EVERY child should be taught to be self-supporting, and every one should
be taught to avoid being a burden on others, as they would shun death.
Every child should be taught that the useful are the honorable, and that
they who live on the labor of others are the enemies of society. Every
child should be taught that useful work is worship and that intelligent
labor is the highest form of prayer.
Children should be taught to think, to investigate, to rely upon the
light of reason, of observation and experience; should be taught to
use all their senses; and they should be taught only that which in some
sense is really useful. They should be taught the use of tools, to use
their hands, to embody their thoughts in the construction of things.
Their lives should not be wasted in the acquisition of the useless, or
of the almost useless. Years should not be devoted to the acquisition of
dead languages, or to the study of history which, for the most part, is
a detailed account of things that never occurred. It is useless to fill
the mind with dates of great battles, with the births and deaths of
kings. They should be taught the philosophy of history, the growth of
nations, of philosophies, theories, and, above all, of the sciences.
So, they should be taught the importance, not only of financial, but of
mental honesty; to be absolutely sincere; to utter their real thoughts,
and to give their actual opinions; and, if parents want honest children,
they should be honest themselves. It may be that hypocrites transmit
their failing to their offspring. Men and women who pretend to agree
with the majority, who think one way and talk another, can hardly expect
their children to be absolutely sincere.
Nothing should be taught in any school that the teacher does not
know. Beliefs, superstitions, theories, should not be treated like
demonstrated facts. The child should be taught to investigate, not to
believe. Too much doubt is better than too much credulity. So, children
should be taught that it is their duty to think for themselves, to
understand, and, if possible, to know.
Real education is the hope of the future. The development of the brain,
the civilization of the heart, will drive want and crime from the world.
The schoolhouse is the real cathedral, and science the only possible
savior of the human race. Education, real education, is the friend of
honesty, of morality, of temperance.
We cannot rely upon legislative enactments to make people wise and good;
neither can we expect to make human beings manly and womanly by keeping
them out of temptation. Temptations are as thick as the leaves of the
forest, and no one can be out of the reach of temptation unless he is
dead. The great thing is to make people intelligent enough and strong
enough, not to keep away from temptation, but to resist it. All the
forces of civilization are in favor of morality and temperance. Little
can be accomplished by law, because law, for the most part, about
such things, is a destruction of personal liberty. Liberty cannot be
sacrificed for the sake of temperance, for the sake of morality, or for
the sake of anything. It is of more value than everything else. Yet some
people would destroy the sun to prevent the growth of weeds. Liberty
sustains the same relation to all the virtues that the sun does to life.
The world had better go back to barbarism, to the dens, the caves and
lairs of savagery; better lose all art, all inventions, than to lose
liberty. Liberty is the breath of progress; it is the seed and soil, the
heat and rain of love and joy.
So, all should be taught that the highest ambition is to be happy,
and to add to the well-being of others; that place and power are not
necessary to success; that the desire to acquire great wealth is a kind
of insanity. They should be taught that it is a waste of energy, a waste
of thought, a waste of life, to acquire what you do not need and what
you do not really use for the benefit of yourself or others.
Neither mendicants nor millionaires are the happiest of mankind. The man
at the bottom of the ladder hopes to rise; the man at the top fears to
fall. The one asks; the other refuses; and, by frequent refusal, the
heart becomes hard enough and the hand greedy enough to clutch and hold.
Few men have intelligence enough, real greatness enough, to own a
great fortune. As a rule, the fortune owns them. Their fortune is their
master, for whom they work and toil like slaves. The man who has a good
business and who can make a reasonable living and lay aside something
for the future, who can educate his children and can leave enough to
keep the wolf of want from the door of those he loves, ought to be the
happiest of men.
Now, society bows and kneels at the feet of wealth. Wealth gives power.
Wealth commands flattery and adulation. And so, millions of men give
all their energies, as well as their very souls, for the acquisition of
gold. And this will continue as long as society is ignorant enough and
hypocritical enough to hold in high esteem the man of wealth without the
slightest regard to the character of the man.
In judging of the rich, two things should be considered: How did they
get it, and what are they doing with it? Was it honestly acquired? Is
it being used for the benefit of mankind? When people become really
intelligent, when the brain is really developed, no human being will
give his life to the acquisition of what he does not need or what he
cannot intelligently use.
The time will come when the truly intelligent man cannot be happy,
cannot be satisfied, when millions of his fellow-men are hungry and
naked. The time will come when in every heart will be the perfume of
pity's sacred flower. The time will come when the world will be anxious
to ascertain the truth, to find out the conditions of happiness, and to
live in accordance with such conditions; and the time will come when
in the brain of every human being will be the climate of intellectual
hospitality.
Man will be civilized when the passions are dominated by the intellect,
when reason occupies the throne, and when the hot blood of passion no
longer rises in successful revolt.
To civilize the world, to hasten the coming of the Golden Dawn of the
Perfect Day, we must educate the children, we must commence at the
cradle, at the lap of the loving mother.