moral debasement which is put 
 upon her sex in the bosom of the Church: "It 
 would be impious audacity for a woman to as- 
 pire in the Church even to the position of the 
 lowest sacristan." 
 
 A man must suffer from ophthalmia of the 
 mind not to see that, under the inspiration of 
 Christianity, the position of woman is no better 
 than it was under the ancient civilisations; it 
 is, indeed, worse, and has aggravating circum- 
 stances. It is a conspicuous fact in our modern 
 Christian society that, as a result and culmina- 
 tion of our patriarchal development, the woman 
 does not belong to herself; she is neither more
 
 The Co-Education of the Sexes 37 
 
 nor less than an adjunct of man, subject con- 
 stantly to his absolute dominion, bound to him — • 
 it may be — by chains of gold. Man has made 
 her a perpetual minor. Once this was done, she 
 was bound to experience one of two alternatives : 
 man either oppresses and silences her, or treats 
 her as a child to be coaxed — according to the 
 mood of the master. If at length we note in her 
 some sign of the new spirit, if she begins to assert 
 her will and claim some share of independence, 
 if she is passing, with irritating slowness, from 
 the state of slave to the condition of a respected 
 ward, she owes it to the redeeming spirit of 
 science, which is dominating the customs of 
 races and the designs of our social rulers. 
 
 The work of man for the greater happiness 
 of the race has hitherto been defective; in 
 future it must be a joint action of the sexes; 
 it is incumbent on both man and woman, 
 according to the point of view of each. It is 
 important to realise that, in face of the pur- 
 poses of life, man is neither inferior nor (as we 
 affect to think) superior to woman. They 
 have different qualities, and no comparison 
 is possible between diverse things. 
 
 As many psychologists a*id sociologists 
 observe, the human race displays two funda- 

 
 38 The Modern School 
 
 mental aspects. Man typifies the dominion 
 of thought and of the progressive spirit; 
 woman bears in her moral nature the char- 
 acteristic note of intense sentiment and of the 
 conservative spirit. But this view of the 
 sexes gives no encouragement whatever to 
 the ideas of reactionaries. If the predomi- 
 nance of the conservative element and of the 
 emotions is ensured in woman by natural 
 law, this does not make her the less fitted to 
 be the companion of man. She is not pre- 
 vented by the constitution of her nature from 
 reflecting on things of importance, nor is it 
 necessary that she should use her mind in 
 contradiction to the teaching of science and 
 absorb all kinds of superstitions and fables. 
 The possession of a conservative disposition 
 does not imply that one is bound to crystallise 
 in a certain stage of thought, or that one must 
 be obsessed with prejudice in all that relates 
 to reality. 
 
 "To conserve" merely means "to retain," 
 to keep what has been given us, or what we 
 have ourselves produced. The author of 
 The Religion of the Future says, referring to 
 woman in this respect: "The conservative 
 spirit may be applied to truth as well as to
 
 The Co-Education of the Sexes 39 
 
 error; it all depends what it is you conserve. 
 If woman is instructed in philosophical and 
 scientific matters, her conservative power 
 will be to the advantage, not to the disad- 
 vantage, of progressive thought." 
 
 On the other hand, it is pointed out that 
 woman is emotional. She does not selfishly 
 keep to herself what she receives ; she spreads 
 abroad her beliefs, her ideas, and all the good 
 and evil that form her moral treasures. She 
 insists on sharing them with all those who 
 are, by the mysterious power of emotion, 
 identified with her. With exquisite art, with 
 invariable unconsciousness, her whole moral 
 physiognomy, her whole soul, so to say, im- 
 presses itself on the soul of those she loves. 
 
 If the first ideas implanted in the mind of 
 the child by the teacher are germs of truth 
 and of positive knowledge; if the teacher 
 himself is in touch with the scientific spirit 
 of the time, the result will be good from every 
 point of view. But if a man be fed in the 
 first stage of his mental development with 
 fables, errors, and all that is contrary to the 
 spirit of science, what can be expected of his 
 future? When the boy becomes a man he 
 will be an obstacle to progress. The human
 
 40 The Modern School 
 
 conscience is in infancy of the same natural 
 texture as the bodily organism; it is tender 
 and pliant. It readily accepts what comes to 
 it from without. In the course of time this 
 plasticity gives place to rigidity; it loses its 
 pliancy and becomes relatively fixed. From 
 that time the ideas communicated to it by 
 the mother will be encrusted and identified 
 with the youth's conscience. 
 
 The acid of the more rational ideas which 
 the youth acquires by social intercourse or 
 private study may in cases relieve the mind of 
 the erroneous ideas implanted in childhood. 
 But what is likely to be the practical out- 
 come of this transformation of the mind in 
 the sphere of conduct? We must not forget 
 that in most cases the emotions associated 
 with the early ideas remain in the deeper 
 folds of the heart. Hence it is that we find 
 in so many men such a flagrant and lament- 
 able antithesis between the thought and the 
 deed, the intelligence and the will; and this 
 often leads to an eclipse of good conduct and 
 a paralysis of progress. 
 
 This primary sediment which we owe to our 
 mothers is so tenacious and enduring — it 
 passes so intimately into the very marrow of
 
 The Co-Education of the Sexes 41 
 
 our being — that even energetic characters, 
 which have effected a sincere reform of mind 
 and will, have the mortification of discov- 
 ering this Jesuitical element, derived from 
 their mothers, when they turn to make an 
 inventory of their ideas. 
 
 Woman must not be restricted to the home. 
 The sphere of her activity must go out far 
 beyond her home ; it must extend to the very 
 confines of society. But in order to ensure 
 a helpful result from her activity we must not 
 restrict the amount of knowledge we commu- 
 nicate to her ; she must learn, both in regard 
 to quantity and quality, the same things as 
 man. When science enters the mind of 
 woman it will direct her rich vein of emotion, 
 the characteristic element of her nature, the 
 glad harbinger of peace and happiness among 
 men. 
 
 It has been said that woman represents 
 continuity, and man represents change: man 
 is the individual, woman is the species. 
 Change, however, would be useless, fugitive, 
 and inconstant, with no solid foundation 
 of reality, if the work of woman did not 
 strengthen and consolidate the achievements 
 of man. The individual, as such, is the
 
 42 The Modern School 
 
 flower of a day, a thing of ephemeral sig- 
 nificance in life. Woman, who represents 
 the species, has the function of retaining 
 within the species the elements which improve 
 its life, and to discharge this function ade- 
 quately she needs scientific instruction. 
 
 Humanity will advance more rapidly and 
 confidently in the path of progress and in- 
 crease its resources a hundredfold if it com- 
 bines the ideas acquired by science with the 
 emotional strength of woman. Ribot observes 
 that an idea is merely an idea, an act of 
 intelligence, incapable of producing or doing 
 anything, unless it is accompanied by an 
 emotional state, a motive element. Hence 
 it is conceived as a scientific truth that, to 
 the advantage of progress, an idea does not 
 long remain in a purely contemplative con- 
 dition when it appears. This is obviated 
 by associating the idea with emotion and 
 love, which do not fail to convert it into 
 vital action. 
 
 When will all this be accomplished? When 
 shall we see the marriage of ideas with the 
 impassioned heart of woman? From that 
 date we shall have a moral matriarchate 
 among civilised nations. Then, on the one
 
 The Co-Education of the Sexes 43 
 
 hand, humanity, considered in the home circle, 
 will have the proper teacher to direct the 
 new generations in the sense of the ideal; 
 and, on the other hand, it will have an apostle 
 and enthusiastic propagandist who will im- 
 press the value of liberty on the minds of 
 men and the need of co-operation upon the 
 peoples of the world.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 CO-EDUCATION OF THE SOCIAL CLASSES 
 
 There must be a co-education of the different 
 social classes as well as of the two sexes. I 
 might have founded a school giving lessons 
 gratuitously; but a school for poor children 
 only would not be a rational school, since, 
 if they were not taught submission and cre- 
 dulity as in the old type of school, they would 
 have been strongly disposed to rebel, and 
 would instinctively cherish sentiments of 
 hatred. 
 
 There is no escape from the dilemma. 
 There is no middle term in the school for the 
 disinherited class alone; you have either a 
 systematic insistence, by means of false 
 teaching, on error and ignorance, or hatred 
 of those who domineer and exploit. It is a 
 delicate point, and needs stating clearly. 
 Rebellion against oppression is merely a 
 question of statics, of equilibrium. Between 
 44
 
 Co-Education of Social Classes 45 
 
 one man and another who are perfectly equal, 
 as is said in the immortal first clause of the 
 famous Declaration of the French Revolution 
 (" Men are born and remain free and equal in 
 rights "), there can be no social inequality. If 
 there is such inequality, some will tyrannise, 
 the others protest and hate. Rebellion is a 
 levelling tendency, and to that extent natural 
 and rational, however much it may be dis- 
 credited by justice and its evil companions, 
 law and religion. 
 
 I venture to say quite plainly: the op- 
 pressed and the exploited have a right to rebel, 
 because they have to reclaim their rights 
 until they enjoy their full share in the 
 common patrimony. The Modern School, 
 however, has to deal with children, whom it 
 prepares by instruction for the state of man- 
 hood, and it must not anticipate the cravings 
 and hatreds, the adhesions and rebellions, 
 which may be fitting sentiments in the adult. 
 In other words, it must not seek to gather 
 fruit until it has been produced by cultiva- 
 tion, nor must it attempt to implant a sense 
 of responsibility until it has equipped the 
 conscience with the fundamental conditions of 
 such responsibility. Let it teach the children
 
 46 The Modern School 
 
 to be men; when they are men, they may 
 declare themselves rebels against injustice. 
 
 It needs very little reflection to see that a 
 school for rich children only cannot be a ra- 
 tional school. From the very nature of 
 things it will tend to insist on the mainte- 
 nance of privilege and the securing of their 
 advantages. The only sound and enlight- 
 ened form of school is that which co-educates 
 the poor and the rich, which brings the one 
 class into touch with the other in the inno- 
 cent equality of childhood, by means of the 
 systematic equality of the rational school. 
 
 With this end in view I decided to secure 
 pupils of every social rank and include them 
 in a common class, adopting a system accom- 
 modated to the circumstances of the parents 
 or guardians of the children; I would not 
 have a fixed and invariable fee, but a kind 
 of sliding scale, with free lessons for some and 
 different charges for others. I later pub- 
 lished the following article on the subject 
 in the Bulletin (May 10, 1905) : 
 
 Our friend D. R. C. gave a lecture last Sun- 
 day at the Republican Club on the subject of 
 "Modern Pedagogy," explaining to his audience
 
 Co-Education of Social Classes 47 
 
 what we mean by modern education and what 
 advantages society may derive from it. As I 
 think that the subject is one of very great 
 interest and most proper to receive public atten- 
 tion, I offer the following reflections and consid- 
 erations on it. It seems to me that the lecturer 
 was happy in his exposition of the ideal, but not 
 in the suggestions he made with a view to realis- 
 ing it, nor in bringing forward the schools of 
 France and Belgium as models to be imitated. 
 
 Senor C, in fact, relies upon the State, upon 
 Parliament or municipalities, for the building, 
 equipment, and management of scholastic insti- 
 tutions. This seems to me a great mistake. If 
 modern pedagogy means an effort towards the 
 realisation of a new and more just form of society ; 
 if it means that we propose to instruct the rising 
 generation in the causes which have brought 
 about and maintain the lack of social equili- 
 brium ; if it means that we are anxious to prepare 
 the race for better days, freeing it from relig- 
 ious fiction and from all idea of submission to 
 an inevitable socio-economic inequality ; we can- 
 not entrust it to the State or to other official 
 organisms which necessarily maintain existing 
 privileges and support the laws which at present 
 consecrate the exploitation of one man by an- 
 other, the pernicious source of the worst abuses. 
 
 Evidence of the truth of this is so abundant
 
 48 The Modern School 
 
 that any person can obtain it by visiting the 
 factories and workshops and other centres of 
 paid workers, by inquiring what is the manner of 
 life of those in the higher and those in the lower 
 social rank, by frequenting what are called 
 courts of justice, and by asking the prisoners in 
 our penal institutions what were the motives for 
 their misconduct. If all this does not suffice 
 to prove that the State favours those who are 
 in possession of wealth and frowns on those who 
 rebel against injustice, it may be useful to notice 
 what has happened in Belgium. Here, accord- 
 ing to Senor C, the government is so attentive 
 to education and conducts it so excellently that 
 private schools are impossible. In the official 
 schools, he says, the children of the rich mingle 
 with the children of the poor, and one may at 
 times see the child of wealthy parents arm in arm 
 with a poor and lowly companion. It is true, 
 I admit, that children of all classes may attend 
 the Belgian schools; but the instruction that is 
 given in them is based on the supposed eternal 
 necessity for a division of rich and poor, and on 
 the principle that social harmony consists in the 
 fulfilment of the laws. 
 
 It is natural enough that the masters should 
 like to see this kind of education given on every 
 side. It is a means of bringing to reason those 
 who might one day be tempted to rebel. Not
 
 Co-Education of Social Classes 49 
 
 long ago, in Brussels and other Belgian towns, 
 the sons of the rich, armed and organised in 
 national troops, shot down the sons of the poor 
 who were claiming universal suffrage. On the 
 other hand, my acquaintance with the quality of 
 Belgian education differs considerably from that 
 of the lecturer. I have before me various issues 
 of a Belgian journal (L'Expres de Lilge) which 
 devotes an article to the subject, entitled "The 
 Destruction of our National System of Educa- 
 tion. " The facts given are, unfortunately, 
 very similar to the facts about education in 
 Spain, though in this country there has been a 
 great development of education by religious 
 orders, which is, as everybody knows, the sys- 
 tematisation of ignorance. In fine, it is not for 
 nothing that a violently clerical government rules 
 in Belgium. 
 
 As to the modern education which is given in 
 French schools, we may say that not a single one 
 of the books used in them serves the purpose of 
 a really secular education. On the very day 
 on which Sefior C. was lecturing in Gracia the 
 Parisian journal L 'Action published an article, 
 with the title " How Secular Morality is Taught," 
 in regard to the book Recueil de maximes et 
 pensees morales, and quoted from it certain 
 ridiculously anachronistic ideas which offend 
 the most elementary common sense. 
 4
 
 50 The Modern School 
 
 We shall be asked, What are we to do if we 
 cannot rely on the aid of the State, of Parliament, 
 or municipalities? We must appeal to those 
 whose interest it is to bring about a reform; to 
 the workers, in the first place, then to the culti- 
 vated and privileged people who cherish senti- 
 ments of justice. They may not be numerous, 
 but there are such. I am personally acquainted 
 with several. The lecturer complained that the 
 civic authorities were so dilatory in granting the 
 reforms that are needed. I feel sure that he 
 would do better not to waste his time on them, 
 but appeal directly to the working class. 
 
