CHAPTER VIII. THE IMPORTANCE OF POPULAR EDUCATION. Education, as the means of improving the mural and intellectual faculties, is, under all circumstances, a subject of the most imposing consideration. To rescue man from that state of degradation to which he is doomed unless redeemed by education; to unfold his physical, intellectual, and moral powers, and to fit him for those high destinies which his Creator has prepared for him, can not fail to excite the most ardent sensibility of the philosopher and philanthropist. A comparison of the savage that roams through the forest with the enlightened inhabitant of a civilized country would be a brief but impressive representation of the momentous importance of education.-- Report of School Commissioners, New York , 1812.

He who has carefully perused the preceding chapters of this work is already aware that we regard the subject of popular education as one of paramount importance. The object of devoting a chapter to the special consideration of this subject at this time is, if possible, to remove from the mind any remaining doubts in relation to it. The reader will bear in mind that we regard education as having reference to the whole man—the body, the mind, and the heart; and that its object, and, when rightly directed, its effect, is to make him a complete creature after his kind. To his frame it should give vigor, activity, and beauty; to his intellect, power and thoughtfulness; and to his heart, virtue and felicity.

We shall be the better prepared to appreciate the importance and necessity of a judicious system of training and instruction if we consider that, in its absence, every individual will be educated by circumstances. Let it be borne in mind, then, that all the children in every community will be educated somewhere and somehow; and that it devolves upon citizens and parents to determine whether the children of the present generation shall receive their training in the school-house or in the streets; and if in the former, whether in good or poor schools.

In the discharge of my official duties in this state, I had occasion to visit two counties in 1846 in which there were no organized common schools.[30] They were not, however, without places of instruction, for in the shire town of each of those counties there were a billiard-room, bar-rooms, and bowling-alleys. I was forcibly impressed with the remark of an Indian chief residing in one of those counties. As he was passing along the streets one day, he discovered a second bowling-alley in process of erection. He paused, and, surveying it attentively, remarked to those at work upon it as follows: "You have here another long building going up rapidly; and," he added, "is this the place where our children are to be educated?" Such keen and well-merited rebuke rarely falls from human lips. Those two bowling-alleys, with their bars—indispensable appendages—were thronged from six o'clock in the morning until past midnight, six days in the week. They were, moreover, the very places where many of the youth of that village were receiving their education. And who were their teachers? Idlers, tipplers, gamblers, profane persons, Sabbath-breakers. Mark well this truth: as is the teacher, so will be the school. Those pupils will graduate, it may be, at our poor-houses, at our county jails, or at the state penitentiary. These debasing and corrupting appendages of civilization spent not all their influence upon the white man; and this is what gave pungency to the withering satire of the chief. They were at once working the ruin of the red man and of his pale neighbor.

The rudest nations or individuals can not be said to be wholly without education. Even the wildest savage is taught by his superiors not only the best mode of procuring food and shelter known to his race, but also the most adroit manner of defending himself and destroying his enemy. But we use the term in a higher, broader, and more capacious sense, as having reference to the whole man, and the whole duration of his being. A volume might be filled in stating and illustrating the advantages of education. We have only space to state and elucidate a few propositions. We remark, then, first, that

The evils of ignorance are not few in number nor small in magnitude. The whole history of the world justifies the statement that ignorant and uncultivated mind is prone to sensuality and cruelty. In what countries, let me ask, are the people most given to the lowest forms of animal gratification, and most regardless of the lives and happiness of others? Is it not in pagan lands, over which moral and intellectual darkness broods, and where men are vile without shame, and cruel without remorse? And if from pagan we pass to Christian countries, we shall find that those in which education is least prevalent are the very ones in which there is the most immorality, and the greatest indifference to the sufferings of animated and sentient beings. Spain—in which, until recently, there was but one newspaper printed, and in which only about one in thirty five of the people are instructed in schools—has a population about equal to that of England and Wales. Popular education in the latter countries, although much behind several of the other European states, is still greatly in advance of what it is in Spain, and there is an equally marked difference in the state of morals in the people of these countries. In England and Wales the whole number of convictions for murder in the year eighteen hundred and twenty-six was thirteen, and the number convicted for wounding, etc., with intent to kill, was fourteen; while in Spain, the number convicted during the same year was, for murder, twelve hundred and thirty-three! and for maiming with intent to kill, seventeen hundred and seventy-three! or a more than one hundred fold greater number than in the former countries. Facts like these speak volumes in favor of the elevating influences of popular education, while they show most conclusively the low and degraded condition to which people will sink in countries in which education is neglected.

Spain affords an apt illustration of the truth of the statement just made, that ignorant and uncultivated people are prone to sensuality and cruelty. Scenes of cruelty and blood constitute the favorite amusement of the Spaniards, their greatest delight being in bull-fights. An eye-witness describes the manner in which they conduct themselves during these appalling scenes in the following language. "The intense interest which they feel in this game is visible throughout, and often loudly expressed. An astounding shout always accompanies a critical moment. Whether it be the bull or man who is in danger, their joy is excessive; but their greatest sympathy is given to the feats of the bull! If the picador receives the bull gallantly and forces him to retreat, or if the matadore courageously faces and wounds the bull, they applaud these acts of science and valor; but if the bull overthrow the horse and his rider, or if the matadore miss his aim and the bull seems ready to gore him, their delight knows no bounds. And it is certainly a fine spectacle to see thousands of spectators rise simultaneously, as they always do when the interest is intense. The greatest and most crowded theater in Europe presents nothing half so imposing as this. But how barbarous, how brutal is the whole exhibition! Could an English audience witness the scenes that are repeated every week in Madrid, a universal burst of 'shame!' would follow the spectacle of a horse gored and bleeding, and actually treading upon his own entrails while he gallops round the arena. Even the appearance of the goaded bull could not be borne, panting, covered with wounds and blood, lacerated by darts, and yet brave and resolute to the end.

"The spectacle continued two hours and a half, and during that time there were seven bulls killed and six horses. When the last bull was dispatched, the people immediately rushed into the arena, and the carcass was dragged out amid the most deafening shouts."—Spain in 1830, vol. i., p. 191.

The same writer, after describing another fight, in which one bull had killed three horses and one man, and remained master of the arena, remarks, that "this was a time to observe the character of the people. When the unfortunate picador was killed, in place of a general exclamation of horror and loud expressions of pity, the universal cry was 'Que es bravo ese toro! ('Ah, the admirable bull!') The whole scene produced the most unbounded delight; the greater the horror, the greater was the shouting, and the more vehement the expressions of satisfaction. I did not perceive a single female avert her head or betray the slightest symptom of wounded feeling."—Vol. i., p. 195.

A correct system of public instruction develops a character widely different from that here brought to light. Instead of a love for vicious excitement, it cultivates a taste for simple and innocent pleasures, and gives to its subjects a command over their passions, and a disposition habitually to control them. It acquaints them with their duty, and enables them to find their highest pleasure in its discharge. They order their pursuits and choose their employments with reference to their own advantage, it is true; but still, a higher, and the controlling motive with them is, the promotion of the best good of the community in which they live. In short, their supreme desire is to co-operate with the beneficent Creator in advancing the permanent interests of the whole human family; in themselves obeying, and leading others to obey, all the laws which God has ordained for the government and well-being of his creatures.

Education, we said, dissipates the evils of ignorance. But in this country we hardly know what popular ignorance is. The most illiterate among us have derived many and inestimable advantages from our systems of public instruction. Occasionally persons are found among us who can neither read nor write. But even such persons insensibly imbibe ideas and moral influences from the more cultivated society about them which, in countries less favored, are denied to multitudes. Individuals who have had no early advantages for learning, who have never even entered a school-house, but have grown up amid a generally intelligent population, trained by the institutions established by our fathers, have in many instances acquired a mental character and influence which, but for these fortuitous circumstances, they could not have attained. The very excellence of our systems of education in many states of the Union, and the vital and pervading influence of the schools upon the public mind, reaching as they do, and improving even those that remain ignorant of letters, do not allow us to see the full extent of our obligation to them. This remark applies to all civilized countries where any systems of general education are adopted, but perhaps not to so great an extent in any other country as in our own.

The evils which flow from ignorance are deplorable enough in the case of individuals, although, as we have seen, the disastrous consequences are limited in the case of those who live surrounded by an intelligent community. But the general ignorance of large numbers and entire classes of men, unreached by the elevating influence of the educated, acting under the unchastened stimulus of the passions, and excited by the various causes of discontent which are constantly occurring in the progress of human affairs, is not unfrequently productive of scenes, the contemplation of which makes humanity shudder. The following extract from a foreign journal affords a pertinent illustration of the evils which flow from popular ignorance. It relates to the outrages committed by the peasantry in a part of Hungary in consequence of the ravages of the cholera in that region.

"The suspicion that the cholera was caused by poisoning the wells was universal among the peasantry of the counties of Zips and Zemplin, and every one was fully convinced of its truth. The first commotion arose in Klucknow, where, it is said, some peasants died in consequence of taking the preservatives; whether by an immoderate use of medicine, or whether they thought they were to take chloride of lime internally, is not known. This story, with a sudden and violent breaking out of the cholera at Klucknow, led the peasants to a notion of the poisoning of the wells, which spread like lightning. In the sequel, in the attack of the estate of Count Czaki, a servant of the chief bailiff was on the point of being murdered, when, to save his life, he offered to disclose something important. He said that he received from his master two pounds of poisonous powder, with orders to throw it into the wells, and, with an ax over his head, took oath publicly, in the church, to the truth of his statement. These statements, and the fact that the peasants, when they forcibly entered the houses of the land-owners, every where found chloride of lime, which they took for the poisonous powder, confirmed their suspicions, and drove the people to madness. In this state of excitement, they committed the most appalling excesses. Thus, for instance, when a detachment of thirty soldiers, headed by an ensign, attempted to restore order in Klucknow, the peasants, who were ten times their number, fell upon them; the soldiers were released, but the ensign was bound, tortured with scissors and knives, then beheaded, and his head fixed on a pike as a trophy. A civil officer in company with the military was drowned, his carriage broken, and, chloride of lime being found in the carriage, one of the inmates was compelled to eat it till he vomited blood, which again confirmed the notion of poison. On the attack of the house of the lord at Klucknow, the countess saved her life by piteous entreaties: but the chief bailiff, in whose house chloride of lime was unhappily found, was killed, together with his son, a little daughter, a clerk, a maid, and two students who boarded with him. So the bands went from village to village; wherever a nobleman or a physician was found, death was his lot; and in a short time it was known that the high constable of the county of Zemplin, and several counts, nobles, and parish priests, had been murdered. A clergyman was hanged because he refused to take an oath that he had thrown poison into a well; the eyes of a countess were put out, and innocent children cut to pieces. Count Czaki, having first ascertained that his family was safe, fled from his estate at the risk of his life; but he was stopped at Kirtchtrauf, pelted with stones, and wounded all over, torn from his horse, and only saved by a worthy merchant who fell on him, crying, 'Now I have got the rascal.' He drew the count into a neighboring convent, where his wounds were dressed, and a refuge afforded him. His secretary was struck from his horse with an ax, but saved in a similar manner, and in the evening conveyed with his master to Leutschau."[31]

A little knowledge on the part of the peasantry would have prevented these horrible scenes. Had they learned even the elements of physiology and chemistry, they would have known that cleanliness is essential to health at all times, and that during the prevalence of a malignant epidemic it is doubly needful. They would have known, also, that chloride of lime is not a medicine to be taken internally, but that it is very useful for disinfecting offensive apartments, and that its tendency, when properly used, would be to counteract the cause of the disease which they so much dreaded.

Among all nations, and in all ages of the world, ignorance has not only debarred mankind from many exquisite and sublime enjoyments, but has created innumerable unfounded alarms, which greatly increase the sum of human misery. In the early ages of the world, a total eclipse of the sun or of the moon was regarded with the utmost consternation, as if some unusual catastrophe had been about to befall the universe. Believing that the moon in an eclipse was sickening or dying, through the influence of enchanters, the trembling spectators had recourse to the ringing of bells, the sounding of trumpets, the beating of brazen vessels, and to loud and horrid exclamations, in order to break the enchantment, and to drown the muttering of witches, that the moon might not hear them. Nor are such foolish opinions and customs yet banished from the world.

Comets, too, with their blazing tails, were long regarded, and still are by many, as harbingers of divine vengeance, presaging famines and inundations, or the downfall of princes and the destruction of empires. The northern lights have been frequently gazed at with similar apprehensions, whole provinces having been thrown into consternation by the fantastic coruscations of these lambent meteors. Some pretend to see in these harmless lights armies mixing in fierce encounter and fields streaming with blood, while others behold states overthrown, earthquakes, inundations, pestilences, and the most dreadful calamities. Because some one or other of these calamities formerly happened soon after the appearance of a comet or the blaze of an aurora, therefore they are considered either as the causes or the prognostics of such events.

Popular ignorance has given rise to the practice of judicial astrology; an art which, with all its foolish notions so fatal to the peace of mankind, has been practiced in every period of time. Under a belief that the characters and the fates of men are dependent on the various aspects of the stars and conjunctions of the planets, the most unfounded apprehensions, as well as the most delusive hopes, have been excited by the professors of this fallacious science. Such impositions on the credulity of mankind are founded on the grossest absurdity and the most palpable ignorance of the nature of things; still, in the midst of the light of science which the present century has shed upon the world, the astrologer meets with a rich support[32] even in the metropolis of Great Britain; and soothsayers, if not astrologers, get great gain by their craft in various portions of the United States. The extensive annual sale of hundreds of thousands of copies of almanacs that abound in astrological predictions in the United Stales and in Great Britain, and the extent to which they are consulted, affords a striking proof of the belief which is still attached to the doctrines of this fallacious science, and of the ignorance and credulity from which such a belief proceeds.

Shooting stars, fiery meteors, lunar rainbows, and other atmospherical phenomena, have likewise been considered by some as ominous of impending calamities, but they are regarded in a very different light by scientific observers. The most sublime phenomenon of shooting stars of which the world has furnished any record was witnessed throughout the United States on the morning of the 13th of November, 1833. This astonishing exhibition covered no inconsiderable portion of the earth's surface. The first appearance was every where that of fire-works of the most imposing grandeur, covering the entire vault of heaven with myriads of fire-balls resembling sky-rockets; but the most brilliant sky-rockets and fire-works of art bear less relation to the splendors of this celestial exhibition than the twinkling of the most tiny star to the broad glare of the noonday sun. Their coruscations were bright, gleaming, and incessant, and they fell thick as the flakes in the early snows of December. The whole heavens seemed in motion, and suggested to some the awful grandeur of the image employed in the Apocalypse upon the opening of the sixth seal, when "the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind."

While these scenes of grandeur were viewed with unspeakable delight by enlightened scientific observers, the ignorant and superstitious were overpowered with horror and dismay. The description which a gentleman of South Carolina gave of the effect produced by this phenomenon upon his ignorant blacks will apply well to many hardly better informed white persons. "I was suddenly awakened," said he, "by the most distressing cries that ever fell upon my ears. Shrieks of horror and cries of mercy I could hear from most of the negroes of three plantations, amounting in all to about six or eight hundred. While earnestly listening for the cause, I heard a faint voice near the door calling my name: I arose, and, taking my sword, stood at the door. At this moment I heard the same voice still beseeching me to rise and saying, 'O! my God, the world is on fire!' I then opened the door, and it is difficult to say which excited me most, the awfulness of the scene or the distressed cries of the negroes. Upward of one hundred lay prostrate on the ground, some speechless, and some with the bitterest cries, but most with their hands raised, imploring God to save the world and them. The scene was truly awful, for never did rain fall much thicker than the meteors fell toward the earth; east, west, north, and south, it was the same."

