The prairie news. [volume] (Okolona, Miss.) 1851-1875, 1858-04-15

anlmateS The mass OF our fellow citizens
In most of our literary institutions i
this debasing influence too sadly visible
every branch of study is estimated by it
connection with the grand business of ac
emulation, a connexion which we too of
ten hear mentioned under the name O
practical value" cant expression
which has consigned many noble sci
ence to vulgar contempt, and many {
God-like genius to oblivion. Hence the
common inquiry of what practical value
is the study of the ancient classics
Why study abstract sciences, or mathe
matics beyond vulgar fractions 7 AS
though learning and intellectual discip.
line were to be valued by the dollar and
cent table, or measured by our purse
strings as though the sole design Of
education were to convert mans mind
into machine like a mint, into one end
of which is to be forced the bullion OF
knowledge, to come out dollars at the
other!
Many an understanding, fully compe-
tent to this dollar and cent theory, is alb
solutely unable to discern the worth of
those sciences which lie at the very basis
of civilized society, and which furnish
most of the refined and exalted pleasures
of life. We cannot forget, however, the
circumstances in our political condition
which give rise to this money-loving
spirit; these circumstances are that un-
fettered freedom of thought and action
which allow every mind unlimited range
ofinvention, and every hand unmeasured
liberty of performance that absence of
the distinctions of rank and birth which
always render men honorable, the dis
tinctions of wealth that boundless field
of enterprise, and those inexhaustible ma
terials Of profit and labor which are the
peculiar gifts of the new world, and, fin
ally, that wonderful spirit of combination
of applying science to practical pur-
poses, by which the age is so strongly
marked.
These circumstances who would change?
But who does not see that to counteract
them all will require a moral energy of
no common type, moral effort of no or
dinary powerl Moral culture can alone
do this.
BY very large class of society, the
intellectual powers alone are deemed fit
subjects of cultivation and, therefore,
the understanding, the memory, the
imagination, and the tastes are carefully
educated, while every wild passion that
agitates the breast, every APPETITE that de-
grades and debases is left to flourish in
its native luxuriance, with no moral force
to check them. This error is selfish, in
asmuch as it attends solely to the happi-
ness of the individual, and takes no
thought for society at large. 1t assumes
the proposition that the pupil is to be
made happy by intellectual culture, well
knowing, at the same time, that moral
cultivation is most essential to the well
fare of a community.
1t is unphilosophical; for individual
enjoyment is not, in fact, drawn from the
intellectual portion of our nature. 1t is
the heart by which is determined the
happiness C every thinking being; and
unquestionably the misery of the great
chief of fallen spirits is vastly aggravated
by the almost infinite grasp and compass
of his faculties, proving but too clearly
that minds may and is often given to man,
but so shaped by the "Omnipotent
am" as to prove source of woe instead
of pleasure. The heart is the fountain of
woe or bliss. In an uncnltivated con-
dition, it is like the bitter wells of Morah |
in the desert; the discipline of education
operates upon it like the healing power of
Moses upon those fountains, and turns
their gall to sweet. If we would find the
strongest possible proof that knowledge
alone confers not happiness, let us look
at the case of the wisest of all the kings
Of Israel, who, after searching out all
knowledge and learning that mortal mind
could know, was forced to exclaim with
sadness of heart, call is vanity and vex-
alton of spirit!"