I have been subjected to some good-natured banter for having said that I looked forward to a time when our artisans and mechanics would be great readers. But it is surely not unreasonable to regard our social condition as susceptible of great improvement. The spread of schools, the cheapness of books, the establishment of free libraries will, it may be hoped, exercise a civilizing and ennobling influence. They will even, I believe, do much to diminish poverty and suffering, so much of which is due to ignorance and to the want of interest and brightness in uneducated life. So far as our elementary schools are concerned, there is no doubt much difficulty in apportioning the National Grant without unduly stimulating mere mechanical instruction. But this is not the place to discuss the subject of religious or moral training, or the system of apportioning the grant.
If we succeed in giving the love of learning, the learning itself is sure to follow.
We should therefore endeavor to educate our children so that every country walk may be a pleasure; that the discoveries of science may be a living interest; that our national history and poetry may be sources of legitimate pride and rational enjoyment. In short, our schools, if they are to be worthy of the name—if they are to fulfil their high function—must be something more than mere places of dry study; they must train the children educated in them so that they may be able to appreciate and enjoy those intellectual gifts which might be, and ought to be, a source of interest and of happiness, alike to the high and to the low, to the rich and to the poor.
A wise system of education will at least teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn; it will enable us to realize that those who complain of the tiresome monotony of life have only themselves to blame; and that knowledge is pleasure as well as power. It will lead us all to try with Milton "to behold the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of study," and to feel with Bacon that "no pleasure is comparable is the standing upon the vantage ground of truth."
We should then indeed realize in part, for as yet we cannot do so fully, the "sacred trusts of health, strength, and time," and how thankful we ought to be for the inestimable gift of life.
[1] Bacon.
[2] Goethe.
[3] Bacon.