This may seem a very simple question, and very easily answered; but many
who think so, would really be very much at a loss to answer it
correctly. Every man, in a free country, wants three sorts of
education:--one, to fit him for his own particular trade or
calling,--this is professional education;--another, to teach him his
duties as a man and a citizen,--this is moral and political
education;--and a third, to fit him for his higher relations, as God’s
creature, designed for immortality,--this is religious education. Now,
in point of fact, that is most useful to a man which tends most to his
happiness; a thing so plain, that it seems foolish to state it. Yet
people constantly take the word “useful” in another sense, and mean by
it, not what tends most to a man’s happiness, but what tends most to get
money for him; and therefore they call professional education a very
useful thing: but the time which is spent in general education, whether
moral or religious, they are apt to grudge as thrown away, especially if
it interferes with the other education, to which they confine the name
of “useful;” that is, the education which enables a man to gain his
livelihood. Yet we might all be excellent in our several trades and
professions, and still be very ignorant, very miserable, and very
wicked. We might do pretty well just while we were at work on our
business; but no man is at work always. There is a time which we spend
with our families; a time which we spend with our friends and
neighbours; and a very important time which we spend with ourselves. If
we know not how to pass these times well, we are very contemptible and
worthless _men_, though we may be very excellent lawyers, surgeons,
chemists, engineers, mechanics, labourers, or whatever else may be our
particular employment. Now, what enables us to pass these times well,
and our times of business also, is not our _professional_ education, but
our _general_ one. It is the education which all need equally--namely,
that which teaches a man, in the first place, his duty to God and his
neighbour; which trains him to good principles and good temper; to think
of others, and not only of himself. It is that education which teaches
him, in the next place, his duties as a citizen--to obey the laws
always, but to try to get them made as perfect as possible; to
understand that a good and just government cannot consult the interests
of one particular class of calling, in preference to another, but must
see what is for the good of the whole; that every interest, and every
order of men, must give and take; and that if each were to insist upon
having everything its own way, there would be nothing but the wildest
confusion, or the merest tyranny. And because a great part of all that
goes wrong in public or private life arises from ignorance and bad
reasoning, all that teaches us, in the third place, to reason justly,
and puts us on our guard against the common tricks of unfair writers and
talkers, or the confusions of such as are puzzle-headed, is a most
valuable part of a man’s education, and one of which he will find the
benefit whenever he has occasion to open his mouth to speak, or his ears
to hear. And, finally, all that makes a man’s mind more active, and the
ideas which enter it nobler and more beautiful, is a great addition to
his happiness whenever he is alone, and to the pleasure which others
derive from his company when he is in society. Therefore it is most
_useful_ to learn to love and understand what is _beautiful_, whether in
the works of God, or in those of man; whether in the flowers and fields,
and rocks and woods, and rivers, and sea and sky; or in fine buildings,
or fine pictures, or fine music; and in the noble thoughts and glorious
images of poetry. This is the education which will make a man and a
people good, and wise, and happy. Give this,--and the ends of
professional education can never be altogether lost; for good sense and
good principle will ensure a man’s knowing his particular business; but
knowledge of his business, on the other hand, will not ensure _them_;
and not only are sense and goodness the rarest and most profitable
qualities with which any man can enter upon life now, but they are
articles of which there never can be a glut: no competition or
over-production will lessen their value; but the more of them that we
can succeed in manufacturing, so much the higher will be their price,
because there will be more to understand and to love them.
---------------------
_Honesty is the best Policy._--Irritated one day at the bad faith of
Madame Jay, Mirabeau said to her in my presence, “Madam Jay, if probity
did not exist, we ought to invent it, as the best means of getting
rich.”--_Dumont_
---------------------