# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 07/Discourse 7

VII.
Education is the developing and furnishing of the faculties of man. To educate the people is one of the functions of the State. It is generally allowed in the free States of America, that the community owes each child born into it a chance for education, intellectual, moral, and religious. Hence the child has a just and recognised claim on the community for the means of this education, which is to be afforded him, not as a charity, but as a right.
​ The ablest men of the nation were sought out for military teachers, giving practical lessons of the science and the art; they were covered with honour and loaded with gold. The wealth of the people and their highest science went to this work. Institutions were founded to promote this education, and carefully watched over by the State, for it was thought the Commonwealth depended on disciplined valour. The soldier was thought to be the type of the State, the archetype of man; accordingly the highest spiritual function of the State was the production of soldiers.
Most of the civilized nations have passed through that stage of their development: though the few or the many are still taught the science or the art of war in all countries called Christian, there is yet a class of men for whom the State furnishes the means of education that is not military; means of education which the individuals of that class could not provide for themselves. This provision is made at the cost of the State; that is, at the cost of every man in the State, for what the public pays, you pay and I pay, rich or poor, willingly and consciously, or otherwise. This class of men is different in different countries, and their education is modified to suit the form of government and the idea of the State. In Rome the State provides for the public education of priests. Rome is an ecclesiastical State; her government is a Theocracy—a government of all the people, but by the priests, for the sake of the priests, and in the name of God. Place in the church is power, bringing honour and wealth ; no place out of the church is of much value. The offices are filled by priests, the chief magistrate is a priest, supposed to derive his power and right to rule, not democratically, from the people, or royally, by inheritance,—for in theory the priest is as if he had no father, as theoretically he has no child—but theocratically from God.
In Rome the priesthood is thought to be the flower of the State. The most important spiritual function of the State, therefore, is the production of priests; accordingly the greatest rains are taken with their education. Institutions are founded at the public cost, to make priests out of men; these institutions are the favourites of Govern​ men, well ordered, well watched over, well attended, and richly honoured. Institutions for tho education of the people are of small account, ill endowed, watched over but poorly, thinly attended, and not honoured at all. The people are designed to be subjects of the church, and as little culture is needed for that, though much to make them citizens thereof, so little is given.
As there are institutions for tho education of the priests, so there is a class of man devoted to that work; able men, well disciplined, sometimes men born with genius, and always men furnished with the accomplishments of sacerdotal and scientific art; very able men, very well disciplined, the most learned and accomplished men in the land. These men ore well paid and abundantly honoured, for on their faithfulness the power of the priesthood, and so the welfare the State, is thought to depend. Without the allurement of wealth and honours, these able men would not come to this work ; and without the help of their ability, the priests could not be well educated. Hence their power would decline; the class, tonsured and consecrated but not instructed, would fall into contempt; the theocracy would end. So the educators of the priests are held in honour, surrounded by baits for vulgar eyes; but the public educators of the people, chiefly women or ignorant men, are held in small esteem. The very buildings destined to the education of the priests are conspicuous and stately; the colleges of the Jesuits, the Propaganda, the seminaries for the education of priests, the monasteries for training the more wealthy and regular clergy, are great establishments, provided with libraries, and furnished with all the apparatus needful for their important work. But the school-houses for the people are small and mean buildings, ill made, ill famished, and designed for a work thought to be of little moment. All this is in strict harmony with the idea of the theocracy, where the priesthood is mighty and the people are subjects of the Church; where the effort of the State is toward producing a priest.
In England the State takes charge of the education of another class, the nobility and gentry; that is, of young men of ancient and historical families, the nobility, and young men of fortune, the gentry. England is an oligar​ chical State; her government on aristocracy, the government of all by a few, the nobility and gentry, for the sake of a few, and in the name of a king. There the foundation of power is wealth and birth from a noble family. The union of both takes place in a wealthy noble. There, nobility is the blossom of the State; aristocratic birth brings wealth, office, and their consequent social distinction. Political offices are chiefly monopolized by men of famous birth or great riches. The king, the chief officer of the land, must surpass all others in wealth, and the pomp and circumstance which comes thereof, and in aristocracy of birth. He is not merely noble but royal; his right to rule is not at all derived from the people, but from his birth. Thus he has the two essentials of aristocratic influence, birth and wealth, not merely in the heroic degree, but in the supreme degree.
As the State is an aristocracy, its most important spiritual function is the production of aristocrats; each, noble family transmits the full power of its blood only to a single person—the eldest son; of the highest form, the royal, only one is supposed to be born in a generation, only one who receives and transmits in full the blood royal.
As the nobility are the blossom of the State, great pains must be taken with the education of those persons born of patrician or wealthy families. As England is not merely a military or ecclesiastical State, though partaking largely of both, but commercial, agricultural, and productive in many ways; as she holds a very prominent place in the politics of the world, so there must be a good general education provided for these persons; otherwise their power would decline, the nobility and gentry sink into contempt, and the government pass into other hands,—for though a man may be born to rank and wealth, he is not born to knowledge, nor to practical skill. Hence institutions are founded for the education of the aristocractic class: Oxford and Cambridge, "those twins of learning," with their preparatories and help-meets.
The design of these institutions is to educate the young men of family and fortune. The aim in their academic culture is not as in Pagan Rome, a military state, to make soldiers, nor as in Christian Rome, to turn out priests; it is ​ not, as in the German universities, to furnish the world with scholars and philosophers, men of letters and science, but to mature and furnish the gentleman, in the technical sense of that word, a person conventionally fitted to do the work of a complicated aristocratic state, to fill with honour its various offices, military, political, ecclesiastical or social, and enjoy the dignity which comes thereof. These universities furnish the individual who resorts thither with opportunities not otherwise to he had; they are purchased at the cost of the State, at the cost of each man in the State. The alumnus at Oxford pays his term-bills, indeed, but the amount thereof is a trifle compared to the actual cost of his residence there; mankind pays the residue.
These institutions are continually watched over by the State, which is the official guardian of aristocratic education; they are occasionally assisted by grants from the public treasury, though they are chiefly endowed by the voluntary gifts of individual men. But these private gifts, like the public grants, come from the earnings of the whole nation. They are well endowed, superintended well, and richly honoured; their chancellors and vice-chancellors are men of distinguished social rank ; they have their representatives in Parliament; able men are sought out for teachers, professors, heads of houses; men of good ability, of masterly education, and the accomplishments of a finished gentleman; they are well paid, and copiously rewarded with honours and social distinction. Gentility favours these institutions; nobility watches over them, and royalty smiles upon them. In this threefold sunlight, no wonder that they thrive. The buildings at their service are among the most costly and elegant in the land; large museums are attached to them, and immense libraries; every printer in England, at his own cost, must give a copy of each book he publishes to Cambridge and Oxford. What wealth can buy, or artistic genius can create, is there devoted to the culture of this powerful class.
