dissimilar, the period of the Boy, and that of the Man. Education in
general is the developing and instructing the faculties, and is,
therefore, the same in kind to both man and boy, though it may be
brought about by different forces. The education of the boy, so far as
it depends on institutions, and conscious modes of action, must be so
modified as to enable him to meet the influences which will surround him
when he is a man; otherwise, his training will not enable him to cope
with the new forces he meets, and so will fail of the end of making him
a man. I pass over the influence of the family, and of nature, which do
not belong to my present theme. In America, the public education of men
is chiefly influenced by four great powers, which I will call
educational forces, and which correspond to four modes of national
activity:
I. The political action of the people, represented by the State;
II. The industrial action of the people, represented by Business;
III. The ecclesiastical action of the people, represented by the Church;
IV. The literary action of the people, represented by the Press.
I now purposely name them in this order, though I shall presently refer
to them several times, and in a different succession. These forces act
on the people, making us such men as we are; they act indirectly on the
child before he comes to consciousness; directly, afterwards, but most
powerfully on the man. What is commonly and technically called
education--the development and instruction of the faculties of children,
is only preparatory; the scholastic education of the boy is but
introductory to the practical education of the man. It is only this
preparatory education of the children of the people that is the work of
the school-masters. Their business is to give the child such a
development of his faculties, and such furniture of preliminary
knowledge, that he can secure the influence of all these educational
forces, appreciating and enhancing the good, withstanding,
counteracting, and at last ending the evil thereof, and so continue his
education; and at the same time that he can work in one or more of those
modes of activity, serving himself and mankind, politically by the
state, ecclesiastically by the church, literarily by the press, or at
any rate, industrially by his business. To give children the preparatory
education necessary for this fourfold receptivity, or activity, we need
three classes of public institutions:
I. Free common schools;
II. Free high schools;
III. Free colleges.
Of these I will presently speak in detail, but now, for the sake of
shortness, let me call them all collectively by their generic name--the
School. It is plain the teachers who work by this instrument ought to
understand the good and evil of the four educational forces which work
on men grown, in order to prepare their pupils to receive the good
thereof, and withstand the evil. So then let us look a moment at the
character of these educational forces, and see what they offer us, and
what men they are likely to make of their unconscious pupils. Let us
look at the good qualities first, and next at the evil.
It is plain that business, the press, and politics all tend to promote a
great activity of body and mind. In business, the love of gain, the
enterprising spirit of our practical men in all departments, their
industry, thrift and forecast, stimulate men to great exertions, and
produce a consequent development of the faculties called out. Social
distinction depends almost wholly on wealth; that never is accumulated
by mere manual industry, such is the present constitution of society,
but it is acquired by the higher forms of industry, in which the powers
of nature serve the man, or he avails himself of the creations of mere
manual toil. Hence there is a constant pressure towards the higher modes
of industry for the sake of money; of course, a constant effort to be
qualified for them. So in the industrial departments the mind is more
active than the hand. Accordingly it has come to pass that most of the
brute labor of the free states is done by cattle, or by the forces of
nature--wind, water, fire--which we have harnessed by our machinery, and
set to work. In New England most of the remaining work which requires
little intelligence is done by Irishmen, who are getting a better
culture by that very work. Men see the industrial handiwork of the
North, and wonder; they do not always see the industrial head-work,
which precedes, directs and causes it all; they seldom see the complex
forces of which this enterprise and progress are the resultant.
There is no danger that we shall be sluggards. Business now takes the
same place in the education of the people that was once held by war: it
stimulates activity, promotes the intercourse of man with man, nation
with nation; assembling men in masses, it elevates their temperature, so
to say; it leads to new and better forms of organization; it excites men
to invention, so that thereby we are continually acquiring new power
over the elements, peacefully annexing to our domain new provinces of
nature--water, wind, fire, lightning--setting them to do our work,
multiplying the comforts of life, and setting free a great amount of
human time. It is not at all destructive; not merely conservative, but
continually creates anew. Its creative agent is not brute force, but
educated mind. A man's trade is always his teacher, and industry keeps a
college for mankind, much of our instruction coming through our hands;
with us, where the plough is commonly in the hands of him who owns the
land it furrows, business affords a better education than in most other
countries, and develops higher qualities of mind. There is a marked
difference in this respect between the North and South. There was never
before such industry, such intense activity of head and hand in any
nation in a time of peace.