Those harmless meteors, the ignes fatui, which hover above moist and fenny places in the night-time, emitting a glimmering light, have been regarded by the ignorant as malicious spirits endeavoring to deceive the bewildered traveler and lead him to destruction. The plaintive note of the mourning dove, the ticking noise of the little insect called the death-watch, the howling of a dog in the night-time, the meeting of a bitch with whelps, or a snake lying in the road, the breaking of a looking-glass, and even the falling of salt from the table, and the curling of a fiber of wick in a burning candle, together with many other equally harmless incidents, have been regarded with apprehensions of terror, being considered as unfailing signs of impending disasters or of approaching death.

Dr. Dick remarks, that in the Highlands of Scotland—and it should be borne in mind that the Scotch are, as a nation, better instructed, and more moral and religious in their habits, than any other people in Europe—the motions and appearances of the clouds were, not long ago, considered ominous of disastrous events. On the evening before new year's day, if a black cloud appeared in any part of the horizon, it was thought to prognosticate a plague, a famine, or the death of some great man in that part of the country over which it seemed to hang; and in order to ascertain the place threatened by the omen, the motions of the clouds were often watched through the whole night. In the same country, the inhabitants regard certain days as unlucky, or ominous of bad fortune. The day of the week on which the third of May falls is deemed unlucky throughout the year.

With a very slight change, a part of this description would apply well to our own country, even up to the present time. How many thousands of days are lost annually in the United States in consequence of superstitious fears in relation to setting out upon a journey, entering upon a new pursuit of any kind, or even beginning to plant or plow on Friday, the unlucky day of the Americans. How many persons have had misfortunes attend them all their lives because they were born, or christened, or married on Friday! How many houses have been burned because they were begun, raised, or moved into on Friday! How many steamboats and vessels have been burned or wrecked because they were launched or sailed on Friday! And yet, strange as it may seem, this is the very day on which Columbus set sail on a voyage that resulted in the discovery of the New World.

Many people, and in some instances whole communities, always commence plowing, sowing, and reaping on Tuesday, though by this rule the most favorable weather for these purposes is frequently lost. Others, again, will not, on any account, perform certain kinds of labor on Friday. The age of the moon is also much attended to in many parts of the world. Among the vulgar Highlanders, an opinion prevails, that if a house takes fire while the moon is in the decrease, the family will from that time decline in its circumstances and sink into poverty. In this country, equally unfounded and ridiculous opinions are entertained. Passing by the more commonly received opinions that if swine are killed in the old of the moon, the pork will shrink in the pot; that seed sown at this time will be less likely to do well, etc., etc., I will mention one or two instances of opinions which, although equally well founded, are less commonly received, and which may therefore more forcibly impress the popular mind. A few years ago, I spent some months in a neighboring state, in a community where the belief was commonly entertained that shingles should not be laid nor stakes driven in the old of the moon, because the former would be more likely to warp, and the latter to be thrown by the frost. The same and kindred opinions are extensively held in various portions of the United States.

These are a few, and but a very few, of the superstitious notions and vain fears by which the great majority of the human race, in every age and country, have been enslaved, as he who will take the pains to peruse Dr. Dick's admirable treatise on the improvement of society by the diffusion of knowledge can not fail to be convinced. That such absurd notions should ever have prevailed is a most grating and humiliating thought, when we consider the noble faculties with which man is endowed. That they still prevail to a great extent, even in our own country, is a striking proof that as yet we are, as a people, but just emerging from the gloom of intellectual darkness. The prevalence of such opinions is to be regretted, not only on account of the groundless alarms they create, but chiefly on account of the false ideas they inspire with regard to the nature of the Supreme Ruler of the universe, and of his arrangements in the government of the world. He whose mind is enlightened with true science perceives throughout all nature the most striking evidences of benevolent design, and rejoices in the benignity of the Great Parent of the universe, discovering nothing in the arrangements of the Creator, in any department of his works, which has a direct tendency to produce pain to any intelligent or sensitive being. The superstitious man, on the contrary, contemplates the sky, the air, the waters, and the earth as filled with malicious beings, ever ready to haunt him with terror or to plot his destruction. The former contemplates the Deity directing the movements of the material world by fixed and invariable laws, which none but himself can counteract or suspend. The latter views these movements as continually liable to be controlled by capricious and malignant beings to gratify the most trivial passions. How very different, of course, must be their conceptions and feelings respecting the attributes and government of the Supreme Being! While the one views him as the infinitely wise and benevolent Father, whose paternal care and goodness inspire confidence and affection, the other must regard him, in a certain degree, as a capricious being, and offer up his adorations under the influence of fear.

These and like notions have also an evident tendency to habituate the mind to false principles and processes of reasoning which unfit it for legitimate conclusions in its researches after truth. They manifestly chain down the understanding, and unfit it for the appreciation of those noble and enlarged views which revelation and modern science exhibit of the order, extent, and economy of the universe. It is lamentable to reflect that so many thousands of beings endowed with the faculty of reason, who can not by any means be persuaded of the motion of the earth, and the distances and magnitudes of the heavenly bodies, should swallow, without the least hesitation, opinions ten thousand times more improbable. Notwithstanding the mathematical certainty of the truth of the Copernican system of astronomy, I have never yet become extensively acquainted with any community in which I have not found many persons professing a respectable degree of intelligence, and even official members of orthodox churches, who entirely discredit its sublime teachings; and yet some of these very persons find little difficulty in believing that an old woman can transform herself into a hare, and wing her way through the air on a broomstick. What contracted notions such persons must have of the almightiness of the Deity, and of the infinite depth of meaning of the following and like passages of Scripture: The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.—Ps. xix., 1-2.

It has been already remarked, that the whole history of the world justifies the statement that ignorant and uncultivated mind is prone to sensuality and cruelty. Spain and Hungary were referred to in illustration. We are now prepared to remark, what is worse still, that where such superstitious notions as we have been considering are held, even by persons who are somewhat educated, they almost invariably lead to the perpetration of deeds of cruelty and injustice. Many of the barbarities committed in pagan countries, both in their religious worship and their civil polity, and most of the cruelties inflicted on the victims of the Romish Inquisition, have flowed from this source.[33] Nor are the annals of Great Britain and the United States deficient in examples of this kind. About the commencement of the last century, the belief in witchcraft, which was almost universal throughout Christendom, was held in both of these countries. The laws of England, which admitted its existence and punished it with death, were adopted by the Puritans of New England, and in less than twenty years from the founding of the colony, one individual was tried and executed for the supposed crime. Half a century later the delusion broke out in Salem. A minister, whose daughter and niece were subject to convulsions accompanied by extraordinary symptoms, supposing they were bewitched, cast his suspicions on an Indian woman who lived in the house, and who was whipped until she confessed herself a witch; and the truth of the confession, although obtained in this way, was not doubted. During the same year more than fifty persons were terrified into the confession of witchcraft, twenty of whom were put to death. Neither age, sex, nor station afforded any safeguard against a charge for this supposed crime. Women and children not only were its victims, but magistrates were condemned, and a clergyman of the highest respectability was among the executed. So late as 1722 a woman was burned for witchcraft in Scotland, which was among the last executions in that country.

It appears that these superstitious notions, so far from being innocent and harmless speculations, lead to the most deplorable results; they ought, therefore, to be undermined and thoroughly eradicated by all persons who wish to promote the happiness and well-being of general society. This duty is especially incumbent upon parents and teachers, and can be effected only by rendering correct early education universal. Ignorance of the laws and economy of nature is the one great source of these absurd opinions. They have not only no foundation in nature or experience, but are directly opposed to both. In proportion, then, as we advance in our researches into Nature's economy and laws, shall we perceive their futility and absurdity. As in other cases, take away the cause, and the effect will be removed.

Education will dissipate all these evils. It is true that an acquaintance with a number of dead languages, with Roman and Grecian antiquities, with the subtleties of metaphysics, with pagan mythology, and with politics and poetry, may coexist with these superstitions, as was true in the case of the late Dr. Samuel Johnson, who believed in ghosts and in the second sight. However important in other respects these departments of an extensive and varied education may be, they do not form an effectual barrier against the admission of superstitious opinions. In order to do this, the mind must be directed to the study of the material universe, to contemplate the various appearances it presents, and to mark well the uniform results of those invariable laws by which it is governed. In particular, the attention should be directed to those discoveries which have been made by philosophers in the different departments of nature and art during the last two centuries. For this purpose, the study of natural history, as recording the various facts respecting the atmosphere, the waters, the earth, and animated beings, combined with the study of natural philosophy and astronomy, as explaining the causes of the phenomena of nature, will have a happy tendency to eradicate from the mind superstitious and false notions, and at the same time will present to view objects of delightful contemplation. Let a person be once thoroughly convinced that nature is uniform in her operations, and governed by regular laws impressed by an all-wise and benevolent Being, and he will soon be inspired with confidence, and will not easily be alarmed at any occasional phenomena which at first sight might appear as exceptions to the general rule.

Let persons be taught, for example, that eclipses are occasioned merely by the shadow of one opaque body falling upon another; that they are the necessary result of the inclination of the moon's orbit to that of the earth; that, if these orbits were in the same plane, there would be an eclipse of the sun and of the moon every month, the former occurring at the change, and the latter at the full of the moon; that the times when they do actually take place depend on the new or full moon happening at or near the points of intersection of the orbits of the earth and moon, and that other planets which have moons experience eclipses of a similar nature. Let them also be taught that the comets are regular bodies belonging to our system, which finish their revolutions and appear and disappear in stated periods of time; that the northern lights, though seldom seen in southern climes, are frequent in the regions of the North, and supply the inhabitants with light in the absence of the sun, and have probably a relation to the magnetic and electric fluids; that the ignes fatui are harmless lights, formed by the ignition of a certain species of gas produced in the soils above which they hover; and that the notes of the death-watch, so far from being presages of death, are ascertained to be the notes of love and presages of hymeneal intercourse among these little insects.

Let rational information of this kind be imparted to people generally, and they will learn to contemplate nature with tranquillity and composure. A more beneficial effect than this will at the same time be produced, for those very objects which were formerly beheld with alarm will now be converted into sources of enjoyment, and be contemplated with emotions of delight.

To remove the groundless apprehensions which arise from the fear of invisible and incorporeal beings, let persons be instructed in the various optical illusions to which we are subject, arising from the intervention of fogs, and the indistinctness of vision in the night-time, which makes us frequently mistake a bush that is near us for a large tree at a distance, and let them be taught that under the influence of these illusions a timid imagination will transform the indistinct image of a cow or a horse into a terrific phantom of a monstrous size. Let them also be taught, by a selection of well-authenticated facts, the powerful influence of the imagination in creating ideal forms, especially when under the dominion of fear; the effects produced by the workings of conscience when harassed by guilt; let them be taught the effects produced by lively dreams, by strong doses of opium, by drunkenness, hysteric passions, madness, and other disorders that affect the mind. Let the experiments of optics, and the striking phenomena produced by electricity, galvanism, magnetism, and the different gases, be exhibited to their view, together with details of the results which have been produced by various mechanical contrivances. In fine, let their attention be directed to the foolish, whimsical, and extravagant notions attributed to apparitions, and to their inconsistency with the wise and benevolent arrangements of the Governor of the universe.

There is no rational foundation for entertaining any doubts but that, could such instructions as I have suggested be universally given, the effect would be the banishment of superstitions of the nature contemplated from among mankind; for they have uniformly produced this effect on every mind which has been thus enlightened. Where is the man to be found whose mind is enlightened by the doctrines and discoveries of modern science, and who yet remains the slave of superstitious notions and vain fears? Of all the philosophers of America and Europe, is there one who is alarmed at an eclipse, at a comet, at an ignis fatuus, or at the notes of a death-watch? or who postpones his experiments on account of what is called an unlucky day? Who ever heard of a specter appearing to such a person, dragging him from bed at the dead hour of midnight, to wander through the forest, trembling with fear? Such beings appear only to the ignorant and illiterate, at least to those who are unacquainted with natural science, and we never hear of their appearing to any who did not previously believe in their existence. But should philosophers be freed from such terrific visions, if substantial knowledge has not the power of banishing them from the mind? Why should supernatural beings feel so shy in conversing with men of science? These would, indeed, be the fittest persons to whom they might impart their secrets, and communicate information respecting the invisible world; but it never falls to their lot to be favored with such visits. It may therefore be concluded that the diffusion of useful knowledge among mankind would infallibly dissipate those groundless fears which have banished much of happiness from the human family, and particularly among the lower orders of society.[34]

I might, perhaps, safely dismiss this subject, and proceed to the consideration of other topics; but, before doing so, it may be well to state that many of the views here presented, and all that come within the range of the subjects discussed by him, are fully sustained by Dr. Lardner, whose popular lectures on science and art have been so well received both in Europe and America. His publishers justly remark, that "probably no public lecturer ever continued, for the same length of time, to collect around him so numerous audiences." The author himself states, in the preface to his Lectures,[35] that from November, 1841, when he commenced his public lectures in the lecture-room of Clinton Hall, in New York, to the close of the year 1844, when he concluded his public labors in this country, he "visited every considerable city and town of the Union, from Boston to New Orleans, and from New York to St. Louis. Most of the principal cities were twice visited, and several courses were given in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Nor did the appetite for this species of intellectual entertainment appear to flag by repetition."

I can not forbear making a few quotations from the preface to the work under consideration, which are creditable to the comparative intelligence of the American people, and show the avidity with which they seek instruction and useful knowledge. Dr. Lardner observes, that "it was usual on each evening to deliver from two to four of the essays which compose the contents of the present volumes, and the duration of the entertainment was from two to three hours. On every occasion the most profound interest was evinced on the part of the audience, and the most unremitting and silent attention was given. These assemblies consisted of persons of both sexes, of every age, from the elder classes of pupils in the schools to their grandfathers and grandmothers. Frequently the audiences amounted to twelve hundred, and sometimes, as at the Philadelphia Museum, they exceeded two thousand. Nor was the manifestation of this interest confined, as might be imagined, to the northern Atlantic cities, where education is known to be attended to, and where, as in New England, the diffusion of useful knowledge is regarded as a paramount duty of the state. The same crowded assemblies were collected, for a long succession of nights, in the largest theaters of each of the southern and western cities; in the Charleston Theater; the Mobile Theater; the St. Charles Theater, New Orleans; the Vicksburg and Jackson Theaters, Mississippi; the St. Louis Theater, Missouri; and in the theaters of Cincinnati, Pittsburg, and other western and central cities.

"It can not be denied that such facts are symptomatic of a very remarkable condition of the public mind, more especially among a people who are admitted to be, more than any other nation, engrossed by money-getting and by the more material pursuits of life. The less pretension to eloquence and the attractive graces of oratory the lecturer can offer, the more surprising is the result, and the more creditable to the intelligence of the American people. It is certain that a similar intellectual entertainment, clogged, as it necessarily was, with a pecuniary condition of admission, would fail to attract an audience even in the most polished and enlightened cities of Europe."

While these statements are highly creditable to the American people, the lectures themselves contain paragraphs which show that the popular mind even in our own country is not sufficiently enlightened to eradicate the superstitions just considered.

The Moon and the Weather.—Dr. Lardner, in a lecture on the moon, in answer to the question, Does the moon influence the weather? says,[36] It is asserted, first, that at the epochs of new and full moon, and at the quarters, there is generally a change of weather; and, secondly, that the phases of the moon, or, in other words, the relative position of the moon and sun in regard to the earth, is the cause of these changes. Now these and kindred opinions are very extensively held in this country. But the doctor refers to meteorological tables, constructed in various countries after the most extensive and careful observation, and the result is that no correspondence exists between the condition of the weather and the phases of the moon. He hence, after a full examination, comes to the conclusion that "the condition of the weather as to change, or in any other respect, has, as a matter of fact, no correspondence whatever with the lunar phases."