But while the nobility and gentry are reckoned the flower of the State, the common people are only the leaves, and therefore thought of small importance in the political botany of the nation. Their education is amazingly neglected; is mainly left to the accidental piety of private ​ Christiana, to tho transient charity of philanthropic men, or tho "enlightened self-interest" of mechanics and small-traders, who now and then found institutions for tho education of some small fraction of tho multitude. But such institutions are little favoured by the Government, or the spirit of the dominant class; gentility does not frequent them, nor nobility help them, nor royalty watch over to foster and to bless. Tho Parliament, which voted one hundred thousand pounds of the nation's money for the queen's horses and hounds, had but thirty thousand to spare for tho education of her people. No honour attends the educators of tho people; no wealth is heaped up for them; no beautiful buildings are erected for their use, no great libraries got ready at the public charge; no costly buildings are provided. You wonder at the colleges and collegiate churches of Oxford and of Cambridge; at the magnificence of public edifices in London, new or ancient—the Houses of Parliament, the Bank, the palaces of royal and noble men, the splendour of the churches—but yon ask, where are the school houses for the people? You go to Bridewell and Newgate for the answer. All this is consistent with the idea of an aristocracy. The gentlemen is the type of the State; and the effort of the State is towards producing him. The people require only education enough to become the servants of the gentlemen, and seem not to be valued for their own sake, but only as they furnish pabulum for the flower of the oligarchy.
In Rome and England, great sums have been given by wealthy men, and by the State itself, to furnish the means of a theocratic or aristocratic education to a certain class; and to produce the national priests, and the national gentlemen. There public education is the privilege of a few, but bought at the cost of the many ; for the plough-boy in Yorkshire, who has not culture enough to read the petition for daily bread in the Lord's Prayer, helps pay the salary of the Master of Trinity, and the swine-herd in the Roman Campagna, who knows nothing of religion, except what he learns at Christmas and Easter, by seeing the Pope carried on men's shoulders into St. Peter's, helps support the Propaganda and the Roman College. The privileged classes are to receive an education under the eye of the State, which considers itself bound to furnish them the ​ moans of a public education, partly at the individual's cost, chiefly at the cost of the public. The amount of education depends on three things:—on the educational attainments of the human race; on the wealth and tranquillity of tho special nation, enabling it to avail itself of that general attainment and on tho natural powers and industry of tho particular individual in the nation. Such is the solidarity of mankind that the development of the individual thus depends on that of the race, and tho education of a priest in Rome, or a gentleman in England is the resultant of those three forces,—the attainment of mankind, tho power of the nation, and the private character and conduct of the man himself. Each of these three is a variable and not a constant quantity. So the amount of education which a man can receive at Oxford or at Rome fluctuates, and depends on tho state of the nation and of the world; but as the attainments of mankind have much increased within a few years, as the wealth of England has increased, and her tranquillity become more secure, you see how easy it becomes for the State to offer each gentleman an amount of education which it would have been quite impossible to furnish in the time of the Yorks and the Lancasters.
In America things are quite other and different. I speak of the free States of the North; the slave States have the worst features of an oligarchy, combined with a theocratic pride of caste, which generates continual unkindness; there the idea of the State is found inconsistent with the general and public education of the people; it is as much so in South Carolina as in England or Rome; even more so, for the public and general culture of all is only dangerous to a theocracy or aristocracy while it is directly fetal to Slavery. In England, and still more in Catholic Rome, the churches—themselves a wonderful museum of curiosities, and open all the day to all persons—form an important element for the education of the most neglected class. But Slavery and education of the people are incommensurable quantities. No amount of violence can be their common measure. The republic, where master and slave were equally educated, would soon be a red-republic. The slave-master knows this, and accordingly ​ puts education to the ban, and glories in keeping three million barbarians in the land, and, of course, suffers the necessary degradation which comes thereof. But in the free States of the North the government is not a theocracy or an aristocracy; the State, in theory, is not for the few, not even for the majority, but for all; classes are not recognised, and therefore not protected in any privilege. The government is a democracy, the government of all, by all, for all, and in the name of all. A man is born to all the rights of mankind; all are born to them, so all are equal. Therefore, what the State pays for, not only comes at the cost of all, but must be for the use and benefit of all. Accordingly, as a theocracy demands the education of priests, and an aristocracy that of the nobility and the gentry, so a democracy demands the education of all. The aim must be, not to make priests and gentlemen of a few, a privileged class, but to make men of all; that is to give a normal and healthy development of their intellectual, moral, affectional and religious faculties, to furnish and instruct them with the most important elementary knowledge, to extend this development and furnishing of the faculties as far as possible.
Institutions must be founded for this purpose—to educate all, rich and poor, men well-born with good abilities, men ill-born with slender natural powers. In New England, these institutions have long since been founded at the public cost, and watched over with paternal care, as the ark of our covenant, the palladium of our nation. It has been recognised as a theory, and practised on as a fact, that all the property in the land is held by the State for the public education of the people, as it is for their defence; that property is amenable to education as to military defence.
In a democracy there are two reasons why this theory and practice prevail. One is a political reason. It is for the advantage of the State; for each man that keeps out of the gaol and the poor-houee, becomes a voter at one-and-twenty; he may have some office of trust and honour; the highest office is open before him. As so much depends on his voting wisely, he must have a chance to qualify himself for his right of electing and of being elected. It is as necessary now in a democracy, and as much demanded by ​ the idea thereof, that all should be thus qualified by education, as it once was in a military State, that all should be bred up soldiers.
The other is a philosophical reason. It is for the advantage of the individual himself, irrespective of tho State. The man is a man, an integer, and the State is for him; as well as a fraction of the State, and ho for it. He has a man's rights; and, however inferior in might to any other man, born of parentage how humble soever, to no wealth at all, with a body never so feeble, he is yet a man, and so equal in rights to any other man born of a famous line, rich and able; of course he has a right to a chance for the best culture which the educational attainment of mankind, and the circumstances of the nation render possible to any man; to no much thereof as he has the inborn power and the voluntary industry to acquire. This conclusion is getting acted on in New England, and there are schools for the dumb and the blind, even for the idiot and the convict.
So, then, as the idea of our government demands the education of all, the amount of education must depend on the same three variables mentioned before; it must be as good as it is possible for them to afford. The democratic State has naver done its political and educational duty, until it affords every man a chance to obtain the greatest amount of education which the attainment of mankind renders it possible for the nation, in its actual circumstances, to command, and the man's nature and disposition render it possible for him to take.
Looking at the matter politically, from the point of view of the State, each man must have education enough to exercise his rights of electing and being elected. It is not easy to fix the limits of the amount; it is also a variable continually increasing. Looking at the matter philosophically, from the point of view of the individual, there is no limit but the attainment of the race and the individual's capacity for development and growth. Only a few men will master all which the circumstances of the nation and the world render attainable; some will come short for lack of power, others for lack of inclination. Make education as accessible as it can now be made, as attractive as the teachers of this age can render it, the majority will still ​ got along with tho smallest amount that is possible or reputable. Only a few will strive for the most they can get. There will be many a thousand farmers, traders, and mechanics in their various callings, manual and intellectual, to a single philosopher. This also is as it should be, and corresponds with the nature of man and his function on the earth. Still all have the natural right to the means of education to this extent, by fulfilling its condition.
