Yet simple as this duty seems, society with all its aims and appliances, has not as yet attained the refinement of culture needful to the receiving of a child into its bosom, and of educating it to the full demands of its endowments. With the child comes the seed of states; the family being the nursery of the citizen, the measure of a people's civilization. As the homes, so the state; as the parents, so the children. Nor has society fathered its functions till all children, befriended from the first, are fashioned into the image each is capable of attaining. Other goods are but aids to this end; all are necessary for educating the human being, since the child is the summary of all gifts, and the most precious of all trusts committed to the state for trial and training.
Yet still the decease of gifts follows fast on their birth, and parents are oftener called beside the bier of these children of the sun than to their nuptials or coronation. They hold their jubilees in weeds rather; and the untimeliness of genius is the tragedy of life as of letters. Amidst the sickliness and wane of things, neither poet nor saint survives his laurel for more than a day. Far from treating the human being with anything like the subtlety and skill displayed by the ancient masters, we wait for the first hint of an institution for training youth into the fulness of their powers, by the genial touch of sensibility, the magnetism of thought. Left instead to the superficial culture of the sects, the traditions of the elders, the guidance of worldlings, they slide soon into vague conjectures, run adrift on the sea of doubt, the shoals of expediency, bereft of faith in themselves as in things unseen and ideal.
"See gifted youths rush out to feed on whims; Fashion craves their hours, low hopes their aim, To win not noble women for their brides, But titled slaves, heirs to some teasing caste, For beauty without culture seems mere show; As if great nature laid not on her tints With more contrivance than the brush of art; Or schools where grammars hide the place of sense, And shallow stammering drowns the native voice."
Not letters but life chiefly educate if we are educatable. But experience follows oftenest too late for most and too distant from the work to help us directly without an interpreter to assist in making timely use of it. Fortunate will it be, if by instinct and mother wit we take life at first hand, converting it forthwith into thought and habit. Character comes of temperament far more than of acquirement. And the most that culture performs is the drawing forth, fashioning and polishing the natural gifts. But we cannot create what is not inborn. A fine brain is a spiritual endowment, as from the head of Jove sprang Minerva. Centuries of culture pass into pure power; piety and genius are parents of piety and genius. But less discriminating than were the ancient carvers in wood and ivory, who, when they had an order for a head of Hermes, or any ordinary god even, searched carefully for substances adapted to receive the proper form, states attempt to fashion saints and rulers out of any materials that chance brings to hand. Omitting mind, or overriding it in our haste to come at immediate and superficial results, we ignore ideas and principles altogether. Aiming at little we attain little. For while our country opens the freest scope for the exercise of the higher gifts of genius and character, we cherish these but feebly in our public or private training. The highest prizes held forth to youth are not only beneath the aims of a noble ambition, but the stimulus for their attainment is wanting. Even in New England, culture is external, provincial; neglectful of the better parts of body and mind; behind the old countries, that of the ancient states. We cram the memory with the lore of foreign tongues, the understanding with a medley of learning, leaving fancy, imagination, the moral sentiment, mainly to shift for themselves—the forming of the manners, motives, aims and aspirations. Then what substitutes have we, for the falconry, archery, the hunting, fishing, of earlier and what we deem barbarous times? Yet these were sports, heroic and wholesome, giving a national coloring and strength of character: the wrestling too, throwing the quoit, and other manly games, horsemanship, boating, swimming, were a natural gymnastic for body and mind. War also had its advantages. So the plays and games were schools of genius and valor: the people were refined by contact with the refinements of the best citizens, the guardians of public taste and honor providing hereby a polite and manly culture suited to the needs of the state. Education extended into the age of ripe maturity. Nor was the disciple committed to himself till he became the master. And through life he was prompted by incentives of virtue and fame. The state was venerable, ennobled as it was by the genius and services of great men; great men earning honorably their renown by teaching.
'Tis noble minds who noble men create, And they who have great manners form mankind.
Happy the man who wins the confidence of the rising youth of his time. He becomes priest and professor elect without degrees of synods or universities. He shapes the future of the next generation as of the succeeding. A noble artist he cherishes visions of excellence not easily impersonated or spoken. His life and teachings are studies for high ideals.
The highest end of instruction is to discipline and liberalize mind and character by familiarizing the thoughts with those of the learned and wise. Character is inspired by admiration of character, intellect by participating in intellect. The masters form masters. And had I the choice of my class, I would put Plato's works at once into its hands. And, for a beginning,—say the Alcibiades of the earlier Dialogues. I know of no discipline under the care of a thoughtful instructor so fitting for educating the reason, quickening the moral sense, refining the sensibilities, fashioning the manners, ennobling the character, as exercises in the Socratic dialectic: opening the whole armory of gifts, it sharpens and polishes these for the victories of life. The youth who masters Plato wins fairly his degree alike in humanity and divinity. He has the key to the mysteries, ancient and modern.[[C]]
Take the following as an example of the pure dialectic method as of metaphysic;
"In what way, asks Socrates, may we attain to know the soul itself with the greatest clearness? for when we know this, it seems we shall know ourselves. Now, in the name of the gods, whether are we not ignorant of the right meanings of that Delphic inscription just now mentioned, 'Know thyself?'"