 The field has been well prepared. Let him 
 visit the various working-men's societies, the 
 Republican Fraternities, the Centres of Instruc- 
 tion, the Workers' Athenaeums, and all the 
 bodies which are working for reform, 1 and let 
 him give ear to the language of truth, the exhor- 
 tations to union and courage. Let him observe 
 the attention given to the problem of rational 
 and scientific instruction, a kind of instruction 
 which shows the injustice of privilege and the 
 possibility of reforms. If individuals and socie- 
 ties continue thus to combine their endeavours 
 
 'These societies are particularly numerous in Spain, 
 where the government system of education is deplorable, 
 and schools are often established in connection with them. 
 — J. M.
 
 Co-Education of Social Classes 51 
 
 to secure the emancipation of those who suffer — 
 for it is not the workers only who suffer — Sefior 
 C. may rest assured of a positive, sound, and 
 speedy result, while whatever may be obtained 
 of the government will be dilatory, and will 
 tend only to stupefy, to confuse ideas, and to 
 perpetuate the domination of one class over 
 another.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 SCHOOL HYGIENE 
 
 In regard to hygiene we are, in Spain, domi- 
 nated by the abominable ideas of the Catholic 
 Church. Saint Aloysius and Saint Benedict 
 J. Labre are not the only, or the most char- 
 acteristic, saints in the list of the supposed 
 citizens of the kingdom of heaven, but they 
 are the most popular with the masters of 
 uncleanliness. With such types of perfec- 
 tion, J in an atmosphere of ignorance, cleverly 
 and maliciously sustained by the clergy and 
 the middle-class Liberals, it was to be ex- 
 pected that the children who would come to 
 our school would be wanting in cleanliness; 
 dirt is traditional in their world. 
 
 We began a discreet and systematic cam- 
 paign against it, showing the children how a 
 
 J It is especially commended in the life of Benedict J. 
 Labre" and others that they deliberately cultivated filthi- 
 ness of person. — J. M. 
 
 52
 
 School Hygiene 53 
 
 dirty person or object inspires repugnance, 
 and how cleanliness attracts esteem and sym- 
 pathy; how one instinctively moves towards 
 the cleanly person and away from the dirty 
 and malodorous; and how we should be 
 pleased to win the regard of those who see us 
 and ashamed to excite their disgust. 
 
 We then explained cleanliness as an aspect of 
 beauty, and uncleanliness as a part of ugliness ; 
 and we at length entered expressly into the 
 province of hygiene, pointing out that dirt 
 was a cause of disease and a constant possible 
 source of infection and epidemic, while clean- 
 liness was one of the chief conditions of health. 
 We thus soon succeeded in disposing the 
 children in favour of cleanliness, and making 
 them understand the scientific principles of 
 hygiene. 
 
 The influence of these lessons spread to 
 their families, as the new demands of the 
 children disturbed traditional habits. One 
 child would ask urgently for its feet to be 
 washed, another would ask to be bathed, 
 another wanted a brush and powder for its 
 teeth, another new clothes or boots, and so on. 
 The poor mothers, burdened with their daily 
 tasks, sometimes crushed by the hardness of
 
 54 The Modern School 
 
 the circumstances in which their life was 
 passed, and probably under the influence of 
 religious teaching, endeavoured to stop their 
 petitions; but in the end the new life intro- 
 duced into the home by the child triumphed, 
 a welcome presage of the regeneration which 
 rational education will one day accomplish. 
 I entrusted the expounding of the principles 
 of scholastic hygiene to competent men, and 
 Dr. Martinez Vargas and others wrote able 
 and detailed articles on the subject in the 
 Bulletin. Other articles were written on the 
 subject of games and play, on the lines of 
 modern pedagogy. x 
 
 'These articles are reproduced in the Spanish edition. 
 As they are not from Ferrer's pen, I omit them. — J. M.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE TEACHERS 
 
 The choice of teachers was another point 
 of great difficulty. The tracing of a pro- 
 gramme of rational instruction once accom- 
 plished, it remained to choose teachers who 
 were competent to carry it out, and I found 
 that in fact no such persons existed. We 
 were to illustrate once more that a need 
 creates its own organs. 
 
 Certainly there were plenty of teachers. 
 Teaching, though not very lucrative, is a 
 profession by which a man can support him- 
 self. There is not a universal truth in the 
 popular proverb which says of an unfortunate 
 man : "He is hungrier than a schoolmaster. " * 
 The truth is that in many parts of Spain the 
 schoolmaster forms part of the local govern- 
 
 '£20 a year is a not uncommon salary of masters and 
 mistresses in Spain, and many cannot obtain even 
 that.— J. M. 
 
 - 55
 
 56 The Modern School 
 
 ing clique, with the priest, the doctor, the 
 shopkeeper, and the money-lender (who is 
 often one of the richest men in the place, 
 though he contributes least to its welfare). 
 The master receives a municipal salary, and 
 has a certain influence which may at times 
 secure material advantages. In larger towns 
 the master, if he is not content with his salary, 
 may give lessons in private schools, where, 
 in accord with the provincial institute, he 
 prepares young men for the University. 
 Even if he does not obtain a position of dis- 
 tinction, he lives as well as the generality of 
 his fellow- townsmen. 
 
 There are, moreover, teachers in what are 
 called "secular schools" — a name imported 
 from France, where it arose because the 
 schooling was formerly exclusively clerical 
 and conducted by religious bodies. This is 
 not the case in Spain; however Christian the 
 teaching is, it is always given by lay masters. 
 However, the Spanish lay teachers, inspired 
 by sentiments of freethought and political 
 radicalism, were rather anti-Catholic and 
 anti-clerical than Rationalist, in the best 
 sense of the word. 
 
 Professional teachers have to undergo a
 
 The Teachers 57 
 
 special preparation for the task of imparting 
 scientific and rational instruction. This is 
 difficult in all cases, and is sometimes ren- 
 dered impossible by the difficulties caused by 
 habits of routine. On the other hand, those 
 who had had no pedagogical experience, and 
 offered themselves for the work out of pure 
 enthusiasm for the idea, stood in even greater 
 need of preparatory study. The solution of 
 the problem was very difficult, because there 
 was no other place but the rational school 
 itself for making this preparation. 
 
 The excellence of the system saved us. 
 Once the Modern School had been established 
 by private initiative, with a firm determina- 
 tion to be guided by the ideal, the difficulties 
 began to disappear. Every dogmatic imposi- 
 tion was detected and rejected, every excursion 
 or deviation in the direction of metaphysics 
 was at once abandoned, and experience 
 gradually formed a new and salutary peda- 
 gogical science. This was due, not merely to 
 my zeal and vigilance, but to my earliest 
 teachers, and to some extent to the naive 
 expressions of the pupils themselves. We 
 may certainly say that if a need creates an 
 organ, the organ speedily meets the need.
 
 58 The Modern School 
 
 Nevertheless, in order to complete my 
 work, I established a Rationalist Normal 
 School for the education of teachers, under 
 the direction of an experienced master and 
 with the co-operation of the teachers in the 
 Modern School. In this a number of young 
 people of both sexes were trained, and they 
 worked excellently until the despotic authori- 
 ties, yielding to our obscure and powerful 
 enemies, put a stop to our work, and flattered 
 themselves that they had destroyed it for 
 ever.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE REFORM OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 There are two ways open to those who seek 
 to reform the education of children. They 
 may seek to transform the school by studying 
 the child and proving scientifically that the 
 actual scheme of instruction is defective, and 
 must be modified; or they may found new 
 schools in which principles may be directly 
 applied in the service of that ideal which is 
 formed by all who reject the conventions, the 
 cruelty, the trickery, and the untruth which 
 enter into the bases of modern society. 
 
 The first method offers great advantages, 
 and is in harmony with the evolutionary con- 
 ception which men of science regard as the 
 only effective way of attaining the end. 
 They are right in theory, as we fully admit. 
 It is evident that the progress of psychology 
 and physiology must lead to important 
 changes in educational methods; that the 
 59
 
 60 The Modern School 
 
 teachers, being now in a better position to 
 understand the child, will make their teaching 
 more in conformity with natural laws. I 
 further grant that this evolution will proceed 
 in the direction of greater liberty, as I am con- 
 vinced that violence is the method of ignorance, 
 and that the educator who is really worthy of 
 the name will gain everything by spontaneity ; 
 he will know the child's needs, and will be 
 able to promote its development by giving 
 it the greatest possible satisfaction. 
 
 In point of fact, however, I do not think 
 that those who are working for the regenera- 
 tion of humanity have much to hope from this 
 side. Rulers have always taken care to 
 control the education of the people; they 
 know better than any that their power is 
 based entirely on the school, and they there- 
 fore insist on retaining their monopoly of it. 
 The time has gone by when rulers could 
 oppose the spread of instruction and put 
 limits to the education of the masses. Such 
 a policy was possible formerly because 
 economic life was consistent with general 
 ignorance, and this ignorance facilitated 
 despotism. The circumstances have changed, 
 however. The progress of science and our
 
 The Reform of the School 61 
 
 repeated discoveries have revolutionised the 
 conditions of labour and production. It is no 
 longer possible for the people to remain 
 ignorant; education is absolutely necessary 
 for a nation to maintain itself and make 
 headway against its economic competitors. 
 Recognising this, the rulers have sought to 
 give a more and more complete organisation 
 to the school, not because they look to educa- 
 tion to regenerate society, but because they 
 need more competent workers to sustain 
 industrial enterprises and enrich their cities. 
 Even the most reactionary rulers have learned 
 this lesson; they clearly understand that the 
 old policy was dangerous to the economic 
 life of nations, and that it was necessary 
 to adapt popular education to the new 
 conditions. 
 
 It would be a serious mistake to think that 
 the ruling classes have not foreseen the danger 
 to themselves of the intellectual development 
 of the people, and have not understood that 
 it was necessary to change their methods. 
 In fact, their methods have been adapted to 
 the new conditions of life; they have sought 
 to gain control of the ideas which are in course 
 of evolution. They have endeavoured to
 
 62 The Modern School 
 
 preserve the beliefs on which social discipline 
 had been grounded, and to give to the results 
 of scientific research and the ideas involved 
 in them a meaning which will not be to the 
 disadvantage of existing institutions; and it 
 is this that has induced them to assume con- 
 trol of the school. In every country the 
 governing classes, which formerly left the 
 education of the people to the clergy, as these 
 were quite willing to educate in a sense of 
 obedience to authority, have now themselves 
 undertaken the direction of the schools. 
 
 The danger to them consists in the stimu- 
 lation of the human mind by the new spectacle 
 of life and the possible rise of thoughts of 
 emancipation in the depths of their hearts. 
 It would have been folly to struggle against the 
 evolving forces; the effect would be only 
 to inflame them, and, instead of adhering to 
 earlier methods of government, they would 
 adopt new and more effective methods. It 
 did not require any extraordinary genius to 
 discover the solution. The course of events 
 itself suggested to those who were in power 
 the way in which they were to meet the 
 difficulties which threatened; they built 
 schools, they sought generously to extend
 
 The Reform of the School 63 
 
 the sphere of education, and if there were at 
 one point a few who resisted this impulse — 
 as certain tendencies favoured one or other 
 of the political parties — all soon understood 
 that it was better to yield, and that the best 
 policy was to find some new way of defending 
 their interests and principles. There were 
 then sharp struggles for the control of the 
 schools, and these struggles continue to-day 
 in every civilised country; sometimes the 
 republican middle-class triumphs, sometimes 
 the clergy. All parties appreciate the im- 
 portance of the issue, and they shrink from 
 no sacrifice to win the victory. " The school " 
 is the cry of every party. The public good 
 must be recognised in this zeal. Everybody 
 seeks to raise himself and improve his con- 
 dition by education. In former times it 
 might have been said: "Those people want 
 to keep thee in ignorance in order the better 
 to exploit thee : we want to see thee educated 
 and free." That is no longer possible; 
 schools of all kinds rise on every side. 
 
 In regard to this general change of ideas 
 among the governing classes as to the need of 
 schools, I may state certain reasons for dis- 
 trusting their intentions and doubting the
 
 64 The Modern School 
 
 efficacy of the means of reform which are 
 advocated by certain writers. As a rule, 
 these reformers care little about the social 
 significance of education; they are men who 
 eagerly embrace scientific truth, but elimi- 
 nate all that is foreign to the object of their 
 studies. They are patiently endeavouring 
 to understand the child, and are eager to 
 know — though their science is young, it 
 must be remembered — what are the best 
 methods to promote its intellectual 
 development. 
 
 This kind of professional indifference is, in 
 my opinion, very prejudicial to the cause they 
 seek to serve. I do not in the least think 
 them insensible of the realities of the social 
 world, and I know that they believe that the 
 public welfare will be greatly furthered by 
 their labours. "Seeking to penetrate the 
 secrets of the life of man, " they reflect, "and 
 unravelling the normal process of his physical 
 and psychic development, we shall direct 
 education into a channel which will be favour- 
 able to the liberation of energy. We are 
 not immediately concerned with the reform 
 of the school, and indeed we are unable to 
 say exactly what lines it should follow. We
 
 The Reform of the School 65 
 
 will proceed slowly, knowing that, from the 
 very nature of things, the reform of the school 
 will result from our research. If you ask 
 us what are our hopes, we will grant that, 
 like you, we foresee a revolution in the sense 
 of a placing of the child and humanity under 
 the direction of science; yet even in this case 
 we are persuaded that our work makes for 
 that object, and will be the speediest and 
 surest means of promoting it." 
 
 This reasoning is evidently logical. No 
 one could deny this, yet there is a considera- 
 ble degree of fallacy in it, and we must 
 make this clear. If the ruling classes have 
 the same ideas as the reformers, if they are 
 really impelled by a zeal for the continuous 
 reorganisation of society until poverty is at 
 last eliminated, we might recognise that the 
 power of science is enough to improve the lot 
 of peoples. Instead of this, however, we see 
 clearly that the sole aim of those who strive 
 to attain power is the defence of their own 
 interests, their own advantage, and the 
 satisfaction of their personal desires. For 
 some time now we have ceased to accept the 
 phrases with which they disguise their ambi- 
 tions. It is true that there are some in 
 5
 
 66 The Modern School 
 
 whom we may find a certain amount of sin- 
 cerity, and who imagine at times that they 
 are impelled by a zeal for the good of their 
 fellows. But these become rarer and rarer, 
 and the positivism of the age is very severe 
 in raising doubts as to the real intentions of 
 those who govern us. 
 
