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as they are, and need nothing from individuals. In assuming this doctrine as your rule of action, you really assume that it is the scholar who is to be served, not the people. When Mr. Bancroft contends that "the natural association of men of letters is with the democracy," what is his secret thought? Is it that they are thus to associate with the democracy for the purpose of advancing the people, or for advancing themselves? Evidently, as the condition of advancing themselves; for he assumes the test of the excellence of scholarship to be in the popular taste and judgment. Scholars are not to associate with the people for the purpose of correcting or enlightening the popular taste and judgment, but for the purpose of correcting or enlightening their own. What advantage is this to the people? For what end would scholars exist? This would make the advancement of the scholar, not the advancement of the people, the end, and association with the people the means; which would be, under another form, the reproduction of the very doctrine intended to be condemned; namely, that the scholar exists for himself, and not for the people.

Assuming that the scholar is to defer to the people as the condition of serving them, he can serve them only by taking away what restrains them, not by adding any thing positive to their progress. The most he can do is to batter down whatever frowns above them, and clear away whatever obstacles the government, the laws, morals, religion, or education may interpose in their path. This, to a certain extent, might be useful in given circumstances, but only where the whole moral, religious, and political order was wrong, and needed to be swept away. But in this case, he could render the people only a service of destruction, a negative service at best, and in a country like ours, where the established order is to be preserved and developed, not destroyed, no service at all, but a positive injury. We cannot, then, accept this doctrine, for it would impose on the scholar the duty of serving the people, by not serving them!

The other statement is the only one to be accepted. We are to serve the people, and, if need be, to devote ourselves to the cross for their progress. But this denies that progress is the result of the simple, spontaneous development of the divinity in humanity, and assumes it to be the result of long and painful elaboration. It assumes that there is a work to be done for mankind, a positive work, and which all, who can, are bound to perform to the utmost of their ability. Is any one prepared to contradict this?

"But, in assuming this, do you not depress the common mind for the sake of exalting that of the few?" Not at all. Nothing is here said against the common mind. We simply contend that the amount of knowledge actually attained to by the common mind, is not all the knowledge necessary to the well-being of the whole community. To carry the race forward, to improve the condition of the mass, requires profounder, more comprehensive views of truth, moral and political, scientific and religious, than the common mind has as yet attained to, and to which it cannot attain without thorough mental and moral discipline. This is what, and all, we say. Touching the capacity of the individuals composing the great bulk of the people to receive the discipline, and, through that, to attain to the requisite knowledge and understanding of the great problems of life, we say nothing; we only say they cannot understand these problems without the previous discipline, and that these problems be understood is essential to the welfare of the community.

If the question before us related to the capacity of the masses to receive the discipline, that is, the natural abilities with which they, whom we in a vague way term the masses, are born, we should recognize individual differences, indeed, but no difference of caste or class. We yield to none of our democratic friends in our belief in the capacity of all men for progress. They are all capable of being cultivated, and the children of one class, perhaps, not more or less so than the children of

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another. All need to be cultivated, and none can know and comprehend without cultivation.

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But, is not what we call the common mind, that is, the average degree of intelligence of the great bulk of mankind, amply adequate to all the demands of society?" We think not. If it were so, we know not why we should labor for the progress of science, or the diffusion of intelligence. We readily admit that the common intelligence is often sufficient to judge of the practical results of the profoundest science; but, if the science of the few had not surpassed this common intelligence, could those results ever have been obtained? The people can often understand the practical result, when they are wholly unable to comprehend the process by which the result is obtained. Was not the

process necessary to the result? Now you have obtained the result, it may not be; but how could you have obtained the result without it? How large a portion of the people are able to comprehend the Kantian philosophy, in the light and spirit of which is written. the "History of the United States"? Yet, without days and nights, weeks and years, of study of that very philosophy, wholly unintelligible to the great mass of his countrymen, the author never could have written it. And now that it is written, how large a proportion of the people, all popular as it is in style and expression, have sufficient knowledge to appreciate, we say not the labor of its preparation, but the thoughts, the principles, the doctrines, which the author has embodied in it, and of which it is the vehicle to those whose studies have initiated them into the author's modes of thinking? Who that has attempted discussions a little out of the common order, but has been taken all aback by the vacant stare of his auditory? It is not in the spirit of idle complaint, that he who attempts to discuss the more important philosophical, theological, or ethical problems, demands a "fit audience, though few." The want of a "fit audience" is the great difficulty and discouragement of every genuine scholar, who would speak as a master, and not as

a mere pupil. Every great man is misapprehended, misrepresented, and, therefore, abused and persecuted, till he has succeeded in making to himself a public, disciplined by his labors to understand and appreciate him. It is often more difficult to communicate the truth than it is to discover it. Your words shall be crammed full and running over with meaning, and a meaning which embraces the universe, moves and agitates your whole soul, exalts you to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, and yet to your hearers they shall be only the veriest commonplaces, which you would be ashamed to utter to an auditory of clever lads, a dozen years old. "O, you mean only this." "Yes, I understand you." "All very true, very true." The blockheads! they are as far from understanding you as Satan is from loving goodness. Tell them that your meaning lies deeper, and is broader, than they suspect, and forthwith they turn upon you, and demand, why you do not speak so that they can understand you. Alas! they little suspect that the darkness is in them, and not in you. The thought they could take in,well, let it pass. Every man, who has any profound, or really valuable knowledge of his own, knows how difficult it is to make himself generally intelligible, that the best part of his knowledge he never can communicate, because, alas! his countrymen have not the previous mental and moral discipline, necessary to enable them to understand him.

That often much passes for education which is not, that often men are classed where they do not belong, some with the educated who ought to be classed with the uneducated, others with the uneducated who ought to be classed with the educated, we by no means deny. All is not gold that glisters. That there are quacks with diplomas in their pockets, as well as quacks without diplomas, none but a quack would undertake to deny, or to prove. But this has nothing to do with the argument. We care not what men are called; the question is, not what they are said to be, but what they are; and our position is merely, that, without disci

pline, somehow obtained, without extensive observation, long and patient study, they are not able to comprehend any of the great problems of life. We know colleges, sometimes, and not unfrequently, send out dunces; and that wise, shrewd men, profound men, learned men, able to instruct their age, are sometimes found among those who have had little direct advantage of the schools. But to say that these last are uneducated men, is absurd. Read the history of their lives, and you will find that they have been among the hardest students of their times.

Now, if we are right, in assuming the necessity of educating the common mind, in order to prepare it for the comprehension of the great problems of life, the real question before us is decided, and the necessity of liberal studies, and high literary and scientific attainments, is demonstrated. There cannot be education without educators. There must be some in advance of the mass, to be in some way, directly or indirectly, the educators of the mass, or the mass cannot be educated. Colleges and universities would seem, then, to be essential as the condition of educating the educators; at least, there should be some means provided for the education of the few above that of the mass; for if none rise above the level of the mass, there will be none to quicken and direct the common mind, which, in that case, instead of being progressive, must remain stationary.

"Then you would have a caste of scholars, raised above the people, to whom the people must submit?" Nonsense! Be not so afraid, that, if one happens to know more than his neighbours, you are forthwith to be saddled with an aristocracy. We demand education, and we demand, as the condition of the welfare of the whole community, that the few be educated beyond the degree to which it is possible to educate the many. The reason why the many cannot attain to the highest education necessary, need not be looked for in their want of natural capacity, but in their want of leisure and opportunity. Then, why

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