To accomplish this work, tho democratic education of the whole people, with the aim of making them men, wo want public institutions founded by the people, paid for by the public money; institutions well endowed, well attended, watched over well, and proportion ably honoured; we want teachers, able men, well disciplined, well paid, and honoured in proportion to their work. It is a good thing to educate the privileged classes, priests in a theocracy, and gentlemen in an aristocracy. Though they are few in number, it is a great work; the servants thereof are not too well paid, nor too much held in esteem in England, nor in Rome, nor too well furnished with apparatus. But tho public education of a whole people is a greater work, far more difficult, and should be attended with corresponding honour, and watched over even more carefully by the State.
After the grown men of any country have provided for their own physical wants, and insured the needful physical comforts, their most important business is to educate themselves still further, and train up the rising generation to their own level. It is important to leave behind us cultivated lands, houses and shops, railroads and mills, but more important to leave behind us men grown, men that are men; such are the seed of material wealth,—not it of them. The highest use of material wealth is its educational function.
Now the attainments of the human race increase with each generation; the four leading nations of Christendom, England, France, Germany, and the United States, within a hundred years, have apparently, at the least, doubled their spiritual attainments in the free States of America, there is a constant and rapid increase of wealth, far beyond the simultaneous increase of numbers; so not only does the educational achievement of mankind become greater each age, but the power of the State to afford each man a ​ better chance for a bettor education greatens continually, the educational ability of the State enlarging as those two factors got augmented. Tho generation now grown up, is, therefore, able and bound to get a better culture than their fathers, and leave to their own children a chance still greater.
Each child of genius, in the nineteenth century, is born at the foot of the ladder of learning, as completely as the first child, with the same bodily and spiritual nakedness; though of the most civilized race, with six, or sixty thousands of years behind him, he must begin with nothing but himself. Yet such is the union of all mankind, that, with the aid of the present generation, in a few years he will learn all that mankind has learned in its long history; next go beyond that, discovering and creating anew; and then draw up to the same height the new generation, which will presently surpass him.
A man's education never ends, but there are two periods thereof, quite dissimilar, the period of the boy, and that of the man. Education in general is the developing and instructing the faculties, and is, therefore, the same in kind to both man and boy, though it may be brought about by different forces. The education of the boy, so far as it depends on institutions, and conscious modes of action, must be so modified as to enable him to meet the influences which will surround him when he is a man; otherwise, his training will not enable him to cope with the new forces he meets, and so will fail of the end of making him a man. I pass over the influence of the family, and of nature, which do not belong to my present theme. In America, the public education of men is chiefly influenced by four great powers, which I will call educational forces, and which correspond to four modes of national activity:—
I. The political action of the people, represented by the State
II. The industrial action of the people, represented by Business.
III. The ecclesiastical action of the people, represented by the Church.
​ I now purposely name them in this order, though I shall presently refer to them several times, and in a different succession. These forces act on the people, making us such men as we are; they act indirectly on the child before he comes to consciousness; directly, afterwards, but moat powerfully on the man. What is commonly and technically called education—the development and instruction of the faculties of children, is only preparatory; the scholastic education of the boy is but introductory to the practical education of the man. It is only this preparatory education of the children of the people that is the work of the schoolmasters. Their business is to give the child such a development of his faculties, and such furniture of preliminary knowledge, that he can secure the influence of all these educational forces, appreciating and enhancing the good, withstanding, counteracting, and at last ending the evil thereof, and so continue his education; and at the same time that he can work in one or more of those modes of activity, serving himself and mankind, politically by the State, ecclesiastically by the church, literally by the press, or, at any rate, industrially by his business. To give children the preparatory education necessary for this fourfold receptivity, or activity, we need three classes of public institutions:
I. Free common schools.
II. Free high schools.
III. Free colleges.
Of these I will presently speak in detail, but now, for the sake of shortness, let me call them all collectively by their generic name—the school. It is plain the teachers who work by this instrument ought to understand the good and evil of the four educational forces which work on men grown, in order to prepare their pupils to receive the good thereof, and withstand the evil. So then let us look a moment at the character of these educational forces, and see what they offer us, and what men they are likely to make of their unconscious pupils. Let us look at the good qualities first, and next at the evil.
It is plain that business, the press, and politics all tend to promote a great activity of body and mind. In business, the love of gain, the enterprising spirit of our practical men in all departments, their industry, thrift, and fore​ cast, stimulate men to great exertions, and produce a consequent development of the faculties called out. Social distinction depends almost wholly on wealth; that never is accumulated by mere manual industry, such is the present constitution of society, but it is acquired by the higher forms of industry, in which the powers of nature serve the man, or he avails himself of the creations of mere manual toil. Hence there is a constant pressure towards the higher modes of industry for the sake of money; of course, a constant effort to be qualified for them. So in the industrial departments the mind is more active than the hand. Accordingly it has come to pass that most of the brute labour of the free States is done by cattle, or by the forces of nature—wind, water, fire—which we have harnessed by our machinery, and set to work. In New England most of the remaining work which requires little intelligence is done by Irishmen, who are getting a better culture by that very work. Men see the industrial handiwork of the North, and wonder; they do not always see the industrial head-work, which precedes, directs, and causes it all; they seldom see the complex forces of which this enterprise and progress are the resultant.
There is no danger that we shall be sluggards. Business now takes the same place in the education of the people that was once held by war; it stimulates activity, promotes the intercourse of man with man, nation with nation; assembling men in masses, it elevates their temperature, so to say; it leads to new and better forms of organization; it excites men to invention, so that thereby we are continually acquiring new power over the elements, peacefully annexing to our domain new provinces of nature—water, wind, fire, lightning—setting them to do our work, multiplying the comforts of life, and setting free a great amount of human time. It is not at all destructive; not merely conservative, but continually creates anew. Its creative agent is not brute force, but educated mind. A man's trade is always his teacher, and industry keeps a college for mankind, much of our instruction coming through our hands; with us, where the plough is commonly in the hands of him who owns the land it furrows, business affords a better education than in most other countries, and develops higher qualities of mind. There is a marked ​ difference in this respect between the North and South. There was never before such industry, such intense activity of head and hand in any nation in a time of peace.
The press encourages the same activity, enterprise, perseverance. Both of these encourage generosity; neither honours the miser, who gets for the sake of getting, or "starves, cheats, and pilfers to enrich an heir he does mot die respectably in Boston, who dies rich and bequeaths nothing to any noble public charity. It encourages industry which accumulates with the usual honesty, and for a rather generous use.
The press furnishes us with books exceedingly cheap. We manufacture literature cheaper than any nation except the Chinese. Even the best books, the works of the great masters of thought, are within the reach of an industrious farmer or mechanic, if half-a-dozen families combine for that purpose. The educational power of a few good books scattered through a community is well known.
Then the press circulates, cheap and wide, its newspapers, emphatically the literature of meu who read nothing else; they convey inteiligenoe from all parts of the world, and broaden the minds of home-keeping youths, who need not now have homely wits.
The State also promotes activity, enterprise, hardihood, perseverance, and thrift. The American Government is eminently distinguished by these five qualities. The form of government stimulates patriotism, each man has a share in the public lot. The theocracies, monarchies, and aristocracies of old time have produced good and great examples of patriotism, in the few or the many; but the nobler forms of love of country, of self-denial and disinterested zeal for its sake, are left for a democracy to bring to light.