 And just as they contrived to adapt them- 
 selves when the necessity arose, and pre- 
 vented education from becoming a danger, 
 they also succeeded in organising the school 
 in accord with the new scientific ideas in such 
 a way that nothing should endanger their 
 supremacy. These ideas are difficult to 
 accept, and one needs to keep a sharp look- 
 out for successful methods and see how things 
 are arranged so as to avoid verbal traps. 
 How much has been, and is, expected of 
 education! Most progressive people expect 
 everything of it, and, until recent years, many 
 did not understand that instruction alone 
 leads to illusions. Much of the knowledge 
 actually imparted in schools is useless; and 
 the hope of reformers has been void because 
 the organisation of the school, instead of serv- 
 ing an ideal purpose, has become one of the 
 most powerful instruments of servitude in
 
 The Reform of the School 67 
 
 the hands of the ruling class. The teachers 
 are merely conscious or unconscious organs 
 of their will, and have been trained on their 
 principles. From their tenderest years, and 
 more drastically than anybody, they have 
 endured the discipline of authority. Very 
 few have escaped this despotic domination; 
 they are generally powerless against it, 
 because they are oppressed by the scholastic 
 organisation to such an extent that they have 
 nothing to do but obey. It is unnecessary 
 here to describe that organisation. One word 
 will suffice to characterise it — Violence. The 
 school dominates the children physically, 
 morally, and intellectually, in order to con- 
 trol the development of their faculties in the 
 way desired, and deprives them of contact 
 with nature in order to modify them as 
 required. This is the explanation of the 
 failure; the eagerness of the ruling class to 
 control education and the bankruptcy of the 
 hopes of reformers. "Education" means in 
 practice domination or domestication. I do 
 not imagine that these systems have been put 
 together with the deliberate aim of securing 
 the desired results. That would be a work 
 of genius. But things have happened just as
 
 68 The Modern School 
 
 if the actual scheme of education corre- 
 sponded to some vast and deliberate concep- 
 tion; it could not have been done better. 
 To attain it teachers have inspired themselves 
 solely with the principles of discipline and 
 authority, which always appeal to social 
 organisers; such men have only one clear 
 idea and one will — the children must learn 
 to obey, to believe, and to think according to 
 the prevailing social dogmas. If this were 
 the aim, education could not be other than 
 we find it to-day. There is no question of 
 promoting the spontaneous development of 
 the child's faculties, or encouraging it to 
 seek freely the satisfaction of its physical, 
 intellectual, and moral needs. There is 
 question only of imposing ready-made ideas 
 on it, of preventing it from ever thinking 
 otherwise than is required for the mainten- 
 ance of existing social institutions — of mak- 
 ing it, in a word, an individual rigorously 
 adapted to the social mechanism. 
 
 It cannot be expected that this kind of 
 education will have any influence on the 
 progress of humanity. I repeat that it is 
 merely an instrument of domination in the 
 hands of the ruling classes, who have never
 
 The Reform of the School 69 
 
 sought to uplift the individual, and it is 
 quite useless to expect any good from the 
 schools of the present day. What they have 
 done up to the present they will continue to 
 do in the future. There is no reason what- 
 ever why they should adopt a different 
 system ; they have resolved to use education 
 for their purposes, and they will take advan- 
 tage of every improvement of it. If only 
 they preserve the spirit of the school and 
 the authoritative discipline which rules it, 
 every innovation will tend to their advantage. 
 For this they will keep a constant watch, 
 and take care that their interests are secured. 
 I would fix the attention of my readers on 
 this point: the whole value of education 
 consists in respect for the physical, intellec- 
 tual, and moral faculties of the child. As in 
 science, the only possible demonstration is 
 demonstration by facts; education is not 
 worthy of the name unless it be stripped of all 
 dogmatism, and unless it leaves to the child 
 the direction of its powers and is content to 
 support them in their manifestations. But 
 nothing is easier than to alter this meaning 
 of education, and nothing more difficult 
 than to respect it. The teacher is always
 
 70 The Modern School 
 
 imposing, compelling, and using violence; 
 the true educator is the man who does not 
 impose his own ideas and will on the child, 
 but appeals to its own energies. 
 
 From this we can understand how easily 
 education is conducted, and how light is the 
 task of those who seek to dominate the 
 individual. The best conceivable methods 
 become in their hands so many new and more 
 effective means of despotism. Our ideal is 
 that of science ; we appeal to it in demanding 
 the power to educate the child by fostering 
 | its development and procuring a satisfaction 
 \ of its needs as they manifest themselves. 
 We are convinced that the education of the 
 future will be entirely spontaneous. It is 
 plain that we cannot wholly realise this, but 
 the evolution of methods in the direction of 
 a broader comprehension of life and the 
 fact that all improvement involves the sup- 
 pression of violence indicate that we are on 
 solid ground when we look to science for the 
 liberation of the child. 
 
 Is this the ideal of those who actually 
 control the scholastic system? Is this what 
 they propose to bring about? Are they eager 
 to abandon violence? Only in the sense that
 
 The Reform of the School 71 
 
 they employ new and more effective methods 
 to attain the same end — that is to say, the 
 formation of individuals who will accept all 
 the conventions, all the prejudices, and all the 
 untruths on which society is based. 
 
 We do not hesitate to say that we want 
 men who will continue unceasingly to develop ; 
 men who are capable of constantly destroying 
 and renewing their surroundings and renew- 
 ing themselves; men whose intellectual inde- 
 pendence is their supreme power, which they 
 will yield to none; men always disposed for 
 things that are better, eager for the triumph 
 of new ideas, anxious to crowd many lives 
 into the one life they have. Society fears 
 such men; you cannot expect it to set up a 
 system of education which will produce 
 them. 
 
 What, then, is our mission? What is the 
 policy we must adopt in order to contribute 
 to the reform of the school? 
 
 Let us follow closely the work of the experts 
 who are engaged in the study of the child, 
 and let us endeavour to find a way of apply- 
 ing their principles to the education we seek 
 to establish, aiming at an increasingly com- 
 plete emancipation of the individual. But
 
 72 The Modern School 
 
 how are we to do this? By putting our hand 
 energetically to the work, by promoting the 
 establishment of new schools in which, as far 
 as possible, there shall rule this spirit of free- 
 dom which, we feel, will colour the whole 
 education of the future. 
 
 We have already had proof that it leads 
 to excellent results. We can destroy what- 
 ever there is in the actual school that savours 
 of violence, all the artificial devices by which 
 the children are estranged from nature and 
 life, the intellectual and moral discipline 
 which has been used to impose ready-made 
 thoughts, all beliefs which deprave and ener- 
 vate the will. Without fear of injury we 
 may place the child in a proper and natural 
 environment, in which it will find itself in 
 contact with all that it loves, and where vital- 
 impressions will be substituted for the weari- 
 some reading of books. If we do no more 
 than this, we shall have done much towards 
 the emancipation of the child. 
 
 In such an environment we may freely 
 make use of the data of science and work with 
 profit. It is true that we could not realise 
 all our hopes; that often we shall find our- 
 selves compelled, from lack of knowledge, to
 
 The Reform of the School 73 
 
 use the wrong means. But we shall be sus- 
 tained by the confident feeling that, without 
 having achieved our entire aim, we shall 
 have done a great deal more than is being 
 done by the actual school. I would rather 
 have the free spontaneity of a child who 
 knows nothing than the verbal knowledge 
 and intellectual deformation of one that 
 has experienced the existing system of 
 education. 
 
 What we have sought to do in Barcelona 
 is being done by others in various places. 
 All of us saw that the work was possible. 
 Dedicate yourself to it at once. We do not 
 hope that the studies of children will be 
 suspended that we may regenerate the school. 
 Let us apply what we know, and go on learn- 
 ing and applying. A scheme of rational 
 education is already possible, and, in such 
 schools as we advocate, the children may 
 develop freely according to their aspirations. 
 Let us endeavour to improve and extend the 
 work. 
 
 Those are our aims. We know well the 
 difficulties we have to face ; but we have made 
 a beginning in the conviction that we shall 
 be assisted in our task by those who work
 
 74 The Modern School 
 
 in their various spheres to deliver men from 
 the dogmas and conventions which secure the 
 prolongation of the present unjust arrange- 
 ment of society.
 
 v^ 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 NO REWARD OR PUNISHMENT 
 
 Rational education is, above all things, a 
 means of defence against error and ignorance. 
 To ignore truth and accept absurdities is, 
 unhappily, a common feature in our social 
 order ; to that we owe the distinction of classes 
 and the persistent antagonism of interests. 
 Having admitted and practised the co-educa- 
 tion of boys and girls, of rich and poor — 
 having, that is to say, started from the prin- 
 ciple of solidarity and equality — we are not 
 prepared to create a new inequality. Hence 
 in the Modern School there will be no rewards 
 and no punishments; there will be no exam- 
 inations to puff up some children with the 
 flattering title of "excellent," to give others 
 the vulgar title of "good," and make others 
 unhappy with a consciousness of incapacity 
 and failure. 
 
 These features of the existing official and 
 75 

 
 76 The Modern School 
 
 religious schools, which are quite in accord 
 with their reactionary environment and aim, 
 cannot, for the reasons I have given, be 
 admitted into the Modern School. Since 
 we are not educating for a specific purpose, we 
 cannot determine the capacity or incapacity 
 of the child. When we teach a science, or 
 art, or trade, or some subject requiring special 
 conditions, an examination may be useful, 
 and there may be reason to give a diploma 
 or refuse one; I neither affirm nor deny it. 
 But there is no such specialism in the Modern 
 School. The characteristic note of the school, 
 distinguishing it even from some which pass 
 as progressive models, is that in it the facul- 
 ties of the children shall develop freely 
 without subjection to any dogmatic patron, 
 not even to what it may consider the body 
 of convictions of the founder and teachers; 
 every pupil shall go forth from it into social 
 life with the ability to be his own master and 
 guide his own life in all things. 
 
 Hence, if we were rationally prevented 
 from giving prizes, we could not impose 
 penalties, and no one would have dreamed of 
 doing so in our school if the idea had not been 
 suggested from without. Sometimes parents
 
 No Reward or Punishment 77 
 
 came to me with the rank proverb, "Letters 
 go in with blood," on their lips, and begged 
 me to punish their children. Others who 
 were charmed with the precocious talent of 
 their children wanted to see them shine in 
 examinations and exhibit medals. We re- 
 fused to admit either prizes or punishments, 
 and sent the parents away. If any child 
 were conspicuous for merit, application, 
 laziness, or bad conduct, we pointed out to 
 it the need of accord, or the unhappiness of 
 lack of accord, with its own welfare and that 
 of others, and the teacher might give a lecture 
 on the subject. Nothing more was done, 
 and the parents were gradually reconciled to 
 the system, though they often had to be cor- 
 rected in their errors and prejudices by their 
 own children. 
 
 Nevertheless, the old prejudice was con- 
 stantly recurring, and I saw that I had to 
 repeat my arguments with the parents of new 
 pupils. I therefore wrote the following 
 article in the Bulletin: — 
 
 The conventional examinations which we 
 usually find held at the end of a scholastic year, 
 to which our fathers attached so much import-
 
 78 The Modern School 
 
 ance, have had no result at all; or, if any result, 
 a bad one. These functions and their accom- 
 panying solemnities seem to have been instituted 
 for the sole purpose of satisfying the vanity of 
 parents and the selfish interests of many teachers, 
 and in order to put the children to torture before 
 the examination and make them ill afterwards. 
 Each father wants his child to be presented in 
 public as one of the prodigies of the college, and 
 regards him with pride as a learned man in minia- 
 ture. He does not notice that for a fortnight or 
 so the child suffers exquisite torture. As things 
 are judged by external appearances, it is not 
 thought that there is any real torture, as there 
 is not the least scratch visible on the skin. . . . 
 
 The parent's lack of acquaintance with the 
 natural disposition of the child, and the iniquity 
 of putting it in false conditions so that its intel- 
 lectual powers, especially in the sphere of mem- 
 ory, are artificially stimulated, prevent the 
 parent from seeing that this measure of personal 
 gratification may, as has happened in many 
 cases, lead to illness and to the moral, if not the 
 physical, death of the child. 
 
 On the other hand, the majority of teachers, 
 being mere stereotypers of ready-made phrases 
 and mechanical inoculators, rather than moral 
 fathers of their pupils, are concerned in these 
 examinations with their own personality and
 
 No Reward or Punishment 79 
 
 their economic interests. Their object is to let 
 the parents and the others who are present at the 
 public display see that, under their guidance, the 
 child has learned a good deal, that its knowledge 
 is greater in quantity and quality than could 
 have been expected of its tender years and in 
 view of the short time that it has been under the 
 charge of this very skilful teacher. 
 
 In addition to this wretched vanity, which is 
 satisfied at the cost of the moral and physical 
 life of the child, the teachers are anxious to elicit 
 compliments from the parents and the rest of 
 the audience, who know nothing of the real state 
 of things, as a kind of advertisement of the 
 prestige of their particular school. 
 
 Briefly, we are inexorably opposed to holding 
 public examinations. In our school everything 
 must be done for the advantage of the pupil. 
 Everything that does not conduce to this end 
 must be recognised as opposed to the natural 
 spirit of positive education. Examinations do 
 no good, and they do much harm to the child. 
 Besides the illness of which we have already 
 spoken, the nervous system of the child suffers, 
 and a kind of temporary paralysis is inflicted 
 on its conscience by the immoral features of the 
 examination : the vanity provoked in those who 
 are placed highest, envy and humiliation, grave 
 obstacles to sound growth, in those who have
 
 80 The Modern School 
 
 failed, and in all of them the germs of most of 
 the sentiments which go to the making of egoism. 
 
 In a later number of the Bulletin I found it 
 necessary to return to the subject: — 
 
 We frequently receive letters from Workers' 
 Educational Societies and Republican Frater- 
 nities asking that the teachers shall chastise the 
 children in our schools. We ourselves have been 
 disgusted, during our brief excursions, to find 
 material proofs of the fact which is at the base 
 of this request; we have seen children on their 
 knees, or in other attitudes of punishment. 
 
 These irrational and atavistic practices must 
 disappear. Modern pedagogy entirely discredits 
 them. The teachers who offer their services to 
 the Modern School, or ask our recommendation 
 to teach in similar schools, must refrain from any 
 moral or material punishment, under penalty of 
 being disqualified permanently. Scolding, im- 
 patience, and anger ought to disappear with the 
 ancient title of "master." In free schools all 
 should be peace, gladness, and fraternity. 
 We trust that this will suffice to put an end 
 to these practices, which are most improper 
 in people whose sole ideal is the training of a 
 generation fitted to establish a really fraternal, 
 harmonious, and just state of society.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE GENERAL PUBLIC AND THE LIBRARY 
 
 In setting out to establish a rational school 
 for the purpose of preparing children for their 
 entry into free solidarity of humanity, the 
 first problem that confronted us was the selec- 
 tion of books. The whole educational lug- 
 gage of the ancient system was an incoherent 
 mixture of science and faith, reason and un- 
 reason, good and evil, human experience and 
 revelation, truth and error; in a word, totally 
 unsuited to meet the new needs that arose 
 with the formation of a new school. 
 