In another lecture on the moon and the weather, the following decisive opinion is expressed: "From all that has been stated, it follows then, conclusively, that the popular notions concerning the influence of the lunar phases on the weather have no foundation in the theory, and no correspondence with observed facts."[37]

Time for Felling Timber.—In another lecture on lunar influences, Dr. Lardner observes that "there is an opinion generally entertained that timber should be felled only during the decline of the moon; for if it be cut down during its increase, it will not be of a good or durable quality. This impression prevails in various countries. It is acted upon in England, and is made the ground of legislation in France. The forest laws of the latter country interdict the cutting of timber during the increase of the moon. In the extensive forests of Germany, the same opinion is entertained and acted upon, with the most undoubting confidence in its truth. Sauer, a superintendent of some of these districts, assigns what he believes to be its physical cause. According to him, the increase of the moon causes the sap to ascend in the timber, and, on the other hand, the decrease of the moon causes it to descend. If the timber, therefore, be cut during the decrease of the moon, it will be cut in a dry state, the sap having retired, and the wood, therefore, will be compact, solid, and durable. But if it be cut during the increase of the moon, it will be felled with the sap in it, and will therefore be more spongy, more easily attacked by worms, more difficult to season, and more readily split and warped by changes of temperature.

"Admitting for a moment the reality of this supposition concerning the motion of the sap, it would follow that the proper time for felling the timber would be the new moon, that being the epoch at which the descent of the sap would have been made, and the ascent not yet commenced. But can there be imagined, in the whole range of natural science, a physical relation more extraordinary and unaccountable than this supposed correspondence between the movement of the sap and the phases of the moon? Assuredly theory affords not the slightest countenance to such a supposition; but let us inquire as to the fact whether it be really the case that the quality of timber depends upon the state of the moon at the time it is felled.

"M. Duhamel Monceau, a celebrated French agriculturist, has made direct and positive experiments for the purpose of testing this question, and has clearly and conclusively shown that the qualities of timber felled in different parts of the lunar month are the same. M. Duhamel felled a great many trees of the same age, growing from the same soil, and exposed to the same aspect, and never found any difference in the quality of the timber, when he compared those which were felled in the decline of the moon with those which were felled during its increase: in general, they have afforded timber of the same quality. He adds, however, that by a circumstance which was doubtless fortuitous, a slight difference was manifested in favor of timber which had been felled between the new and full moon, contrary to popular opinion."

Supposed Lunar Influences.—It is an aphorism received by all gardeners and agriculturists in Europe, remarks the same author, that vegetables, plants, and trees, which are expected to flourish and grow with vigor, should be planted, grafted, and pruned during the increase of the moon. This opinion, however, he thinks is altogether erroneous; for the experiments and observations of several French agriculturists have clearly established the fact that the increase or decrease of the moon has no appreciable influence on the phenomena of vegetation.

This erroneous prejudice prevails also on the American continent. A French author states that, in Brazil, cultivators plant during the decline of the moon all vegetables whose roots are used as food, and that, on the contrary, they plant during the increasing moon the sugar-cane, maize, rice, beans, etc., and those which bear the food upon their stocks and branches. Experiments, however, were made and reported by M. de Chauvalon, at Martinique, on vegetables of both kinds, planted at different times in the lunar month, and no appreciable difference in their qualities was discovered.

There are some traces of a principle adopted by the South American agronomes (farmers), according to which they treat the two classes of plants distinguished by the production of fruit on their roots or on their branches differently; but there are none in the European aphorisms. The directions of Pliny are still more specific: he prescribes the time of the full moon for sowing beans, and that of the new moon for lentils. "Truly," says M. Arago, "we have need of a robust faith to admit, without proof, that the moon, at the distance of two hundred and forty thousand miles, shall, in one position, act advantageously upon the vegetation of beans, and that in the opposite position, and at the same distance, she shall be propitious to lentils."

Dr. Lardner gives numerous and extended illustrations of the supposed influence of the moon on the growth of grain, on wine-making,[38] on the color of the complexion, on putrefaction, on the size of shell-fish, on the quantity of marrow in the bones of animals, on the number of births, on mental derangement, and other human maladies, etc., etc.

The influence on the phenomena of human maladies imputed to the moon is very ancient. Hippocrates had so strong a faith in the influence of celestial objects upon animated beings, that he expressly recommends no physician to be trusted who is ignorant of astronomy. Galen, following Hippocrates, maintained the same opinion, especially of the influence of the moon. The critical days, or crises, were the seventh, fourteenth, and twenty-first of the disease, corresponding to the intervals between the moon's principal phases. While the doctrine of alchemists prevailed, the human body was considered as a microcosm, or an epitome of the universe, the heart representing the sun, and the brain the moon. The planets had each his proper influence: Jupiter presided over the lungs, Saturn over the spleen, Venus over the kidneys, and Mercury over the organs of generation. The term lunacy, which still designates unsoundness of mind, is a relic of these grotesque notions, and is defined by Dr. Webster as "a species of insanity or madness, formerly supposed to be influenced by the moon, or periodical in the month." But even this term may now be said, in some degree, to be banished from the nomenclature of medicine; it has, however, taken refuge in that receptacle of all antiquated absurdities of phraseology—the law—lunatic being still the term for the subject who is incapable of managing his own affairs.

Sanctorius, whose name is celebrated in physics for the invention of the thermometer, held it as a principle that a healthy man gained two pounds' weight at the beginning of every lunar month, which he lost toward its completion. This opinion appears to have been founded on experiments made upon himself, and affords another instance of a fortuitous coincidence hastily generalized.

For all the progress that has been made in this country toward the removal from the popular mind of the numerous corrupting and debasing absurdities which have hitherto enslaved it, we are indebted to our enlightened and chastened systems of popular education; and to these, and to these only, may we confidently look for entire freedom from the thraldom.

The desirableness of education is manifest, view it in what light we may, and whether as affecting individuals or communities. We have already seen that education, and that alone, will dissipate the evils of ignorance. We now propose to discuss the equally tenable proposition that education increases the productiveness of labor.

That knowledge is power has become a proverb. If it be asked why the labor of a man is more valuable than the same amount of physical effort put forth by a brute, the ready answer is, It is because man combines intelligence with his labor. A single yoke of oxen will do more in one day at plowing than forty men; yet the oxen may be had for fifty cents a day, while each of the men can earn a dollar. Physical exertion in this case, combined with ordinary skill, is eighty times more valuable than the same amount of brute force. The strength of the ox is of no account without some one to guide and apply it, while the power of man is guided by intelligence within.

In proportion as man's intelligence increases is his labor more valuable. A small compensation is the reward of mere physical power, while skill, combined with a moderate amount of strength, commands high wages. The labor of an ignorant man is scarcely more valuable than the same amount of brute force; but the services of an intelligent, skillful person are a hundred fold more productive. I will pause and illustrate, for I wish to have every person who arises from the perusal of these pages do so with the fullest conviction that mental culture is of the highest importance even in the ordinary departments of human industry. It is, indeed, hardly less important for the man of business, the farmer, or the mechanic, than for statesmen, legislators, and members of the so-called learned professions.

An intelligent farmer of my acquaintance having a piece of greensward to break up, and having three work-horses, determined to employ them all. He hence, possessing some mechanical skill, himself constructed a three-horse whipple-tree, by means of which he advantageously combined the strength of his horses. A less intelligent neighbor, pleased with the novel appearance of three horses working abreast, resolved to try the experiment himself. But not possessing the skill requisite to construct such a whipple-tree, he waited till his better-informed and more expert neighbor had got through with his, and then, borrowing it, tried the experiment with his own team. Early one morning, and full of expectation, aided by his two sons and a hired man, he harnessed his three horses to the plow. But one of them, for the first time, refused to draw. After several fruitless attempts to make the team work as first harnessed, the relative position of the horses was changed, when, lo! although this horse would draw as formerly, one of the others would not. By and by another change was made, and the third horse, in turn, refused to draw. The farmer could not understand it, nor his sons, nor his hired man. His three horses, for the first time, were each fickle in turn. And, what was most surprising, they would all work in either of two positions, but in the third none of them would draw. The honest farmer thought the age of witchcraft had not yet passed. At the conclusion of the forenoon he gave up the undertaking in disgust, and, carrying the whipple-tree home, told the story of his unsuccessful and vexatious experiment.

"And how did you harness the horses to the whipple-tree?" inquired the more intelligent farmer. "Why, one at the short end, and two at the long end, where there is the most room for them, to be sure!" was the frank reply.

The power at the short end, I need not say, should be twice that at the long end; whereas he had it reversed. One horse drew against two with a double purchase. He then would have to draw twice as much as both of them, or four times as much as one of them. The fickleness of the horses, then, instead of being the result of witchcraft, as he was inclined to believe, was chargeable solely to the ignorance of their hardly more intelligent master. A knowledge of the first principles of mechanics, or, in the absence of this, an ordinary degree of active, available common sense, would teach the proper use of such a whipple-tree. For want of this knowledge, the farmer suffered much chagrin, lost the time of four men, and did great injury to his team.

After mentioning this circumstance on a certain occasion, a gentleman present gave a parallel case, that occurred under his immediate observation. His neighbor had a yoke of oxen, one of which was large, strong, and beautiful. One day, as the neighbor was passing the residence of the gentleman, the latter remarked to him, "You have one very fine-looking ox." "Yes," replied the neighbor, with apparent satisfaction, "and a bonny fellow he is too. He can carry the long end of the yoke, and grow fat under it." Here, again, the weaker ox had to tax his strength doubly on account of the advantage which the ignorance of his kind master had unintentionally given to his superior yoke-fellow.

A farmer, or laborer of any kind, who possesses a knowledge of the merest elements of science, and is accustomed to think and investigate, can not only work more advantageously with his team, but he can do more work himself, and do it easier too, than his neighbor of superior physical strength, though of inferior mental capacity. The correctness of this statement may be satisfactorily proved and amply illustrated in loading timber, in moving buildings, in plowing, and in almost every kind of work done on a farm or among men, either on land or at sea. The ignorant man will spend more time in running after help to do a supposed difficult job, than it will require for a skillful one to do it alone. This is true in carpentry, and in all of the mechanic arts. Increase the practical and available education of the laborer, and you enable him to do more work, and better work too, than his less informed associate. The following is a striking illustration.

A practical teacher employed some mechanics to build him a barn. The day after the frame was raised, the teacher discovered that it needed to be turned a few inches upon its foundation, to range properly with other buildings. While the mechanics went in several directions to procure what they regarded as necessary help, the teacher, who was familiar with the various combinations of the lever, effected the work alone, and before their return! Other equally striking illustrations might be cited.

But education increases the productiveness of labor in a wider and more extended sense. By its omnipotent influence, man is enabled to lay the elements under tribute. The water and the wind, by its mysterious power, are made to propel his machinery for various purposes. The utmost skill of the untutored savage enables him to construct a rude canoe which two can carry upon their shoulders by land, which is barely capable of plying upon our rivers and coasting our inland seas, and which can be propelled only by human muscles, but the educated man erects a magnificent vessel, a floating palace, and, spreading his canvas to the breeze, aided by the mariner's compass, can traverse unknown seas in safety. To such perfection has he attained in the science and art of navigation, that he contends successfully with wind and tide, and makes headway against both, even when he depends upon the former for his motive power. Yes, education enables man even to tax the gentle breeze to urge a proud ship, heavily laden, up an inclined plane, thousands of miles, against the current of a mighty river.

I can not, perhaps, so satisfactorily establish the proposition which I am now endeavoring to elucidate, nor so well maintain the universality of its application, as by referring to the writings of the most indefatigable and successful laborer in the department of popular education of which our country can boast. I refer to the Hon. Horace Mann,[39] who, a few years ago, in his official capacity, opened a correspondence, and availed himself of all opportunities to hold personal interviews with many of the most practical, sagacious, and intelligent business men in our country, who for many years had had large numbers of persons in their employment. His object was to ascertain the difference in the productive ability, where natural capacities were equal, between the educated and the uneducated; between a man or a woman whose mind has been awakened to thought, and supplied with the rudiments of knowledge by a good common school education, and one whose faculties have never been developed, or aided in emerging from their original darkness and torpor by such a privilege. For this purpose he conferred and corresponded with manufacturers of all kinds—with machinists, engineers, rail-road contractors, officers in the army, etc.; classes which have means of determining the effects of education on individuals equal in their natural abilities that other classes do not possess.

A farmer hiring a laborer for one season who has received a good common school education, and the ensuing season hiring another who has not enjoyed this advantage, although he may be personally convinced of the relative value or profitableness of their services, yet he will rarely have any exact data or tests to refer to by which he can measure the superiority of the former over the latter. They do not work side by side, so that he can institute a comparison between the amounts of labor they perform. They may cultivate different fields, where the ease of tillage or the fertility of the soils may be different. They may rear crops under the influence of different seasons, so that he can not discriminate between what is referable to the bounty of nature and what to superiority in judgment or skill.

Similar difficulties exist in estimating the amount and value of female labor in the household. And as to the mechanic also—the carpenter, the mason, the blacksmith, the tool-maker of any kind—there are a thousand circumstances, which we call accidental, that mingle their influence in giving quality and durability to their work, and prevent us from making a precise estimate of the relative value of any two men's handicraft. Individual differences, too, in regard to a single article or a single days' work, may be too minute to be noticed or appreciated, while the aggregate of these differences at the end of a few years may make all the difference between a poor man and a rich one. No observing man can have failed to notice the difference between two workmen, one of whom, to use a proverbial expression, always "hits the nail on the head," while the other loses half his strength and destroys half his nails by the awkwardness of his blows; but perhaps few men have thought of the difference in the results of two such men's labor at the end of twenty years.

But when hundreds of men or women work side by side in the same factory, at the same machinery, in making the same fabrics, and, by a fixed rule of the establishment, labor the same number of hours each day; and when, also, the products of each operative can be counted in number, weighed by the pound, or measured by the yard or cubic foot, then it is perfectly practicable to determine, with arithmetical exactness, the productions of one individual and class as compared with those of another individual and class.

So, where there are different kinds of labor, some simple, others complicated, and of course requiring different degrees of intelligence and skill, it is easy to observe what class of persons rise from a lower to a higher grade of employment.

This, too, is not to be forgotten, that in a manufacturing or mechanical establishment, or among a set of hands engaged in filling up a valley or cutting down a hill, where scores of people are working together, the absurd and adventitious distinctions of society do not intrude. The capitalist and his agents are looking for the greatest amount of labor or the largest income in money from their investments, and they do not promote a dunce to a station where he will destroy raw material or slacken industry because of his name, or birth, or family connections. The obscurest and humblest person has a fair field for competition. That he proves himself capable of earning more money for his employers is a testimonial better than a diploma from all the colleges.

Now many of the most intelligent and valuable men in the community, in compliance with Mr. Mann's request, examined their books for a series of years, and ascertained both the quality and the amount of work performed by persons in their employment, and the result of the investigation is a most astonishing superiority in productive power on the part of the educated over the uneducated laborer. The hand is found to be another hand when guided by an intelligent mind. Processes are performed not only more rapidly, but better, when faculties which have been exercised in early life furnish their assistance. Individuals who, without the aid of knowledge, would have been condemned to perpetual inferiority of condition, and subjected to all the evils of want and poverty, rise to competence and independence by the uplifting power of education. In great establishments, and among large bodies of laboring men, where all services are rated according to their pecuniary value; where there are no extrinsic circumstances to bind a man down to a fixed position after he has shown a capacity to rise above it; where, indeed, men pass by each other, ascending or descending in their grades of labor just as easily and certainly as particles of water of different degrees of temperature glide by each other—under such circumstances it is found, as an almost invariable fact, other things being equal, that those who have been blessed with a good common school education rise to a higher and a higher point in the kinds of labor performed, and also in the rate of wages received, while the ignorant sink like dregs, and are always found at the bottom.

