LD 
 
 2101 
 &1 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 ^B 115 533 
 
 r 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 X 
 N 
 
 CO 
 
 oo 
 
 n 
 
 o 
 
 t*»ji 
 
AN 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 LITERARY SOCIETIES 
 
 
 HAMILTON COLLEGE, 
 
 JULY 23, 1844. 
 
 BY HORACE GREELEY. 
 
 n 
 
 PUBLISHED BV REQUEST, 
 
 CLINTON, N. Y. 
 1844. 
 

 • • • 
 
 •••••••• ••• 1 -• •• • • ••• - .' 
 
 Andrews, Prentiss Sf Studley, Printers. 
 Boston: 11 Devonshire Street, 
 
fTf 
 
 '-O 
 
 Hamilton College^ Oct. 4, 1844. 
 Horace Greeley, Esq,. 
 
 Sir : — The Phoenix Society of Hamilton College, through the under- 
 signed, their Committee, tender their unanimous thanks for the able and 
 entertaining Address you delivered before them at their last Anniversary, 
 and request a copy af the same for publication. 
 
 With sentiments of respect, we have the honor to be, 
 Your obedient servants, 
 
 Sumner Stow Ely, \ 
 
 John T. Clark, > Committee, 
 
 Chauncey L. Hatch, ' 
 
 JVewj York, Oct. 15, 1844. 
 
 Gentlemen : — I transmit to the printers, at your request, the manuscript 
 of my Address before your Societies on the eve of your last Commencement. 
 I do this the more readily since I am sure your reiterated invitation to pub- 
 lish is not a matter of course — not a reluctantly proiFered compliment. I 
 stated to you, in reply to a similar invitation, the day after you listened to 
 this Address, that I had no desire to see it printed, and that I had abundant 
 opportunities to obtain of the public a hearing, without tasking'your cour- 
 tesy. I then intimated that, as some of the suggestions of my discourse 
 were, if not novel, at any rate very different from those usually presented 
 on such an occasion, you might very naturally hesitate to endorse them. 
 But I was relieved by your prompt response that such publication would not 
 in any way render you responsible for the sentiments of the Address, while 
 you were desirous of considering more carefully and leisurely before passing 
 judgment upon them. The public, therefore, will rightfully censure me 
 only if it shall discover any thing heretical or offensive in the following 
 pages. 
 
 I apprehend youVill not find this Address * entertaining,' though you so 
 characterize it in your note. I am quite sure that entertainment was very 
 far from my thoughts in writing it. Indeed, had I not been impelled by far 
 different considerations, I suspect I could not have found leisure, in snatches 
 of half hours from the incessant labors of this most exacting summer, to pre- 
 pare it at all. But I deeply felt that there were truths vital to the useful- 
 ness and well-being of the Educated Class which had not been so often nor 
 
 f^80307 
 
so emphatically presented as the interests of Mankind require. How far 1 
 have succeeded in evolving such truths I leave to your judgment and that of 
 the few beside you who will condescend to read these pages. I know well 
 that there is another side to the picture I have presented — that the Scholar 
 has vast fields of usefulness, even under all existing disparagements, and 
 that they are by no means unimproved. But all that need be said on this 
 has been well said from Commencement to Commencement for generations. 
 If I have been able to present any new ideas, or give fuller expression to old 
 ones, be yours the credit and the advantage ; if I have wholly failed, be 
 mine alone the censure. 
 
 I am yours, most truly, 
 
 Horace Greeley. 
 Messrs. S. S. Ely, J. T. Clark, C. L. Hatch, Committee. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Phcenix and Union Societies : 
 
 From the fierce turmoils and hot strifes of the passing 
 day, I come at your bidding to spend an hour with you in 
 the interchange of more quiet thought, returning on the 
 morrow to my wonted sphere and calling. I appear be- 
 fore you, not as a scholar among his equals, to descant on 
 themes common and dear alike to all, but as one whose 
 chief teacher has^ been the rugged world, and whose little 
 all of knowledge has been gathered amid its rude jousts and 
 stern encounters. You will not expect me, therefore, if 
 you give me credit for sincerity and purpose in embracing 
 this opportunity, to address you in the language or unfold to 
 you thoughts peculiar to the halls of learning. Were he 
 some specimen of our fading Aboriginal Race whom you had 
 thus summoned before you, you would hardly*anticipate any 
 thing more than an outward deference to the genius of the 
 place — a relinquishment, for the occasion, of the blanket, the 
 tomahawk and the war-paint — not of whatever is intrinsic 
 and essential. He could only hope to justify your daring 
 choice by speaking to you his own words, — by an utterance 
 from the depths of his own being. And thus I, standing be- 
 fore you in some sort a humble representative of that large 
 
class sometimes termed the self-educsited, by others (perhaps 
 more properly) the wneducated, shall speak to you from the 
 heart of that class, — truths which may or may not have long 
 since resounded through the halls of our Universities, agitat- 
 ing their venerable dust, but which in either case are certain 
 ere long to make themselves heard and respected. 
 