 If the school has been from remote anti- 
 quity equipped not for teaching in the broad 
 sense of communicating to the rising genera- 
 tion the gist of the knowledge of previous 
 generations, but for teaching on the basis 
 of authority and the convenience of the rul- 
 ing classes, for the purpose of making 
 children humble and submissive, it is clear 
 81
 
 82 The Modern School 
 
 that none of the books hitherto used would 
 suit us. But the severe logic of this position 
 did not at once convince me. I refused to 
 believe that the French democracy, which 
 worked so zealously for the separation of 
 Church and State, incurred the anger of the 
 clericals, and adopted obligatory secular 
 instruction, would resign itself to a semi- 
 education or a sophisticated education. I 
 had, however, to yield to the evidence, against 
 my prejudice. I first read a large number of 
 works in the French code of secular instruc- 
 tion, and found that God was replaced by the 
 State, Christian virtue by civic duty, religion 
 by patriotism, submission to the king, the 
 aristocracy, and the clergy by subservience 
 to the official, the proprietor, and the em- 
 ployer. Then I consulted an eminent Free- 
 thinker who held high office in the Ministry of 
 Public Instruction, and, when I had told him 
 my desire to see the books they used, which 
 I understood to be purged of traditional errors, 
 and explained my design and ideal to him, he 
 told me frankly that they had nothing of the 
 sort; all their books were, more or less 
 cleverly and insidiously, tainted with untruth, 
 which is the indispensable cement of social
 
 General Public and the Library 83 
 
 inequality. When I further asked if, seeing 
 that they had replaced the decaying idol of 
 deity by the idol of oligarchic despotism, they 
 had not at least some book dealing with the 
 origin of religion, he said that there was none ; 
 but he knew one which would suit me — 
 Malvert's Science and Religion. In point of 
 fact, this was already translated into Spanish, 
 and was used as a reading-book in the Modern 
 School, with the title Origin of Christianity. 
 
 In Spanish literature I found several works 
 written by a distinguished author, of some 
 eminence in science, who had produced them 
 rather in the interest of the publishers than 
 with a view to the education of children. 
 Some of these were at first used in the Modern 
 School, but, though one could not accuse 
 them of error, they lacked the inspiration of 
 an ideal and were poor in method. I com- 
 municated with this author with a view to 
 interesting him in my plans and inducing 
 him to write books for me, but his publishers 
 held him to a certain contract and he could 
 not oblige me. 
 
 In brief, the Modern School was opened 
 before a single work had been chosen for its 
 library, but it was not long before the first
 
 84 The Modern School 
 
 appeared — a brilliant book by Jean Grave, 
 which has had a considerable influence on our 
 schools. His work, The Adventures of Nono, 
 is a kind of poem in which a certain phase of 
 the happier future is ingeniously and dramati- 
 cally contrasted with the sordid realities of 
 the present social order; the delights of the 
 land of Autonomy are contrasted with the 
 horrors of the kingdom of Argirocracy. 
 The genius of Grave has raised the work to a 
 height at which it escapes the strictures of 
 the sceptical and conservative; he has 
 depicted the social evils of the present truth- 
 fully and without exaggeration. The read- 
 ing of the book enchanted the children, and 
 the profundity of his thought suggested many 
 opportune comments to the teachers. In 
 their play the children used to act scenes from 
 Autonomy, and their parents detected the 
 causes of their hardships in the constitution 
 of the kingdom of Argirocracy. 
 
 It was announced in the Bulletin and other 
 journals that prizes were offered for the best 
 manuals of rational instruction, but no writers 
 came forward. I confine myself to recording 
 the fact without going into the causes of it. 
 Two books were afterwards adopted for read-
 
 General Public and the Library 85 
 
 ing in school. They were not written for 
 school, but they were translated for the 
 Modern School and were very useful. One 
 was called The Note Book, the other Colonisa- 
 tion and Patriotism. Both were collections 
 of passages from writers of every country on 
 the injustices connected with patriotism, the 
 horrors of war, and the iniquity of conquest. 
 The choice of these works was vindicated by 
 the excellent influence they had on the minds 
 of the children, as we shall see from the little 
 essays of the children which appeared in the 
 Bulletin, and the fury with which they were 
 denounced by the reactionary press and 
 politicians. 
 
 Many think that there is not much differ- 
 ence between secular and rationalist educa- 
 tion, and in various articles and propagandist 
 speeches the two were taken to be synonym- 
 ous. In order to correct this error I pub- 
 lished the following article in the Bulletin: — 
 
 The word education should not be accompanied 
 by any qualification. It means simply the need 
 and duty of the generation which is in the full 
 development of its powers to prepare the rising 
 generation and admit it to the patrimony of 
 human knowledge. This is an entirely rational
 
 86 The Modern School 
 
 ideal, and it will be fully realised in some future 
 age, when men are wholly freed from their pre- 
 judices and superstitions. 
 
 In our efforts to realise this ideal we find our- 
 selves confronted with religious education and 
 political education: to these we must oppose 
 rational and scientific instruction. The type 
 of religious education is that given in the clerical 
 and convent schools of all countries; it consists 
 of the smallest possible quantity of useful know- 
 ledge and a good deal of Christian doctrine and 
 sacred history. Political education is the kind 
 established some time ago in France, after the 
 fall of the Empire, the object of which is to 
 exalt patriotism and represent the actual public 
 administration as the instrument of the common 
 welfare. 
 
 Sometimes the qualification free or secular is 
 applied abusively and maliciously to education, 
 in order to distract or alienate public opinion. 
 Orthodox people, for instance, call free schools 
 certain schools which they establish in opposition 
 to the really free tendency of modern pedagogy ; 
 and many are called secular schools which are 
 really political, patriotic, and anti-humanitarian. 
 
 Rational education is lifted above these illib- 
 eral forms. It has, in the first place, no regard 
 to religious education, because science has shown 
 that the story of creation is a myth and the gods
 
 General Public and the Library 87 
 
 legendary; and therefore religious education 
 takes advantage of the credulity of the parents 
 and the ignorance of the children, maintaining 
 the belief in a supernatural being to whom 
 people may address all kinds of prayers. This 
 ancient belief, still unfortunately widespread, 
 has done a great deal of harm, and will continue 
 to do so as long as it persists. The mission of 
 education is to show the child, by purely scien- 
 tific methods, that the more knowledge we have 
 of natural products, their qualities, and the way 
 to use them, the more industrial, scientific, and 
 artistic commodities we shall have for the sup- 
 port and comfort of life, and men and women 
 will issue in larger numbers from our schools 
 with a determination to cultivate every branch 
 of knowledge and action, under the guidance of 
 reason and the inspiration of science and art, 
 which will adorn life and reform society. 
 
 We will not, therefore, lose our time praying to 
 an imaginary God for things which our own exer- 
 tions alone can procure. 
 
 On the other hand, our teaching has nothing to 
 do with politics. It is our work to form individ- 
 uals in the full possession of all their faculties, 
 while politics would subject their faculties to 
 other men. While religion has, with its divine 
 power, created a positively abusive power and 
 retarded the development of humanity, political
 
 88 The Modern School 
 
 systems also retard it by encouraging men to 
 depend for everything on the will of others, on 
 what are supposed to be men of a superior 
 character — on those, in a word, who, from tradi- 
 tion or choice, exercise the profession of politics. 
 It must be the aim of the rational schools to 
 show the children that there will be tyranny and 
 slavery as long as one man depends upon another, 
 to study the causes of the prevailing ignorance, 
 to learn the origin of all the traditional practices 
 which give life to the existing social system, and to 
 direct the attention of the pupils to these matters. 
 
 We will not, therefore, lose our time seeking from 
 others what we can get for ourselves. 
 
 In a word, our business is to imprint on the 
 minds of the children the idea that their condi- 
 tion in the social order will improve in proportion 
 to their knowledge and to the strength they are 
 able to develop; and that the era of general 
 happiness will be the more sure to dawn when 
 they have discarded all religious and other super- 
 stitions, which have up to the present done so 
 much harm. On that account there are no re- 
 wards or punishments in our schools; no alms, 
 no medals or badges in imitation of the religious 
 and patriotic schools, which might encourage the 
 children to believe in talismans instead of in the 
 individual and collective power of beings who are 
 conscious of their ability and knowledge.
 
 General Public and the Library 89 
 
 Rational and scientific knowledge must per- 
 suade the men and women of the future that 
 they have to expect nothing from any privileged 
 being (fictitious or real); and that they may 
 expect all that is reasonable from themselves 
 and from a freely organised and accepted social 
 order. 
 
 I then appealed in the Bulletin and the 
 local press to scientific writers who were eager 
 for the progress of the race to supply us with 
 text-books on these lines. They were, I 
 said, "to deliver the minds of the pupils 
 from all the errors of our ancestors, encourage 
 them in the love of truth and beauty, and 
 keep from them the authoritarian dogmas, 
 venerable sophisms, and ridiculous conven- 
 tionalities which at present disgrace our social 
 life." A special note was added in regard 
 to the teaching of arithmetic: — 
 
 The way in which arithmetic has hitherto 
 been generally taught has made it a powerful 
 instrument for impressing the pupils with the 
 false ideals of the capitalist regime which at 
 present presses so heavily on society. The 
 Modern School, therefore, invites essays on the 
 subject of the reform of the teaching of arith-
 
 90 The Modern School 
 
 metic, and requests those friends of rational and 
 scientific instruction who are especially occupied 
 with mathematics to draw up a series of easy 
 and practical problems, in which there shall be 
 no reference to wages, economy, and profit. 
 These exercises must deal with agricultural and 
 industrial production, the just distribution of 
 the raw material and the manufactured articles, 
 the means of communication, the transport of 
 merchandise, the comparison of human labour 
 with mechanical, the benefits of machinery, 
 public works, etc. In a word, the Modern School 
 wants a number of problems showing what arith- 
 metic really ought to be — the science of the 
 social economy (taking the word economy in its 
 etymological sense of "good distribution"). 
 
 The exercises will deal with the four funda- 
 mental operations (integrals, decimals, and 
 fractions), the metrical system, proportion, 
 compounds and alloys, the squares and cubes of 
 numbers, and the extraction of square and cube 
 roots. As those who respond to this appeal are, 
 it is hoped, inspired rather with the ideal of a 
 right education of children than with the desire 
 of profit, and as we wish to avoid the common 
 practice in such circumstances, we shall not 
 appoint judges or offer any prizes. The Modern 
 School will publish the Arithmetic which best 
 serves its purpose, and will come to an
 
 General Public and the Library 91 
 
 amicable agreement with the author as to his 
 fee. 
 
 A later note in the Bulletin was addressed to 
 teachers : — 
 
 We would call the attention of all who dedicate 
 themselves to the noble ideal of the rational 
 teaching of children and the preparation of the 
 young to take a fitting share in life to the 
 announcements of a Compendium of Universal 
 History by C16mence Jacquinet, and The Adven- 
 tures of Nono by Jean Grave, which will be found 
 on the cover. 1 The works which the Modern 
 School has published or proposes to publish 
 are intended for all free and rational teaching 
 institutions, centres of social study, and parents, 
 who resent the intellectual restrictions which 
 dogma of all kinds — religious, political, and 
 social — imposes in order to maintain privilege at 
 the expense of the ignorant. All who are op- 
 
 1 It should be stated that both the writers are Anarchists, 
 in the sense I have indicated in the Preface. Except on 
 special subjects — the famous geographer Od6n de Buen, 
 for instance, co-operated with Ferrer in regard to geo- 
 graphy — no other writers were likely to embody Ferrer's 
 ideals. All, however, were as opposed to violence as 
 Ferrer himself, and Mr. W. Archer has shown in his life of 
 Ferrer that the charges brought against Mme. Jacquinet 
 by Ferrer's persecutors at his trial are officially denied 
 by our Egyptian authorities. — J. M.
 
 92 The Modern School 
 
 posed to Jesuitism and to conventional lies, and 
 to the errors transmitted by tradition and rou- 
 tine, will find in our publications truth based 
 upon evidence. As we have no desire of profit, 
 the price of the works represents almost their 
 intrinsic value or material cost; if there is any 
 profit from the sale of them, it will be spent upon 
 subsequent publications. 
 
 In a later number of the Bulletin (No. 6, 
 second year) the distinguished geographer 
 Eli see Reclus wrote, at my request, a lengthy 
 article on the teaching of geography. In 
 a letter which Reclus afterwards wrote me 
 from the Geographical Institute at Brussels, 
 replying to my request that he should recom- 
 mend a text-book, he said that there was 
 "no text-book for the teaching of geography 
 in elementary schools"; he "did not know 
 one that was not tainted with religious or 
 patriotic poison, or, what is worse, adminis- 
 trative routine." He recommended that the 
 teachers should use no manual in the Modern 
 School, which he cordially commended (Feb- 
 ruary 26, 1903). 
 
 In the following number (7) of the Bulletin 
 I published the following note on the origin 
 of Christianity: —
 
 General Public and the Library 93 
 
 The older pedagogy, the real, if una vowed, aim 
 of which was to impress children with the useless- 
 ness of knowledge, in order that they might 
 be reconciled to their hard conditions and seek 
 consolation in a supposed future life , used reading- 
 books in the elementary school which swarmed 
 with stories, anecdotes, accounts of travels, gems 
 of classical literature, etc. There was a good 
 deal of error mixed with what was sound and 
 useful in this, and the aim was not just. The 
 mystical idea predominated, representing that a 
 relation could be established between a Supreme 
 Being and men by means of priests, and this 
 priesthood was the chief foundation of the exist- 
 ence of both the privileged and the disinherited, 
 and the cause of much of the evil that they 
 endured. 
 
 Among other books of this class, all tainted 
 with the same evil, we remember one which 
 inserted an academic discourse, a marvel of 
 Spanish eloquence, in praise of the Bible. The 
 gist of it is expressed in the barbarous declara- 
 tion of Omar when he condemned the Library 
 of Alexandria to the flames: "The whole truth 
 is contained in the sacred book. If those other 
 books are true, they are superfluous; if they 
 are not true, they should be burned." 
 
 The Modern School, which seeks to form free 
 minds, with a sense of responsibility, fitted to
 
 94 The Modern School 
 
 experience a complete development of their 
 powers, which is the one aim of life, must neces- 
 sarily adopt a very different kind of reading- 
 book, in harmony with its method of teaching. 
 For this reason, as it teaches established truth 
 and is interested in the struggle between light 
 and darkness, it has deemed it necessary to 
 produce a critical work which will enlighten the 
 mind of the child with positive facts. These 
 may not be appreciated in childhood, but will 
 later, in manhood, when the child takes its 
 place in social life and in the struggle against the 
 errors, conventions, hypocrisies, and infamies 
 which conceal themselves under the cloak of 
 mysticism. This work reminds us that our 
 books are not merely intended for children; 
 they are destined also for the use of the Adult 
 Schools which are being founded on every side 
 by associations of workers, Freethinkers, Co- 
 operators, social students, and other progressive 
 bodies who are eager to correct the illiteracy of 
 our nation, and remove that great obstacle to 
 progress. 
 
