The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1891-06-09
FORMATIVE INFLUENCES.

eOHmA I'VE INFLUENCES.
Education Teaches . Creature to Exert II.
Powers, But It Can Create None.
In speaking of Buckle, Mr.. Lecky, in
the Forum, refers to one defect which
that writer shared with thinkers from
Bacon and Locke to Condillac and Ben.
than" The defect Mr. Lecky describes
Is the tendency to aggrandize as much
as possible the power Of circumstances
and experience over the individual, and
to reduce to the narrowest limits every
influence that is innate, transmitted OF
hereditary. Man as creature of cir.
cumstances and his mind blank sheet
upon what education might write what
1t pleased, were the beginnings Of all
the philosophy of education. as we'll as
the philosophy Of history and Of pure
metaphysics
The error which Mr. Lecky ascribes to
Buckle and his predecessors may no
longer vitiate the reasonings of specu-
lative philosophers, but it is so thor
oughly alive In the great mass of people
that sometimes the reformer doubts
whether all literature written before
1860 should not be withheld from the
schools and disapproved in the family
circle until every man. woman and child
learns that what living creature is
born that he will be until he dies Ed
ucation can teach a creature to exert its
power, but IL can create none. II can
train a creature to concentrate its en-
kergies, but it can not build energies out
,of nnfNinO 1nad h,p
creature to do what Ii does not natural
ly do we'll, just as it can force pig to
stand on its hind legs or horse to roll
q barrel. 1t can not make biped of a
pig nor gymnast Of horse.
With a fraction Of the labor it could
m AXE fat pork of the pig, 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-
ians about IL, but he has given more at
tention TO almost every hing else. He
has always had a monomania for laws,
for customs, for wise maxims and for
proverbs He has passionately wept be-
cause all that was natural and strong in
him has seemed wrong, sinful even.
Everybody has been trying to cut his
garments by a measure which was good
for somebody else at some other place
and time. The strenuous pressure of
the life struggle for preservation has
differentiated men into soldiers, mer-
chants advocates poets, priests, labor
ers and farmers but it is not yet ad-
|mitted generally that it would be we'll
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 thing else;
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 a
thousand is needed. One girl in five
hundred may learn to play a piano
fairly we'll, and one in thousand may
have the genius which will give her
piano playing the touch of life Health
fsnd Joy in labor are the best education
Work is best done when it is the natural
Exercise of faculty. The boy learns il
be does nothing but play until he is
nature It is not a good education.
fS0t ~ 40 OCteSI w al . WEOhH
Education. There is a pretty poetry
md also the blindness Of ignorance in
he assumption that all young minds are
|,apable of oratory and leadership
From birth every individual Is itself
and perhaps by NO means susceptible
20 the influences which were good for
Is father. Mr.. Lecky found formative
Influences in Butler and Locke. If he
had been born somebody else he might
with the same environments have been
Effected BY the Badminton library or tho
poetry of Keats His mind was the
Dam in which Butler and Locke could
AXE root and grow. He would have
zen the same man. less developed, per
laps. but not different IL he had never
heard of Butlor. Whaseley and Locke.
The world at large has yet to consider
he individual and give him his due
Kansas City Times