The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1901-06-13
The Purposes of Education.

Education is to inspire the
love of truth as the supremest
good, and to clarity the vision of
the intellect to discern it.
We want men above deciding
great and eternal principles upon
narrow and selfish grounds. Our
advanced state of civilization has
evolved many complicated ques-
tions respecting social duties.
We want men capable of taking
up the complex questions, and of
turning all sides of them towards
the sun, and examining them by
the white light of reason, and not
under the false colors which
sophistry may throw upon them.
We want no men who will change
like the vanes of our steeples,
with the course of the popular
wind; but we want men who, like
mountains, will change the course
of the wind. We want no more
of those patriots who exhaust
their patriotism in lauding the
past; but we want patriots who
will do for the future what the
past has done for US. We want
men capable of deciding, not
merely what is right in principle
but what is right in means, to
accomplish what is right in prin-
ciple. We want men who will
speak to this great people in
counsel and not in fattery. We
want godlike men who can tame
the madness of the times, and
can say to the raging of human
passions, 'Peace be still. " Look
at our community divided into so
many parties on all questions of
social, national, and inter national
duty;-while, over all, stands al
most unheeded, the sublime form
of truth, eternally and indissolu-
bly, one. Now, what can save us
from endless contention, but the
love of truth? What can save as
and our children after us, from
eternal, implacable, universal war
but the power of impartial
thought? Most of those great
questions which make the pres
ent age boil and seethe like a cal
dron, will never be settled until
we have a generation of men who
were educated from childhood to
seek for truth and to revere JUS
tice. In the middle of the eigh-
teenth century, great dispute
arose among astronomers re-
specting one of the planets.
Some, in their folly, commenced
a war of words, and wrote hot
books against each other; others,
in their wisdom, improved their
telescopes, and soon settled the
question forever.
Education should initiate the
latter. If there are momentous
questions which, with present
lights, we cannot demonstrate
and determine, let US rear up
stronger and purer and more i'm
partial minds for the solemn ar
bitrament. Let it be forever and
ever inculcated that no bodily
wounds or main, no deformity
nor disease can be so disabling or
painful, as errors; and that he
who heals us of our prejudices, is
is thousand-fold more our ben
efactor, than he who heals US of
mortal maladies. Teach children
that no horror is so fatal as a
horror of truth because it does
not come from our leader or our
party. Then shall we have more
men who will think, as it were,
under oath-not thousandth and
ten thousandth transmitters of
falsity-not copyists of copyists,
and blind followers of blind fol
lowers; but men who can track
the Deity in his ways of wisdom.
A love of truth-a love of truth!
this is the pool whose waters have
miraculous healing. And though
we cannot bequeath to posterity
this precious boon, in its perfect
ness, yet we can inspire love of
it, reverence for it, a devotion
TO it; and thus circumscribe and
weaken whatever is wrong and
knlor0a and atrQn othap whofav