Waterbury evening Democrat., 1890-11-17
FORMATIVE INFLueNoEa

Education Teaches Creature to Exert Its
 Powers, But It Can Create None.
 In speaking of Buckle, MT. Lecky, in the Forum, refers to one defect which that writer shared with thinkers from Bacon and Loc 0 to Cond lac and Ben tham." The defect Mir. L,csy describes Is the tendency tO aggrand ze as much as possible the power Of circumstances and experiences eyer the individual, and to reduce to tin r.'rr"wcst limits every infiu"nc" thaN g irnwtT. transmitted or heredl tary %in ms a erea ture of cir cumstanc"4 =. iis a,ioi a blank sheet upon whai .; '-'. " Int WIT to what it pltan'" '.' j..' !. r npiRcs of all the phtir,o1t 70 ='-s i..n. as well as the philu~no,:i ,..at''ry and of pure metaphyS
 The err, r 't'r Lac Y a at l,es O Buckle ant .,I% .;r,: .ss,rs may no longer vt o," 'i q l.',.ssin, ,n,E% sr.."n- lative ph t" ,,'". 90. hut ;.s SD ihrr- ough a,-vn :l" ,sroa: mas Q ,"opio that som"tim"s t;'e reform Auuhts whether all lferabnrc writtHn b"fire 1860 should not be withheld from the schools and d,sapproved in tho Iam W circle until every man, woman and cid learns that what living creaturn is born that he will be until he dies. E1- ucation can teach creature to exert it's power, but it can create none. It c:n train a creature to concentrate it's en- ergies. but it can not build energies out of nothing. It can lead a human creature to do what it does not natural ly do well, just as it can force pig to stand on its hind legs or horse to roll a barrel. It can not make biped of a pig nor gymnast of horse.
 With fraction of the labor it could m ake fat pork of the p g, and of the horse a useful servant of men. Man has been urging the good of knowing him. self ever since Socrates tod the Athen- fans about it, but he has gwen m Ire at tention to almost every thing csc He has always had monomania for laws, for customs, for wise maxtms and for proverbs He has passionately went be- cause all that was natural and strong n him has seemed wrong, sinful even Everybody has been trying to cut his garments by measure which was good for somebody else at some othe" place and time The strenuous pressure of the life struggle for preservation has differentiated men into soldiers mrr- chants, advocates, poets, priests, labor CTS and farmers but it is not yet ad- mitted generally that 1t would be well to study the child's qualities and train him for his best future.
 Owners of cattle and horses can not and do not afford to do any tn nr e'se: man alone is wasted in efforts to make every boy an attorney-at-law and every girl piano player One boy in thousand can become a good lawyer, and not much more than one in thousand is needed. One grl in five hundred may learn to play a ano ia rly well, and one in a thousand may have the genius which wilt give her piano playing the touch of~life. Health and joy in labor are tho best education Work is best done when it Is the natural exercise of faculty. The boy learns if he does nothing but p ay until he is mature. 1t is not a good ,.duc4tinn, but sonnet mes it is better than a wrong education. There IS pretty poetry and a so the blindness of gnorlncn in the assumption that all young minds are capabl of oratory and lea iershlp.
 From birth every ind vdual is tseh and perhaps by no means susceptible to the influences which were good for its father. MT Lechy found formative influences in Butler and Locke. IF he had been born somebody else he might with the same environments have been affected by the Badminton library or the poetry of Keats. Ills mind was the foam in which Butter and Locke could take root and grow He would have been the same man. ,ess developed, per 1aps, but not different if he had never heard of Butler, Whateley and Locke. The world at largo has yet to consider she individual and g.ve him his due.- Kansas City Times