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For, if the highest positions were bestowed according to birth and
favor, the intermediate positions were reserved to correct habits and
attainments. Many canons and vicars-general, and almost all the cur?s
in the towns were doctors of divinity or of canon law, while
ecclesiastical studies, very thorough, had occupied eight or nine
years of their youth.[70] Although the method was out of date, much
was learned at the Sorbonne and St. Sulpice; at the very least, one
became a good logician through prolonged and scientific intellectual
gymnastics. "My dear Abb?," said Turgot, smiling, to Morellet, "it is
only you and I who have taken our degree who can reason closely."
Their theological drill, indeed, was about as valuable as our
philosophical drill; if it expanded the mind less, it supplied this
better with applicable concepts; less exciting, it was more fruitful.
In the Sorbonne of the nineteenth century, the studies consist of the
speculative systems of a few isolated, divergent intellects who have
exercised no authority over the multitude, while in the Sorbonne of
the eighteenth century, the studies consisted of the creed, morality,
discipline, history and canons of a Church which had already existed
seventeen centuries and which, comprising one hundred and fifty
millions of souls, still sways one-half of the civilized world.
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