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.