It is sometimes the bane of the poor that they do not work, and it is often equally the bane of the rich that they have nothing to do. The idle, both rich and poor, carry a weight of reproach that not all ought to bear. The disposition and the ability to labor are both the result of education; and why should the uneducated be better able to labor than to read Greek and Latin? Surely only that there are more teachers in one department than in the others; but a good teacher of labor may be as uncommon as a good teacher of Latin or Greek. There is a false, vicious, unmanly pride, which leads our youth of both sexes to shun labor; and it is the business of the true teacher to extirpate this growth of a diseased civilization. And we could have no faith in this school, if it were not a school of industry as well as of morality,—a school in which the divine law of labor is to be observed equally with the laws of men. Industry is near to all the virtues. In this era every branch of labor is an art, and sometimes it is necessary for the laborer to be both an artist and a scientific person. How great, then, the misfortune of those, whether rich or poor, who are uninstructed in the business of life! We should hardly know what judgment to pass upon a man of wealth who should entirely neglect the education of his children in schools; but the common indifference to industrial learning is not less reprehensible. Labor should be systematic; not constant, indeed, but always to be reckoned as the great business of life, never to be avoided, never to cease.
Labor gives us a better knowledge of the fulness, magnificence and glory, of the divine blessing of creation. This lesson may be learned by the farmer in the wonderful growth of vegetation; by the artist, in the powers of invention and taste of the human mind and soul; by the man of science, in the beauty of an insect or the order of a universe. The vision of the idle is limited. The ability to see may be improved by education as much as the ability to read, remember, or converse. With many people, not seeing is a habit. Near-sighted persons are generally those who declined to look at distant objects; and so nature, true to the most perfect rules of economy, refused to keep in order faculties that were entirely neglected. The laborer's recompense is not money, nor the accumulation of worldly goods chiefly; but it is in his increased ability to observe, appreciate, and enjoy the world, with its beauties and blessings. Nor is labor, the penalty for sin, a punishment merely, but a divine means of reformation. It is, therefore, a moral discipline that all should submit to; and especially is it a means by which the youth here are to be prepared for the duties of life. But industry is not only near to all the virtues; it is itself a virtue, as idleness is a vice. The word labor is, of course, used in the broadest signification. Labor is any honest employment, or use of the head or hands, which brings good to ourselves, and consequently, though indirectly, brings good to our fellow-men.
The state has now furnished a home, reproduced, as far as practicable, the family relation, and provided for a class of neglected and exposed girls the means of mental, industrial, moral, and religious culture. The plan appears well; but its practical value depends upon the fidelity of its execution by the superintendent, matrons and assistants. I venture to predict in advance, that the degree of success is mainly within their control. This is a school, they are the teachers; and they must bend to the rule which all true teachers willingly accept.
The teacher must be what he would have his pupils become. This was the standard of the great Teacher; this is the aim of all who desire to make education a matter of reality and life, and not merely a knowledge of signs and forms. Here will be needed a spirit and principle of devotion which will be fruitful in humility, patience, earnestness, energy, good words and works for all. Here must be strictness, possibly sternness of discipline; but this is not incompatible with the qualities mentioned. It is a principle at Mettray to combine unbounded personal kindness with a rigid exclusion of personal indulgence.
This principle produces good results that are two-fold in their influence. First, personal kindness in the teacher induces a reciprocal quality in the pupils. The habit of personal kindness, proceeding from right feelings, is a potent element of good in the family, the school, and the prison. Indeed, it is an element of good citizenship; and no one destitute of this quality ought to be intrusted with the education of children, or the punishment and reformation of criminals.
Secondly, the rigid exclusion of personal indulgence trains the inmates in the virtue of self-control. And may it not be forgotten that all apparent reformation must be hedged by this cardinal virtue of practical life! Otherwise the best-formed expectations will fail; the highest hopes will be disappointed; and the life of these teachers, and the promise of the youth who may be gathered here, will be like the sun and the winds upon the desert, which bring neither refreshing showers nor fruitful harvests. Every form of labor requires faith. This labor requires faith in yourselves, and faith in others;—faith in yourselves, as teachers here, based upon your own knowledge of what you are and are to do; and faith in others upon the divine declaration that God breathed into man the breath of life, and he became a living soul,—not merely as the previous creations, possessed of animal life; but as a sentient, intellectual, and moral being, capable of a progressive, immortal existence.
"'Tis nature's law
That none, the meanest of created things,
Should exist