 We believe that the section of Malvert's work 
 (Science and Religion) which we have entitled 
 "The Origin of Christianity" will be useful for 
 this purpose. It shows the myths, dogmas, and 
 ceremonies of the Christian religion in their 
 original form; sometimes as exoteric symbols
 
 General Public and the Library 95 
 
 concealing a truth known to the initiated , some- 
 times as adaptations of earlier beliefs, imposed 
 by sheer routine and preserved by malice. As 
 we are convinced and have ample evidence of the 
 usefulness of our work, we offer it to the public 
 with the hope that it will bear the fruit which we 
 anticipate. We have only to add that certain 
 passages which are unsuitable for children have 
 been omitted; the omissions are indicated, and 
 adults may consult the passages in the complete 
 edition.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 SUNDAY LECTURES 
 
 The Modern School did not confine itself to 
 the instruction of children. Without for a 
 moment sacrificing its predominant character 
 and its chief object, it also undertook the 
 instruction of the people. We arranged a 
 series of public lectures on Sundays, and they 
 were attended by the pupils and other 
 members of their families, and a large number 
 of workers who were anxious to learn. 
 
 The earlier lectures were wanting in method 
 and continuity, as we had to employ lecturers 
 who were quite competent in regard to their 
 own subjects, but gave each lecture without 
 regard to what preceded or followed. On 
 other occasions, when we had no lecturer, we 
 substituted useful readings. The general 
 public attended assiduously, and our adver- 
 tisements in the Liberal press of the district 
 were eagerly scanned. 
 96
 
 Sunday Lectures 97 
 
 In view of these results, and in order to 
 encourage the disposition of the general 
 public, I held a consultation with Dr. Andres 
 Martinez Vargas and Dr. Odon de Buen, 
 Professors at the Barcelona University, on 
 the subject of creating a popular university 
 in the Modern School. In this the science 
 which is given — or, rather, sold — by the 
 State to a privileged few in the universities 
 should be given gratuitously to the general 
 public, by way of restitution, as every human 
 being has a right to know, and science, which 
 is produced by observers and workers of all 
 ages and countries, ought not to be restricted 
 to a class. 
 
 From that time the lectures became con- 
 tinuous and regular, having regard to the 
 different branches of knowledge of the two 
 lecturers. Dr. Martinez Vargas expounded 
 physiology and hygiene, and Dr. Odon de 
 Buen geography and natural science, on 
 alternate Sundays, until we began to be 
 persecuted. Their teaching was eagerly wel- 
 comed by the pupils of the Modern School, 
 and the large audiences of mixed children 
 and adults. One of the Liberal journals of 
 Barcelona, in giving an account of the 
 7
 
 98 The Modern School 
 
 work, spoke of the function as "the scientific 
 Mass." 
 
 The eternal light-haters, who maintain 
 their privileges on the ignorance of the people, 
 were greatly exasperated to see this centre 
 of enlightenment shining so vigorously, and 
 did not delay long to urge the authorities, 
 who were at their disposal, to extinguish it 
 brutally. For my part, I resolved to put 
 the work on the firmest foundation I could 
 conceive. 
 
 I recall with the greatest pleasure that 
 hour we devoted once a week to the confra- 
 ternity of culture. I inaugurated the lectures 
 on December 15, 1901, when Don Ernesto 
 Vendrell spoke of Hypatia as a martyr to the 
 ideals of science and beauty, the victim of 
 the fanatical Bishop Cyril of Alexandria. 
 Other lectures were given on subsequent 
 Sundays, as I said, until, on October 5, 1902, 
 the lectures were organised in regular courses 
 of science. On that day Dr. Andres Mar- 
 tinez Vargas, Professor of the Faculty of 
 Medicine (child diseases) at Barcelona Uni- 
 versity, gave his first lecture. He dealt with 
 the hygiene of the school, and expounded its 
 principles in plain terms adapted to the minds
 
 Sunday Lectures 99 
 
 of his hearers. Dr. Odon de Buen, Professor 
 of the Faculty of Science, dealt with the use- 
 fulness of the study of natural history. 
 
 The press was generally in sympathy with 
 the Modern School, but when the programme 
 of the third scholastic year appeared some of 
 the local journals, the Noticiero Universal 
 and the Diario de Barcelona, broke out. Here 
 is a passage that deserves recording as an 
 illustration of the way in which conservative 
 journals dealt with progressive subjects : — 
 
 We have seen the prospectus of an educational 
 centre established in this city, which professes to 
 have nothing to do with "dogmas and systems. " 
 It proposes to liberate everybody from "authori- 
 tarian dogmas, venerable sophisms, and ridicu- 
 lous conventions." It seems to us that this 
 means that the first thing to do is to tell the boys 
 and girls — it is a mixed school — that there is no 
 God, an admirable way of forming good children, 
 especially young women who are destined to be 
 wives and mothers. 
 
 The writer continues in this ironical manner 
 for some time, and ends as follows: — 
 
 This school has the support of a professor of 
 Natural Science (Dr. Odon de Buen) and another
 
 ioo The Modern School 
 
 of the Faculty of Medicine. We do not name the 
 latter, as there may be some mistake in including 
 him among the men who lend their support to 
 such a work. 
 
 These insidious clerical attacks were 
 answered by the anti-clerical journals of 
 Barcelona at the time.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE RESULTS 
 
 At the beginning of the second scholastic 
 year I once more drew up a programme. Let 
 us, I said, confirm our earlier programme; 
 vindicated by results, approved in theory and 
 practice, the principle which from the first 
 informed our work and governs the Modern 
 School is now unshakable. 
 
 Science is the sole mistress of our life. In- 
 spired with this thought, the Modern School 
 proposes to give the children entrusted to it a 
 mental vitality of their own, so that when they 
 leave our control they will continue to be 
 the mortal enemies of all kinds of prejudices 
 and will form their own ideas, individually 
 and seriously, on all subjects. 
 
 Further, as education does not consist 
 
 IOI
 
 102 The Modern School 
 
 merely in the training of the mind, but must 
 include the emotions and the will, we shall 
 take the utmost care in the training of the 
 child that its intellectual impressions are con- 
 verted into the sap of sentiment. When this 
 attains a certain degree of intensity, it spreads 
 through the whole being, colouring and refin- 
 ing the individual character. And as the con- 
 duct of the youth revolves entirely in the 
 sphere of character, he must learn to 
 adopt science as the sole mistress of his 
 life. 
 
 To complete our principle we must state 
 that we are enthusiastically in favour of mixed 
 education, so that, having the same education, 
 the woman may become the real companion 
 of man, and work with him for the regenera- 
 tion of society. This task has hitherto been 
 confined to man; it is time that the moral 
 influence of woman was enlisted in it. Science 
 will illumine and guide her rich vein of senti- 
 ment, and utilise her character for the welfare 
 of the race. Knowing that the chief need 
 in this country is a knowledge of natural 
 science and hygiene, the Modern School 
 intends to help to supply it. In this it has 
 the support of Dr. de Buen and Dr. Vargas,
 
 The Results 103 
 
 who lecture, alternately, on their respective 
 subjects. 
 
 On June 30, 1903, I published in the Bul- 
 letin the following declaration: — 
 
 We have now passed two years in expounding 
 our principles, justifying them by our practice, 
 and enjoying the esteem of all who have co- 
 operated in our work. We do not see in this any 
 other triumph than that we are able to confirm 
 confidently all that we have proclaimed. We 
 have overcome the obstacles which were put in 
 our way by interest and prejudice, and we intend 
 to persevere in it, counting always on that pro- 
 gressive comradeship which dispels the darkness 
 of ignorance with its strong light. We resume 
 work next September, after the autumn vacation. 
 We are delighted to be able to repeat what we 
 said last year. The Modern School and its 
 Bulletin renew their life, for they have filled, with 
 some measure of satisfaction, a deeply-felt need. 
 Without making promises or programmes, we 
 will persevere to the limit of our powers. 
 
 In the same number of the Bulletin was 
 published the following list of the pupils who 
 had attended the school during the first two 
 years : —
 
 104 
 
 The Modern School 
 
 
 GIRLS. 
 
 BOYS. 
 
 TOTAL. 
 
 MONTHS. 
 
 
 
 
 
 1901-2, 1902-3. 
 
 1901-2, 1902-3. 
 
 1st Yr. 2nd Yr. 
 
 Opening day 
 
 12 — 
 
 18 — 
 
 30 — 
 
 September 
 
 16 23 
 
 23 40 
 
 39 63 
 
 October 
 
 18 28 
 
 25 40 
 
 43 68 
 
 November 
 
 21 31 
 
 29 40 
 
 50 71 
 
 December 
 
 22 31 
 
 30 40 
 
 52 71 
 
 January 
 
 22 31 
 
 32 44 
 
 54 75 
 
 February 
 
 23 3i 
 
 32 48 
 
 55 79 
 
 March 
 
 25 33 
 
 34 47 
 
 59 80 
 
 April 
 
 26 32 
 
 37 48 
 
 63 80 
 
 May 
 
 30 33 
 
 38 48 
 
 68 81 
 
 June 
 
 32 34 
 
 38 48 
 
 70 82 
 
 At the beginning of the third year I pub- 
 lished with special pleasure the following 
 article in the Bulletin on the progress of the 
 School : — 
 
 On the eighth of the present month we opened 
 the new scholastic year. A large number of 
 pupils, their relatives, and members of the gen- 
 eral public who were in sympathy with our 
 work and lectures, filled the recently enlarged 
 rooms, and, before the commencement of the 
 function, inspected the collections which give 
 the school the appearance of a museum of
 
 The Results 105 
 
 science. The function began with a short 
 address from the director, who formally declared 
 the opening of the third year of school life, and 
 said that, as they now had more experience and 
 were encouraged by success, they would carry 
 out energetically the ideal of the Modern School. 
 Dr. de Buen congratulated us on the enlarge- 
 ment of the School, and supported its aims. 
 Education should, he said, reflect nature, as 
 knowledge can only consist in our perception of 
 what actually exists. On the part of his children, 
 who study at the School and live in the neigh- 
 bourhood, he paid a tribute to the good-comrade- 
 ship among the pupils, with whom they played 
 and studied in a perfectly natural way. He 
 said that even in orthodox education, or rather 
 on the part of the professors engaged in it, there 
 were, for all its archaic features, certain tend- 
 encies similar to those embodied in the Modern 
 School. This might be gathered from his own 
 presence, and that of Dr. Vargas and other pro- 
 fessors. He announced that there was already a 
 similar school at Guadalajara, or that one would 
 shortly be opened there, built by means of a 
 legacy left for the purpose by a humanitarian. 
 He wished to contribute to the redemption of 
 children and their liberation from ignorance and 
 superstition; and he expressed a hope and very 
 strong wish that wealthy people would, at their
 
 106 The Modern School 
 
 death, restore their goods in this way to the social 
 body, instead of leaving them to secure an 
 imaginary happiness beyond the grave. 
 
 Dr. Martinez Vargas maintained, against all 
 who thought otherwise, that the purely scientific 
 and rational education given in the Modern 
 School is the proper basis of instruction; no 
 better can be conceived for maintaining the 
 relations of the children with their families and 
 society, and it is the only way to form, morally 
 and intellectually, the men of the future. He 
 was glad to hear that the scholastic hygiene 
 which had been practised in the Modern School 
 during the previous two years, involving a 
 periodical examination of the children, and 
 expounded in the public lectures, had received 
 the solemn sanction of the Hygienic Congress 
 lately held at Brussels. 
 
 Going on to resume his lectures, and as a 
 means of enforcing oral instruction by visual 
 perception, he exhibited a series of lantern- 
 slides illustrating various hygienic exercises, 
 certain types of disease, unhealthy organs, etc., 
 which the speaker explained in detail. An 
 accident to the lantern interrupted the pictures ; 
 but the professor continued his explanations, 
 speaking of the mischievous effects of corsets, the 
 danger of microbic infection by trailing dresses 
 or by children playing with soil, by insanitary
 
 The Results 107 
 
 houses and workshops, etc., and promised to 
 continue his medical explanations during the 
 coming year. 
 
 The audience expressed its pleasure at the close 
 of the meeting, and the sight of the great joy of 
 the pupils was some consolation amid the hard- 
 ships of the present, and a good augury for the 
 future.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A DEFENSIVE CHAPTER 
 
 Our programme for the third scholastic year 
 (1903-4) was as follows: — 
 
 To promote the progressive evolution of child- 
 hood by avoiding all anachronistic practices, 
 which are merely obstacles placed by the past 
 to any real advance towards the future, is, in 
 sum, the predominant aim of the Modern School. 
 Neither dogmas nor systems, moulds which con- 
 fine vitality to the narrow exigencies of a transi- 
 tory form of society, will be taught. Only 
 solutions approved by the facts, theories ac- 
 cepted by reason, and truths confirmed by 
 evidence, shall be included in our lessons, so 
 that each mind shall be trained to control a 
 will, and truths shall irradiate the intelligence, 
 and, when applied in practice, benefit the whole 
 of humanity without any unworthy and dis- 
 graceful exclusiveness. 
 
 Two years of success are a sufficient guarantee 
 108
 
 A Defensive Chapter 109 
 
 to us. They prove, in the first place, the excel- 
 lence of mixed education, the brilliant result — ■ 
 the triumph, we would almost say — of an ele- 
 mentary common sense over prejudice and 
 tradition. As we think it advisable, especially 
 that the child may know what is happening 
 about it, that physical and natural science and 
 hygiene should be taught, the Modern School 
 will continue to have the services of Dr. de 
 Buen and Dr. Vargas. They will lecture on 
 alternate Sundays, from eleven to twelve, on 
 their respective subjects in the school-room. 
 These lectures will complete and further explain 
 the classes in science held during the week. 
 
 It remains only to say that, always solicitous 
 for the success of our work of reform, we have 
 enriched our scholastic material by the acquisi- 
 tion of new collections which will at once assist 
 the understanding and give an attractiveness to 
 scientific knowledge ; and that, as our rooms are 
 now not large enough for the pupils, we have 
 acquired other premises in order to have more 
 room and give a favourable reply to the petitions 
 for admission which we have received. 
 
 The publication of this programme at- 
 tracted the attention of the reactionary press, 
 as I said. In order to give them a proof of 
 the logical strength of the position of the
 
 no The Modern School 
 
 Modern School, I inserted the following 
 article in the Bulletin: — 
 
 Modern pedagogy, relieved of traditions and 
 conventions, must raise itself to the height of 
 the rational conception of man, the actual state 
 of knowledge, and the consequent ideal of 
 mankind. If from any cause whatever a differ- 
 ent tendency is given to education, and the 
 master does not do his duty, it would be just to 
 describe him as an impostor; education must 
 not be a means of dominating men for the 
 advantage of their rulers. Unhappily, this is 
 exactly what happens. Society is organised, 
 not in response to a general need and for the 
 realisation of an ideal, but as an institution with 
 a strong determination to maintain its primitive 
 forms, defending them vigorously against every 
 reform, however reasonable it may be. 
 
