promotes the virtues I have named before, it does not tend to promote
the highest form of character. It does not promote justice and humanity,
as one could wish; it does not lead the employer to help the operative
as a man, only to use him as a tool, merely for industrial purposes. The
average merchant cares little whether his ship brings cloth and cotton,
or opium and rum. The average capitalist does not wish the stock of his
manufacturing company divided into small shares, so that the operatives
can invest their savings therein and have a portion of the large
dividends of the rich; nor does he care whether he takes a mortgage on a
ship or a negro slave, nor whether his houses are rented for sober
dwellings, or for drunkeries; whether the state hires his money to build
harbors at home, or destroy them abroad. The ordinary manufacturer is as
ready to make cannons and cannon-balls to serve in a war which he knows
is unjust, as to cast his iron into mill-wheels, or forge it into
anchors. The common farmer does not care whether his barley feeds
poultry for the table, or, made into beer, breeds drunkards for the
almshouse and the jail; asks not whether his rye and potatoes become the
bread of life, or, distilled into whiskey, are deadly poison to men and
women. He cares little if the man he hires become more manly or not; he
only asks him to be a good tool. Whips for the backs of negro slaves are
made, it is said, in Connecticut with as little compunction as Bibles
are printed there; "made to order," for the same purpose--for the
dollar. The majority of blacksmiths would as soon forge fetter-chains to
enslave the innocent limbs of a brother-man, as draught-chains for oxen.
Christian mechanics and pious young women, who would not hurt the hair
of an innocent head, have I seen at Springfield, making swords to
slaughter the innocent citizens of Vera Cruz and Jalapa. The ships of
respectable men carry rum to intoxicate the savages of Africa, powder
and balls to shoot them with; they carry opium to the Chinese; nay,
Christian slaves from Richmond and Baltimore to New Orleans and
Galveston. In all commercial countries, the average vice of the age is
mixed up with the industry of the age, and unconsciously men learn the
wickedness long intrenched in practical life. It is thought industrial
operations are not amenable to the moral law, only to the law of trade.
"Let the supply follow the demand" is the maxim. A man who makes as
practical a use of the golden rule as of his yard-stick, is still an
exception in all departments of business.
Even in the commercial and manufacturing parts of America, money
accumulates in large masses; now in the hands of an individual, now of a
corporation. This money becomes an irresponsible power, acting by the
laws, but yet above them. It is wielded by a few men, to whom it gives a
high social position and consequent political power. They use this
triple form of influence, pecuniary, social and political, in the spirit
of commerce, not of humanity, not for the interest of mankind; thus the
spirit of trade comes into the state. Hence it is not thought wrong in
politics to buy a man, more than in commerce to buy a ship; hence the
rights of a man, or a nation, are looked on as articles of trade, to be
sold, bartered, and pledged; and in the Senate of the United States, we
have heard a mass of men, more numerous than all our citizens seventy
years ago, estimated as worth twelve hundred millions of dollars.
In most countries business comes more closely into contact with men than
the state, or the church, or the press, and is a more potent educator.
Here it not only does this, but controls the other three forces, which
are mainly instruments of this; hence this form of evil is more
dangerous than elsewhere, for there is no power organized to resist it
as in England or Rome; so it subtly penetrates everywhere, bidding you
place the accidents before the substance of manhood, and value money
more than man.
* * * * *
Notwithstanding the good qualities of the Press, the books it
multiplies, and the great service it renders, it also has certain vices
of its own. From the nature of the thing the greater part of literature
represents only the public opinion of the time. It must therefore teach
deference to that, not deference to truth and justice. It is only the
eminent literature which can do more than this; books, which at first
fall into few hands though fit, and like the acorns sown with the
mulleins and the clover, destined to germinate but slowly, long to be
over-topped by an ephemeral crop, at last, after half an hundred years,
shall mature their own fruit for other generations of men. The current
literature of this age only popularizes the thought of the eminent
literature of the past. Great good certainly comes from this, but also
great evil.
Of all literature, the newspapers come most into contact with men--they
are the literature of the people, read by such as read nothing else;
read also by such as read all things beside. Taken in the mass, they
contain little to elevate men above the present standard. The political
journals have the general vice of our politics, and the special faults
of the particular party; the theological journals have the common
failings of the church, intensified by the bigotry of the sects they
belong to; the commercial journals represent the bad qualities of
business. Put all three together, and it is not their aim to tell the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, nor to promote
justice, the whole of justice, and nothing but justice. The popular
literature helps bring to consciousness the sentiments and ideas which
prevail in the state, the church, and business. It brings those
sentiments and ideas intimately into connection with men, magnetizing
them with the good and ill of those three powers, but it does little
directly to promote a higher form of human character.
