On education in republican government

It is in republican government that the full power of education is needed. Fear in despotic governments arises of itself from threats and chastisements; honor in monarchies is favored by the passions and favors them in turn; but political virtue is a renunciation of oneself, which is always a very painful thing.

One can define this virtue as love of the laws and the homeland. This love, requiring a continuous preference of the public interest over one’s own, produces all the individual virtues; they are only that preference.

This love is singularly connected with democracies. In them alone, government is entrusted to each citizen. Now government is like all things in the world; in order to preserve it, one must love it.

One never hears it said that kings do not love monarchy or that despots hate despotism.

Therefore, in a republic, everything depends on establishing this love, and education should attend to inspiring it. But there is a sure way for children to have it; it is for the fathers themselves to have it.

One is ordinarily in charge of giving one’s knowledge to one’s children and even more in charge of giving them one’s own passions.

If this does not happen, it is because what was done in the father’s house is destroyed by impressions from the outside.

It is not young people who degenerate; they are ruined only when grown men have already been corrupted.

MONTESQUIEU
The Spirit of the Laws