 This element of immobility gives the ancient 
 errors the character of sacred belief s, invests them 
 with great prestige and a dogmatic authority, 
 and arouses conflicts and disturbances which 
 deprive scientific truths of their due efficacy or 
 keep them in suspense. Instead of being 
 enabled to illumine the minds of all and realise 
 themselves in institutions and customs of general 
 utility, they are unhappily restricted to the 
 sphere of a privileged few. The effect is that,
 
 A Defensive Chapter in 
 
 as in the days of the Egyptian theocracy, there is 
 an esoteric doctrine for the cultivated and an 
 exoteric doctrine for the lower classes — the 
 classes destined to labour, defence, and misery. 
 On this account we set aside the mystic and 
 mythical doctrine, the domination and spread of 
 which only befits the earlier ages of human 
 history, and embrace scientific teaching, accord- 
 ing to its evidence. This is at present restricted 
 to the narrow sphere of the intellectuals, or is 
 at the most accepted in secret by certain hypo- 
 crites who, so that their position may not be 
 endangered, make a public profession of the 
 contrary. Nothing could make this absurd 
 antagonism clearer than the following parallel, 
 in which we seethe contrast between the imagina- 
 tive dreams of the ignorant believer and the 
 rational simplicity of the scientist : — 
 
 The Bible. Anthropism. 
 
 The Bible contains One of the main 
 
 the annals of the heav- supports of the reac- 
 
 ens, the earth, and the tionary system is what 
 
 human race; like the we may call "anthrop- 
 
 Deity himself, it con- ism." I designate by 
 
 tains all that was, is, this term that power- 
 
 and will be. On its ful and world-wide 
 
 first page we read of group of erroneous
 
 112 
 
 The Modern School 
 
 the beginning of time 
 and of things, and on 
 its last page the end of 
 time and of things. It 
 begins with Genesis, 
 which is an idyll, and 
 ends with Revelation, 
 which is a funeral 
 chant. Genesis is as 
 beautiful as the fresh 
 breeze which sweeps 
 over the world; as the 
 first dawn of light in 
 the heavens; as the 
 first flower that opens 
 in the meadows ; as the 
 first word of love spok- 
 en by men ; as the first 
 appearance of the sun 
 in the east. Revelation 
 is as sad as the last 
 palpitation of nature; 
 as the last ray of the 
 sun ; as the last breath 
 of a dying man. And 
 between the funeral 
 chant and the idyll 
 there pass in succession 
 before the eyes of God 
 
 opinions which opposes 
 the human organism 
 to the whole of the 
 rest of nature, and 
 represents it as the pre- 
 ordained end of or- 
 ganic creation, an 
 entity essentially dis- 
 tinct from it, a god- 
 like being. Closer ex- 
 amination of this group 
 of ideas shows it to be 
 made up of three dif- 
 ferent dogmas, which 
 we may distinguish as 
 the antkropocentric, the 
 anthropomorphic, and 
 the anthropolatrous. 
 
 i . The anthropo- 
 centric dogma culmi- 
 nates in the idea that 
 man is the preordained 
 centre and aim of all 
 terrestrial life — or, in 
 a wider sense, of the 
 whole universe. As 
 this error is extremely 
 conducive to man's in- 
 terest, and as it is
 
 A Defensive Chapter 113 
 
 all generations and all 
 peoples. The tribes 
 and the patriarchs go 
 by; the republics and 
 the magistrates ; the 
 monarchies and their 
 kings; the empires and 
 their emperors. Baby- 
 lon and all its abomina- 
 tions go by; Nineveh 
 and all its pomps ; 
 Memphis and its 
 priests; Jerusalem and 
 its prophets and tem- 
 ple ; Athens and its arts 
 and heroes; Rome and 
 its diadem of conqueror 
 of the world. Nothing 
 lasts but God; all else 
 passes and dies, like the 
 froth that tips the 
 wave. 
 
 A prodigious book, 
 which mankind began 
 to read three and thirty 
 centuries ago, and of 
 which, if it read all day 
 
 intimately connected 
 with the creation-myth 
 of the three great Medi- 
 terranean religions, and 
 with the dogmas of the 
 Mosaic, Christian, and 
 Mohammedan theolo- 
 gies, it still dominates 
 the greater part of the 
 civilised world. 
 
 2. The anthropo- 
 morphic dogma, also, 
 is connected with the 
 creation-myth of the 
 three aforesaid reli- 
 gions and of many 
 others. It likens the 
 creation and control of 
 the world by God to 
 the artificial creation 
 of an able engineer or 
 mechanic, and to the 
 administration of a 
 wise ruler. God, as 
 creator, sustainer, and 
 ruler of the world, is 
 thus represented after 
 a purely human fash- 
 ion in his thought and
 
 H4 
 
 The Modern School 
 
 and night, it would 
 not exhaust the wealth. 
 A prodigious book in 
 which all was calcu- 
 lated before the science 
 of arithmetic was in- 
 vented; in which the 
 origin of language is 
 told without any know- 
 ledge of philology; in 
 which the revolutions 
 of the stars are de- 
 scribed without any 
 knowledge of astro- 
 nomy ; in which history 
 is recorded without 
 any documents of his- 
 tory; in which the laws 
 of nature are unveiled 
 without any knowledge 
 of physics. A prodi- 
 gious book, that sees 
 everything and knows 
 everything ; that knows 
 the thoughts hidden in 
 the hearts of men and 
 those in the mind of 
 God; that sees what 
 is happening in the 
 
 work. Hence it fol- 
 lows that man in turn 
 is godlike. ' ' God made 
 man to his own image 
 and likeness." The 
 older, naive theology is 
 pure " homotheism, " 
 attributing human 
 shape, flesh, and blood 
 to the gods. It is more 
 intelligible than the 
 modern mystic theo- 
 sophy which adores a 
 personal God as an 
 invisible — properly 
 speaking, gaseous — be- 
 ing, yet makes him 
 think, speak, and act 
 in human fashion; it 
 offers us the paradoxi- 
 cal picture of a gaseous 
 vertebrate. 
 
 3. The anthropola- 
 tric dogma naturally 
 results from this com- 
 parison of the activity 
 of God and man; it 
 ends in the apotheosis 
 of human nature. A
 
 A Defensive Chapter 115 
 
 abysses of the sea and 
 in the bowels of the 
 earth; that records or 
 foretells all the cata- 
 strophes of nations, and 
 in which are accumu- 
 lated all the treasures 
 of mercy, of justice, 
 and of vengeance. A 
 book, in fine, which, 
 when the heavens are 
 folded like a gigantic 
 fan, and the earth sinks 
 and the sun withdraws 
 its light, and the stars 
 are extinguished, will 
 remain with God, be- 
 cause it is his eternal 
 word, echoing for ever 
 in the heights. 1 
 
 further result is the 
 belief in the personal 
 immortality of the soul 
 and the dualistic dog- 
 ma of the twofold 
 nature of man, whose 
 1 ' immortal" soul is con- 
 ceived as the temporary 
 inhabitant of a mortal 
 frame. Thus these 
 three anthropistic dog- 
 mas, variously adapted 
 to the respective pro- 
 fessions of the different 
 religions, came at 
 length to be vested 
 with extraordinary im- 
 portance, and proved 
 to be the source of the 
 most dangerous errors. 2 
 
 In face of this antagonism, maintained by 
 ignorance and self-interest, positive education, 
 which proposes to teach truths that issue in 
 practical justice, must arrange and systematise 
 the established results of natural research, com- 
 
 1 Extract from a speech delivered by Donoso Cortes at 
 his admission into the Academy. 
 
 2 Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe, chap. i.
 
 n6 The Modern School 
 
 municate them to children, and thus prepare 
 the way for a more equitable state of society, 
 in which, as an exact expression of sociology, 
 it must work for the benefit of all as well as of the 
 individual. Moses, or whoever was the author 
 of Genesis, and all the dogmatisers, with their 
 six days of creation out of nothing after the 
 Creator has passed an eternity in doing nothing, 
 must give place to Copernicus, who showed 
 the revolution of the planets round the sun; 
 to Galileo, who proclaimed that the sun, not 
 the earth, is the centre of the planetary universe; 
 to Columbus and others who, believing the 
 earth to be a sphere, set out in search of other 
 peoples, and gave a practical basis to the doctrine 
 of human brotherhood ; to Linnaeus and Cuvier, 
 the founders of natural history; to Laplace, 
 the inventor of the established cosmogony; 
 to Darwin, the author of the evolutionary 
 doctrine, which explains the formation of species 
 by natural selection ; and to all who, by means of 
 observation and experiment, have discredited 
 the supposed revelation, and tell us the real 
 nature of the universe, the earth, and life. 
 
 Against the evils engendered by generations 
 sunk in ignorance and superstition, from which so 
 many are now delivered, only to fall into an 
 anti-social scepticism, the best remedy, without 
 excluding others, is to instruct the rising genera-
 
 A Defensive Chapter 117 
 
 tion in purely humanist principles and in the 
 positive and rational knowledge provided by 
 science. Women educated thus will be mothers 
 in the true sense of the word, not transmitters of 
 traditional superstitions; they will teach their 
 children integrity of life, the dignity of life, social 
 solidarity, instead of a medley of outworn and 
 sterile dogmas and submission to illegitimate 
 hierarchies. Men thus emancipated from mys- 
 tery, miracle, and distrust of themselves and 
 their fellows, and convinced that they were 
 born, not to die, as the wretched teaching of the 
 mystics says, but to live, will hasten to bring 
 about such social conditions as will give to 
 life its greatest possible development. In this 
 way, preserving the memory of former genera- 
 tions and other frames of mind as a lesson and a 
 warning, we will once for all close the religious 
 period, and enter definitely into that of reason 
 and nature. 
 
 In June, 1904, the Bulletin published the 
 following figures in regard to the attendance 
 at school. At that time the publications of 
 the Modern School were in use in thirty-two 
 other schools throughout the country, and its 
 influence was thus felt in Seville and Malaga, 
 Tarragona and Cordova, and other towns, 
 as well as Barcelona and the vicinity. The
 
 n8 
 
 The Modern School 
 
 number of scholars in our schools was also 
 steadily rising, as the following table shows : — 
 
 List of the Pupils in the Modern School 
 During the First Three Years. 
 
 
 GIRLS. 
 
 BOYS. 
 
 TOTALS. 
 
 MONTHS. 
 
 <M° 
 
 ro 
 
 ■* 
 
 n to ^ 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 m 
 
 m p» ro 
 
 1 st 2nd 3rd 
 
 
 O 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 OOO 
 
 Ov O* Ov 
 
 year .year. year. 
 
 Opening day 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 30 
 
 September 
 
 16 
 
 23 
 
 24 
 
 23 40 40 
 
 39 63 64 
 
 October 
 
 18 
 
 28 
 
 43 
 
 25 40 59 
 
 43 68 102 
 
 November 
 
 21 
 
 31 
 
 44 
 
 29 40 59 
 
 50 71 103 
 
 December 
 
 22 
 
 31 
 
 45 
 
 30 40 59 
 
 52 71 104 
 
 January 
 
 22 
 
 31 
 
 47 
 
 32 44 60 
 
 54 75 107 
 
 February 
 
 23 
 
 31 
 
 47 
 
 32 48 61 
 
 55 79 108 
 
 March 
 
 25 
 
 33 
 
 49 
 
 34 47 61 
 
 59 80 1 10 
 
 April 
 
 26 
 
 32 
 
 50 
 
 37 48 61 
 
 63 80 in 
 
 May 
 
 30 
 
 33 
 
 5i 
 
 38 48 62 
 
 68 81 113 
 
 June 
 
 32 
 
 34 
 
 5i 
 
 38 48 63 
 
 70 82 114
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE INGENUOUSNESS OF THE CHILD 
 
 In the Bulletin of September 30, 1903, we 
 published the work of the pupils in the various 
 classes of the Modern School, which had been 
 read on the closing day of the second scho- 
 lastic year. In these writings, in which the 
 children are requested to apply their dawning 
 judgment to some particular subject, the 
 influence of mind over the inexpert, ingenu- 
 ous reasoning power, inspired by the senti- 
 ment of justice, is more apparent than the 
 observance of rules. The judgments are not 
 perfect from the logical point of view, only 
 because the child has not the knowledge 
 necessary for the formation of a perfectly 
 sound opinion. This is the opposite of what 
 we usually find, as opinions are generally 
 founded only on prejudice arising from tradi- 
 tions, interests, and dogmas. 
 119
 
 120 The Modern School 
 
 A boy of twelve, for instance, gave the 
 following principle for judging the value of 
 nations : — 
 
 To be called civilised, a nation or State must 
 be free from the following — 
 
 Let me interrupt for a moment to point out 
 that the young author identifies "civilised" 
 with "just," and especially that, putting 
 aside prejudice, he describes certain evils as 
 curable, and regards the healing of them as an 
 essential condition of justice. These evils 
 are: — 
 
 i . The co-existence of poor and rich, and the 
 resultant exploitation. 
 
 2. Militarism, a means of destruction em- 
 ployed by one nation against another, due to the 
 bad organisation of society. 
 
 3. Inequality, which allows some to rule 
 and command, and obliges others to humble 
 themselves and obey. 
 
 This principle is fundamental and simple, 
 as we should expect to find in an imperfectly 
 informed mind, and it would not enable one to 
 solve a complete sociological problem; but it 
 has the advantage of keeping the mind open
 
 The Ingenuousness of the Child 121 
 
 to fresh knowledge. It is as if one asked: 
 What does a sick man need to recover health ? 
 And the reply is: His suffering must disap- 
 pear. This is a naive and natural reply, and 
 would certainly not be given by a child 
 brought up in the ordinary way ; such a child 
 would be taught first to consider the will of 
 supposed supernatural beings. It is clear 
 that this simple way of putting the problem 
 of life does not shut out the hope of a reason- 
 able solution; indeed, the one logically de- 
 mands the other, as the same child's essay 
 shows : — 
 
 I do not mean that, if there were no rich, or 
 soldiers, or rulers, or wages, people would abuse 
 their liberty and welfare, but that, with every- 
 body enjoying a high degree of civilisation, 
 there would be universal cordiality and friend- 
 ship, and science would make much greater 
 progress, not being interrupted by wars and 
 political stagnation. 
 
 A girl of nine made the following sensible 
 observation, which we leave in her own 
 incorrect language: — 
 
 A criminal is condemned to death; if the
 
 122 The Modern School 
 
 murderer deserves this punishment, the man 
 who condemns him and the man who kills him 
 are also murderers; logically, they ought to die 
 as well, and so humanity would come to an end. 
 It would be better, instead of punishing a crimi- 
 nal by committing another crime, to give him 
 good advice, so that he will not do it again. 
 Besides, if we are all equal, there would be no 
 thieves, or assassins, or rich people, or poor, but 
 all would be equal and love work and liberty. 
 
 The simplicity, clearness, and soundness of 
 this observation need no commentary. One 
 can understand our astonishment to hear it 
 from the lips of a tender and very pretty little 
 girl, who looked more like a symbolical 
 representation of truth and justice than a 
 living reality. 
 