The press encourages the same activity, enterprise, perseverance. Both
of these encourage generosity; neither honors the miser, who gets for
the sake of getting, or "starves, cheats, and pilfers to enrich an
heir;" he does not die respectably in Boston, who dies rich and
bequeaths nothing to any noble public charity. It encourages industry
which accumulates with the usual honesty, and for a rather generous
use.
The press furnishes us with books exceedingly cheap. We manufacture
literature cheaper than any nation except the Chinese. Even the best
books, the works of the great masters of thought, are within the reach
of an industrious farmer or mechanic, if half a dozen families combine
for that purpose. The educational power of a few good books scattered
through a community, is well known.
Then the press circulates, cheap and wide, its newspapers, emphatically
the literature of men who read nothing else: they convey intelligence
from all parts of the world, and broaden the minds of home-keeping
youths, who need not now have homely wits.
The state, also, promotes activity, enterprise, hardihood, perseverance
and thrift. The American Government is eminently distinguished by these
five qualities. The form of government stimulates patriotism, each man
has a share in the public lot. The theocracies, monarchies, and
aristocracies of old time have produced good and great examples of
patriotism, in the few or the many; but the nobler forms of love of
country, of self-denial and disinterested zeal for its sake, are left
for a democracy to bring to light.
Here all men are voters, and all great questions are, apparently and in
theory, left to the decision of the whole people. This popular form of
government is a great instrument in developing and instructing the mind
of the nation. It helps extend and intensify the intelligent activity
which is excited by business and the press. Such is the nature of our
political institutions that, in the free states, we have produced the
greatest degree of national unity of action, with the smallest
restriction of personal freedom, have reconciled national unity with
individual variety, not seeking uniformity; thus room is left for as
much individualism as a man chooses to take; a vast power of talent,
enterprise and invention is left free for its own work. Elsewhere, save
in England, this is latent, kept down by government. Since this power is
educated and has nothing to hold it back; since so much brute work is
done by cattle and the forces of nature, now domesticated and put in
harness, and much time is left free for thought, more intelligence is
demanded, more activity, and the citizens of the free states have become
the most active, enterprising and industrious people in the world; the
most inventive in material work.
In all these three forms of action there is much to stir men to love of
distinction. The career is open to talent, to industry; open to every
man; the career of letters, business, and politics. Our rich men were
poor men; our famous men came of sires else not heard of. The laurel,
the dollar, the office, and the consequent social distinction of men
successful in letters, business and politics, these excite the obscure
or needy youth to great exertions, and he cannot sleep; emulation wakes
him early, and keeps him late astir. Behind him, scattering "the rear of
darkness," stalk poverty and famine, gaunt and ugly forms, with scorpion
whip to urge the tardier, idler man. The intense ambition for money, for
political power, and the social results they bring, keeps men on the
alert. So ambition rises early, and works with diligence that never
tires.
The Church, embracing all the churches under that name, cultivates the
memory of men, and teaches reverence for the past; it helps keep
activity from wandering into unpopular forms of wickedness or of
unbelief. Men who have the average intelligence, goodness and piety, it
keeps from slipping back, thus blocking to rearward the wheels of
society, so that the ascent gained shall not be lost; men who have less
than this average it urges forward, addressing them in the name of God,
encouraging by hope of heaven, and driving with fear of hell. It turns
the thought of the people towards God; it sets before us some facts in
the life, and some parts of the doctrine, of the noblest One who ever
wore the form of man, bidding us worship him. The ecclesiastical worship
of Jesus of Nazareth is, perhaps, the best thing in the American church.
It has the Sunday and the institution of preaching under its control. A
body of disciplined men are its servants; they praise the ordinary
virtues; oppose and condemn the unpopular forms of error and of sin.
Petty vice, the vice of low men, in low places, is sure of their lash.
They promote patriotism in its common form. Indirectly, they excite
social and industrial rivalry, and favor the love of money by the honor
they bestow upon the rich and successful. But at the same time they
temper it a little, sometimes telling men, as business or the state does
not, that there is in man a conscience, affection for his brother-man,
and a soul which cannot live by bread alone; no, not by wealth, office,
fame and social rank. They tell us, also, of eternity, where worldly
distinctions, except of orthodox and heterodox, are forgotten, where
wealth is of no avail; they bid us remember God.
Such are the good things of these great national forces; the good things
which in this fourfold way we are teaching ourselves. The nation is a
monitorial school, wonderfully contrived for the education of the
people. I do not mean to say that it is by the forethought of men that
the American democracy is at the same time a great practical school for
the education of the human race. This result formed no part of our plan,
and is not provided for by the Constitution of the United States; it
comes of the forethought of God, and is provided for in the Constitution
of the Universe.