Here all men. are voters, and all great questions are, apparently and in theory, left to the decision of the whole people. This popular form of government is a great instrument in developing and instructing the mind of the nation. It helps extend and intensify the intelligent activity which is excited by business and the press. Such is the nature of our political institutions that, in the free States, we have produced the greatest degree of national unity of action, with the smallest restriction of personal ​ freedom, have reconciled national unity with individual variety, not seeking uniformity; thus room is loft for as much individualism an a man chooses to take; a vast power of talent, enterprise, and invention is left free for its own work. Elsewhere, nave in England, this is latent, kept down by government. Since this power is educated and law nothing to hold it back; since so much brute work in done by cattle and the forces of nature, now domesticated and put in harness, and much time is left free for thought, more intelligence is demanded, more activity, and the citizens of tho free States have become the most active, enterprising, and industrious people in the world; the most inventive in material work.
In all these three forms of action there is much to stir men to love of distinction. The career is open to talent, to industry; open to every man; the career of letters, business, and politics. Our rich men were poor men; our famous men came of sires else not heard of. The laurel, the dollar, the office, and the consequent social distinction of men successful in letters, business, and politics,—these excite the obscure or needy youth to great exertions, and he cannot sleep; emulation wakes him early, and keeps him late astir. Behind him, scattering "the rear of darkness," stalk poverty and famine, gaunt and ugly forms, with scorpion whip to urge the tardier, idler man. The intense ambition for money, for political power, and the social results they bring, keeps men on the alert. So ambition rises early, and works with diligence that never tires.
The Church, embracing all the churches under that name, cultivates the memory of men, and teaches reverence for the past; it helps keep activity from wandering into unpopular forms of wickedness or of unbelief. Men who have the average intelligence, goodness, and piety, it keeps from slipping back, thus blocking to rearward the wheels of society, so that the ascent gained shall not be lost; men who have less than this average it urges forward, addressing them in the name of God, encouraging by hope of heaven, and driving with fear of hell. It turns the thought of the people towards God; it sets before us some facts in the life, and some parts of the doctrine, of the noblest One who ever wore the form of man, bidding ​ us worship Him. The ecclesiastical worship of Jesus of Nazareth is, perhaps, tho best thing in the American church. It has the Sunday and the institution of preaching under its control. A body of disciplined men are its servants; they praise the ordinary virtues; oppose and condemn the unpopular forms of error and of sin. Petty vice, the vice of low men, in low places, is sure of their lush. They promote patriotism in its common form. Indirectly, they excite social and industrial rivalry, and favour the love of money by the honour they bestow upon, the rich and successful. But at the same time they temper it a little, sometimes tolling men, as business, or the State does not, that there is in man a conscience, affection for his brother-man, and a soul which cannot live by bread alone; no, not by wealth, office, fame, and social rank. They toll us, also, of eternity, where worldly distinctions, except of orthodox and heterodox, are forgotten, where wealth is of no avail; they bid us remember God.
Such are the good things of these great national forces; the good things which in this fourfold way we are teaching ourselves. The nation is a monitorial school, wonderfully contrived for the education of the people. I do not mean to say that it is by the forethought of men that the American democracy is at the same time a great practical school for the education of the human race. This result formed no part of our plan, and is not provided for by the Constitution of the United States ; it comes of the fore-thought of God, and is provided for in the Constitution of the Universe.
Now each of these educational forces has certain defects, negative evils, and certain vices, positive evils, which tend to misdirect the nation, and so hinder the general education of the people: of these, also, let me speak in detail.
The State appeals to force, not to justice; this is its last appeal; the force of muscles aided by force of mind, instructed by modern science in the art to kill. The nation appeals to force in the settlement, of affairs out of its borders. We have lately seen an example of this, when we commenced war against a feeble nation, who, in that special emergency, had right on her side, about as emphatically as the force was on our side. The immediate ​ success of the enterprise, tho popular distinction acquired by some of the leaders, the high honour bestowed on one of its heroes,—all this makes the lesson of injustice attractive. It may be that a similar experiment will again be tried, and doubtless with like success. Certainly there is no nation this side of the water which can withstand the enterprise, the activity, the invention, industry, and perseverance of a people so united, and yet so free and intelligent. Another successful injustice of this character, on a large scale, will make right still less regarded, and might honoured yet more.
The force we employ out of our borders, might opposed to right, we employ also at home against our brethren, and keep three millions of them in bondage; we watch for opportunities to extend the institution of Slavery over soil unpolluted by that triple curse; and convert the Constitution, the fundamental law of the land, into an instrument for the defence of Slavery.
The men we honour politically, by choosing them to offices in the State, are commonly men of extraordinary force, sometimes, it is true, only or extraordinary luck, but of only ordinary justice; men who, perhaps, have mind in the heroic degree, but conscience of the most vulgar pattern. They are to keep the law of the United States when it is wholly hostile to the law of the universe, to the everlasting justice of God.
I am not speaking to politicians, professional representatives of the State ; not speaking for political effect; not of the State as a political machine for the government of the people. I am speaking to teachers, for an educational purpose; of the State as on educational machine, as one of the great forces for the spiritual development of the people. Now, by this preference of force and postponement of justice at home and abroad, in the selection of men for office, with its wealth, and rank, and honour, by keeping the law of the land to the violation of the law of God, it is plain we are teaching ourselves to love wrong; at least to be insensible to the right. What we practise on a national scale as a people, it is not easy to think wrong when practised on a personal scale, by this man and that.
The patriotism, also, which the State nurses, is little more than that Old Testament patriotism which loves ​ your countrymen, and hates the stranger; the affection which the Old Testament attributes to Jehovah, and which makes Him say, "I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau;" a patriotism which supports our country in the wrong as readily as in the right, and is glad to keep one-sixth part of the nation in bondage without hope. It is not a patriotism which, beginning here, loves all the children of God; but one that robs the Mexican, enslaves the African, and exterminates the Indian.
These ore among the greater evils taught us by the political action of the people as a whole. If you look at the action of tho chief political parties, you see no more respect for justice in the politics of either party than in the politics of tho nation, the resultant of both; no more respect for right abroad, or at home. One party aims distinctively at preserving the property already acquired; its chief concern is for that, its sympathy there; where its treasure is, is also its heart. It legislates, consciously or otherwise, more for accumulated wealth than for the labouring man who now accumulates. This party goes for the dollar; the other for the majority, and sims at the greatest good of the greatest number, leaving the good of the smaller number to most uncertain mercies. Neither party seems to aim at justice, which protects both the wealth that labour has piled up, and the labourer who now creates it; justice, which is the point of morals common to man and God, where the interests of all men, abroad and at home, electing and elected, greatest number and smallest number, exactly balance. Falsehood, fraud, a willingness to deceive, a desire for the power and distinction cf office, a readiness to use base means in obtaining office—these vices are sown with a pretty even hand upon both parties, and spring up with such blossoms and such a fruitage as we all see. The third political party has not been long enough in existence to develop any distinctive vices of its own.