 A boy of twelve deals with sincerity, and 
 says: — 
 
 The man who is not sincere does not live peace- 
 fully; he is always afraid of being discovered: 
 when one is sincere, if one has done wrong, the 
 sincere declaration relieves the conscience. If a 
 man begins to tell lies in childhood, he will tell 
 bigger lies when he grows up, and may do much 
 harm. There are cases in which one need not 
 be sincere. For instance, if a man comes to
 
 The Ingenuousness of the Child 123 
 
 our house, flying from the police, and we are 
 asked afterwards if we have seen him, we must 
 deny it; the contrary would be treachery and 
 cowardice. 
 
 It is sad that the mind of a child who 
 regards truth as an incomparable good, 
 "without which it is impossible to live," 
 is induced by certain grave abuses to consider 
 lying a virtue in some cases. 
 
 A girl of thirteen writes of fanaticism, and, 
 regarding it as a characteristic of backward 
 countries, she goes on to seek the cause: — 
 
 Fanaticism is the outcome of the state of ignor- 
 ance and backwardness of women; on that 
 account Catholics do not want to see women 
 educated, as they are the chief support of their 
 system. 
 
 A profound observation on the causes of 
 fanaticism, and the cause of the causes. 
 Another girl of thirteen indicates the best 
 remedy of the evil in the following lines: — 
 
 The mixed school, for both sexes, is supremely 
 necessary. The boy who studies, works, and 
 plays in the society of girls learns gradually to 
 respect and help her, and the girl reciprocally;
 
 124 The Modern School 
 
 whereas, if they are educated separately, and the 
 boy is told that the girl is not a good companion 
 and she is worse than he, the boy will not respect 
 women when he is a man, and will regard her as 
 a subject or a slave, and that is the position in 
 which we find women. So we must all work 
 for the foundation of mixed schools, wherever 
 it is possible, and where it is not possible we 
 must try to remove the difficulties. 
 
 A boy of twelve regards the school as 
 worthy of all respect, because we learn in it 
 to read, write, and think, and it is the basis 
 of morality and science; he adds: — 
 
 If it were not for the school we should live like 
 savages, walk naked, eat herbs and raw flesh, 
 and dwell in caves and trees; that is to say, we 
 should live a brutal life. In time, as a result of 
 the school, everybody will be more intelligent, 
 and there will be no wars or inflamed populations 
 and people will look back on war with horror as 
 a work of death and destruction. It is a great 
 disgrace that there are children who wander in 
 the streets and do not go to school, and when 
 they become men it is more disgraceful. So let 
 us be grateful to our teachers for the patience 
 they show in instructing us, and let us regard 
 the school with respect.
 
 The Ingenuousness of the Child 125 
 
 If that child preserves and develops the facul- 
 ties it exhibits, it will know how to harmonise 
 egoism and altruism for its own good and that 
 of society. A girl of eleven deplores that 
 nations destroy each other in war, and laments 
 the difference of social classes and that the 
 rich live on the work and privation of the 
 poor. She ends: — 
 
 Why do not men, instead of killing each other 
 in wars and hating each other for class-differ- 
 ences, devote themselves cheerfully to work and 
 the discovery of things for the good of mankind ? 
 Men ought to unite to love each other and live 
 fraternally. l 
 
 A child of ten, in an essay which is so good 
 that I would insert it whole if space permitted 
 and if it were not for the identity in senti- 
 ment with the previous passages, says of the 
 school and the pupil : — 
 
 Reunited under one roof, eager to learn what 
 
 1 1 omit some of Ferrer's short comments on these speci- 
 mens of reasoning and sentiment, as he regards them. One 
 can recognise the echo of the teacher's words. The 
 children were repeating their catechism. But (i) this is 
 no catechism of violence and class-hatred, and (2) there is 
 a distinct apppreciation of the ideas and sentiments on the 
 part of the children. I translate the passages as literally 
 as possible. — J. M.
 
 126 The Modern School 
 
 we do not know, without distinction of classes 
 [there were children of university professors 
 among them, it will be remembered], we are 
 children of one family guided to the same end. 
 . . . The ignorant man is a nullity; little or 
 nothing can be expected of him. He is a warn- 
 ing to us not to waste time; on the contrary, 
 let us profit by it, and in due course we shall 
 be rewarded. Let us not miss the fruits of a 
 good school, and, honouring our teachers, our 
 family, and society, we shall live happily. 
 
 A child of ten philosophises on the faults 
 of mankind, which, in her opinion, can be 
 avoided by instruction and goodwill: — 
 
 Among the faults of mankind are lying, hypo- 
 crisy, and egoism. If men, and especially 
 women, were better instructed, and women were 
 entirely equal to men, these faults would dis- 
 appear. Parents would not send their children 
 to religious schools, which inculcate false ideas, 
 but to rational schools, where there is no teach- 
 ing of the supernatural, which does not exist; 
 nor to make war; but to live in solidarity and 
 work in common. 
 
 We will close with the following essay, 
 written by a young lady of sixteen, which is 
 correct enough in form and substance to quote 
 in entirety: —
 
 The Ingenuousness of the Child 127 
 
 What inequality there is in the present social 
 order! Some working from morning to night 
 without more profit than enough to buy their 
 insufficient food; others receiving the products 
 of the workers in order to enjoy themselves with 
 the superfluous. Why is this so? Are we not 
 all equal? Undoubtedly we are; but society 
 does not recognise it, while some are destined 
 to work and suffering, and others to idleness and 
 enjoyment. If a worker shows that he realises 
 the exploitation to which he is subject, he is 
 blamed and cruelly punished, while others suffer 
 the inequality with patience. The worker must 
 educate himself; and in order to do this it is 
 necessary to found free schools, maintained by 
 the wages which the rich give. In this way the 
 worker will advance more and more, until he is 
 regarded as he deserves, since the most useful 
 mission of society depends on him. 
 
 Whatever be the logical value of these 
 ideas, this collection shows the chief aim 
 of the Modern School — namely, that the 
 mind of the child, influenced by what it sees 
 and informed by the positive knowledge it 
 acquires, shall work freely, without prejudice 
 or submission to any kind of sect, with 
 perfect autonomy and no other guide but 
 reason, equal in all, and sanctioned by the
 
 128 The Modern School 
 
 cogency of evidence, before which the dark- 
 ness of sophistry and dogmatic imposition 
 is dispelled. 
 
 In December, 1903, the Congress of Railway 
 Workers, which was then held at Barcelona, 
 informed us that, as a part of its pro- 
 gramme, the delegates would visit the Modern 
 School. The pupils were delighted, and we 
 invited them to write essays to be read on the 
 occasion of the visit. The visit was prevented 
 by unforeseen circumstances; but we pub- 
 lished in the Bulletin the children's essays, 
 which exhaled a delicate perfume of sincerity 
 and unbiassed judgment, graced by the naive 
 ingenuousness of the writers. No suggestion 
 was made to them, and they did not compare 
 notes, yet there was a remarkable agreement 
 in their sentiments. At another time the 
 pupils of the Workers' School at Badalona 
 sent a greeting to our pupils, and they again 
 wrote essays, from which we compiled a 
 return letter of greeting. r 
 
 1 This letter and the preceding essays are given in the 
 Spanish edition. As they are a repetition of the sentiments 
 expressed in the extracts already given, it is unnecessary to 
 reproduce them here. Except that I have omitted papers 
 incorporated by Ferrer, but not written by him, this is the 
 only modification I have allowed myself. — J. M.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE BULLETIN 
 
 The Modern School needed and found its 
 organ in the Press. The political and ordin- 
 ary press, which at one time favoured us and 
 at another time denounced us as dangerous, 
 cannot maintain an impartial attitude. It 
 either gives exaggerated or unmerited praise, 
 or calumnious censures. The only remedy 
 for this was the sincerity and clearness of our 
 own indications. To allow these libels to 
 pass without correction would have done us 
 considerable harm, and the Bulletin enabled 
 us to meet them. 
 
 The directors published in it the pro- 
 gramme of the school, interesting notes about 
 it, statistical details, original pedagogical 
 articles by the teachers, accounts of the pro- 
 gress of rational education in our own and 
 other countries, translations of important 
 
 9 129
 
 130 The Modern School 
 
 articles from foreign reviews and periodicals 
 which were in harmony with the main char- 
 acter of our work, reports of the Sunday 
 lectures, and announcements of the public 
 competitions for the engagement of teachers 
 and of our library. 
 
 One of the most successful sections of the 
 Bulletin was that devoted to the publication 
 of the ideas of the pupils. Besides showing 
 their individual ideas it revealed the spon- 
 taneous manifestation of common sense. 
 Girls and boys, with no appreciable difference 
 in intellect according to sex, in contact with 
 the realities of life as indicated by the teachers, 
 expressed themselves in simple essays which, 
 though sometimes immature in judgment, 
 more often showed the clear logic with which 
 they conceived philosophical, political, or 
 social questions of some importance. The 
 journal was at first distributed without 
 charge among the pupils, and was exchanged 
 with other periodicals; but there was soon 
 a demand for it, and a public subscription 
 had to be opened. When this was done, the 
 Bulletin became a philosophical review, as 
 well as organ of the Modern School; and it 
 retained this character until the persecution
 
 The "Bulletin" 131 
 
 began and the school was closed. An instance 
 of the important mission of the Bulletin will 
 be found in the following article, which I 
 wrote in No. 5 of the fourth year, in order to 
 correct certain secular teachers who had 
 gone astray: — 
 
 A certain Workers' School has introduced the 
 novelty of establishing a savings-bank, adminis- 
 tered by the pupils. This piece of information, 
 reproduced in terms of great praise by the press 
 as a thing to be imitated, induces us to express 
 our opinion on the subject. While others have 
 their own right to decide and act, we have the 
 same right to criticise, and thus to create a 
 rational public opinion. 
 
 In the first place we would observe that the 
 word economy is very different from, if not the 
 opposite of, the idea of saving. One may teach 
 children the knowledge and practice of economy 
 without necessarily teaching them to save. 
 Economy means a prudent and methodical use of 
 one's goods: saving means a restriction of one's 
 use of one's goods. By economising, we avoid 
 waste; by saving, the man who has nothing 
 superfluous deprives himself of what is necessary. 
 
 Have the children who are taught to save any 
 superfluous property? The very name of the 
 society in question assures us that they have not.
 
 132 The Modern School 
 
 The workers who send their children to this 
 school live on their wages, the minimum sum, 
 determined by the laws of supply and demand, 
 which is paid for their work by the employers; 
 and as this wage gives them nothing superfluous, 
 and the social wealth is monopolised by the 
 privileged classes, the workers are far from 
 obtaining enough to live a life in harmony with 
 the progress of civilisation. Hence, when these 
 children of workers, and future workers them- 
 selves, are taught to save — which is a voluntary 
 privation under the appearance of interest — they 
 are taught to prepare themselves to submit to 
 privilege. While the intention is to initiate them 
 to the practice of economy, what is really done is 
 to convert them into victims and accomplices of 
 the present unjust order. 
 
 The working-class child is a human child , and, 
 as such, it has a right to the development of all its 
 faculties, the satisfaction of all its needs, moral 
 and physical. For that purpose society was 
 instituted. It is not its function to repress or 
 subject the individual, as is selfishly pretended by 
 the privileged and reactionary class, and all who 
 enjoy what others produce; it has to hold the 
 balance justly between the rights and duties of 
 all members of the commonwealth. 
 
 As it is, the individual is asked to sacrifice his 
 rights, needs, and pleasures to society; and, as
 
 The "Bulletin" 133 
 
 this disorder demands patience, suffering, and 
 sophistical reasoning, let us commend economy 
 and blame saving. We do not think it right to 
 teach children to look forward to being workers in 
 a social order in which the average mortality of 
 the poor, who live without freedom, instruction, 
 or joy, reaches an appalling figure in comparison 
 with that of the class which lives in triumph on 
 their labour. Those who, from sociolatry, would 
 derogate in the least from the rights of man, 
 should read the fine and vigorous words of 
 Pi y Margall: "Who art thou to prevent my use 
 of my human rights? Perfidious and tyrannical 
 society, thou wert created to defend, not to 
 coerce us. Go back to the abyss whence thou 
 earnest." 
 
 Starting from these principles, and applying 
 them to pedagogy, we think it necessary to 
 teach children that to waste any class of objects 
 is contrary to the general welfare ; that if a child 
 spoils paper, loses pens, or destroys books, it 
 does an injustice to its parents and the school. 
 Assuredly one may impress on the child the 
 need of prudence in order to avoid getting imper- 
 fect things, and remind it of lack of employment, 
 illness, or age; but it is not right to insist that a 
 provision be made out of a salary which does not 
 suffice to meet the needs of life. That is bad 
 arithmetic.
 
 134 The Modern School 
 
 The workers have no university training; they 
 do not go to the theatre or to concerts; they 
 never go into ecstasies before the marvels of art, 
 industry, or nature; they have no holiday in 
 which to fill their lungs with life-giving oxygen; 
 they are never uplifted by reading books or 
 reviews. On the contrary, they suffer all kinds 
 of privations, and may have to endure crises due 
 to excessive production. It is not the place of 
 teachers to hide these sad truths from the children 
 and to tell them that a smaller quantity is equal 
 to, if not better than, a larger. In order that 
 the power of science and industry be shared 
 by all, and all be invited to partake of the ban- 
 quet of life, we must not teach in the school, in 
 the interest of privilege, that the poor should 
 organise the advantages of crumbs and leavings. 
 We must not prostitute education. 
 
 On another occasion I had to censure a 
 different departure from our principles: — 
 
 We were distressed and indignant on reading 
 the list of contributions voted by the Council 
 of Barcelona for certain popular societies which 
 are interested in education. We read of sums 
 offered to Republican Fraternities and similar 
 societies; and we find that, instead of rejecting
 
 The " Bulletin" 135 
 
 them, they forwarded votes of thanks to the 
 Council. 
 
 The meaning of these things in a Catholic and 
 ultra-conservative nation is clear. The Church 
 and the capitalist system only maintain their 
 ascendency by a judicious system of charity and 
 protection. With this they gratify the disin- 
 herited class, and continue to enjoy its respect. 
 But we cannot see republicans acting as if they 
 were humble Christians without raising a cry 
 of alarm. 
 
 Beware, we repeat, beware! You are educat- 
 ing your children badly, and taking the wrong 
 path towards reform, in accepting alms. You 
 will neither emancipate yourselves nor your 
 children if you trust in the strength of others, 
 and rely on official or private support. Let the 
 Catholics, ignorant of the realities of life, expect 
 everything of God, or St. Joseph, or some similar 
 being, and, as they have no security that their 
 prayers will be heard in this life, trust to receive a 
 reward after death. Let gamblers in the lottery 
 fail to see that they are morally and materially 
 victimised by their rulers, and trust to receive 
 by chance what they do not earn by energy. 
 But it is sad to see men hold out the hand of a 
 beggar, who are united in a revolutionary protest 
 against the present system; to see them admit- 
 ting and giving thanks for humiliating gifts,
 
 136 The Modern School 
 
 instead of trusting their own energy, intellect, 
 and ability. 
 