James K. Mills, Esq., of Boston, who has been connected with a house that has had for the last ten years the principal direction of cotton-mills, machine shops, and calico-printing works, in which are constantly employed about three thousand persons, and whose opinions of the effects of a common school education upon a manufacturing population are the result of personal observation and inquiries, and are confined to the testimony of the overseers and agents who are brought into immediate contact with the operatives, expresses the conviction that the rudiments of a common school education are essential to the attainment of skill and expertness as laborers, or to consideration and respect in the civil and social relations of life; that very few who have not enjoyed the advantages of a common school education ever rise above the lowest class of operatives, and that the labor of this class, when it is employed in manufacturing operations which require even a very moderate degree of manual or mental dexterity, is unproductive; that a large majority of the overseers and others employed in situations which require a high degree of skill in particular branches—which oftentimes require a good general knowledge of business, and always an unexceptionable moral character—have made their way up from the condition of common laborers, with no other advantage over a large proportion of those they have left behind than that derived from a better education.

A statement made from the books of one of the manufacturing companies will show the relative number of the two classes, and the earnings of each; and this mill, we are assured, may be taken as a fair index of all the others. The average number of operatives employed for the last three years is twelve hundred. Of this number there are forty-five unable to write their names, or about three and three fourths per cent. The average of women's wages, in the departments requiring the most skill, is two dollars and fifty cents per week, exclusive of board. The average wages of the lowest departments is one dollar and twenty-five cents per week.

Of the forty-five who are unable to write, twenty-nine, or about two thirds, are employed in the lowest department. The difference between the wages earned by the forty-five and the average wages of an equal number of the better-educated class is about twenty-seven per cent. in favor of the latter. The difference between the wages earned by twenty-nine of the lowest class and the same number in the higher is sixty-six per cent. Of seventeen persons filling the most responsible stations in the mills, ten have grown up in the establishment from common laborers or apprentices.

This statement does not include an importation of sixty-three persons from Manchester, in England, in 1839. Among these persons there was scarcely one who could read or write; and although a part of them had been accustomed to work in cotton-mills, yet, either from incapacity or idleness, they were unable to earn sufficient to pay for their subsistence, and at the expiration of a few weeks not more than half a dozen remained in the employment of the company.

In some of the print-works a large proportion of the operatives are foreigners. Those who are employed in the branches which require a considerable degree of skill are as well educated as our people in similar situations. But the common laborers, as a class, are without any education, and their average earnings are about two thirds only of those of our lowest classes, although the prices paid to each are the same for the same amount of work.

Among the men and boys employed in the machine shops, the want of education is quite rare. Mr. Mills does not know an instance of a person so employed who is unable to read and write; and many have a good common school education. To this, he thinks, may be attributed the fact that a large proportion of persons who fill the higher and more responsible situations come from this class of workmen. From these statements the reader will be able to form some estimate, in dollars and cents, at least, of the advantages of even a little education to the operative; and there is not the least doubt, says the same authority, that the employer is equally benefited. He has the security for his property that intelligence, good morals, and a just appreciation of the regulations of his establishment always afford. His machinery and mills, which constitute a large part of his capital, are in the hands of persons who, by their skill, are enabled to use them to their utmost capacity, and to prevent any unnecessary depreciation.

Each operative in a cotton-mill, according to the estimate of Mr. Mills, may be supposed to represent from one thousand to twelve hundred dollars of the capital invested in the mill and its machinery. It is only from the most diligent and economical use of this capital that the proprietor can expect a profit. A fraction less than one half of the cost of manufacturing common cotton goods when a mill is in full operation, is made up of charges which are permanent. If the product is reduced in the ratio of the capacity of the two classes of operatives mentioned in this statement, it will be seen that the cost will be increased in a compound ratio. Mr. Mills expresses the opinion "that the best cotton-mill in New England, with such operatives only as the forty-five mentioned above, who are unable to write their names, would never yield the proprietor a profit; that the machinery would be soon worn out, and he would be left, in a short time, with a population no better than that which is represented by the importation from England. I can not imagine any situation in life," he continues, "where the want of a common school education would be more severely felt, or be attended with worse consequences, than in manufacturing villages; nor, on the other hand, is there any where such advantages can be improved with greater benefit to all parties. There is more excitement and activity in the minds of people living in masses, and if this expends itself in any of the thousand vicious indulgences with which they are sure to be tempted, the road to destruction is traveled over with a speed exactly corresponding to the power employed."

H. Bartlett, Esq., of Lowell, who has been engaged ten years in manufacturing, and has had the constant charge of from four hundred to nine hundred persons during that time, has come in contact with a very great variety of character and disposition, and has seen mind applied to production in the mechanic and manufacturing arts possessing different degrees of intelligence, from gross ignorance to a high degree of cultivation, and he has no hesitation in affirming that he finds the best educated to be the most profitable help. Even those females who merely tend machinery give a result somewhat in proportion to the advantages enjoyed in early life for education, those who have a good common school education giving, as a class, invariably a better production than those brought up in ignorance.

In regard to the domestic and social habits of persons in his employ, the same gentleman adds, "I have never considered mere knowledge, valuable as it is to the laborer, as the only advantage derived from a good common school education. I have uniformly found the better educated, as a class, possessing a higher and better state of morals, more orderly and respectful in their deportment, and more ready to comply with the wholesome and necessary regulations of an establishment. And in times of agitation, on account of some change in regulations or wages, I have always looked to the most intelligent, best educated, and the most moral for support, and have seldom been disappointed; for, while they are the last to submit to imposition, they reason, and if your requirements are reasonable, they will generally acquiesce, and exert a salutary influence upon their associates. But the ignorant and uneducated I have generally found the most turbulent and troublesome, acting under the influence of excited passion and jealousy.

"The former appear to have an interest in sustaining good order, while the latter seem more reckless of consequences. And, to my mind, all this is perfectly natural. The better educated have more and stronger attachments binding them to the place where they are. They are generally neater in their persons, dress, and houses; surrounded with more comforts, with fewer of 'the ills flesh is heir to.' In short, I have found the educated, as a class, more cheerful and contented, devoting a portion of their leisure time to reading and intellectual pursuits, more with their families, and less in scenes of dissipation. The good effect of all this is seen in the more orderly and comfortable appearance of the whole household, but nowhere more strikingly than in the children. A mother who has a good common school education will rarely suffer her children to grow up in ignorance. As I have said, this class of persons are more quiet, more orderly, and, I may add, more regular in their attendance upon public worship, and more punctual in the performance of all their duties."

Mr. Bartlett thinks it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for a young man, who has not an education equal to a good common school education, to rise from grade to grade until he should obtain the berth of an overseer, and that, in making promotions, as a general thing, it would be unnecessary to make inquiry as to the education of the young men from whom you would select. Very seldom indeed, he says, would an uneducated young man rise to "a better place and better pay. Young men who expect to resort to manufacturing establishments for employment, can not prize too highly a good education. It will give them standing among their associates, and be the means of promotion among their employers."

The final remark of this gentleman, in a lengthy letter, showing the advantages of education in a pecuniary, social, and moral point of view, is, that "those who possess the greatest share in the stock of worldly goods are deeply interested in this subject, as one of mere insurance; that the most effectual way of making insurance on their property would be to contribute from it enough to sustain an efficient system of common school education, thereby educating the whole mass of mind, and constituting it a police more effectual than peace officers and prisons." By so doing he thinks they would bestow a benefaction upon those who, from the accident of birth or parentage, are subjected to the privations and temptations of poverty, and would do much to remove the prejudice and to strengthen the bands of union between the different and extreme portions of society. He very justly regards it a wise provision of Providence which connects so intimately, and, as he thinks, so indissolubly, the greatest good of the many with the highest interest of the few; or, in other words, which unites into one brotherhood all the members of the community, and in the existing partnership connects inseparably the interests of Labor and Capital.[40]

John Clark, Esq., of Lowell, who has had under his superintendence for eight years about fifteen hundred persons of both sexes, gives concurrent testimony. He has found, with very few exceptions, the best educated among his hands to be the most capable, intelligent, energetic, industrious, economical, and moral, and that they produce the best work, and the most of it, with the least injury to the machinery. They are, in short, in all respects the most useful, profitable, and the safest operatives; and as a class, they are more thrifty, and more apt to accumulate property for themselves. "I am very sure," he remarks, "that neither men of property nor society at large have any thing to fear from a more general diffusion of knowledge, nor from the extension and improvement of our system of common schools. On our pay-roll for the last month are borne the names of twelve hundred and twenty-nine female operatives, forty of whom receipted for their pay by 'making their mark.' Twenty-six of these have been employed in job work; that is, they are paid according to the quantity of work turned off from their machines. The average pay of these twenty-six falls eighteen and one half per cent. below the general average of those engaged in the same departments.

"Again: we have in our mills about one hundred and fifty females who have at some time been engaged in teaching schools. Many of them teach during the summer months, and work in the mills in winter. The average wages of these ex-teachers I find to be seventeen and three fourths per cent. above the general average of our mills, and about forty per cent. above the twenty-six who can not write their names. It may be said they are generally employed in the higher departments, where the pay is better. This is true; but this again may be, in most cases, fairly attributed to their better education, which brings us to the same result. If I had included in my calculations the remaining fourteen of the forty, who were mostly sweepers and scrubbers, and who are paid by the day, the contrast would have been still more striking; but, having no well-educated females in this department with whom to compare them, I have omitted them altogether. In arriving at the above results, I have considered the net wages merely, the price of board being in all cases the same. I do not consider these results as either extraordinary or surprising, but as a part only of the legitimate and proper fruits of a better cultivation, and fuller development of the intellectual and moral powers."

Mr. Mann gives the entire letters from which I have so freely drawn, and also introduces into his report extracts from a letter of Jonathan Crane, Esq., who has been for many years a large rail-road contractor, and has had several thousand men in his employment. The testimony of this gentleman is corroborative of that already presented. Testimony similar to the preceding might be introduced from the proprietors and superintendents of the principal manufacturing establishments in America not only, but from every part of the civilized world. Before concluding this chapter, I shall, for another purpose, refer to statements made by extensive manufacturers in England and Switzerland.

These are no more than a fair specimen of a mass of facts which Mr. Mann obtained from the most authentic sources. They seem to prove incontestably that education is not only a moral renovator, and a multiplier of intellectual power, but that it is also the most prolific parent of material riches. It has a right, therefore, not only to be included in the grand inventory of a nation's resources, but to be placed at the very head of that inventory. It is not only the most honest and honorable, but the surest means of amassing property. Considering education, then, as a producer of wealth, it follows that the more educated a people are, the more will they abound in all those conveniences, comforts, and satisfactions which money will buy; and, other things being equal, the increase of competency and the decline of pauperism will be measurable on this scale.

Education and Agriculture.—The healthful and praiseworthy employment of agriculture requires knowledge for its successful prosecution. In this department of industry we are in perpetual contact with the forces of nature. We are constantly dependent upon them for the pecuniary returns and profits of our investments, and hence the necessity of knowing what those forces are, and under what circumstances they will operate most efficiently, and will most bountifully reward our original outlay of money and time.

Our country yields a great variety of agricultural productions, and this brings into requisition all that chemical and experimental knowledge which pertains to the rotation of crops and the enrichment of soils. If rotation be disregarded, the repeated demands upon the same soil to produce the same crop will exhaust it of the elements on which that particular crop will best thrive. If the chemical ingredients and affinities of the soil are not understood, an attempt may be made to reenforce it by substances with which it is already surcharged, instead of renovating it with those of which it has been exhausted by previous growths. But for these arrangements and adaptations knowledge is the grand desideratum, and the addition of a new fact to a farmer's mind will often increase the amount of his harvests more than the addition of acres to his estate.

Why is it that, if we except Egypt, all the remaining territory of Africa, containing nearly ten millions of square miles, with a soil most of which is incomparably more fertile by nature, produces less for the sustenance of man and beast than England, whose territory is only fifty thousand square miles? In the latter country, knowledge has been a substitute for a genial climate and an exuberant soil; while in the former, it is hardly a figurative expression to say that all the maternal kindness of nature, powerful and benignant as she is, has been repulsed by the ignorance of her children. Doubtless industry as well as knowledge is indispensable to productiveness; but knowledge must precede industry, or the latter will work to so little effect as to become discouraged, and to relapse into the slothfulness of savage life. This is illustrated by the condition of the inhabitants of Lower California, as described by an intelligent friend of the author, who left this country a year ago. He says this is a "most beautiful country, with the finest climate in the world. But its inhabitants, who are principally Spaniards and Indians, are in a state of semi-barbarism, and consequently its resources are, to a certain extent, undeveloped. The land, which is generally level and of the richest quality, is divided into ranchos or plantations, the largest of which are twenty miles square, and feed twenty or thirty thousand head of wild cattle, with horses and mules in proportion. But these are all. The arts are in the lowest state imaginable. Their houses are mere pens, without pen floors; their plows are pointed logs; their yokes are straight sticks, which they tie to the horns of their oxen; and every implement of industry shows an equal want of ingenuity and enterprise. They are too indolent to raise much grain, though the soil will yield, I am told, eighty bushels of wheat to an acre; consequently, wheat is sold to the immigrants at three dollars per bushel, while the finest beef cattle in the world bring from eight to ten dollars per head. Butter, cheese, and even milk, you can not obtain at all, for they are too lazy to tame their cows. A few Americans, who own large ranchos, have American plows, and are doing better than the rest. Many ranchos have been abandoned, and their owners have gone to the mines. This state of things the energetic Anglo-Saxon will soon change. The immigration for the next few years will be immense, and the whole community will yield to American customs. The large ranchos will be cut up into farms, and their products will supply the wants of a dense population. Property will rapidly change hands, and it will be easy for the shrewd Yankee to reap the benefit of the change."

But, without further exposition, it may be remarked generally, that the spread of intelligence, through the instrumentality of good books, and the cultivation in our children of the faculties of observing, comparing, and reasoning, through the medium of good schools, would add millions to the agricultural products of nearly every state of the Union, without imposing upon the husbandman an additional hour of labor.

Education and the Useful Arts.—For the successful prosecution among us of the manufacturing and mechanic arts, if not for their very existence, there must be not only the exactness of science, but also exactness or skill in the application of scientific principles throughout the whole processes, either of constructing machinery, or of transforming raw materials into finished fabrics. This ability to make exact and skillful applications of science to an unlimited variety of materials, and especially to the subtile but most energetic agencies of nature, is one of the latest attainments of the human mind. It is remarkable that astronomy, sculpture, painting, poetry, oratory, and even ethical philosophy, had made great progress thousands of years before the era of the manufacturing and mechanic arts. This era, indeed, has but just commenced; and already the abundance, and, what is of far greater importance, the universality of the personal, domestic, and social comforts it has created, constitute one of the most important epochs in the history of civilization.

The cultivation of these arts is conferring a thousand daily accommodations and pleasures upon the laborer in his cottage, which, only two or three centuries ago, were luxuries in the palace of the monarch. Through circumstances incident to the introduction of all economical improvements, there has hitherto been great inequality in the distribution of their advantages; but their general tendency is greatly to ameliorate the condition of the mass of mankind. It has been estimated that the products of machinery in Great Britain, with a population of eighteen millions, is equal to the labor of hundreds of millions of human hands. This vast gain is effected without the conquest or partitioning of the territory of any neighboring nation, and without rapine or the confiscation of property already accumulated by others. It is an absolute creation of wealth—that is, of those articles, commodities, and improvements which we appraise and set down as of a certain moneyed value alike in the inventory of a deceased man's estate and in the grand valuation of a nation's capital. These contributions to human welfare have been derived from knowledge; from knowing how to employ those natural agencies which from the beginning of the race had existed, but had lain dormant or run uselessly away. For mechanical purposes, what is wind, or water, or the force of steam worth, until the ingenuity of man comes in, and places the wind-wheel, the water-wheel, or the piston between these mighty agents and the work he wishes them to perform? But after the intervention of machinery, how powerful they become for all purposes of utility! In a word, these great improvements, which distinguish our age from all preceding ages, have been obtained from Nature by addressing her in the language of Science and Art, the only language she understands, yet one of such all-pervading efficacy that she never refuses to comply to the letter with all petitions for wealth or physical power, if they are preferred to her in that dialect.