I shall not speak of the public or private character of the politicians who direct the State; no doubt that is a powerful element in our national education; but as a class, they seem no better and no worse than merchants, mechanics, ministers, and farmers, as a class; so in their influence there is nothing peculiar, only their personal ​ character ceases to be private, and becomes a public force in the education of the people.
The churches have the same faults as the State. There is the same postponement of justice and preference of force; the same neglect of the law of God in their seal for the statutes of men; tho same crouching to dollars or to numbers. However, in the churches these faults appear negatively, rather than as an affirmation. The worldliness of the church is not open, self-conscious, and avowed; it is not, as a general thing, that human in justice is openly defended, but rather justice goes by default. But if the churches do not positively support and teach injustice, as the State certainly does, they do not teach the opposite, and, be far as that goes, are allies of tho State in its evil influence The fact that the churches, as such, did not oppose the war, and do not oppose Slavery, its continuance or its extension—nay, that there are often found its apologists and defenders, seldom its opponents; that they not only pervert the sacred books of the Christians to its defence, but wrest the doctrines of Christianity to justify it; the fact that they cannot, certainly do not, correct the particularism of the political parties, the love of wealth in one, of mere majorities in the other; that they know no patriotism not bounded by their country, none co-extensive with mankind; that they cannot resist the vice of party spirit—these are real proofs that the church is but the ally of the State in this evil influence.
But the church has also certain specific faults of its own. It teaches injustice by continually referring to the might of God, not His justice; to His ability and will to damn mankind, not asking if He has the right? It teaches that in virtue of His infinite power, He is not amenable to infinite justice and to infinite love. Thus, while the State teaches, in the name of expediency and by practice, that the strong may properly be the tyrants of the weak, the mighty nation over the feeble, the strong race over the inferior, that the Government may dispense with right at home and abroad—the church, as theory in Christ's name, teaches that God may repudiate His own justice and His own love.
The churches have little love of truth, as such, only of ​ its uses. It must, be such a truth as they can use for their purposes; canonized truth; truth long known; that alone is acceptable, and called "religious truth;" all else is "profane and carnal," as the reason which discovers it. They represent the average intelligence of society; hence, while keeping the old, they welcome not the now. They promote only popular forms of truth, popular in all Christendom, or m their special sect. They lead in no intellectual reforms; they hinder the loaders. Negatively and positively, they teach, that to believe what is clerically told you in the name of religion, is bettor than free, impartial search after the truth. They dishonour free thinking, and venerate constrained believing. When the clergy doubt, they seldom give men audience of their doubt. Few scientific men, not clerical, believe the Bible account of creation,—the universe made in six days, and but a few thousand years ago,—or that of the formation of woman, and of the deluge. Some clerical men still believe these venerable traditions, spite of the science of the times; but the clerical men who have no faith in these stories not only leave the people to think them true and miraculously taught, but encourage men in the belief, and calumniate the men of science who look the universe fairly in the face, and report the facts as they find them.
The church represents only the popular morality, not any high and aboriginal virtue. It represents not the conscience of human nature, reflecting the universal and unchangeable moral laws of God, touched and beautified by His love, but only the conscience of human history, reflecting the circumstances man has passed by, and the institutions he has built along the stream of time. So, while it denounces unpopular sins, vices below the average vice of society, it denounces also unpopular excellence, which is above the average virtue of society. It blocks the wheels rearward, and the car of humanity does not roll down hill; but it blocks them forward also. No great moral movement of the age is at all dependent directly on the church for its birth; very little for its development. It is in spite of the church that reforms go forward; it holds the curb to check more than the rein to guide. In morals, as in science, the church is on the anti-liberal side, afraid of progress, against movement, loving "yet a little ​ sloop, a little slumber;" conservative and chilling, like ice, not creative, nor oven quickening, as water. It doffs to use and wont; has small confidence in human nature, much in a few facts of human history. It aims to stipe rate piety from goodness, her natural and heaven-appointed spouse, and marry her to bigotry, in joyless and unprofitable wedlock. The church does not load men to the deep springs of human nature, fed ever from tho far heights of toe Divine nature, whence flows that river of God, full of living water, where weary souls may drink perennial supply. While it keeps us from foiling back, it does little directly to advance mankind. In common with tho State, this priest and Levite pass by on the other side of the least developed classes of society, leaving the slave, the pauper, and tho criminal to their fate, hastening to strike hands with the thriving or the rich.
These faults are shared in the main by all sects; some have them in the common, and some in a more eminent degree, but none is so distinguished from the rest as to need emphatic rebuke, or to deserve a special exemption from the charge. Such are the faults of the church of every land, and must be from the nature of the institution; like the State, it can only represent the average of mankind.
I am not speaking to clergymen, professional representatives of the church, not of the church as an ecclesiastical machine for keeping and extending certain opinions and symbols; not for an ecclesiastical purpose; I speak to teachers, for an educational purpose, of the church as an educational machine, one of the great forces for the spiritual development of the people.
The business of the land has also certain vices of its own; while it promotes the virtues I have named before, it does not tend to promote the highest form of character. It does not promote justice and humanity, as one could wish; it does not lead the employer to help the operative as a man, only to use him as a tool, merely for industrial purposes. The average merchant cares little whether his ship brings cloth ana cotton, or opium and rum. The average capitalist does not wish the stock of his manufacturing company divided into small shares, so that the ​ operatives can invest their savings therein and have a portion of the large dividends of the rich; nor does he care whether he takes a mortgage on a ship or a negro slave, nor whether his houses are rented for sober dwellngs or for drunkeries; whether the State hires his money to build harbours at homo, or destroy them abroad. Tho ordinary manufacturer is as ready to make cannons and cannon-balls to serve in a war which he knows is unjust, as to cast his iron into mill-wheels, or forge it into anchors. The common farmer does not care whether his barley feeds poultry for the table, or, made into beer, breeds drunkards for the almshouse and the gaol; asks not whether his rye and potatoes become the bread of life, or, distilled into whisky, are deadly poison to men and women. He cares little if the man he hires become more manly or not; he only asks him to be a good tool. Whips for the backs of negro slaves are made, it is said, in Connecticut, with as little compunction as Bibles are printed there; "made to order," for the same purpose—for tho dollar. The majority of blacksmiths would as soon forge fetter-chains to enslave the innocent limbs of a brother man, as draught-chains for oxen. Christian mechanics and pious young women, who would not hurt the hair of an innocent head, have I seen at Springfield, making swords to slaughter the innocent citizens of Vera Cruz and Jalapa. The ships of respectable men carry rum to intoxicate the savages of Africa, powder and balls to shoot them with; they carry opium to the Chinese; nay, Christian slaves from Richmond and Baltimore to New Orleans and Galveston. In all commercial countries the average vice of the age is mixed up with the industry of the age, and unconsciously men learn the wickedness long intrenched in practical life. It is thought industrial operations are not amenable to the moral law, only to the law of trade. "Let the supply follow the demand," is the maxim. A man who makes as practical a use of the golden rule as of his yard-stick, ia still an exception in all departments of business.