 Beware, then, all men of good faith! That is 
 not the way to set up a true education of children, 
 but the way to enslave them.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE MODERN SCHOOL 
 
 I have reached the culmination of my life 
 and my work. My enemies, who are all the 
 reactionaries in the world, represented by the 
 reactionaries of Barcelona and of Spain, be- 
 lieved that they had triumphed by involving 
 me in a charge of attempted assassination. 
 But their triumph proved to be only an epi- 
 sode in the struggle of practical Rationalism 
 against reaction. The shameful audacity 
 with which they claimed sentence of death 
 against me (a claim that was refused on ac- 
 count of my transparent innocence rather 
 than on account of the justice of the court) 
 drew on me the sympathy of all liberal men — 
 all true progressives — in all parts of the world, 
 and fixed attention on the meaning and ideal 
 of the Rational School. There was a uni- 
 versal and uninterrupted movement of pro- 
 test and admiration for a whole year — from 
 137
 
 138 The Modern School 
 
 May, 1906, to May and June, 1907 — echoed 
 in the Press of every civilised country, and 
 in meetings and other popular manifestations. 
 
 It proved in the end that the mortal 
 enemies of our work were its most effective 
 supporters, as they led to the establishment 
 of international Rationalism. 
 
 I felt my own littleness in face of this 
 mighty manifestation. Led always by the 
 light of the ideal, I conceived and carried 
 out the International League for the Ration- 
 al Education of Children, in the various 
 branches of which, scattered over the world, 
 are found men in the front ranks of culture 
 [Anatole France, Ernst Haeckel, etc.]. It 
 has three organs, UEcole Renovee in France, 
 the Bulletin in Barcelona, and La Scuola Laica 
 at Rome, which expound, discuss, and spread 
 all the latest efforts of pedagogy to purify 
 science from all defilement of error, to dispel 
 all credulity, to bring about a perfect harmony 
 between belief and knowledge, and to destroy 
 that privileged esoteric system which has 
 always left an exoteric doctrine to the masses. 
 
 This great concentration of knowledge and 
 research must lead to a vigorous action which 
 will give to the future revolution the char-
 
 Closing of the Modern School 139 
 
 acter of practical manifestation of applied 
 sociology, without passion or demand of 
 revenge, with no terrible tragedies or heroic 
 sacrifices, no sterile movements, no disillu- 
 sion of zealots, no treacherous returns to 
 reaction. For scientific and rational educa- 
 tion will have pervaded the masses, making 
 each man and woman a self-conscious, active, 
 and responsible being, guiding his will 
 according to his judgment, free for ever from 
 the passions inspired by those who exploit 
 respect for tradition and for the charlatanry 
 of the modern framers of political pro- 
 grammes. 
 
 If progress thus loses this dramatic char- 
 acter of revolution, it will gain in firmness, 
 stability, and continuity, as evolution. The 
 vision of a rational society, which revolution- 
 aries foresaw in all ages, and which sociolog- 
 ists confidently promise, will rise before the 
 eyes of our successors, not as the mirage of 
 dreamy Utopians, but as the positive and 
 merited triumph won by the revolutionary 
 power of reason and science. 
 
 The new repute of the educational work of 
 the Modern School attracted the attention 
 of all who appreciated the value of sound
 
 140 The Modern School 
 
 instruction. There was a general demand for 
 knowledge of the system. There were num- 
 bers of private secular schools, or similar 
 institutions supported by societies, and their 
 directors made inquiry concerning the differ- 
 ence of our methods from theirs. There were 
 constant requests to visit the school and con- 
 sult me. I gladly satisfied them, removed 
 their doubts, and pressed them to enter on the 
 new way; and at once efforts were made to 
 reform the existing schools, and to create 
 others on the model of the Modern School. 
 There was great enthusiasm and the 
 promise of mighty things; but one serious 
 difficulty stood in the way: we were short of 
 teachers, and had no means of creating them. 
 Professional teachers had two disadvantages 
 — traditional habits and dread of the contin- 
 gencies of the future. There were very few 
 who, in an unselfish love of the ideal, would 
 devote themselves to the progressive cause. 
 Instructed young men and women might be 
 found to fill the gap ; but how were we to train 
 them? Where could they pass their appren- 
 ticeship? Now and again I heard from 
 workers' or political societies that they had 
 decided to open a school; they would find
 
 Closing of the Modern School 141 
 
 rooms and appliances, and we could count 
 upon their using our school manuals. But 
 whenever I asked if they had teachers, they 
 replied in the negative, and thought it would 
 be easy to supply the want. I had to give in. 
 
 Circumstances had made me the director of 
 rationalist education, and I had constant 
 consultations and demands on the part of 
 aspirants for the position of teacher. This 
 made me realise the defect, and I endeavoured 
 to meet it by private advice and by admitting 
 young assistants in the Modern School. The 
 result was naturally mixed. There are now 
 worthy teachers who will carry on the work 
 of rational education elsewhere; others failed 
 from moral or intellectual incapacity. 
 
 Not feeling that the pupils of the Modern 
 School who devoted themselves to teaching 
 would find time for their work, I established 
 a Normal School, of which I have already 
 spoken. I was convinced that, if the key 
 of the social problem is in the scientific and 
 rational school, it is essential, to make a 
 proper use of the key, that fitting teachers 
 be trained for so great a destiny. 
 
 As the practical and positive result of my 
 work, I may say that the Modern School of
 
 142 The Modern School 
 
 Barcelona was a most successful experiment, 
 and that it was distinguished for two char- 
 acteristics : — 
 
 1. While open to successive improve- 
 ments, it set up a standard of what education 
 should be in a reformed state of society. 
 
 2. It gave an impulse to the spread of 
 this kind of education. 
 
 There was up to that time no education in 
 the true sense of the word. There were, for 
 the privileged few in the universities, tradi- 
 tional errors and prejudices, authoritarian 
 dogmas, mixed up with the truths which 
 modern research has brought to light. For 
 the people there was primary instruction, 
 which was, and is, a method of taming 
 children. The school was a sort of riding- 
 school, where natural energies were subdued 
 in order that the poor might suffer their hard 
 lot in silence. Real education, separated 
 from faith — education that illumines the 
 mind with the light of evidence — is the 
 creation of the Modern School. 
 
 During its ephemeral existence 1 it did a 
 marvellous amount of good. The child 
 
 1 The Modern School was closed after Ferrer's arrest in 
 1906.— J. M.
 
 Closing of the Modern School 143 
 
 admitted to the school and kept in contact 
 with its companions rapidly changed its 
 habits, as I have observed. It cultivated 
 cleanliness, avoided quarrels, ceased to be 
 cruel to animals, took no notice in its games 
 of the barbarous spectacle which we call the 
 national entertainment [bull-fight], and, as its 
 mind was uplifted and its sentiments purified, 
 it deplored the social injustices which abound 
 on the very face of life. It detested war, 
 and would not admit that national glory, 
 instead of consisting in the highest possible 
 moral development and happiness of a people, 
 should be placed in conquest and violence. 
 
 The influence of the Modern School, ex- 
 tended to other schools which had been 
 founded on its model and were maintained 
 by various working-men societies, penetrated 
 the families by means of the children. Once 
 they were touched by the influence of reason 
 and science they were unconsciously con- 
 verted into teachers of their own parents, and 
 these in turn diffused the better standards 
 among their friends and relatives. 
 
 This spread of our influence drew on us the 
 hatred of Jesuitism of all kinds and in all 
 places, and this hatred inspired the design
 
 144 The Modern School 
 
 which ended in the closing of the Modern 
 School. It is closed; but in reality it is 
 concentrating its forces, defining and improv- 
 ing its plan, and gathering the strength for a 
 fresh attempt to promote the true cause of 
 progress. 
 
 That is the story of what the Modern 
 School was, is, and ought to be.
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 By J. M. 
 
 "That is the story of what the Modern 
 School was, is, and ought to be." When 
 Ferrer wrote this, in the summer of 1908, he 
 was full of plans for the continuation of his 
 work in various ways. He was fostering such 
 free schools as the Government still per- 
 mitted. He was promoting his "popular 
 university, " and multiplying works of science 
 and sociology for the million. His influence 
 was growing, and he saw with glad eyes the 
 light breaking on the ignorant masses of his 
 fellows. In the summer of 1909 he came to 
 England to study the system of moral instruc- 
 tion which, under the inspiration of the 
 Moral Instruction League, is used in thou- 
 sands of English schools. A friend in London 
 begged him never to return to Spain, as his 
 life was sought. He knew it, but nothing 
 would divert him from his ideal. And three 
 10 145
 
 146 The Modern School 
 
 months later he was shot, among the graves 
 of criminals, in the trenches of Montjuich. 
 
 Form your own opinion of him from his 
 words. He conceals nothing. He was a 
 rebel against religious traditions and social 
 inequalities ; he wished children to become as 
 resentful of poverty and superstition as he. 
 There is no law of Spain, or of any other 
 country, that forbids such enterprise as his. 
 He might be shot in Russia, of course; for 
 the law has been suspended there for more 
 than a decade. In Spain men had to lie in 
 order to take his life. 
 
 With the particular value of his scheme of 
 education I am not concerned. He was well 
 acquainted with pedagogical literature, and 
 there were few elementary schools in Spain to 
 equal his. Writers who have spoken slight- 
 ingly of his school, apart from its social 
 dogmas, know little or nothing about it. 
 Ferrer was in close and constant association 
 with two of the ablest professors in the Uni- 
 versity of Barcelona, one of whom sent his 
 children to the school, and with distinguished 
 scholars in other lands. There was more 
 stimulating work done in the Modern School 
 than, probably, in any other elementary
 
 Epilogue 147 
 
 school in Spain, if not elsewhere. All that 
 can be questioned is the teaching of an explicit 
 social creed to the children. Ferrer would 
 have rejoined that there was not a school in 
 Europe that does not teach an explicit social 
 creed. But, however we may differ from his 
 creed, we cannot fail to recognise the elevated 
 and unselfish idealism of the man, and deplore 
 the brutality and illegality with which his 
 genial life was prematurely brought to a 
 close. 
 
 THE END
 
 The Psychology of 
 Revolution 
 
 By Gustave Le Bon 
 
 Author of " The Crowd : A Study of the Popular Mind " 
 
 Translated by Bernard Niall 
 
 8°. 337 Pages. $2.50 net. By mail, $2.75 
 
 Brief Contents 
 
 Part I. — The Psychological Elements of Revolutionary 
 Movements — General Characteristics of Revolutions 
 — The Forms of Mentality Prevalent During 
 Revolution. 
 
 Part II. — The Origins of the French Revolution — The 
 Rational, Affective, Mystic, and Collective Influences 
 Active During the Revolution — The Conflict between 
 Ancestral Influences and Revolutionary Principles. 
 
 Part III. — The Recent Evolution of the Revolutionary 
 Principles. 
 
 A book of an arresting character, in which the author 
 makes specific application of his theory of crowds to 
 activities in which the influence of the masses is most 
 far-reaching. In it are discussed with that graceful turn 
 of phrase of which the author is a master, the psychology 
 of revolutions in general, whether religious or political, 
 and the mental and emotional make-up of the leaders of 
 such movements, with very special and detailed con- 
 sideration of the French Revolution. The examples are, 
 by preference, chosen from French history, but universal 
 history is drawn upon too, even to the inclusion of 
 such recent events as the political cataclysms in Turkey, 
 Portugal, and China. 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York London
 
 Only Authorized Edition 
 
 An Introduction to 
 Metaphysics 
 
 By Henri Bergson 
 
 Member of the Institute and Professor of the 
 College de France 
 
 Translated by T. E. Hulme 
 
 Authorized Edition, Revised by the Author, with 
 Additional Material 
 
 12°. 75 cts. net. By mail, 85 cts. 
 
 " I certify that the translation of my volume Introduc- 
 tion to Metaphysics, which has been prepared by Mr. T. 
 E. Hulme, is the only English version to which I have 
 given my authorization. I may add that Mr. Hulme was 
 excellently well qualified for his task by the careful study 
 that he has made of the whole series of my writings. I 
 have examined his translation with care and am able 
 to say that it renders with remarkable accuracy the 
 thought and the conclusions presented in my volume." 
 
 Henri Bergson. 
 
 This volume forms the best introduction to M. Bergson 's 
 philosophy. In it the author explains with a thoroughness 
 not attempted in his other books the precise meaning he 
 wishes to convey by the word intuition. A reading of 
 this book is, therefore, indispensable to a proper under- 
 standing of Bergson's position. German, Italian, Hun- 
 garian, Swedish, and Russian translations of it have 
 already appeared, testifying to its intrinsic importance 
 and indicating the scope of its appeal. 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 N«="w "YorH London
 
 Symbol and Satire in the 
 French Revolution 
 
 By Ernest F. Henderson 
 
 Ph.D. (Berlin), L.H.D. (Trinity) 
 
 8°. With 171 Illustrations Reproduced from Con- 
 temporary Prints. $4.00 net. By mail, $4.25 
 
 Contents s Introductory —Liberty — Equality 
 — Fraternity — Flight — Probation — Down- 
 fall — Massacre — War — Proscription — 
 Terror — Idolatry — Reaction — Index. 
 
 Of books on the French Revolution there 
 have been many, but Mr. Henderson's Symbol 
 and Satire covers a field almost untouched. It 
 draws art into the service of history in a 
 wholly original way. Incidentally it gives a 
 very full series, beautifully reproduced, of the 
 extant broadsides, allegories, caricatures, and 
 cartoons. But the work is much more than a 
 mere collection of illustrations. Based mainly 
 on original material and written with a keen 
 eye for the dramatic, the book is likely to 
 prove the most popular succinct history of the 
 Revolution that has appeared since Carlyle. 
 The results of modern research are embodied 
 in it and it will prove as interesting to the 
 student as to the general reader.
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT 
 
 of 
 
 THE EUROPEAN NATIONS 
 
 1870-1900 
 By J. HOLLAND ROSE, Litl.D. 
 
 Author ol "The Personality of Napoleon," 
 
 "The Revolutionary and Napoleonic 
 
 Era, 1789-1815," etc. 
 
 8°. 2 vols., with maps. Net, $5.00 
 Carriage 50 cents 
 
 A discussion by a scholar of authority of 
 those events which had a distinct formative 
 influence upon the development of European 
 States during the latter part of the nineteenth 
 century, a period remarkable because of the 
 great progress made by the people of Europe 
 in their efforts to secure a larger measure of 
 political freedom for the individual, and the 
 legitimate development of the nation. 
 
 In his introductory chapter, Mr. Rose 
 sketches briefly the main events leading up 
 to 1870, and then in his later chapters con- 
 siders the causes which led to the wonderful 
 development of the last thirty years of the 
 
 centur y- ,^S 
 
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