Now it is easy to show, from reasoning, from history, and from experience, that an early awakening of the mind is a prerequisite to success in the useful arts. But it must be an awakening to thought, not to feeling merely. In the first place, a clearness of perception must be acquired, or the power of taking a correct mental transcript, copy, or image of whatever is seen This, however, though indispensable, is by no means sufficient.

The talent of improving upon the labors of others requires not only the capability of receiving an exact mental copy or imprint of all the objects of sense or reasoning; it also requires the power of reviving or reproducing at will all the impressions or ideas before obtained, and the power of changing their collocations, of re-arranging them into new forms, and of adding something to or removing something from the original perceptions, in order to make a more perfect plan or model. If a ship-wright, for instance, would improve upon all existing specimens of naval architecture, he would first examine as great a number of ships as possible; this done, he would revive the image which each had imprinted upon his mind, and, with all the fleets which he had inspected present to his imagination, he would compare each individual vessel with all others, make a selection of one part from one, and of another part from another, apply his own knowledge of the laws of moving and of resisting forces to all, and thus create, in his own mind, the complex idea or model of a ship more perfect than any of those he had seen.

Now every recitation in a school, if rightly conducted, is a step toward the attainment of this wonderful power. With a course of studies judiciously arranged and diligently pursued through the years of minority, all the great phenomena of external nature, and the most important productions in all the useful arts, together with the principles on which they are evolved or fashioned, would be successively brought before the understanding of the pupil. He would thus become familiar with the substances of the material world, and with their manifold properties and uses; and he would learn the laws, comparatively few, by which results infinitely diversified are produced. When such a student goes out into life, he carries, as it were, a plan or model of the world in his own mind. He can not, therefore, pass, either blindly or with the stupid gaze of the brute creation, by the great objects and processes of nature; but he has an intelligent discernment of their several existences and relations, and their adaptation to the uses of mankind. Neither can he fasten his eye upon any workmanship or contrivance of man without asking two questions: first, How is it? and, secondly, How can it be improved?

Hence it is that all the processes of nature and the contrivances of art are so many lessons or communications to an instructed man; but an uninstructed one walks in the midst of them like a blind man among colors, or a deaf man among sounds. The Romans carried their aqueducts from hill-top to hill-top, on lofty arches erected at immense expenditure of time and money. One idea—that is, a knowledge of the law of the equilibrium of fluids; a knowledge of the fact that water in a tube will rise to the level of the fountain—would have enabled a single individual to do with ease what, without that knowledge, it required the wealth of an empire to accomplish.

It is in ways similar to this—that is, by accomplishing greater results with less means; by creating products at once cheaper, better, and by more expeditious methods; and by doing a vast variety of things otherwise impossible—that the cultivation of mind may be truly said to yield the highest pecuniary requital.

Intelligence is the great money-maker, not by extortion, but by production. There are ten thousand things in every department of life which, if done in season, can be done in a minute, but which, if not seasonably done, will require hours, perhaps days or weeks for their performance. An awakened mind will see and seize the critical juncture; the perceptions of the sluggish one will come too late, if they come at all.

A general culture of the faculties, also, gives versatility of talent, so that, if the customary business of the laborer is superseded by improvements, he can readily betake himself to another kind of employment. But an uncultivated mind is like an automaton, which can do only the thing for which its wheels or springs were made. Brute force expends itself unproductively. It is ignorant of the manner in which Nature works, and hence it can not avail itself of her mighty agencies. Often, indeed, it attempts to oppose Nature. It throws itself across the track where her resistless car is moving. But knowledge enables its possessor to employ her agencies in his own service, and he thereby obtains an amount of power, without fee or reward, which thousands of slaves could not give.

Every man who consumes a single article in whose production or transportation the power of steam is used, has it delivered to him cheaper than he could otherwise have obtained it. Every man who can avail himself of this power in traveling, can perform the business of three days in one, and so far add two hundred per cent. to the length of his life as a business man. What innumerable millions has the invention of the cotton-gin, by Whitney, added, and will continue to add, to the wealth of the world! a part of which is already realized, but vastly the greater part of which is yet to be received, as each successive day draws for an installment which would exhaust the treasury of a nation. The instructed and talented man enters the rich domains of Nature not as an intruder, but, as it were, a proprietor, and makes her riches his own.

Why is it that, so far as the United States are concerned, four fifths of all the improvements, inventions, and discoveries in regard to machinery, to agricultural implements, to superior models in ship-building, and to the manufacture of those refined instruments on which accuracy in scientific observations depends, have originated in New England? I believe no adequate reason can be assigned but the early awakening and training of the power of thought in her children. Improvements, inventions, and discoveries have been made in other states of the Union to an extent commensurate with the progress they have made in perfecting their systems of public instruction, and these improvements will ever keep pace with the attentions which a people bestow upon their common schools.

Mr. Mann remarks that, in conversing with a gentleman who had possessed most extensive opportunities for acquaintance with men of different countries and of all degrees of intellectual development, he observed that he could employ a common immigrant or a slave, and, if he chose, could direct him to shovel a heap of sand from one spot to another, and then back into its former place, and so to and fro through the day; but, added he, neither love nor money would prevail on a New Englander to prosecute a piece of work of which he did not see the utility.

There is scarcely any kind of labor, however simple, pertaining to the farm, to the work-shop, or to domestic employments, and whether performed by male or female, which can be so well done without knowledge in the workman or domestic as with it. It is impossible for an overseer or employer at all times to supply mind to the laborer. In giving directions for the shortest series or train of operations, something will be omitted or misunderstood; and without intelligence in the workman, the omission or mistake will be repeated in the execution.

It is a fact of universal notoriety, that the manufacturing population of England, as a class, work for half, or less than half the wages of our own. The cost of machinery there, also, is about half as much as the cost of the same articles with us; while our capital, when loaned, produces nearly double the rate of English interest; yet against these grand adverse circumstances our manufacturers, with a small per centage of tariff, successfully compete with English capitalists in many branches of manufacturing business. No explanation can be given of this extraordinary fact which does not take into the account the difference of education between the operatives in the two countries.

One of our most careful and successful manufacturers remarks that, on substituting in one of his cotton-mills a better for a poorer educated class of operatives, he was enabled to add twelve or fifteen per cent. to the speed of his machinery, without any increase of damage or danger from the acceleration. How direct and demonstrative the bearing which facts like this have upon the wisdom of our laws respecting the education of children in manufacturing establishments.[41]

The number of females in the State of Massachusetts engaged in the various manufactures of cotton, straw-platting, etc., has been estimated at forty thousand, and the annual value of their labor at one hundred dollars each on an average, or four millions of dollars for the whole. From the facts stated in the letters of Messrs. Mills and Clark above cited, it appears there is a difference of not less than fifty per cent. between the earnings of the least educated and of the best educated operatives—between those who make their marks instead of writing their names, and those who have been acceptably employed in school-keeping. Now suppose the whole forty thousand females engaged in the various kinds of manufactures in that commonwealth to be degraded to the level of the lowest class, it would follow that their aggregate earnings would fall at once to two millions of dollars. But, on the other hand, suppose them all to be elevated by mental cultivation to the rank of the highest, and their earnings would rise to the sum of six millions of dollars annually.

There can be no doubt but that education, or the want of it, affects the pecuniary value of female labor in the ordinary domestic employments of the sex not less than in manufactures. If, then, the females of the thirty states of the Union be estimated at eight millions—and the number sustaining the relations of daughters, wives, and mothers must exceed the supposition—the effect of giving them all an education equal to the best would at once raise their earnings, annually, two hundred millions of dollars! But this is the lowest sense in which we can estimate the value of education, even in the sterner sex. This sum, vast as it may seem, is as dross to gold when compared with the refining and elevating influence which eight millions of educated females would exert upon the domestic and social institutions of our country, in uplifting our national character and improving the condition of the race.

Not more than thirty years ago it was uncommon for a glazier's apprentice, even after having served an apprenticeship of seven years, to be able to cut glass with a diamond without spending much time and destroying much of the glass upon which he worked. But the invention of a simple tool has put it into the power of the merest tyro in the trade to cut glass with facility, and without loss. A man who had a mind, as well as fingers, observed that there was one direction in which the diamond was almost incapable of abrasion or wearing by use. The tool not only steadies the diamond, but fastens it in that direction.

The operation of tanning leather consists in exposing a hide to the action of a chemical ingredient, called tannin, for a length of time sufficient to allow every particle of the hide to become saturated with the solution. In making the best leather, the hides used to lay in the pit for six, twelve, or eighteen months, and sometimes for two years, the tanner being obliged to wait all this time for a return of his capital. By the modern process, the hides are placed in a close pit, with a solution of the tannin matter, and the air being exhausted, the liquid penetrates through every pore and fiber of the skin, and the whole process is completed in a few days.

The bleaching of cloth, which used to be effected in the open air, and in exposed situations where temptation to theft was offered, and in England hundreds and probably thousands of men have yielded and forfeited their lives, is now performed in an unexposed situation, and in a manner so expeditious, that cloth is bleached as much more rapidly than it formerly was as hides are tanned.

It is stated by Lord Brougham, in his beautiful Discourse on the Advantages of Science, that the inventor of the new mode of refining sugar made more money in a shorter time, and with less risk and trouble, than perhaps was ever realized from any previous invention.

Intelligence also prevents loss as well as makes profits. How much time and money have been squandered in repeated attempts to invent machinery, after a principle had been once tested and had failed through some defect inherent and natural, and therefore insuperable! Within thirty years not less than five patents have been taken out, in England and the United States, for a certain construction of paddle-wheels for a steamboat, which construction was tested and condemned as early as 1810.[42] A case once came within my own knowledge, says Mr. Mann, of a person who spent a fortune in mining for coal, when a work on geology, which would have cost but a dollar, and might have been read in a week, would have informed him that the stratum where he began to excavate belonged to a formation lower down in the natural series than coal ever is, or, according to the constitution of things, ever can be found. He therefore worked into a stratum which must have been formed before a particle of coal, or even a tree, or a vegetable existed on the planet. Numerous similar and equally striking illustrations might be cited, but this is not necessary.

These are a few specimens, on familiar subjects, taken almost at random, for the purpose of showing the inherent superiority of any association or community, whether small or great, where mind is a member of the partnership. What is true of the above-mentioned cases is true of the whole circle of those arts by which human life is sustained and human existence comforted, elevated, and embellished. Mind has been the improver, for matter can not improve itself, and improvement has advanced in proportion to the number and culture of the minds excited to activity and applied to the work.

Similar advancements have been effected throughout the whole compass of human labor and research; in the arts of Transportation and Locomotion, from the employment of the sheep and the goat as beasts of burden, to the steam-engine and the rail-road car; in the art of Navigation, from the canoe clinging timidly to the shore, to steam-ships which boldly traverse the ocean; in Hydraulics, from carrying water by hand in a vessel or in horizontal aqueducts, to those vast conduits which supply the demands of a city, and to steam fire-engines which throw a column of water to the top of the loftiest buildings; in the arts of Spinning and Rope-making, from the hand distaff to the spinning-frame, and to the machine which makes cordage or cables of any length, in a space ten feet square; in Horology or Time-keeping, from the sun-dial and the water-clock to the watch, and to the chronometer, by which the mariner is assisted in measuring his longitude, and in saving property and life; in the extraction, forging, and tempering of Iron and other ores having malleability to be wrought into all forms and used for all purposes, and supplying, instead of the stone hatchet or the fish-shell of the savage, an almost infinite variety of instruments, which have sharpness for cutting or solidity for striking; in the art of Vitrification or Glass-making, giving not only a multitude of commodious and ornamental utensils for the household, but substituting the window for the unsightly orifice or open casement, and winnowing light and warmth from the outward and the cold atmosphere; in the arts of Induration by Heat, from bricks dried in the sun to those which withstand the corrosion of our climate for centuries or resist the intensity of the furnace; in the arts of Illumination, from the torch cut from the fir or pine tree to the brilliant gas-light which gives almost a solar splendor to the nocturnal darkness of our cities; in the arts of Heating and Ventilation, which at once supply warmth for comfort and pure air for health; in the art of Building, from the hollowed trunk of a tree or the roof-shaped cabin, to those commodious and lightsome dwellings which betoken the taste and competence of our villages and cities; in the art of Copying or Printing, from the toilsome process of hand-copying, where the transcription of a single book was the labor of months or years, and sometimes almost of a life, to the power printing-press, which throws off sixty printed sheets in a minute; in the art of Paper-making, from the preparation of the inner bark of a tree, cleft off and dried at immense labor, to machinery from which there jets out an unbroken stream of paper with the velocity and continuousness of a current of water; in the art of Painting, from the use of the crayon, and artificial colors imperfectly blended, requiring whole days to present an incomplete picture, to the production, as by enchantment, of perfect likenesses in nature's own penciling, executed in a few seconds; in the art of Telegraphing, from communicating information by signs which may be seen from one station to another, to conveying intelligence to any given distance with the velocity of lightning; and, in addition to all these, in the arts of Moulding and Casting, of Designing and Engraving, of Preserving materials and of Changing their color, of Dividing and Uniting them, etc., etc., an ample catalogue, whose very names and processes would fill volumes.

Now, for the perfecting of all these operations, from the tedious and bungling process to the rapid and elegant; for the change of an almost infinite variety of crude and worthless materials into useful and beautiful fabrics, mind has been the agent. Succeeding generations have outstripped their predecessors just in proportion to the superiority of their mental cultivation. When we compare different people or different generations with each other, the diversity is so great that all must behold it. But there is the same kind of difference between contemporaries, fellow-townsmen, and fellow-laborers. Though the uninstructed man works side by side with the intelligent, yet the mental difference between them places them in the same relation to each other that a past age bears to the present. If the ignorant man knows no more respecting any particular art or branch of business than was generally known during the last century, he belongs to the last century, and he must consent to be outstripped by those who have the light and knowledge of the present. Though they are engaged in the same kind of work, though they are supplied with the same tools or implements for carrying it on, yet, so long as one has only an arm, but the other has an arm and a mind, their products will come out stamped and labeled all over with marks of contrast; inferiority and superiority, both as to quantity and quality, will be legibly written on their respective labors.

It is related by travelers among savage tribes that when, by the aid of an ingeniously devised instrument or apparatus, they have performed some skillful manual operation, the savages have purloined from them the instrument they had used, supposing there was some magic in the apparatus itself, by which the seeming miracle had been performed; but, as they could not steal the art of the operator with the instrument which he employed, the theft was fruitless. Any person who expects to effect with less education what another is enabled to do with more, ought not to smile at the delusion of the savage or the simplicity of his reasoning.

On a cursory inspection of the great works of art—the steam-engine, the printing-press, the power-loom, the mill, the iron foundery, the ship, the telescope, etc., etc.—we are apt to look upon them as having sprung into sudden existence, and reached their present state of perfection by one, or, at most, by a few mighty efforts of creative genius. We do not reflect that they have required the lapse of centuries and the successive application of thousands of minds for the attainment of their present excellence; that they have advanced from a less to a more perfect form by steps and gradations almost as imperceptible as the growth by which an infant expands to the stature of a man; and that, as later discoverers and inventors had first to go over the ground of their predecessors, so must future discoverers and inventors first master the attainments of the present age before they will be prepared to make those new achievements which are to carry still further onward the stupendous work of improvement.