Even in the commercial and manufacturing parts of America, money accumulates in large masses; now in the hands of an individual, now of a corporation. This money becomes an irresponsible power, acting by the laws, but yet above them. It is wielded by a few men, to whom it gives ​ a "high social position, and consequent political power: They use this triple form of influence—pecuniary, social, and political—in the spirit of commerce, not of humanity, not for the interest of mankind; thus the spirit of trade comes into the State. Hence it is not thought wrong in politics to buy a man, more than in commerce to buy a ship; hence the rights of a man, or a nation, are looked on as articles of trade, to be sold, bartered, and pledged; and in the Senate of tho United States we have hoard a mass of men, more numerous than all our citizens seventy years ago, estimated as worth twelve hundred millions of dollars.
In most countries business comes mere closely into contact with men than the State, or the church, or the press, and is a more potent educator. Hero it not only does this, but controls the other three forces, which are mainly instruments of this; hence this form of evil is more dangerous than elsewhere, for there is no power organized to resist it as in England or Rome; so it subtly penetrates everywhere, bidding you place the accidents before the substance of manhood, and value money more than man.
Notwithstanding the good qualities of the press, the books it multiplies, and the great service it renders, it also has certain, vices of its own. From the nature of the thing, the greater part of literature represents only the public opinion of the time. It must therefore teach deference to that, not deference to truth and justice. It is only the eminent literature which can do more than this; books, which at first fall into few hands, though fit, and like the acorns sown with the mulleins and the clover, destined to germinate but slowly, long to be overtopped by an ephemeral crop, at last, after half a hundred years, shall mature their own fruit for other generations of men. The current literature of this age only popularizes the thought of the eminent literature of the past. Great good certainly comes from this, but also great evil.
Of all literature, the newspapers come most into contact with men—they are the literature of the people, read by such as read nothing else ; read also by such as read all things beside. Taken in the mass, they contain little to elevate men above the present standard. The political journals have the general vice of our politics, and the spe​ cial faults of tho particular party; the theological journals have tho common failings of the church, intensified by tho bigotry of tho sects they belong to; tho commercial journals represent the bad qualities of business. Put all three together, and it is not their aim to toll the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but tho truth, nor to promote justice, the whole of justice, and nothing but justice. The popular literature helps bring to consciousness the sentiments and ideas which prevail in tho State, the church, and business. It brings those sentiments and ideas intimately into connection with men, magnetizing them with the good and ill of those three powers, but it does little directly to promote a higher form of human character.
So, notwithstanding the good influence of these four modes of national activity in educating the grown men of America, they yet do not afford the highest teaching which the people require, to realize individually the idea of a man, and jointly that of a democracy. The State does not teach perfect justice; the church does not teach that, or love of truth. Business does not teach perfect morality; and the average literature, which falls into the hands of the million, teaches men to respect public opinion more than the word of God, which transcends that. Thus, these four teach only the excellence already organized or incorporated in the laws, the theology, the customs, and the books of the land. I cannot but think these four teachers are lees deficient here than in other lands, and have excellences of their own, but the faults mentioned are inseparable from such institutions. An institution is an organized thought; of course, no institution can represent a truth which is too new or too high for the existing organizations, yet that is the truth which it is desirable to teach. So there will always be exceptional men, with more justice, truth, and love than is represented by the institutions of the time, who seem therefore hostile to these institutions, which they seek to improve, and not destroy. Contemporary with the priests of Judah and Israel were the prophets thereof, antithetic to one another as the centripetal and centrifugal forces, but, like them, both necessary to the rhythmic movement of the orbs in heaven, and the even poise of the world.
In Rome and in England the idea of a theocracy and an ​ aristocracy has become a fact in tho institutions of the land, which accordingly favour the formation of priests and gentlemen. The teachers of the educated class, therefore, may trust to the machinery already established to do their work, only keeping off the spirit of the ago which would make innovations; and such is the respectability and popular esteem of the institutions, that this is done easier than men think, by putting an exceptional book in the index at Rome, or in the academical fire at Oxford. But here, the idea of a democracy is by no means so well established and organized in institutions. It is now; and, while a theocrat and an aristocrat are respected everywhere, a democrat is held in suspicion; accordingly, to make men, the teacher cannot trust his educational machinery, he must make it, and invent anew as well as turn his mill.
These things being so, it is plain the teachers in the schools should be of such a character that they can give the children what they will most want when they become men; such an intellectual and moral development that they can appreciate and receive the good influence of these four educational forces, and withstand, resist, and exterminate the evil thereof. In the schools of a democracy, which are to educate the people and make them men, you need more aboriginal virtue than in the schools of an aristocracy or a theocracy, where a few are to be educated as gentlemen or priests. Since the institutions of the land do not represent the idea of a democracy, and the average spirit of the people, which makes the institutions, represents it no more, if the children of the people are to become better than their fathers, it is plain their teachers must be prophets, and not priests merely; must animate them with a spirit higher, purer, and more holy than that which inspires the State, the church, business, or the common literature of the times. As the teacher cannot impart and teach what he does not possess and know, it is also plain that the teacher must have this superior spirit.
To accomplish the public education of the children of the people, we need the three classes of institutions. just mentioned: free common schools, free high schools, and free colleges. Let me say a word of each. ​ Tho design of the common school is to take children at the proper ago from their mothers, and give them the most indispensable development, intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious; to furnish thorn with as much positive useful knowledge as they can master, and, at the same time, teach them the three great scholastic helps or tools of education—the art to read, to write, and calculate.
Tho children of most parents are easily brought to school, by a little diligence on tho part of the teachers and school committee; there are also children of low and abandoned, or at least affected parents, who live in a state of continual truancy; there are found on the banks of your canals, they swarm in your large cities. When those children become men, through lack of previous development, instruction and familiarity with these three instruments of education, they cannot receive the full educational influence of the State and church, of business and the press; they lost their youthful education, and therefore they lose, in consequence, their manly culture. They remain dwarfs, and are barbarians in the midst of society; there will be exceptional men whom nothing can make vulgar; but this will be the lot of the mass. They cannot perform the intelligent labour which business demands, only the brute work; so they lose the development which, comes through the hand that is active in the higher modes of industry, which, after all, is the greatest educational force. Accordingly, they cannot compete with ordinary men, and remain poor; lacking also that self-respect which comes of being respected, they fall into beggary, into intemperance, into crime; so, from being idlers at first, a stumbling-block in the way of society, they become paupers, a positive burden which society must take on its shoulders; or they turn into criminals, active foes to the industry, the order, and the virtue of society.
Now if a man abandons the body of his child, the State adopts that body for a time; takes the guardianship thereof, for the child's own sake; sees that it is housed, fed, clad, and cared for. If a man abandons his child's spirit, and the child commits a crime, the State, for its own. mike, assumes the temporary guardianship thereof, and puts him in a gaol. When a man deserts his child, taking no concern about his education, I venture to make the sugges​ tion whether it would not be well, as a last resort, for the State to assume the guardianship of the child for its own Bake, and for the child's sake. We allow no one, with over so thick a skin, to grow up in nakedness; why should we suffer a child, with however so perverse a parent, to grow up in ignorance and degenerate into crime? Certainly, a naked man is not so dangerous to society as an ignorant man, nor is the spectacle so revolting. I should have less hope of a State where the majority were so perverse as to continue ignorant of reading, writing, and calculating, than of one where they were so thick-skinned as to wear no clothes. In Massachusetts, there is an Asylum for juvenile offenders, established by the city of Boston; a Farm School for bad boys, established by the characteristic benevolence of tho rich men of that place; and a State Reform School under the charge of the Commonwealth: all these are for Jade who break the laws of the land. Would it not be better to take one step more, adopt them before they offended, and allow no child to grow up in the barbarism of ignorance P Has any man an unalienable right to live a savage in the midst of civilization?