So, notwithstanding the good influence of these four modes of national
activity in educating the grown men of America, they yet do not afford
the highest teaching which the people require, to realize individually
the idea of a man, and jointly that of a democracy. The state does not
teach perfect justice; the church does not teach that, or love of truth.
Business does not teach perfect morality, and the average literature,
which falls into the hands of the million, teaches men to respect public
opinion more than the word of God, which transcends that. Thus these
four teach only the excellence already organized or incorporated in the
laws, the theology, the customs, and the books of the land. I cannot but
think these four teachers are less deficient here than in other lands,
and have excellences of their own, but the faults mentioned are
inseparable from such institutions. An institution is an organized
thought; of course, no institution can represent a truth which is too
new or too high for the existing organizations, yet that is the truth
which it is desirable to teach. So there will always be exceptional men,
with more justice, truth and love than is represented by the
institutions of the time, who seem therefore hostile to these
institutions, which they seek to improve and not destroy. Contemporary
with the priests of Judah and Israel were the prophets thereof,
antithetic to one another as the centripetal and centrifugal forces,
but, like them, both necessary to the rhythmic movement of the orbs in
heaven, and the even poise of the world.
In Rome and in England the idea of a theocracy and an aristocracy has
become a fact in the institutions of the land, which accordingly favor
the formation of priests and gentlemen. The teachers of the educated
class, therefore, may trust to the machinery already established to do
their work, only keeping off the spirit of the age which would make
innovations; and such is the respectability and popular esteem of the
institutions, that this is done easier than men think, by putting an
exceptional book in the index at Rome or in the academical fire at
Oxford. But here, the idea of a democracy is by no means so well
established and organized in institutions. It is new, and while a
theocrat and an aristocrat are respected everywhere, a democrat is held
in suspicion; accordingly, to make men, the teacher cannot trust his
educational machinery, he must make it, and invent anew as well as turn
his mill.
* * * * *
These things being so, it is plain the teachers in the schools should be
of such a character that they can give the children what they will most
want when they become men; such an intellectual and moral development
that they can appreciate and receive the good influence of these four
educational forces, and withstand, resist, and exterminate the evil
thereof. In the schools of a democracy which are to educate the people
and make them men, you need more aboriginal virtue than in the schools
of an aristocracy or a theocracy, where a few are to be educated as
gentlemen or priests. Since the institutions of the land do not
represent the idea of a democracy, and the average spirit of the people,
which makes the institutions, represents it no more, if the children of
the people are to become better than their fathers, it is plain their
teachers must be prophets, and not priests merely; must animate them
with a spirit higher, purer and more holy than that which inspires the
state, the church, business, or the common literature of the times. As
the teacher cannot impart and teach what he does not possess and know,
it is also plain that the teacher must have this superior spirit.
* * * * *
To accomplish the public education of the children of the people, we
need the three classes of institutions just mentioned: free Common
Schools, free High Schools and free Colleges. Let me say a word of each.
The design of the Common School is to take children at the proper age
from their mothers, and give them the most indispensable development,
intellectual, moral, affectional and religious; to furnish them with as
much positive, useful knowledge as they can master, and, at the same
time, teach them the three great scholastic helps or tools of
education--the art to read, to write and calculate.
The children of most parents are easily brought to school, by a little
diligence on the part of the teachers and school committee; but there
are also children of low and abandoned, or, at least, neglected parents,
who live in a state of continual truancy; they are found on the banks of
your canals; they swarm in your large cities. When those children become
men, through lack of previous development, instruction and familiarity
with these three instruments of education, they cannot receive the full
educational influence of the state and church, of business and the
press: they lost their youthful education, and therefore they lose, in
consequence, their manly culture. They remain dwarfs, and are barbarians
in the midst of society; there will be exceptional men whom nothing can
make vulgar; but this will be the lot of the mass. They cannot perform
the intelligent labor which business demands, only the brute work, so
they lose the development which comes through the hand that is active in
the higher modes of industry, which, after all, is the greatest
educational force; accordingly, they cannot compete with ordinary men,
and remain poor; lacking also that self-respect which comes of being
respected, they fall into beggary, into intemperance, into crime; so,
from being idlers at first, a stumbling-block in the way of society,
they become paupers, a positive burden which society must take on its
shoulders; or they turn into criminals, active foes to the industry, the
order, and the virtue of society.