Now each of these educational forces has certain defects, negative
evils, and certain vices, positive evils, which tend to misdirect the
nation, and so hinder the general education of the people: of these,
also, let me speak in detail.
The state appeals to force, not to justice; this is its last appeal; the
force of muscles aided by force of mind, instructed by modern science in
the art to kill. The nation appeals to force in the settlement of
affairs out of its borders. We have lately seen an example of this, when
we commenced war against a feeble nation, who, in that special
emergency, had right on her side, about as emphatically as the force was
on our side. The immediate success of the enterprise, the popular
distinction acquired by some of the leaders, the high honor bestowed on
one of its heroes, all this makes the lesson of injustice attractive. It
may be that a similar experiment will again be tried, and doubtless with
like success. Certainly there is no nation this side of the water which
can withstand the enterprise, the activity, the invention, industry and
perseverance of a people so united, and yet so free and intelligent.
Another successful injustice of this character, on a large scale, will
make right still less regarded, and might honored yet more.
The force we employ out of our borders, might opposed to right, we
employ also at home against our brethren, and keep three millions of
them in bondage; we watch for opportunities to extend the institution of
slavery over soil unpolluted by that triple curse, and convert the
Constitution, the fundamental law of the land, into an instrument for
the defence of slavery.
The men we honor politically, by choosing them to offices in the state,
are commonly men of extraordinary force, sometimes, it is true, only of
extraordinary luck, but of only ordinary justice; men who, perhaps, have
mind in the heroic degree, but conscience of the most vulgar pattern.
They are to keep the law of the United States when it is wholly hostile
to the law of the universe, to the everlasting justice of God.
I am not speaking to politicians, professional representatives of the
state; not speaking for political effect; not of the state as a
political machine for the government of the people. I am speaking to
teachers, for an educational purpose; of the state as an educational
machine, as one of the great forces for the spiritual development of the
people. Now by this preference of force and postponement of justice at
home and abroad, in the selection of men for office, with its wealth,
and rank, and honor, by keeping the law of the land to the violation of
the law of God, it is plain we are teaching ourselves to love wrong; at
least to be insensible to the right. What we practise on a national
scale as a people, it is not easy to think wrong when practised on a
personal scale, by this man and that.
The patriotism, also, which the state nurses, is little more than that
Old Testament patriotism which loves your countryman, and hates the
stranger; the affection which the Old Testament attributes to Jehovah,
and which makes him say, "I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau;" a patriotism
which supports our country in the wrong as readily as in the right, and
is glad to keep one sixth part of the nation in bondage without hope. It
is not a patriotism which, beginning here, loves all the children of
God, but one that robs the Mexican, enslaves the African, and
exterminates the Indian.
These are among the greater evils taught us by the political action of
the people as a whole. If you look at the action of the chief political
parties, you see no more respect for justice in the politics of either
party, than in the politics of the nation, the resultant of both; no
more respect for right abroad, or at home. One party aims distinctively
at preserving the property already acquired; its chief concern is for
that, its sympathy there; where its treasure is, is also its heart. It
legislates, consciously or otherwise, more for accumulated wealth, than
for the laboring man who now accumulates. This party goes for the
dollar; the other for the majority, and aims at the greatest good of the
greatest number, leaving the good of the smaller number to most
uncertain mercies. Neither party seems to aim at justice, which protects
both the wealth that labor has piled up, and the laborer who now creates
it; justice, which is the point of morals common to man and God, where
the interests of all men, abroad and at home, electing and elected,
greatest number and smallest number, exactly balance. Falsehood, fraud,
a willingness to deceive, a desire for the power and distinction of
office, a readiness to use base means in obtaining office--these vices
are sown with a pretty even hand upon both parties, and spring up with
such blossoms and such a fruitage as we all see. The third political
party has not been long enough in existence to develop any distinctive
vices of its own.
I shall not speak of the public or private character of the politicians
who direct the state; no doubt that is a powerful element in our
national education; but as a class, they seem no better and no worse
than merchants, mechanics, ministers and farmers, as a class; so in
their influence there is nothing peculiar, only their personal character
ceases to be private, and becomes a public force in the education of the
people.
* * * * *
The Churches have the same faults as the State. There is the same
postponement of justice and preference of force, the same neglect of the
law of God in their zeal for the statutes of men; the same crouching to
dollars or to numbers. However, in the churches these faults appear
negatively, rather than as an affirmation. The worldliness of the church
is not open, self-conscious and avowed; it is not, as a general thing,
that human injustice is openly defended, but rather justice goes by
default. But if the churches do not positively support and teach
injustice, as the state certainly does, they do not teach the opposite,
and, so far as that goes, are allies of the state in its evil influence.