We need also public high schools to take children where the common schools leave them, and carry them further on. Some States have done something towards establishing such institutions; they are common in New England. Some have established normal schools, special high schools for the particular and professional education of public teachers. Without these, it is plain there would not be a supply of competent educators for the public service.
​ If all is free, common schools, high eohools; and colleges, boys and girls of common ability and common love of learning, mil get a common education ; those of greater ability, a more extended education ; and those of the highest powers, the best culture which the race can now furnish, and the State afford. Hitherto no nation has established a public college, wholly at the public cost, where the children of the poor and the rich could enjoy together the great national charity of superior education. To do this is certainly not consistent with the idea of a theocracy or an aristocracy; but it is indispensable to the complete realization of a democracy. Otherwise the children of the rich will have a monopoly of superior education, which is the case with the girls everywhere—for only the daughters of rich men can get a superior education, even in the United States—and with boys in England and France, and of course the offices, emoluments, and honours which depend on a superior education; or else the means thereof will be provided for poor lads by private benefactions, charity funds, and the like, which, some pious and noble man has devoted to this work. In this case the institutions will have a sectarian character, be managed by narrow, bigoted men, and the gift of the means of education be coupled with conditions which must diminish its value, and fetter the free spirit of the young man. This takes place in many of the collegiate establishments of the North, which, notwithstanding those defects, have done a great good to mankind.
The common schools, giving their pupil the power of reading, writing, and calculating, developing his faculties, and furnishing him with much elementary knowledge, put him in communication with all that is written in a common form in the English tongue; its treasures lie level to his eye and hand. The high school and the college, teaching him also other languages, afford him access to the treasures contained there; teaching him the mathematics and furnishing him with the discipline of science, they enable him to understand all that has hitherto been recorded in the compendious forms of philosophy, and thus place the child of large ability in connection with all the spiritual treasures of the world. In the mean time, for ail these pupils, there is the material and the human world ​ about them, the world of consciousness within. They can study both, and add what they may to the treasures of human discovery or invention.
It seems to me that it is the duty of the State to place the means of this education within the reach of all children of superior ability,—a duty that follows from the very idea of a democracy, not to speak of the idea of Christianity. It is not less the interest of the State to do so, for then youths well born, with good abilities, will not be hindered from getting a breeding proportionate to their birth, and from occupying tho stations which are adequately filled only by men of superior native abilities, enriched by culture, and developed to their highest power. Then the work of such stations will fall to the lot of such men, and of course be done. Eminent ability, talent, or genius, should have eminent education, and so serve the nation in its eminent kind; for when God makes a million-minded, man, as once or twice in the ages, or a myriad-minded man, as He does now and then, it is plain that this gift also is to be accounted precious, and used for the advantage of all.
I say no State has ever attempted to establish such institutions; yet the Government of the United States has a seminary for the public education of a few men at the public cost. But it is a school to qualify men to fight; they learn the science of destruction, the art thereof, the kindred art and science of defence. If the same money we now pay for military education at West Point were directed to the education of teachers of the highest class, say professors and presidents of colleges; if the same pains were taken to procure able men, to furnish them with the proper instruction for their special work, and give them the best possible general development of their powers, not forgetting the moral, the affectional, and the religious, and animating them with the philanthropic spirit needed for such a work, how much better results would appear! But in the present intellectual condition of the people it would be thought unworthy of a cation to train up school-masters! But is it only sol tiers that we need?
All these institutions are bat introductory, a preparatory school, in three departments, to fit youths for the great educational establishment of practical life. This will find ​each youth and maiden as the schools leave him, moulding him to their image, or moulded by him to a better. So it is plain what the teachers are to do;—besides teaching the special branches which fall to their lot, they are to supply for the pupils tho defects of tho State, of the church, of business, and tho press, especially the moral defects. For this great work of mediating between tho mother and tho world, for so furnishing and fitting tho rising generation, introducing them into practical life, that they shall receive all tho good of these public educational forces with none of the ill, but enhance the one while they withstand the other, and so each in himself realize the idea of man, and all, in their social capacity, the idea of a democracy—it is also plain what sort of men wo need for teachers: we need able men, well endowed by nature, well disciplined by art; we need superior men—men juster than the State, truer and better than the churches, more humane than business, and higher than tho common literature of the press. There are always men of that stamp born into the world; enough of them in any age to do its work. How shall we bring them to the task? Give young men and women the opportunity to fit themselves for the. work, at free common schools, high schools, normal schools, and colleges; give them a pay corresponding to their services, as in England and Rome; give them social rank and honour in that proportion, and they will come: able men will come; men well disciplined will come; men of talent and even genius for education will come.
In the State you pay a man of great political talents large money and large honours; hence there is no lack of ability in politics, none of competition for office. In the church you pay a good deal for a "smart minister," one who can preach an audience into the pews and not himself out of the pulpit. Talent enough goes to business; educated talent, too, at least with a special education for theological schools often have powerful men for their professors and presidents; sometimes, men of much talent for education; commonly, men of ripe learning and gentlemanly accomplishments. Even men of genius seek a place as teachers in some private college, where they are under the control of the leaders of a sect—and must not doubt ​
​ America has nothing to fear from any foreign foe; for nearly forty-years she has had no quarrel but of her own making. Such is our enterprise and our strength, that few nations would carelessly engage in war with us; none without great provocation. In the midst of us is our danger; not in foreign arms, but in tho ignorance and the wickedness of our own children, tho ignorance of the many, the wickedness of the few who will load tho many to their ruin. Tho bulwark of America is not the army and navy of the United States, with all the men at public cost instructed in the art of war; it is not the swords and muskets idly bristling in our armouries; it is not the cannon and the powder carefully laid by; no, nor is it yet the forts, which frown in all their grim barbarity of stone along the coast, defacing tho landscape, else so fair; these might all be destroyed to-night, and tho nation be as safe as now. Tho more effectual bulwark of America is her schools. The cheap spelling-book, or tho vane on her school-house is a better symbol of the nation than "the star-spangled banner;" the printing-press does more than the cannon; the press is mightier than the sword. The army that is to keep our liberties—you are part of that, the noble army of teachers. It is you who are to make a great nation greater, even wise and good,—the next generation better than their sires.
Europe shows us, by experiment, that a republic cannot be made by a few well-minded men, however well-meaning. They tried for it at Rome, full of enlightened priests; in Germany, the paradise of the scholar, but there was not a people well educated, and a democracy could not stand upright long enough to be set a going. In France, where men arc better fitted for the experiment than elsewhere in continental Europe, you see what comes of it—the first step is a stumble, and for their president the raw republicans chose an autocrat, not a democrat; not a mere soldier, but only the name of a soldier one that thinks it an insult if liberty, equality, and fraternity be but named!