Now if a man abandons the body of his child, the state adopts that body
for a time; takes the guardianship thereof, for the child's own sake;
sees that it is housed, fed, clad, and cared for. If a man abandons his
child's spirit, and the child commits a crime, the state, for its own
sake, assumes the temporary guardianship thereof, and puts him in a
jail. When a man deserts his child, taking no concern about his
education, I venture to make the suggestion, whether it would not be
well, as a last resort, for the State to assume the guardianship of the
child for its own sake, and for the child's sake. We allow no one, with
ever so thick a skin, to grow up in nakedness; why should we suffer a
child, with however so perverse a parent, to grow up in ignorance and
degenerate into crime? Certainly, a naked man is not so dangerous to
society as an ignorant man, nor is the spectacle so revolting. I should
have less hope of a state where the majority were so perverse as to
continue ignorant of reading, writing and calculating, than of one where
they were so thick-skinned as to wear no clothes. In Massachusetts,
there is an Asylum for juvenile offenders, established by the city of
Boston, a Farm School for bad boys, established by the characteristic
benevolence of the rich men of that place, and a State Reform School
under the charge of the Commonwealth: all these are for lads who break
the laws of the land. Would it not be better to take one step more,
adopt them before they offended, and allow no child to grow up in the
barbarism of ignorance? Has any man an unalienable right to live a
savage in the midst of civilization?
We need also public High Schools, to take children where the common
schools leave them, and carry them further on. Some States have done
something towards establishing such institutions; they are common in New
England. Some have established Normal Schools, special High Schools for
the particular and professional education of public teachers. Without
these, it is plain there would not be a supply of competent educators
for the public service.
Then we need free Colleges, conducted by public officers, and paid for
by the public purse. Without these the scheme is not perfect. The idea
which lies at the basis of the public education of a people in a
democracy, is this: Every man, on condition of doing his duty, has a
right to the means of education, as much as a right, on the same
condition, to the means of defence from a public enemy in time of war,
or from starvation in time of plenty and of peace. I say every man, I
mean every woman also. The amount of education must depend on the three
factors named before,--on the general achievement of mankind, the
special ability of the state, and the particular power of the
individual.
If all is free, common schools, high schools, and colleges, boys and
girls of common ability and common love of learning, will get a common
education; those of greater ability, a more extended education, and
those of the highest powers, the best culture which the race can now
furnish, and the state afford. Hitherto no nation has established a
public college, wholly at the public cost, where the children of the
poor and the rich could enjoy together the great national charity of
superior education. To do this is certainly not consistent with the idea
of a theocracy or an aristocracy, but it is indispensable to the
complete realization of a democracy. Otherwise the children of the rich
will have a monopoly of superior education, which is the case with the
girls everywhere--for only the daughters of rich men can get a superior
education, even in the United States--and with boys in England and
France, and of course the offices, emoluments and honors which depend on
a superior education; or else the means thereof will be provided for
poor lads by private benefactions, charity-funds and the like, which
some pious and noble man has devoted to this work. In this case the
institutions will have a sectarian character, be managed by narrow,
bigoted men, and the gift of the means of education be coupled with
conditions which must diminish its value, and fetter the free spirit of
the young man. This takes place in many of the collegiate establishments
of the North, which, notwithstanding those defects, have done a great
good to mankind.
The Common Schools giving their pupil the power of reading, writing and
calculating, developing his faculties and furnishing him with much
elementary knowledge, put him in communication with all that is written
in a common form, in the English tongue; its treasures lie level to his
eye and hand. The High School and the College, teaching him also other
languages, afford him access to the treasures contained there; teaching
him the mathematics and furnishing him with the discipline of science,
they enable him to understand all that has hitherto been recorded in the
compendious forms of philosophy, and thus place the child of large
ability in connection with all the spiritual treasures of the world. In
the mean time, for all these pupils, there is the material and the human
world about them, the world of consciousness within. They can study both
and add what they may to the treasures of human discovery or invention.
It seems to me that it is the duty of the state to place the means of
this education within the reach of all children of superior ability,--a
duty that follows from the very idea of a democracy, not to speak of
the idea of Christianity. It is not less the interest of the state to do
so, for then, youths, well born, with good abilities, will not be
hindered from getting a breeding proportionate to their birth, and from
occupying the stations which are adequately filled only by men of
superior native abilities, enriched by culture, and developed to their
highest power. Then the work of such stations will fall to the lot of
such men, and of course be done. Eminent ability, talent, or genius,
should have eminent education, and so serve the nation in its eminent
kind; for when God makes a million-minded man, as once or twice in the
ages, or a myriad-minded man, as He does now and then, it is plain that
this gift also is to be accounted precious, and used for the advantage
of all.