That education increases the productiveness of labor has been already conclusively established. It has also been incidentally shown that mere knowledge, valuable as it is to the laborer, is not the only advantage derived from a good common school education, but that the better educated, as a class, possess a higher and better state of morals, and are more orderly and respectful in their deportment than the uninstructed; and that for those who possess the greatest share in the stock of worldly goods, the most effectual way of making insurance on their property would be, to contribute from it enough to sustain an efficient system of common school education, thereby educating the whole mass of mind, and constituting it a police more effective than peace officers or prisons. If, then, poverty is at once a cause and an effect of crime, as is stated by a late writer,[44] who has made an extended survey of the relative state of instruction and social welfare in the leading nations of the world, it is directly inferable that education will, and, from the nature of the case, must act in a compound ratio in diminishing both pauperism and crime.

This proposition is not received by a few individuals merely in comparatively unimportant communities: it is one which is generally adopted by enlightened practical educators and by liberal-minded capitalists of both hemispheres. The views of several of our principal American manufacturers have been already presented. Let us now direct our attention to the testimony of enlightened and liberal-minded capitalists residing in some of the transatlantic states.

William Fairbrain, Esq., the sole proprietor of a manufactory in Manchester, and part owner of another establishment in London, and who has between eleven and twelve hundred persons in his employ, remarks in relation to the habits of the educated and uneducated as follows: There is no doubt that the educated are more sober and less dissipated than the uneducated. During the hours of recreation, the younger portion of the educated workmen indulge more in reading and mental pleasures; they attend more at reading-rooms, and avail themselves of the facilities afforded by libraries, by scientific lectures, and by lyceums. The older of the more educated workmen spend their time chiefly with their families, reading and walking out with them. The time of the uneducated classes is spent very differently, and chiefly in the grosser sensual indulgences. Mr. Fairbrain has given his own time as president of a lyceum for the use of the working classes, which furnishes the means of instruction in arithmetic, mathematics, drawing, and mensuration, and by lectures. In these institutions liberal provision is very properly made, not only for the occupation of the leisure hours of the laborers themselves, and for their intellectual and social improvement, but for that of their wives and families, in order "to make the home comfortable, and to minister to the household recreation and amusement: this is a point of view in which the education of the wives of laboring men is really of very great importance, that they may be rational companions for men."[45]

Albert G. Escher, Esq., one of the firm of Escher, Wyss, and Co., of Zurich, Switzerland, remarks as follows: We employ from six to eight hundred men in our machine-making establishment at Zurich: we also employ about two hundred men in our cotton-mills there, and about five hundred men in our cotton manufactories in the Tyrol and in Italy. I have occasionally had the control of from five to six hundred men engaged in engineering operations as builders, masons, etc., and men of the class called navigators in England.

After giving a list of the different countries from which his laborers are drawn, classifying the workmen of various nations "in respect to such natural intelligence as may be distinguished from any intelligence imparted by the labors of the schoolmaster," and remarking in relation to the influence of education upon the value of labor—where his testimony corroborates that of manufacturers in New England, already quoted—the same gentleman makes a statement which is applicable to the subject under consideration.

"The better educated workmen, we find, are distinguished by superior moral habits in every respect. In the first place, they are entirely sober; they are discreet in their enjoyments, which are of a more rational and refined kind; they are more refined themselves, and they have a taste for much better society, which they approach respectfully, and consequently find much readier admittance to it; they cultivate music; they read; they enjoy the pleasures of scenery, and make parties for excursions into the country; they are economical, and their economy extends beyond their own purse to the stock of their master; they are consequently honest and trustworthy."

Scotland affords a very striking illustration of the power of education in diminishing pauperism and crime, and in improving the morals and increasing the wealth of a country. Indeed, it would be difficult to find another instance in the history of nations of a country which has made such rapid progress in the diminution of crime, the increase of public wealth, and the diffusion of comforts, as Scotland. And this gratifying change—this remarkable instance of progress in the scale of being, has been concurrent with increased and increasing attention to the education of the people.

At the beginning of the last century, Scotland swarmed with gipsies and other vagabonds, who lived chiefly by stealing, and who often committed violent robberies and murders. Of these pests to society it was estimated that there were not less than two hundred thousand. Besides these, there were the more gentlemanly, though less tolerable robbers, such as the notorious Rob Roy, who made no more ado about seizing another man's cattle than a grazier does of driving from market a drove of oxen for which he has paid every shilling demanded.

But now, the laying aside of a sum sufficient for the education of his children is an object which a Scotchman seldom loses sight of, both when he thinks of marrying and settling in life, and at every future period; and it is to this habit, handed down from father to son, that the Scotch owe their morality. One of their own writers says, "we have scarcely any rural population who are not perfectly aware of the importance of education, and not willing to make sacrifices to secure it to their children."

Having seen something of the excellence of education in improving the social and moral habits of a community, and in banishing pauperism and crime from among those who become the happy subjects of its uplifting power, let us, for the purpose of becoming more alive to its importance, consider the condition of a people where the masses are not brought under its benign influence.

Spain, which has been already referred to in illustration of the evils of ignorance, affords a striking illustration for our present purpose. Until after the lapse of one third of the present century, there was but ONE newspaper published in this country! "Yes, one miserable government gazette was the sole channel through which twelve or fourteen millions of people, spread over a vast territory, were to be supplied with information on the momentous affairs of their own country, and of the whole external world."—National Education, vol. ii., p. 136.

"The most authentic return of the number of children receiving education in Spain was made in the year 1803, and it is believed that but little change has taken place since that time. According to the returns, the number of children receiving education, exclusive of those brought up in convents and monasteries, was only one in every three hundred and forty-six of the population! M. JonnÉs estimates the population at about fourteen millions and a half, and assuming, as he does, that about the same fraction of the population is receiving education as in 1803, he estimates the present number of children in school in the whole of Spain at not more than about forty-three thousand; and, pursuing his calculations, he shows that, if his data be correct, not more than one child in thirty-five ever goes to school. He further states that the children thus favored are exclusively from the middle and upper classes."[46]—National Education, vol. ii., p. 130-1.

How far the education given to the favored few is of a practical and useful kind, may be conjectured from the following extract from M. JonnÉs's work. After speaking of the many libraries, schools, colleges, and universities, the creation of past times, but which still exist, he remarks, that "these institutions were intended for a state of society which had nothing in common with that of the present day. The kind of instruction afforded in them, confined as it is to prayer, church discipline, and the dogmas of theology, has no connection with the interests and wants of the existing generation.

"What every enlightened man in Spain has long called for is a national, popular, gratuitous education, extending to all classes, as well in the towns as in the rural districts. Up to the present time, the people have received no other instruction than that offered by the clergy, which has had scarcely any other object than the performance of religious ceremonies."

In addition to what has been already stated, it may be remarked, that even with those who know how to read, "books and study are almost out of the question, because, unless in the principal cities, public libraries are nowhere to be found, and private libraries are luxuries that few possess."

If education is conducive to virtue, and ignorance fosters crime, what must be the social and moral state of a country in which ignorance is so prevalent! "The amount of crime in Spain is appalling. We have before us a return of convictions for the year 1826, from which we shall make some extracts. Our reason for taking this year is simply because we are unable to procure any return for a later one. The number of convictions for murder in England and Wales in the year 1826 was thirteen, and the number convicted of wounding, etc., with intent to kill, was fourteen. These numbers are lamentably large. That the horrible crime of murder should ever be perpetrated is a most melancholy fact; and that so many as thirteen murders should be committed in one year must fill the mind of every moral man and lover of his country with grief and shame. But great as this number is absolutely, it sinks into insignificance when compared with the number of murders perpetrated in Spain; for in that unhappy country, in the single year of 1826, the number of convictions for murder reached the frightful height of twelve hundred and thirty-three! in addition to which, there were seventeen hundred and seventy-three convictions on charges of maiming with intent to kill, and sixteen hundred and twenty persons were convicted of robbery under aggravated circumstances. We doubt not for an instant this mass of crime is the offspring of ignorance."—National Education, vol. ii., p. 144.

It has been well remarked that the truest proofs of a good government are just laws, and that the best evidence of a well-organized government is to be found in the strict execution of these laws. "Judging the Spanish government by these tests, it will appear the worst and weakest government that ever held together. Justice of no kind has any existence; there is the most lamentable insecurity of person and property; redress is never certain, because both judgment and the execution of the laws are left to men so inadequately paid that they must depend for their subsistence upon bribery. Nothing is so difficult as to bring a man to trial who has any thing in his purse, except to bring him to execution: this, unless in Madrid and Catalonia, is impossible, for money will always buy indemnity.

"I can state, upon certain information received in Madrid, that the principal Spanish diligences pay black mail to the banditti for their protection. This arrangement was at first entered into with some difficulty; and from a gentleman who was present at the interview between the person employed to negotiate on behalf of the diligences and the representative of the banditti, I learned a few particulars. The diligences in question were those between Madrid and Seville, and the sum offered for their protection was not objected to, but another difficulty was started. 'I have nothing to say against the terms you offer,' said the negotiator for the banditti, 'and I will at once insure you against being molested by robbers of consequence! but as for the small fry, I can not be responsible! we respect the engagements entered into by each other, but there is nothing like honor among the petty thieves.' The proprietors of the diligences, however, were satisfied with the assurance of protection against the great robbers, and the treaty was concluded; but not long afterward one of the coaches was stopped and rifled by the petty thieves: this led to an arrangement which has ever since proved effectual; one of the chiefs accompanies the coach on its journey, and overawes, by his name and reputation, the robbers of inferior degree."—Spain in 1830, vol. i., p. 2.

A volume might be filled with similar testimony, showing the great insecurity of person and property in various parts of this unhappy country. Even "a woman who dares prosecute the murderer of her husband speedily receives a private intimation that effectually silences her; and it has not been uncommon for money to be put into the hands of an escrivano[47] previous to the commission of a murder, in order to insure the services and protection of a person so necessary to one who meditates crime."

Spain abounds in poverty. Ignorance conduces to crime, which, as we have seen, is at once a cause and an effect of poverty. In view of what has already been said of the ignorance and immorality of the Spaniards, one would readily enough infer that poverty exists among them to a deplorable extent, and it is even so. In this country "every thing, indeed, appears to have conspired to paralyze industry, and to render of no avail the natural fertility of the soil. The havoc of war; the plunder committed by organized and powerful bodies of robbers; the rapacity of government and of its army of officers; the exclusion of foreign goods, and the consequent shutting up of the foreign market; the ignorance of the people as to the best modes of agriculture; and, last of all, the want of capital—all these combine to produce squalid poverty in a land which ought to," and, with a good system of popular education, most assuredly would, "abound in wealth."

Scotland and Spain have been referred to, not to bring out a few facts in history merely, but to illustrate an important truth. Where a good system of popular education is well administered in a country, and, as a consequence, intelligence, industry, and morality become universal among its citizens, they will eventually become a wealthy, and a highly-prosperous and happy community, even though they derive their subsistence from a naturally unfruitful soil; but, on the contrary, where popular education is neglected in a commonwealth, and its future citizens, as a consequence, grow up in ignorance, idleness, and vice, squalid poverty and flagrant crime will become prevalent throughout a wretched and degenerate community, that is scarcely able to gain a mere subsistence from a naturally productive soil.

In further confirmation of the truth of the proposition that education diminishes crime, I will introduce the following statistics, gleaned from various official documents respecting prisons. According to returns to the British Parliament, the commitments for crimes in an average of nine years in proportion to population are as follows: In Manchester, the most infidel city in the nation, 1 in 140; in London, 1 in 800; in all Ireland, 1 in 1600; and in Scotland, celebrated for learning and religion, 1 in 20,000!

The Rev. Dr. Forde, for many years the Ordinate of Newgate, London, represents ignorance as the first great cause, and idleness as the second, of all the crimes committed by the inmates of that celebrated prison. Sir Richard Phillips, sheriff of London, says that, on the memorial addressed to the sheriffs by 152 criminals in the same institution, 25 only signed their names in a fair hand, 26 in an illegible scrawl, and that 101, two thirds of the entire number, were marksmen, signing with a cross. Few of the prisoners could read with facility; more than half of them could not read at all; the most of them thought books were useless, and were totally ignorant of the nature, object, and end of religion.

The Rev. Mr. Clay, chaplain to the House of Correction in Lancashire, represents that out of 1129 persons committed, 554 could not read; 222 were barely capable of reading; 38 only could read well; and only 8, or 1 in 141, could read and write well. One half of the 1129 prisoners were quite ignorant of the simplest truths; 37 of these, 1 in 20 of the entire number, were occasional readers of the Bible; and only one out of this large number was familiar with the Holy Scriptures and conversant with the principles of religion. Among the 516 represented as entirely ignorant, 125 were incapable of repeating the Lord's Prayer.

In the New York State Prisons, as examined a few years ago, more than three fourths of the convicts had either received no education or a very imperfect one. Out of 842 at Sing Sing, 289 could not read or write, and only 42—less than 1 in 20—had received a good common school education. Auburn prison presents similar statistics. Out of 228 prisoners, only 59 could read, write, and cipher, and 60 could do neither.

The chaplain of the Ohio penitentiary remarks that not only in the prison of that state, but in others, depraved appetites and corrupt habits, which have led to the commission of crime, are usually found with the ignorant, uninformed, and duller part of mankind. Of 276 at one time in that institution, nearly all were below mediocrity, and 175 are represented as grossly ignorant, and, in point of education, scarcely capable of transacting the ordinary business of life.

The preceding, it is believed, is no more than a fair specimen of the criminal statistics of this country and of the civilized world. I will conclude this dark catalogue by introducing a statement in relation to education and crime in a state which, according to the last general census, contained fewer persons in proportion to the whole population who were unable to read and write than any other state in the Union. From this statement it appears that as a people become more generally intelligent and moral, a greater proportion of their criminals will be found among the ignorant and neglected classes.

The chaplain of the Connecticut State Prison states that, out of 190 prisoners, not one was liberally educated, or a member of either of the learned professions. Of the whole number, 109 were natives of Connecticut; and of these, many of them could not understand the plainest sentences which they read, and their moral culture had been more neglected than their intellectual. From the investigations of this officer, it appears that out of every 100 prisoners only two could be found who could read, write, and were temperate, and only four who could read, write, and followed any regular trade.

It is evident, then, that while education increases the wealth and general happiness of a community, the want of it will reduce a people to a state of poverty and wretchedness; or, to repeat a sentiment placed at the head of this article, the different countries of the world, if arranged according to the state of education in them, will be found to be arranged also according to wealth, morals, and general happiness; at the same time, the condition of the people, and the extent of crime and violence among them, follow a like order.

I might appropriately add under this head that a proper attention to the subject of education would greatly diminish the number of fatal accidents; that it would save many lives, prevent much of idiocy and insanity, and a multitude of evils that ordinarily result from ignorance of the organic laws.

Fatal Accidents.—He who understands the laws of motion knows that a man jumping from a carriage at speed is in great danger of falling after his feet reach the ground, for his body has the same forward velocity as if he had been running with the speed of the carriage, and unless he continues to advance his feet as in running to support his advancing body, he must as certainly be dashed to the ground as a runner whose feet are suddenly arrested. If, then, there is danger in leaping from a carriage in motion, how much greater is the hazard in jumping from a rail-road car under full headway. And yet many do this, jumping off side-wise, so that it is impossible to advance; and some even jump in the opposite direction from the motion of the car, which increases the already imminent hazard. From statistics recently collected, it appears that the great majority of accidents on the rail-roads of this country have happened in this way, a want of practical conformity to this one law of motion being the prevailing cause of fatality along these thoroughfares. This is but a specimen of the fatal accidents that are continually occurring in the every-day transactions of life, which might be prevented as easily as this by the practical application of a single scientific principle.

Loss of Life.—In a single hospital at Dublin, during four years, 2944 children out of 7650, about 40 in 100, died within a fortnight after their birth. Dr. Clark, the attending physician, suspecting a want of pure air to be the cause, provided for the ventilation of all the apartments; and by means of pipes six inches in diameter, introduced into every room a current of fresh, pure air, which is essential to vitality, and allowed that which was vitiated by respiration to escape. The consequence was, that during the three succeeding years only 165 out of 4243 children died within the first two weeks, or less than 4 in 100. As there was no other known cause of improvement in the health of these children, it may be justly inferred that, during the four years first mentioned, 2650 children, nine tenths of the whole number, had perished for want of pure air.