The fact that the churches, as such, did not oppose the war, and do not
oppose slavery, its continuance, or its extension; nay, that they are
often found its apologists and defenders, seldom its opponents; that
they not only pervert the sacred books of the Christians to its defence,
but wrest the doctrines of Christianity to justify it; the fact that
they cannot, certainly do not, correct the particularism of the
political parties, the love of wealth in one, of mere majorities in the
other; that they know no patriotism not bounded by their country, none
coextensive with mankind; that they cannot resist the vice of party
spirit--these are real proofs that the church is but the ally of the
state in this evil influence.
But the church has also certain specific faults of its own. It teaches
injustice by continually referring to the might of God, not His justice;
to His ability and will to damn mankind, not asking if He has the right?
It teaches that in virtue of His infinite power, He is not amenable to
infinite justice, and to infinite love. Thus, while the state teaches,
in the name of expediency and by practice, that the strong may properly
be the tyrants of the weak, the mighty nation over the feeble, the
strong race over the inferior, that the government may dispense with
right at home and abroad--the church, as theory in Christ's name,
teaches that God may repudiate His own justice and His own love.
The churches have little love of truth, as such, only of its uses. It
must be such a truth as they can use for their purposes; canonized
truth; truth long known; that alone is acceptable and called "religious
truth;" all else is "profane and carnal," as the reason which discovers
it. They represent the average intelligence of society; hence, while
keeping the old, they welcome not the new. They promote only popular
forms of truth, popular in all Christendom, or in their special sect.
They lead in no intellectual reforms; they hinder the leaders.
Negatively and positively, they teach, that to believe what is
clerically told you in the name of religion, is better than free,
impartial search after the truth. They dishonor free thinking, and
venerate constrained believing. When the clergy doubt, they seldom give
men audience of their doubt. Few scientific men not clerical believe the
Bible account of creation,--the universe made in six days, and but a few
thousand years ago,--or that of the formation of woman, and of the
deluge. Some clerical men still believe these venerable traditions,
spite of the science of the times; but the clerical men who have no
faith in these stories not only leave the people to think them true and
miraculously taught, but encourage men in the belief, and calumniate the
men of science who look the universe fairly in the face and report the
facts as they find them.
The church represents only the popular morality, not any high and
aboriginal virtue. It represents not the conscience of human nature,
reflecting the universal and unchangeable moral laws of God, touched and
beautified by his love, but only the conscience of human history,
reflecting the circumstances man has passed by, and the institutions he
has built along the stream of time. So, while it denounces unpopular
sins, vices below the average vice of society, it denounces also
unpopular excellence, which is above the average virtue of society. It
blocks the wheels rearward, and the car of humanity does not roll down
hill; but it blocks them forward also. No great moral movement of the
age is at all dependent directly on the church for its birth; very
little for its development. It is in spite of the church that reforms go
forward; it holds the curb to check more than the rein to guide. In
morals, as in science, the church is on the anti-liberal side, afraid of
progress, against movement, loving "yet a little sleep, a little
slumber;" conservative and chilling, like ice, not creative, nor even
quickening, as water. It doffs to use and wont; has small confidence in
human nature, much in a few facts of human history. It aims to separate
Piety from Goodness, her natural and heaven-appointed spouse, and marry
her to Bigotry, in joyless and unprofitable wedlock. The church does
not lead men to the deep springs of human nature, fed ever from the far
heights of the Divine nature, whence flows that river of God, full of
living water, where weary souls may drink perennial supply. While it
keeps us from falling back, it does little directly to advance mankind.
In common with the state, this priest and Levite pass by on the other
side of the least developed classes of society, leaving the slave, the
pauper, and the criminal, to their fate, hastening to strike hands with
the thriving or the rich.
These faults are shared in the main by all sects; some have them in the
common, and some in a more eminent degree, but none is so distinguished
from the rest as to need emphatic rebuke, or to deserve a special
exemption from the charge. Such are the faults of the church of every
land, and must be from the nature of the institution; like the state, it
can only represent the average of mankind.
I am not speaking to clergymen, professional representatives of the
church, not of the church as an ecclesiastical machine for keeping and
extending certain opinions and symbols; not for an ecclesiastical
purpose; I speak to teachers, for an educational purpose, of the church
as an educational machine, one of the great forces for the spiritual
development of the people.
* * * * *