I say no state has ever attempted to establish such institutions; yet
the Government of the United States has a seminary for the public
education of a few men at the public cost. But it is a school to qualify
men to fight; they learn the science of destruction, the art thereof,
the kindred art and science of defence. If the same money we now pay for
military education at West Point were directed to the education of
teachers of the highest class, say professors and presidents of
colleges; if the same pains were taken to procure able men, to furnish
them with the proper instruction for their special work, and give them
the best possible general development of their powers, not forgetting
the moral, the affectional and the religious, and animating them with
the philanthropic spirit needed for such a work, how much better results
would appear! But in the present intellectual condition of the people it
would be thought unworthy of a nation to train up school-masters! But is
it only soldiers that we need?
All these institutions are but introductory, a preparatory school, in
three departments, to fit youths for the great educational establishment
of practical life. This will find each youth and maiden as the schools
leave him, moulding him to their image, or moulded by him to a better.
So it is plain what the teachers are to do:--besides teaching the
special branches which fall to their lot, they are to supply for the
pupils, the defects of the State, of the Church, of Business, and the
Press, especially the moral defects. For this great work of mediating
between the mother and the world, for so furnishing and fitting the
rising generation, introducing them into practical life, that they shall
receive all the good of these public educational forces with none of the
ill, but enhance the one while they withstand the other, and so each in
himself realize the idea of man, and all in their social capacity, the
idea of a democracy--it is also plain what sort of men we need for
teachers: we need able men, well endowed by nature, well disciplined by
art; we need superior men--men juster than the state, truer and better
than the churches, more humane than business, and higher than the common
literature of the press. There are always men of that stamp born into
the world; enough of them in any age to do its work. How shall we bring
them to the task? Give young men and women the opportunity to fit
themselves for the work, at free common schools, high schools, normal
schools, and colleges; give them a pay corresponding to their services,
as in England and Rome; give them social rank and honor in that
proportion, and they will come; able men will come; men well disciplined
will come; men of talent and even genius for education will come.
In the state you pay a man of great political talents large money and
large honors; hence there is no lack of ability in politics, none of
competition for office. In the church you pay a good deal for a "smart
minister," one who can preach an audience into the pews and not himself
out of the pulpit. Talent enough goes to business; educated talent too,
at least with a special education for this, honor, and social
distinction. Private colleges and theological schools, often, have
powerful men for their professors and presidents; sometimes, men of much
talent for education; commonly, men of ripe learning and gentlemanly
accomplishments. Even men of genius seek a place as teachers in some
private college, where they are under the control of the leaders of a
sect--and must not doubt its creed, nor set science a-going freely lest
it run over some impotent theological dogma--or else of a little
coterie, or close corporation of men selected because radical or because
conservative, men chosen not on account of any special fitness for
superintending the superior education of the people, but because they
were one-sided, and leaned this way in Massachusetts and that in
Virginia. Able men seek such places because they get a competent pay,
competent honors, competent social rank. Senators and ambassadors are
not ashamed to be presidents of a college, and submit to the control of
a coterie, or a sect, and produce their results. If such men can be had
for private establishments to educate a few to work in such trammels and
such company, certainly, it is not difficult to get them for the public
and for the education of all. As the state has the most children to
educate, the most money to pay with, it is clear, not only that they
need the best ability for this work, but that they can have it soon as
they make the teacher's calling gainful and respectable.
In England and Rome, the most important spiritual function of the state
is the production of the gentleman and the priest; in democratic America
it is the production of the man. Some nations have taken pains with the
military training of all the people, for the sake of the state, and made
every man a soldier. No nation has hitherto taken equivalent pains with
the general education of all, for the sake of the state and the sake of
the citizens;--"the heathens of China" have done more than any Christian
people, for the education of all. This was not needed in a theocracy,
nor an aristocracy; it is essential to a democracy. This is needed
politically; for where all men are voters, the ignorant man, who cannot
read the ballot which he casts; the thief, the pirate, and the murderer,
may, at any time, turn the scale of an election, and do us a damage
which it will take centuries to repair. Ignorant men are the tools of
the demagogue; how often he uses them, and for what purposes, we need
not go back many years to learn. Let the people be ignorant and suffrage
universal, a very few men will control the state, and laugh at the folly
of the applauding multitude whose bread they waste, and on whose necks
they ride to insolence and miserable fame.