Editing Victor Cousin (section)

===Effect on primary instruction===
The government was not slow to honour him. He was induced by the ministry of which his friend [[François Guizot]] was the head to become a member of the council of public instruction and counsellor of state, and in 1832 he was made a [[Peerage of France|Peer of France]]. He ceased to lecture, but retained the title of professor of philosophy. Finally, he accepted the position of minister of public instruction in 1840 under [[Adolphe Thiers]]. He was in addition director of the Normal School and virtual head of the university, and from 1840 a member of the [[Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques|Academy of the Moral and Political Sciences]] in the [[Institut de France]]. His character and his official position at this period gave him great power in the university and in the educational arrangements of the country.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=331}}

The most important work he accomplished during this period was the organization of primary instruction. It was to the efforts of Cousin that France owed her advance, in relation to primary education, between 1830 and 1848. [[Prussia]] and [[Saxony]] had set the national example, and France was guided into it by Cousin. Forgetful of national calamity and of personal wrong, he looked to Prussia as affording the best example of an organized system of national education; and he was persuaded that "to carry back the education of Prussia into France afforded a nobler (if a bloodless) triumph than the trophies of [[Battle of Austerlitz|Austerlitz]] and [[Battle of Jena-Auerstedt|Jena]]." In the summer of 1831, commissioned by the government, he visited Frankfurt and Saxony, and spent some time in Berlin. The result was a series of reports to the minister, afterwards published as ''Rapport sur l'Etat de l'instruction publique dans quelques pays de l'Allemagne et particulièrement en Prusse'' (Compare also ''De l'instruction publique en Hollande'', 1837) His views were readily accepted on his return to France, and soon afterwards through his influence there was passed the law of primary instruction. (See his ''Exposé des motifs et projet de loi sur l'instruction primaire, présentés à la chambre des députés'', ''séance du 2 janvier 1837''.){{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=331}}

In the words of the ''[[Edinburgh Review]]'' (July 1833), these documents "mark an epoch in the progress of national education, and are directly conducive to results important not only to France but to Europe." The Report was translated into English by [[Sarah Austin (translator)|Sarah Austin]] in 1834. The translation was frequently reprinted in the United States of America. The legislatures of New Jersey and Massachusetts distributed it in the schools at the expense of the states. Cousin remarks that, among all the literary distinctions which he had received, "None has touched me more than the title of foreign member of the American Institute for Education." To the enlightened views of the ministries of Guizot and Thiers under the citizen-king, and to the zeal and ability of Cousin in the work of organization, France owes what is best in her system of primary education,{{mdash}}a national interest which had been neglected under the [[French Revolution]], the Empire and the Restoration (see Exposé, p.&nbsp;17). In the first two years of the reign of Louis Philippe more was done for the education of the people than had been either sought or accomplished in all the history of France. In defence of university studies he stood manfully forth in the chamber of peers in 1844, against the clerical party on the one hand and the levelling or Philistine party on the other. His speeches on this occasion were published in a tractate ''Défense de l'université et de la philosophie'' (1844 and 1845).{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=331}}