"You can not educate people who do not want to be educated," said Tyndall. The value of an education lies in the struggle to get it. Do too much for people, and they will do nothing for themselves.
Many of the students at Harmony Hall had been sent there by Owen, because he, in the greatness of his heart and the blindness of his zeal, thought they needed education. They may have needed it; but they did not want it: ease was their aim.
The indifference and ingratitude Robert Owen met with did not discourage him: it only gave him an occasional pause. He thought that the bad example of English society was too close to his experiments: it vitiated the atmosphere.
So he came over to America and founded the town of New Harmony, Indiana. The fine solid buildings he erected in Posey County, then a wilderness, are still there.
As for the most romantic and interesting history of New Harmony, Robert Owen and his socialistic experiments, I must refer the gentle reader to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a work I have found very useful in the course of making my original researches.
After a year at Harmony Hall, Tyndall saw that he would have to get out or else become a victim of arrested development, through too much acceptance of a strong man's bounty. "You can not afford to accept anything for nothing," he said. Life at Harmony Hall to him was very much like life in a monastery, to which stricken men flee when the old world seems too much for them. "When all the people live the ideal life, I'll live it; but until then I'm only one of the great many strugglers." Besides, he felt that in missing university training he had dropped something out of his life. Now he would go to Germany and see for himself what he had missed.
While railroading he had saved up nearly four hundred pounds. This money he had offered at one time to invest in shares in the Owen mills. But Robert Owen said, "Wait two years and then see how you feel!"
Robert Owen was not a financial exploiter. Tyndall may have differed with him in a philosophic way; but they never ceased to honor and respect each other.
And so John Tyndall bade the ideal life good-by, and went out into the stress, strife and struggle, resolved to spend his two thousand dollars in bettering his education, and then to start life anew.
