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Letter of Jules Ferry, father of secularity in France, addressed to each teacher of France at the beginning of school year 1883: "Paris, November 17, 1883 Mister the Teacher, the school year which has just opened will be the second year of application of the law of March 28, 1882. I do not want to let it start without you to send some recommendations personally (...) the law of March 28 is characterized by two provisions which are complementary without being contradicted: on the one hand, it puts apart from the obligatory program the teaching of any particular dogma, on the other hand it places at the first rank moral and civic teaching there. The religious instruction belongs to the families and to the church, the moral instruction at the school. The legislator thus did not intend to make a purely negative work. Undoubtedly it had the first aim of separating the school from the church, to ensure the freedom of conscience and the Masters and the pupils, to finally distinguish two fields confused too a long time, that of the beliefs which are personal, free and variable, and that of knowledge which is common and essential to all. But there is another thing in the law of March 28: it affirms the will to found on our premises a national education and to base it on notions of the duty and right which the legislator does not hesitate to register with the number of the first truths that no one cannot be unaware of (...)"