It has been estimated that about 40 in every 100 of the deaths annually occurring in Great Britain and the United States are of children under five years of age. To avoid every possibility of exaggeration, we will place the number in this country at 30 in 100. At this rate we lose about 200,000 children under five years of age every year. Now, if nine tenths of the mortality among infants in the Dublin Hospital were caused by breathing bad air, we may reasonably infer that at least one half of the deaths in the United States of children under the age of five years proceed from the same fatal cause. And those who have noticed what pains are taken by excessively careful mothers[48] and ignorant nurses to exclude from the lungs of infants the "free, pure, unadulterated air of heaven," and, by means of many thicknesses of enveloping shawls and blankets, require them to re-respire portions at least of their own breath, until it becomes a virulent and deadly poison, will think with me that this is a low estimate, and wonder that the swaddling-cloths of more infants do not become their winding-sheets. But, even according to this estimate, 100,000 children in the United States annually fall victims to the ignorance of their fond mothers. Many thousands more are subsequently sacrificed in consequence of occupying small and unventilated bed-rooms and school-rooms, which, by a practical knowledge of the principles of physiology, might be saved. Perhaps as many more become sufferers for life from the same cause, for a thousand forms of disease, as it manifests itself in every stage of life, either owe their existence or their severity to breathing bad air. These, then, who drag out a miserable existence in consequence of this cruel treatment, are to be more pitied than those who fall its ready victims.

If so many thousand deaths occur annually in the United States from this one cause, in addition to the vast amount of misery which is entailed upon the wretched survivors, how many hundred thousand precious lives might be saved, and what untold wretchedness might be prevented, by a strict conformity to those physiological laws of our being which might and should be generally taught in the common schools of the land.

Education and Idiocy.[49]—The education of idiots has hitherto been regarded as paradoxical, and still is by the mass of mankind; but that it is possible to improve the condition of this most wretched and helpless class of persons none need longer doubt. The experiment has succeeded in both Europe and America. Massachusetts has the honor of taking the lead in this country; and it is meet that it should be so, for she has long, like a wise parent, been accustomed to care for all her children. She had most readily and generously seconded the efforts of humane men for the relief of the insane, the deaf mutes, and the blind, and made provision for their care and instruction. She extended her maternal love to the bodies of those who were in hopeless idiocy, but as for minds, they seemed to have none; they were, therefore, kept out of sight of the public as much as possible until the year 1846, when a board of commissioners were appointed "to inquire into the condition of the idiots of the commonwealth, to ascertain their number, and whether any thing can be done in their behalf."

In their report the commissioners say that, "by diligent and careful inquiries in nearly one hundred towns in different parts of the state, we have ascertained the existence and examined the condition of five hundred and seventy-five human beings who are condemned to hopeless idiocy, who are considered and treated as idiots by their neighbors, and left to their own brutishness. They are also idiotic in a legal sense; that is, they are regarded as incapable of entering into contracts, and are irresponsible for their actions."

The commissioners conclude that, "if the other parts of the state contain the same proportion of idiots to their whole population, the total number in the commonwealth is between fourteen and fifteen hundred!" Now if we make the same estimate in proportion to the entire population, it will appear that in the United States there are upward of thirty-five thousand persons in the most wretched and helpless condition of idiocy.

In view of the great number of idiots in the commonwealth, the commissioners say, "it appeared to us certain that the existence of so many idiots in every generation must be the consequence of some violation of the natural laws; that where there was so much suffering there must have been sin. We resolved, therefore, to seek for the sources of the evil, as well as to gauge the depth and extent of the misery."

Some of the causes of idiocy are set forth in the report, two of which are as follows: first, the low condition of the physical organization of one or both parents, induced often by intemperance; second, the intermarriage of relatives.

The report states that out of 420 cases of congenital idiocy which were examined, some information was gained respecting the condition of the progenitors of 359. Now in all these cases, save only four, it was found that one or the other, or both, of the immediate progenitors of the unfortunate sufferer had in some way widely departed from the normal condition of health, and violated the natural laws. That is to say, one or the other, or both of them, had been very unhealthy or scrofulous; or hereditarily predisposed to affections of the brain, causing occasional insanity; or had intermarried with blood relatives; or had been intemperate; or had been guilty of sensual excesses which impair the constitution.[50]

Intemperance and Idiocy.—Out of the three hundred and fifty-nine idiots, the condition of whose progenitors was ascertained, ninety-nine were the children of drunkards. But this does not tell the whole story by any means. By drunkard is meant a person who is a notorious and habitual sot. Many persons who are habitually intemperate do not get this name even now; much less would they have done so twenty-five or thirty years ago. By a pretty careful inquiry, with an especial view of ascertaining the number of idiots of the lowest class whose parents were known to be temperate persons, it is found that not one quarter can be so considered.

From the pretty uniform action of a physiological law, which is now becoming well understood, it appears that idiots, fools, and simpletons, either in the first or second generation, are common among the progeny of intemperate persons, and may be considered as an effect of the habitual use of alcohol, even in moderate quantities. If, moreover, one considers how many children of intemperate parents there are who, without being idiots, are deficient in bodily and mental energy, and predisposed by their very organization to have cravings for alcoholic stimulants, it will be seen what an immense burden the drinkers of one generation throw upon the succeeding one.

Idiocy and the Marriage of Relatives.—Out of the three hundred and fifty-nine cases of congenital idiocy already referred to, in which the parentage was ascertained, "seventeen were known to be the children of parents nearly related by blood; but, as many of these cases were adults, it was impossible to ascertain, in some cases, whether their parents, who were dead, were related or not before marriage. From some collateral evidence, we conclude that at least three more cases should be added to the seventeen. This would show that more than one twentieth of the idiots examined are offspring of the marriage of relations. Now, as marriages between near relations are by no means in the ratio of one to twenty, nor even, perhaps, as one to a thousand to the marriages between persons not related, it follows that the proportion of idiotic progeny is vastly greater in the former than in the latter case. Then it should be considered that idiocy is only one form in which Nature manifests that she has been offended by such intermarriages. It is probable that blindness, deafness, imbecility, and other infirmities, are more likely to be the lot of the children of parents related by blood than of others. The probability, therefore, of unhealthy or infirm issue from such marriages becomes fearfully great, and the existence of the law against them is made out as clearly as though it were written on tables of stone.

"The statistics of the seventeen families, the heads of which, being blood relatives, intermarried, tells a fearful tale. Most of the parents were intemperate or scrofulous; some were both the one and the other; of course, there were other causes to increase chances of infirm offspring besides that of the intermarriage. There were born unto them ninety-five children, of whom forty-four were idiotic, twelve others were scrofulous and puny, one was deaf, and one was a dwarf! In some cases, all the children were either idiotic, or very scrofulous and puny. In one family of eight children, five were idiotic."

Condition of Idiots.—From what has been said of the character of parents to whom are born the greatest proportion of this most wretched and helpless class of persons, their condition and treatment might be inferred. To rear healthy children properly, a knowledge of the principles of physiology and mental science is essentially necessary. This knowledge is still more important in the treatment of idiots. Dr. Howe is of the opinion that it requires a rarer and higher kind of talent to teach an idiot than a youth of superior talent. When the time comes that schools for idiots are established all over the country, he thinks "it will be found more difficult to get good teachers for them than to get good professors for our colleges."

After excepting five or six alms-houses in which the idiots are treated both kindly and wisely, the commissioners say, "the general condition of those at the public charge is most deplorable. They are filthy, gluttonous, lazy, and given up to abominations of various kinds. They not only do not improve, but they sink deeper and deeper into bodily depravity and mental degradation. Bad, however, as is the condition of the idiots who are at public charge, and gross as is the ignorance of those who take the charge of them about their real wants and capabilities, we are constrained to say that the condition of those in private houses is, generally speaking, still worse, and the ignorance of the relatives and friends who support them is still more profound."

This is not to be wondered at when we consider that idiots are generally born of a very poor stock—of persons who are subject to some disorders of the brain, or who are themselves scrofulous and puny to the last degree. Such persons are, generally, very feeble in intellect, poor in purse, and intemperate in habits. A great many of them are hardly able to take care of themselves. They are unfit to teach or train common children; how much less to take the charge of idiots, whose education is the most difficult of all!

The commissioners ascertained, mainly by personal observation, the condition of three hundred and fifty-five idiotic persons who are not town or state paupers. Of these there may be, at the most, five who are treated very judiciously; who are taught by wise and discreet persons, and whose faculties and capabilities are developed to their fullest extent; but the remaining three hundred and fifty are generally "in a most deplorable condition as it respects their bodily, mental, and moral treatment."[51]

The commissioners come to the unquestionable conclusion in their report that "nothing can afford a stronger argument in favor of an institution for the proper training and teaching of idiots, and the dissemination of information upon the subject, than the striking difference manifested in the condition of the few children who are properly cared for and judiciously treated, and those who are neglected or abused. There are cases in our community of youths who are idiotic from birth, but who, under proper care and training, have become cleanly in person, quiet in deportment, industrious in habits, and who would almost pass in society for persons of common intelligence; and yet their natural capacity was no greater than that of others, who, from ignorance or neglect of their parents, have become filthy, gluttonous, lazy, vicious, depraved, and are rapidly sinking into driveling idiocy. This fact alone should be enough to encourage the state to take measures at once for the establishment of a school or institution for teaching or training idiots, if it were but a matter of experiment."

Massachusetts is the only state in the Union that as yet has attempted to do any thing for the education and training of this hitherto neglected class of persons. The result of the first year's experiment has been most gratifying and encouraging. Of the whole number received, there was not one who was in a situation where any great improvement in his condition was probable, or hardly possible; they were growing worse in habits, and more confirmed in their idiocy. But the process of deterioration in the pupils has been entirely stopped, and that of improvement has commenced; and though a year is a very short time in the instruction of such persons, yet its effects are manifest in all of them. They have improved in personal appearance and habits, in general health, in vigor, and in activity of body. Some of them can control their appetites in a considerable degree; they sit at the table with their teachers, and feed themselves decently. Almost all of them have improved in the understanding and the use of speech. Some of them have made considerable progress in the knowledge of language; they can select words printed on slips of paper, and a few can read simple sentences. But, what is most important, they have made a start forward.

"There is ground for confidence that the reasonable hopes of the friends of the experiment will be satisfied. All that they promised has been accomplished, so far as was possible in the period of a year. It has been demonstrated that idiots are capable of improvement, and that they can be raised from a state of low degradation to a higher condition. How far they can be elevated, and to what extent they may be educated, can only be shown by the experience of the future. The result of the past year's trial, however, gives confidence that each succeeding year will show even more progress than any preceding one."

Education and Insanity.—It is well established that a defective and faulty education through the period of infancy and childhood is one of the most prolific causes of insanity. Such an education, or rather miseducation, causes a predisposition in many, and excites one where it already exists, which ultimately renders the animal propensities of our nature uncontrollable. Appetites indulged and perverted, passions unrestrained, propensities rendered vigorous by indulgence, and subjected to no salutary restraint, bring persons into a condition in which both moral and physical causes easily operate to produce insanity, if they do not produce it themselves.

We must look to well-directed systems of popular education, having for their object physical improvement, no less than mental and moral culture, to relieve us from many of the evils which "flesh is heir to," and nothing can so effectually secure us from this most formidable disease (as well as from others not less appalling) as that system of instruction which teaches us how to preserve the normal condition of the body and the mind; to fortify the one against the catalogue of physical causes which every where assail us, and to elevate the other above the influence of the trials and disappointments of life, so that the host of moral causes which affect the brain, through the medium of the mind, shall be inoperative and harmless.

Those first principles of physical education which teach us how to avoid disease are all-important to all liable to insanity from hereditary predisposition. The physical health must be attended to, and the training of the faculties of the mind be such as to counteract the over-active propensities of our nature—correcting the bias of the mind to wrong currents and to too great activity by bringing into action the antagonizing powers, and thus giving a sound body and a well-balanced mind. Neglect of this early training entails evils upon the young which are felt in all after life.

These positions are stated and amplified in the able reports of Dr. S. B. Woodward, superintendent of the State Lunatic Asylum, Worcester, Mass., to which the reader is referred. They are also corroborated by persons who have had the care of the insane in other institutions. In the eighteenth annual report of the physician and superintendent of the Connecticut Retreat for the Insane, Dr. Brigham says, "a knowledge of the nature of the disease would frequently lead to its prevention. Insanity, in most cases, arises from undue excitement and labor of the brain; for even if a predisposition to it is inherited, an exciting cause is essential to its development. Hence every thing likely to cause great excitement of the brain, especially in early life, should be avoided.

"The records of cases at this institution and my own observation justify me in saying that the neglect of moral discipline, the too great indulgence of the passions and emotions in early life, together with the excessive and premature exercise of the mental powers, are among the most frequent causes that predispose to insanity. But these causes are in no other way operative in producing insanity than by unduly exciting the brain. By neglect of moral discipline, a character is formed subject to violent passions, and to extreme emotions and anxiety from the unavoidable evils and disappointments of life, and thus the brain, by being often and violently agitated, becomes diseased; and by too early exercising and prematurely developing the mental powers, this organ is rendered more susceptible and liable to disease.

"I am confident there is too much mental labor imposed upon youth at our schools and colleges. There have been several admissions of young ladies at this institution direct from boarding-schools, and of young men from college, where they had studied excessively. Should such intense exertion of the mind in youth not lead to insanity or immediate disease, it predisposes to dyspepsy, hysteria, hypochondriasis, and affections allied to insanity, and which are often its precursors. Should that portion of the community who now act most wisely in obtaining a knowledge of the functions of the digestive organs, and in carefully guarding them from undue excitation, be equally regardful of the brain, they would do a very great service to society, and, in my opinion, do much toward arresting the alarming increase of insanity, and all disorders of the nervous system."[52]

If the doctrines taught and the sentiments inculcated in the preceding chapters of this work, but more especially in the preceding sections of this chapter, are true; if it is established that education dissipates the evils of ignorance; that it increases the productiveness of labor; that it diminishes pauperism and crime—if all this is true, it may seem a work of supererogation to attempt the establishment of the proposition that education increases human happiness. I admit this seeming impropriety; for that the proposition is true may be legitimately inferred from what has gone before. But I wish to amplify and extend this thought, and to show that education has, if possible, still higher claims upon our attention than have yet been presented; that it not only has the power of removing physical and moral evils, and of multiplying and augmenting personal and social enjoyments, but that, when rightly understood, it constitutes our chief good; that to it, and to it only, we may safely look for man's highest and enduring joys, and for the permanent elevation of the race.

Man in Ignorance.—That we may be the better prepared to appreciate the advantages of education, and its usefulness as a means of increasing human happiness, let us consider the state and the enjoyments of the man whose mind is shrouded in ignorance. He grows up to manhood like a vegetable, or like one of the lower animals that are fed and nourished for the slaughter. He exerts his physical powers because such exertion is necessary for his subsistence. Were it otherwise, we should most frequently find him dozing over the fire with a gaze as dull and stupid as his ox, regardless of every thing but the gratification of his appetites. He has, perhaps, been taught the art of reading, but has never applied it to the acquisition of knowledge. His views are chiefly confined to the objects immediately around him, and to the daily avocations in which he is employed. His knowledge of society is circumscribed within the limits of his neighborhood, and his views of the world are confined within the range of the country in which he resides, or of the blue hills which skirt his horizon.

Of the aspect of the globe in other countries, of the various tribes with which these are peopled, of the seas and rivers, continents and islands, which diversify the landscape of the earth, of the numerous orders of animated beings which people the ocean, the atmosphere, and the land, of the revolutions of nations, and the events which have taken place in the history of the world, he has almost as little conception as have the animals which range the forest.