Think you a democracy can stand without the education of all; not barely tho smallest pittance thereof which will keep a live soul in a live body, but a large, generous cultivation of mind and conscience, heart and soul? A ​man, with half an eye, can see how we suffer continually in politics for lack of education among the people. Some nations are priest-ridden, some king-ridden, Rome ridden of nobles; America in ridden by politicians, a heavy burden for a foolish neck.
Our industrial interests demand the game education. The industrial prosperity of the North, our lands yearly enriching, while they bear their annual crop; our rail-roads, mills, and machines, the harness with which we tackle the elements,—for we domesticate lire and water, yes, the very lightning of heaven—all these are but material results of the intelligence of the people. Our political succors, and our industrial prosperity, both come from the pains taken with the education of the people. Halve this education, and you take away three-fourths of our political welfare, three-fourths of our industrial prosperity; double this education, you greaten the political welfare of the people, you increase their industrial success fourfold. Yes, more than that, for the results of education increase by a ratio of much higher powers.
It seems strange that so few of the great men in politics have cared much for the education of the people ; only one of those, now prominent before the North, is intimately connected with it. He, at great personal sacrifice of money, of comfort, of health, even of respectability, became superintendent of the common schools of Massachusetts, a place whence we could ill spare him, to take the place of the famous man he succeeds. Few of the prominent scholars of the land interest themselves in the public education of the people. The men of superior culture think the common school beneath their notice; but it is the mother of them all.
None of the States of the North has ever given this matter the attention it demands. When we legislate about public education, this is the question before us:—Shall we give our posterity the greatest blessing that one generation can bestow upon another? Shall we give them a personal power which will create wealth in every form, multiply ships, and roads of earth, or of iron; subdue the forest, till the field, chain the rivers, hold the winds as its vassals, bind with an iron yoke the fire and water, and catch and tame the lightning of God? Shall we give ​ them a personal power which will make them sober, temperate, healthy, and wise; that shall keep them at peace, abroad and at home, organize them be wisely that all shall be united, and yet, each left free, with no tyranny of the few over the many, or the little over the great? Shall we enable them to keep, to improve, to double manifold the political, social, and personal blessings they now possess; shall we give them this power to create riches, to promote order, peace, happiness — all forms of human welfare, or shall wo not ? That is the question. Give us intelligent men, moral men, men well developed in mind and conscience, heart and soul, men that love man and God,—industrial prosperity, social prosperity, and political prosperity, are sure to follow. But without such men, all the machinery of this threefold prosperity is but a bauble in a child's hand, which ho will soon break or lose, which he cannot replace when gone, nor use while kept.
Rich men, who have intelligence and goodness, will educate their children, at whatever cost. There are some men, even poor men's sons, born with such native power that they will achieve an education, often a most masterly culture; men whom no poverty can degrade, or make vulgar, whom no lack of means of culture can keep from being wise and great. Such are exceptional men; the majority, nine-tenths of the people, will depend for their culture on the public institutions of the land. If there had never been a free public school m New England, not half of her mechanics and farmers would now be able to read, not a fourth part of her women. I need not stop to tell what would be the condition of her agriculture, her manufactures, her commerce; they would have been, perhaps, even behind the agriculture, commerce, and manufactures of South Carolina. I need not ask what would be the condition of her free churches, or the republican institutions which now beautify her rugged shores and sterile soil; there would be no such churches, no such institutions. If there had been no such schools in New England, the revolution would yet remain to be fought. Take away the free schools, you take away the cause of our manifold prosperity; double their efficiency and value, you not only double and quadruple the prosperity of the people, but you will enlarge their welfare—political, social, ​ personal—far more than I now dare to calculate I know men object to public schools; they say, education must be bottomed on religion, and that cannot be taught unless we have a State religion, taught "by authority" in all our schools; we cannot teach religion, without leaching it in a sectarian form. This objection is getting made in New York; we have got beyond it in New England. It is true, all manly education must be bottomed on religion; it is essential to tho normal development of man, and all attempts at education, without this, must fail of the highest end. But there are two parts of religion which can be taught in all the school without disturbing the denominations, or trenching upon their ground, namely,—piety; the love of God; and goodness, the love of man. The rest of religion, after piety and goodness are removed, may safely be loft to the institutions of any of the sects, and so the State will not occupy their ground.
It is often said that superior education is not much needed; the common schools are enough, and good enough, for it is thought that superior education is needed for men as lawyers, ministers, doctors, and the like, not for men as men. It is not so. We want men cultivated with the best discipline, everywhere, not for the profession's sake, but for an's sake. Every man with a superior culture, intellectual, moral, and religious, every woman thus developed, is a safeguard and a blessing. He may sit on the bench of a judge or a shoemaker, be a clergyman or an oysterman, that matters little, he is still a safeguard and a blessing. Tho idea that none should have a superior education but professional men—they only for the profession's sake—belongs to dark ages, and is unworthy of a democracy.
It is the duty of all men to watch over the public education of the people, for it is the most important work of the State. It is particularly the duty of men who, hitherto, have least attended to it, men of the highest culture, men, too, of the highest genius. If a man with but common abilities has attained great learning, he is one of the "public administrators," to distribute the goods of men of genius, from other times and lands, to mankind, their legal heirs. Why does God sometimes ​ endow a man with great intellectual power, mating, now and then, a million-minded man? Is that superiority of gift solely for tho man's own sake? Shame on such a thought! It is of little value to him unless ho use it for me; it is for your sake and my sake, more than for is own. He is a precious almoner of wisdom; one of the public guardians of mankind, to think for us, to help us think for ourselves; born to educate tho world of feebler men. I call on such men, men of culture, men of genius, to help build up institutions for the education of the people. If they neglect this, they are false to their trust. The culture which hinders a man from sympathy with the ignorant, is a curse to both, and tho genius which separates a man from his fellow-creatures, lowlier born than he. is the genius of a demon.
Men and women, practical teachers now before me, a great trust is in your hands; nine-tenths of the children of the people depend on you for their early culture, for all the scholastic discipline they will ever get; their manly culture will depend on that, their prosperity thereon, all these on you. When they are men, you know what evils they will easily learn from State and church, from business and the press. It is for you to give them such a developing, and such a furnishing of their powers, that they will withstand, counteract, and exterminate that evil. Teach them to love justice better than their native land, truth better than their church, humanity more than money, and fidelity to their own nature better than the public opinion of the press. As the chief thing of all, teach them to love man and God. Your characters will be the inspiration of these children; your prayers their practice, your faith their works.
The rising generation is in your hands, you can fashion them in your image, you will, you must do this. Great duties will devolve on these children when grown up to be men; you are to fit them for these duties. Since the Revolution, there has not been a question before the country, not a question of constitution or confederacy, free trade or protective tariff, sub-treasury or bank, of peace or war, freedom or slavery, the extension of liberty, or the extension of bondage—not a question of this sort has come ​