The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1874-06-19
EDUCATE-WHAT FOR?

denounced men, speeding by thei
| own hands into eternity.
: EDUCATE-WHAT FOR?
Educate for adversely. Pros
perity may come; adversely vii
!. come. When the souls outer re
} sources fail, let it have a store
house within that cannot be ex
hausted.
Educate for prosperity. In
limited self qualification is ruin
Culture, intellectual aesthetic, re.
ligIous, will give the needed check
Educate for old age. Old age
is desolate at best. Friends are
gone. sense and sense-pleasures
are dead. Pitiable his lot who
has looked to them for happiness
Culture opens up a fountain that
age cannot dry. Agassiz, Hum
boldt, and the scholars of all time
have proved that the only age
worth living is the old age of the
scholar.
Educate for youth and for man
hood. Beautiful is youth; grand
is manhood; and yet culture can
heighten and ennoble this grand
eur and beauty beyond expression.
Educate for society. Man, +"
says Aristotle, sis more social
than the bee or the ant" His
hopes, his joys, his destiny are
bound up with those of his fell
lows. He should be given to So
ciety with such a training as will
make him count for good. Gull
ture, individual culture, is the lev
er by which the complex mass of
civilization is ever being lifted to
higher and higher planes. Beau
tiful is the home of culture. How
graceful is hospitality; how sim
pie its elegance; how refined its
pleasures. With what q charm
can culture invest the social circle.
How unpretending is scholarship;
how respectful of the right of
others, the educated gentleman or
lady. Their very movement is
but the objectification of the sweet
harmony of their own souls.
True culture has a joyous welcome
to every hearthstone.
Educate for solitude. Social as
We are, We have also to be much
alone. To the natural man sol.
itude is uncomfortable.
How different with the scholar!
Do you remember Cicero's beauti-
full tribute to Scipio? "He was
never less alone than when alone"
So always with the scholar. Is
not God speaking to him through
all His works? Whom of the
mighty dead the scholar wills he
can summon to sweet converse.
Above all he can commune with
his own soul and attain to that
best of all earthly knowledge, the
knowledge of self.
Educate for business. Ameri-
cans are right in thinking with
the Roman stoics that the true life
is that of action instead of specu-
lation. What has he done? is the
test-question. Discipline, rigid,
early, continuous discipline will
enable q man to make drawer
and hotter fight on whatever line
he may choose to fight the battle
of life. Wholesale merchants in
our great cities stretch their fig
ures for scholar "drummers.
Law, medicine, and other learned
professions have long since mott
fled the world that their upper
stories were open to scholars alone.
Educate for leisure. With the
average unframed man idIeness
ends in vice, leisure in dissipation.
How opposite the vacation of the
scholar. Old Scipio's "otium"
was always "negotium." Carpen-
ter and Tyndall in their summer
cruises" and "Alpine rambles"
only studied in bigger museums
and cabinets. 1t is play but also
work. How sweet is such a rest.
You know Daniel Webster's favor
lite sport during rest periods of
his busy life. Izaak Walton new
er had a truer follower. But what
q strange fisherman this scholar
statesman! What may processes
of thought he went through when
the fish were not hungry. How
many sentences like the famous
"morning drum-beat" period were
sounded out on the banks of
Marshfield Brook to be thundered
into the ears of the Senate if a
time should come when, to use his
words, she could get them in"
This is a world of sickness.
Who can number the incurable
diseases? How many inyaiids,
temporary and permanent, do you
know? 70 make an invalid con-
tented would seem impossible.
And yet culture can do no little
toward 1t.
How much loneliness have the
"arts'' dispelled. How many
pains have they assuaged by fix
ing the sufferers eye upon a light
which the uninitiated cannot see
and his ear upon strains of I'M
earthly music that others cannot
hear.
Educate for the sake of educa-
ton, In other words, education
is a good in itself. 1t is an end
as well as n means. The smallest
seed has but its right, and only
fulfils its destiny when earth and
rain and sunshine have led it out
from its crusted state into leafed
and lowered and fruited maturity.
Animals and vegetables are edu-
Gated by nature. Man must edu-
cate himself. Let it never be for
gotten, however, that he too has
but his right, and attains his end
in complete development.
Educate as q means. Knowl-
edge is power, and power moves
the world. Intellect and training
will tell when blood and money
have both failed. What demand
for trained intellect in this age!
Rcleagured truth never need such
defenders as she calls for now.
The nation must summon to its
councils its best talent and best
virtue or give mp the struggle fol
freedom regulated by law. =
God, of course, will not let his
truth die, but what a pang shot
through our hearts as the pen fell
from Agassiz's nerveless grasp
Who will bend the bow of Ulysses
with Ulysses dead.