In the wide sense in which it is proposed to consider the subject of education, three things are pre-supposed—personal talents, personal application, and the divine blessing. Without capacities to be developed, or with very inferior capacities, education is either wholly useless, or only partially successful. As it has no absolute creative power, and is utterly unable to add a single faculty to the mind, so the first condition of its success is the capacity for improvement in the subject. An idiot may be slightly affected by it, but the feebleness of his original powers forbids the noblest result of education. It teaches men how most successfully to use their own native force, and by exercise to increase it, but in no case can it supply the absence of that force. It is not its province to inspire genius, since that is the breath of God in the soul, bestowed as seemeth to him good, and at the disposal of no finite power. It is enough if it unfold and discipline, and guide genius in its mission to the world. We are not to demand that it shall make of every man a Newton, a Milton, a Hall, a Chalmers, a Mason, a Washington; or of every woman a Sappho, a De Stael, a Roland, a Hemans.
The supposition that all intellects are originally equal, however flattering to our pride, is no less prejudicial to the cause of education than false in fact. It throws upon teachers the responsibility of developing talents that have scarcely an existence, and securing attainments within the range of only the very finest powers, during the period usually assigned to this work. To the ignorant it misrepresents and dishonors education, when it presents for their judgment a very inferior intellect, which all the training of the schools has not inspired with power, as a specimen of the result of liberal pursuits. Such an intellect can never stand up beside an active though untutored mind—untutored in the schools, yet disciplined by the necessities around it. It is only in the comparison of minds of equal original power, but of different and unequal mental discipline, that the result of a thorough education reveal themselves most strikingly. The genius that, partially educated, makes a fine bar-room politician, a good county judge, a respectable member of the lower house in our State Legislature, or an expert mechanic and shrewd farmer, when developed by study and adorned with learning, rises to the foremost rank of men. Great original talents will usually give indication of their presence amidst the most depressing circumstances. But when a mind of this stamp has been allowed to unfold itself under the genial influence of large educational advantages, how will it grow in power, outstripping the multitude, as some majestic tree, rooted in a soil of peculiar richness rises above and spreads itself abroad over the surrounding forest? Our inquiry, however, at present, is not exclusively respecting individuals thus highly gifted.
Geniuses are rare in our world; sent occasionally to break up the monotony of life, impart new impulses to a generation, like comets blazing along the sky, startle the dosing mind, no longer on the stretch to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge, and rouse men to gaze on visions of excellence yet unreached. Happily, the mass of mankind are not of this style of mind. Uniting by the process of education the powers which God has conferred upon them, with those of a more brilliant order which are occasionally given to a few, the advancement of the world in all things essential to its refinement, and purity, and exaltation, is probably as rapid and sure as it would be under a different constitution of things. Were all equally elevated, it might still be necessary for some to tower above the rest, and by the sense of inequality move the multitude to nobler aspirations. But while it is not permitted of God that all men should actually rise to thrones in the realm of mind, yet such is the native power of all sane minds, and such their great capacity of improvement, that, made subject to a healthful discipline they may not only qualify us for all the high duties of life on earth, but go on advancing in an ever-perfecting preparation for the life above.
The second thing pre-supposed in education is personal application. There is no thorough education that is not self-education. Unlike the statue which can be wrought only from without, the great work of education is to unfold the life within. This life always involves self-action. The scholar is not merely a passive recipient. He grows into power by an active reception of truth. Even when he listens to another's utterances of knowledge, what vigor of attention and memory are necessary to enable him to make that knowledge his own? But when he attempts himself to master a subject of importance, when he would rise into the higher region of mathematics, philosophy, history, poetry, religion, art; or even when he would prepare himself for grappling with the great questions of life, what long processes of thought! what patient gathering together of materials! what judgment, memory, comparison, and protracted meditation are essential to complete success? The man who would triumph over obstacles and ascend the heights of excellence in the realm of mind, must work with the continuous vigor of a steamship on an ocean voyage. Day by day the fire must burn, and the revolve in the calm and in the gale—in the sunshine and the storm. The innate excellency of genius or talents can give no exemption to its possessor from this law of mental growth. An educated mind is neither an aggregation of particles accreted around a center, as the stones grow, nor a substance, which, placed in a turner's lathe, comes forth an exquisitely wrought instrument. The mere passing through an academy or college, is not education. The enjoyment of the largest educational advantages by no means infers the possession of a mind and heart thoroughly educated; since there is an inner work to be performed by the subject of those advantages before he can lay claim to the possession of a well-disciplined and richly-stored intellect and affections. The phrase, "self-made men" is often so used as to convey the idea that the persons who have enjoyed the advantages of a liberal education, are rather made by their instructors. The supposition is in part unjust.
The outward means of education stimulate the mind, and thus assist the process of development; but it is absolutely essential to all growth in mental or moral excellence, that the person himself should be enlisted vigorously in the work. He must work as earnestly as the man destitute of his faculties. The difference between the two consists not in the fact that one walks and the other rides, but that the one is obliged to take a longer road to reach the same point. Teachers, books, recitations and lectures facilitate our course, direct us how most advantageously to study, point out the shortest path to the end we seek, and tend to rouse the soul to the putting forth of its powers; but neither of these can take the place of, or forestall intense personal application. The man without instructors, like a traveler without guide-boards, must take many a useless step, and often retrace his way. He may, after this experimental traveling, at length reach the same point with the person who has enjoyed superior literary aids, but it will cost the waste of many a precious hour, which might have been spent in enlarging the sphere of his vision and perfecting the symmetry of his intellectual powers. In cases of large attainments and ripe character, in either sex, the process of growth is laborious. Thinking is hard work. All things most excellent are the fruits of slow, patient working. The trees grow slowly, grain by grain; the planets creep round their orbits, inch by inch; the river hastens to the ocean by a gentle progress; the clouds gather the rain-drop from the invisible air, particle by particle, and we are not to ask that this immortal mind, the grandest thing in the world, shall reach its perfection by a single stride, or independently of the most early, profound and protracted self-labor. It is enough for us that, thankfully accepting the assistance of those who have ascended above us, we give ourselves to assiduous toil, until our souls grow up to the stature of perfect men.
The third thing pre-supposed in education is the divine benediction. In all spheres of action, we recognize the over-ruling providence of God working without us, and his Spirit commissioned to work within us. Nor is there any work of mortal life in which we need to allay unto ourselves the wisdom and energy of Jehovah, as an essential element of success than is this long process where truth, affection, decision, judgment, and perseverance in the teacher, are to win into the paths of self-labor minds of every degree of ability, and dispositions of every variety. When God smiles upon us, then this grand work of moulding hearts and intellects for their high destiny moves forward without friction, and the young heart silently and joyously comes forth into the light.
Original.
GLEANINGS BY THE WAYSIDE. No. 3.
A river never rises higher than the source from whence it springs; so a character is never more elevated and consistent, in mature life, than the principles which were adopted in childhood were pure, reasonable, and consistent with truth: so a tree is either good or bad, and brings forth fruit after its own kind, though it be ever so stinted. If you find a crab-apple on a tree, you may be sure that the tree is a crab-tree. So one can predicate a pretty correct opinion of a person, as to character, disposition, and modes of thinking and acting, from a single isolated remark, incidentally made, or an act performed on the spur of the moment.