In regard to the boundless regions that lie beyond him in the firmament, and the bodies that roll there in magnificent grandeur, he has the most confused and inaccurate ideas; indeed, he seldom troubles himself with inquiries in relation to such subjects. Whether the stars are great or small, whether they are near us or at a distance, and whether they move or stand still, are to him matters of trivial importance. If the sun gives him light by day and the moon by night, and the clouds distil their watery treasures upon his parched fields, he is contented, and leaves all such inquiries and investigations to those who have leisure and inclination to engage in them. He views the canopy of heaven as merely a ceiling to our earthly habitation, and the starry orbs as only so many luminous tapers to diversify its aspect, and to afford a glimmering light to the benighted traveler.

Such a person has no idea of the manner in which the understanding may be enlightened and expanded by education; he has no relish for intellectual pursuits, and no conception of the pleasures they afford; and he sets no value on knowledge but in so far as it may increase his riches and his sensual gratifications. He has no desire for making improvements in his trade or domestic arrangements, and gives no countenance to those useful inventions and public improvements which are devised by others. He sets himself against every innovation, whether religious, political, mechanical, or agricultural, and is determined to abide by the "good old customs" of his forefathers, even though they compel him to carry his grist to mill in one end of a bag, with a stone in the other to balance it. Were it dependent upon him, the moral world would stand still, as the material world was supposed to in former times; all useful inventions would cease; existing evils would never be remedied; ignorance and superstition would universally prevail; the human mind would be arrested in its progress to perfection, and man would never arrive at the true dignity of his intellectual nature.

It is evident that such an individual—and the world contains thousands and millions of such characters—can never have his mind elevated to those sublime objects and contemplations which enrapture the man of science, nor feel those pure and exquisite pleasures which cultivated minds so frequently experience; nor can he form those lofty and expansive conceptions of the Deity which the grandeur and magnificence of his works are calculated to inspire. He is left as a prey to all those foolish notions and vain alarms which are engendered by ignorance and superstition; and he swallows, without the least hesitation, all the absurdities and childish tales respecting witches, hobgoblins, specters, and apparitions, which have been handed down to him by his forefathers.

While the ignorant man thus gorges his mind with fooleries and absurdities, he spurns at the discoveries of science as impositions on the credulity of mankind, and contrary to reason and common sense. That the sun is a million of times larger than the earth; that light flies from his body at the rate of a hundred thousand miles in the hundredth part of a second; and that the earth is whirling round its axis from day to day with a velocity of a thousand miles every hour, are regarded by him as notions far more improbable and extravagant than the story of the "Wonderful Lamp," and all the other tales of the "Arabian Night's Entertainments." In his hours of leisure from his daily avocations, his thoughts either run wild among the most groveling objects, or sink into sensuality and inanity; and solitude and retirement present no charms to his vacant mind.

While human beings are thus immersed in ignorance, destitute of rational ideas and of a solid substratum of thought, they can never experience those pleasures and enjoyments which flow from the exercise of the understanding, and which correspond to the dignity of a rational and immortal nature.

An enlightened Mind.—On the other hand, the man whose mind is irradiated with the light of substantial science has views, and feelings, and exquisite enjoyments to which the former is an entire stranger. In consequence of the numerous and multifarious ideas he has acquired, he is introduced, as it were, into a new world, where he is entertained with scenes, objects, and movements, of which the mind enveloped in ignorance can form no conception. He can trace back the stream of time to its commencement, and, gliding along its downward course, can survey the most memorable events which have happened in every part of its progress, from the primeval ages to the present day; the rise of empires, the fall of kings, the revolutions of nations, the battles of warriors, and the important events which have followed in their train; the progress of civilization, and of the arts and sciences; the judgments which have been inflicted on wicked nations, the dawnings of Divine mercy toward our fallen race, the manifestation of the Son of God in our nature, the physical changes and revolutions which have taken place in the constitution of our globe; in short, the whole of the leading events in the chain of divine dispensation, from the beginning of the world to the period in which we live.

With his mental eye the enlightened man can survey the terraqueous globe in all its variety of aspects; he can contemplate the continents, islands, and oceans which surround its exterior; the numerous rivers by which it is indented; the lofty ranges of mountains which diversify its surface; its winding caverns; its forests, lakes, and sandy deserts; its whirlpools, boiling springs, and glaciers; its sulphurous mountains, bituminous lakes, and the states and empires into which it is distributed; the tides and currents of the ocean; the icebergs of the polar regions, and the verdant scenes of the torrid zone.

Sitting at his fireside during the blasts of winter, the enlightened man can survey the numerous tribes of mankind scattered over the various climates of the earth, and entertain himself with views of their manners, customs, religion, laws, trade, manufactures, marriage ceremonies, civil and ecclesiastical governments, arts, sciences, cities, towns, and villages, and the animals peculiar to every region. In his rural walks he can not only appreciate the beneficence of Nature, and the beauties and harmonies of the vegetable kingdom in their exterior aspect, but he can also penetrate into the hidden processes which are going on in the roots, trunks, and leaves of plants and flowers, and contemplate the numerous vessels through which the sap is flowing from their roots through the trunks and branches; the millions of pores through which their odoriferous effluvia exhale; their fine and delicate texture; their microscopical beauties; their orders, genera, and species, and their uses in the economy of nature.

Even when shrouded in darkness and in solitude, where other minds could find no enjoyment, the man of knowledge can entertain himself with the most sublime contemplations. He can trace the huge earth we inhabit flying through the depths of space, carrying along with it its vast population, at the rate of sixty thousand miles every hour, and, by the inclination of its axis, bringing about the alternate succession of summer and winter, of seed-time and harvest. By the aid of his telescope he can transport himself toward the moon, and survey the circular plains, the deep caverns, the conical hills, the lofty peaks, and the rugged and romantic mountain scenery which diversify the surface of this orb of night.

By the help of the same instrument he can range through the planetary system, wing his way through the regions of space along with the swiftest orbs, and trace many of the physical aspects and revolutions which have a relation to distant worlds. He can transport himself to the planet Saturn, and behold a stupendous ring six hundred thousand miles in circumference, revolving in majestic grandeur every ten hours around a globe nine hundred times larger than the earth, while seven moons larger than ours, along with an innumerable host of stars, display their radiance to adorn the firmament of that magnificent world. He can wing his flight through the still more distant regions of the universe, leaving the sun and all his planets behind him, till they appear like a scarcely discernible speck in creation, and contemplate thousands and millions of stars and starry systems beyond the range of the unassisted eye, and wander among the suns and worlds dispersed throughout the boundless dimensions of space.

In his imagination he can fill up those blanks which astronomy has never directly explored, and conceive thousands of systems and ten thousands of worlds beyond all that is visible by the optic tube, stretching out to infinity on every hand, peopled with intelligences of various orders, and all under the superintendence and government of the "King Eternal, Immortal, and Invisible," whose power is omnipotent, and the limit of his dominions past finding out.

It is evident that a mind capable of such excursions and contemplations as I have now supposed must experience enjoyments infinitely superior to those of the individual whose soul is enveloped in intellectual darkness. If substantial happiness is chiefly situated in the mind; if it depends on the multiplicity of objects which lie within the range of its contemplation; if it is augmented by the view of scenes of beauty and sublimity, and displays of infinite intelligence and power; if it is connected with tranquillity of mind, which generally accompanies intellectual pursuits, and the subjugation of the pleasures of sense to the dictates of reason, the enlightened mind must enjoy gratifications as far superior to those of the ignorant as man is superior in station and capacity to the worms of the dust.

In order to illustrate this topic a little further, I shall select a few facts and deductions in relation to science, which demonstrate the interesting nature and delightful tendency of scientific pursuits.

There are several recorded instances of the powerful effect which the study of astronomy has produced upon the human mind. Dr. Rittenhouse, of Pennsylvania, after he had calculated the transit of Venus, which was to happen June 3d, 1769, was appointed, at Philadelphia, with others, to repair to the township of Norriston, and there to observe this planet until its passage over the sun's disc should verify the correctness of his calculations. This occurrence had never been witnessed but twice before by an inhabitant of our earth, and was never to be again seen by any person then living. A phenomenon so rare, and so important in its bearings upon astronomical science, was, indeed, well calculated to agitate the soul of one so alive as he was to the great truths of nature. The day arrived, and there was no cloud on the horizon. The observers, in silence and trembling anxiety, awaited for the predicted moment of observation to arrive. It came, and in the instant of contact, an emotion of joy so powerful was excited in the bosom of Dr. Rittenhouse that he fainted.

Sir Isaac Newton, after he had advanced so far in his mathematical proof of one of his great astronomical doctrines as to see that the result was to be triumphant, was so affected in view of the momentous truth he was about to demonstrate that he was unable to proceed, and begged one of his companions in study to relieve him, and carry out the calculation. These are striking illustrations, and the effect is perhaps heightened from their connection with a most sublime science, all of whose conclusions stand in open contradiction with those of superficial and vulgar observation.

But the discovery and contemplation of truths in philosophy, chemistry, and the mathematics have, in numerous instances, awakened kindred emotions. The enlightened man sees in every thing he beholds upon the surface of the earth, whether animal or vegetable, and in the very elements themselves, no less than when contemplating the wonders of astronomy, instances innumerable illustrative of the wisdom and beneficence of the Architect, all of which has a direct tendency to increase his happiness. In the invisible atmosphere which surrounds him, where other minds discern nothing but an immense blank, he beholds an assemblage of wonders, and a striking scene of divine wisdom and omnipotence. He views this invisible agent not only as a material, but as a compound substance, composed of two opposite principles, the one the source of flame and animal life, and the other destructive to both. He perceives the atmosphere as the agent under the Almighty which produces the germination and growth of plants, and all the beauties of the vegetable creation; which preserves water in a liquid state, supports fire and flame, and produces animal heat; which sustains the clouds, and gives buoyancy to the feathered tribes; which is the cause of winds, the vehicle of smells, the medium of sounds, the source of all the pleasures we derive from the harmonies of music, the cause of the universal light and splendor which is diffused around us, and of the advantages we derive from the morning and evening twilight. He contemplates it as the prime mover in a variety of machines, as impelling ships across the ocean, raising balloons to the region of the clouds, blowing our furnaces, raising water from the deepest pits, extinguishing fires, and performing a thousand other beneficent agencies, without which our globe would cease to be habitable. No one can doubt that all these views and contemplations have a direct tendency to enlarge the capacity of the mind, to stimulate its faculties, and to produce rational enjoyment.

But there is another view of this subject which is perhaps still more impressive. The atmosphere, it has been stated, is a compound substance. A knowledge of its elementary principles, which chemistry teaches, introduces its possessor to a new world of happiness. The adaptation of air to respiration, and the influence of a change in the nature or proportion of its elements upon health and longevity, have already been considered.[53] We have seen that carbonic acid, the vitiating product of respiration, although immediately fatal to animals, constitutes the very life of vegetation; that in the growth of plants the vitiated air is purified and fitted again for the sustenance of animal life; and that, by a beneficent provision of the Creator, animals and vegetables are thus perpetually interchanging kindly offices. It will suffice for our present purpose simply to remind the reader that the atmosphere is composed of the two gases, oxygen and nitrogen, united in the ratio of one to four by volume. Oxygen is a supporter of combustion, nitrogen is not. Increase the proportion of oxygen in the air, and the same substances burn with increased brilliancy; but diminish the proportion gradually, and they will burn more and more dimly until they become extinct. Iron and steel, as well as wood and the ordinary combustibles, will burn with great brilliancy in pure oxygen.

Water, I may add, is composed of the two gases, oxygen and hydrogen. The former, as we have seen, is a supporter of combustion, and the latter is one of the most combustible substances known. These two gases are nearly two thousand times more voluminous than their equivalent of water, and, when ignited, they combine with explosive energy. If, then, the Creator were to decompose the atmosphere that surrounds the earth to the height of forty-five miles, and the water that rests upon its surface, either or both of them, the oxygen, being specifically heavier than the nitrogen or hydrogen, would settle immediately upon the earth, and, coming in contact with fires here and there, its whole surface would, in an instant of time, be enveloped in one general conflagration, and "the day of the Lord," spoken of in the Scriptures, "in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also, and the things therein shall be burned up," would be speedily ushered in. He who understands the first principles of chemical science can not fail to perceive how readily (and in perfect accordance with laws well understood) such a general conflagration would take place were the great Architect simply to resolve these two elements—air and water—into their constituent parts. How full of meaning to such a one are the words of the Psalmist, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

One more illustration must suffice. All fluids, except water, contract in volume as they become colder to the point of congelation. But the point of greatest density in water is about eight degrees above freezing. As the temperature of all fluids increases above this point, their volume increases. As the temperature of all fluids, with the single exception of water, decreases, the volume decreases down to the freezing point. Water increases in density as it becomes colder until it reaches the temperature of forty degrees—eight degrees above the freezing point—when it begins to expand. This only exception to the general law of fluids is of greater importance in the economy of nature than most persons are conscious of. As the cold season advances in the temperate and frigid zones, the water in our lakes and rivers is reduced to the temperature of forty degrees; but at this point, by a beneficent provision of an All-wise Providence, the upper substratum becomes specifically lighter, and is converted into a covering of ice, which, resting upon the water beneath, protects it from freezing. Moreover, when water is converted into ice, one hundred and forty degrees of heat are given out, a part of which, entering into the water below, retards the further formation of ice.[54]

If water, like other fluids, continued to increase in density to the freezing point, the cold air of winter would rob the water of our lakes and rivers of its heat, until the whole was reduced to the temperature of thirty-two degrees; when, but for the circumstance to which we have just alluded, it would be immediately converted into a solid mass of ice from top to bottom, causing instant death to every animal living in it. The lower strata of such a mass of ice would never again become liquefied.

This is a striking proof of the beneficence and design of the Creator in forming water with such an exception to the ordinary laws of nature, and a knowledge of it can hardly fail to exert a most salutary, elevating, and ennobling influence on the mind of its possessor. The field of human happiness, then, with the virtuous, seems to enlarge in proportion as a knowledge of the works and laws of the beneficent Creator is extended. There is little ground for doubt as to what is God's will in relation to the universal education of the family of man, when he has connected with the exercise of mind in the study of his works superior enjoyments and heavenly aspirations.

The various propositions stated and elucidated in this chapter, we think, are as fully established as any moral truths need be, and, we doubt not, they commend themselves to the judgment and conscience of all who have carefully perused the preceding pages, if, indeed, they had not been duly considered and adopted before. If, then, a system of universal education, judiciously administered, would dissipate the evils of ignorance, which are legion; if it would greatly increase the productiveness of labor; if it would diminish—not to say exterminate—pauperism and crime; if it would prevent the great majority of fatal accidents that are constantly occurring in every community; if it would save the lives of a hundred thousand children in the United States every year, and as many more puny survivors from dragging out a miserable existence in consequence of being the offspring of ignorant or vicious parents; if it would prevent so much of idiocy, and would humanize those who are born idiots only, but have hitherto been permitted, nay, doomed to die brutes; if it would prevent so much insanity, and would save to society and their family and friends, "clothed and in their right mind," multitudes of every generation who now dwell in mental darkness and gloom; if it would increase the sum total of human happiness in proportion to its excellence, and the number of persons who are brought under its benign influence and uplifting power; if it would do all this—and that this is its legitimate tendency there can be no doubt—it would seem that no enlightened community could be found in any country, and especially that there can be no state in this Union, that would not at once resolve upon maintaining a system of universal education by opening the doors of improved free schools to all her sons and daughters, and, if need be, employing agents, vigilant and active, "to go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in." If this is not done, thousands and tens of thousands of every generation will continue to lead cheerless lives, and will go down to their graves like the brute that perisheth, without knowing that He who gave to man life has also, in his goodness, which knows no bounds, provided that in the proper exercise of his faculties man shall find an inexhaustible source of happiness.[55]

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