 I have not hesitated to choose for my theme on this occa- 
 sion — The Discipline and Duties of the Scholar, 
 vast and lofty though it be, and imperfect as have been my 
 oJ>jyprtunitiiBi^ fdr its thorough appreciation and discussion. 
 Few-aS'ar^. the fragments of hours that I have been able to 
 '3ei2:e for its cbntemplation, I am well aware that on its proper 
 apprehension depends, in great degree, the Progress and the 
 Well-being of the Human Race. You need not fear, my 
 friends ! that the advantages of a thorough Education, or of 
 a thoroughly Educated Class, will be undervalued in our day, 
 and especially by us weary marchers and combatants along 
 the parched highways, beneath the fervid sun of active life, 
 who have been able but to scoop, as it were, here and there 
 a handful! from the grateful, invigorating waters of Know- 
 ledge, as they danced and bubbled across our too eager, head- 
 long course. O, not from our panting ranks will ever arise 
 the cry that solid and symmetric Learning is a boon to be re- 
 jected or lightly prized ! The small coins of knowledge which 
 we awkwardly handle and dispense are constantly reminding 
 us of the priceless ingots of golden treasure which for us lie 
 buried in the far recesses of halls like these, from which a 
 grim Fate has •forever debarred us. Limited as may have 
 been our opportunities, it is not to us a sealed truth that the 
 Present is only to be rightly read and interpreted in the full 
 light reflected from the Past. We are not unaware that this 
 uneasy, jostling throng of to-day is but a reproduction, with 
 slight permutations, of the sweating, striving crowds of a thou- 
 sand yesterdays, to be again and again represented, in the 
 several throngs of countless to-morrows. We are well aware 
 
that faithful, graphic History is a diviner as well as a judge — 
 that her magic mirror gives back the faces glowing around us 
 as well as the forms in dust beneath us, and that he who 
 rightly, intelligently, reads of Aristides and Cleon, of Brutus 
 and Catiline, of smooth Augustus and deified Nero, may turn 
 at once from the musty chronicle and see the living charac- 
 ters stalking eagerly around him. Must he not discern the 
 Phocion of our Republic in that noble relic of our heroic 
 elder time, the oft-baffled, defeated, decried, but dauntless, 
 bravely struggling, unconquerable octogenarian of Quincy? 
 Might he not be tempted at last to suspect that the difference 
 between one age and another exists quite as often in its chroni- 
 clers as in its actors, and that the perishing hieroglyphics 
 of Tlascala and Quito would reveal heroism as devoted and 
 admirable as any of that more felicitously recorded by Homer 
 or Polybius, had we but the skill to interpret them as thor- 
 oughly ? In short, it is not alone the Educated who have 
 learned that a knowledge of Man is the central truth, to 
 which the study of Men and their acts must be subsidiary ; 
 and that the mingled web of Divine beneficence and Human 
 infirmity, termed History, is to be rightly scanned only in pro- 
 portion as we apprehend its beginning and its destined 
 conclusion. 
 
 There is, there must be, a preeminently Educated Class 
 among us — I do not merely admit the notorious fact ; I per- 
 ceive the vital necessity. Whether the distance between that 
 class and the many should or should not be as broad and 
 palpable as at present, is not now the question. My theme 
 implies its existence, and assumes that the greater number are 
 relatively uneducated. However we might desire the universal 
 diffusion and possession of the knowledge now confined to 
 this class, we know it is, and long must be, impossible. Its 
 attainment exacts a devotion of time and of means, to say 
 nothing of tastes and habits, which can only be given by the 
 comparatively few. My theme, then, involves the compound 
 
8 
 
 inquiry — what should be the nature of the education of the 
 more cultivated class ? — under what conditions should Learn- 
 ing be acquired ? — what ends should it contemplate ? — what 
 advantages secure to its possessors ? I shall proceed to dis- 
 cuss it. 
 
 I would insist, then, as the primary requisition in the 
 Discipline of the Scholar, on a Thorough and Harmonious 
 Development of the Physical Man. I place this first, not 
 as more important than Moral and Intellectual culture, but as 
 the proper foundation of all culture unto perfection. You need 
 not cite me to instances of intellectual giants who are physi- 
 cally dwarfs — of puny Genius and hypochondriac Wit — you 
 may as well tell me that the foetid, pestilent purlieus of a great 
 City are favorable to health and longevity, because men have 
 risen there to stature and vigor and died in hale old age. As 
 well tell me that the bivouac and the battle-field are favorable 
 to long life, because men have died peacefully at ninety, after 
 a half century of camps and sieges. These are exceptions, 
 which rather establish the rule than invalidate it. * A sound 
 mind in a sound body' — that is the order of Nature — you 
 may find a sound mind elsewhere, but it will be most un- 
 fitly and inconveniently bestowed. The body can endure a 
 divorce far better than the mind. In fact, we see bodies 
 breathing, moving, acting all around us, which seem to per- 
 form their proper functions tolerably with the aid of very little 
 mind — almost none — but a healthful, clear mind in a dis- 
 eased, decrepit, decaying body is a far more pitiable spectacle. 
 It is a diamond in the clutch of a lunatic — to be gazed at a 
 moment in wonder, then hurled into the depths of the sea. 
 It is a freight of the wealth of the Indies, embarked in a tot- 
 tering wherry, which is certain to sink in the first tempest. 
 When I look around me, and recall the many noble, and 
 brilliant, and greatly useful, who have sunk after a meteor- 
 like career into premature graves, under the assaults of 
 diseases insensibly contracted during their years of study 
 
9 
 
 and mental acquisition, — diseases from which any tolerable 
 knowledge, any careful investigation of the laws of Man's 
 physical being must have preserved them — I am impelled to 
 sound the alarm of danger alike to teachers and to students 
 — to plead for the generation now in process of develop- 
 ment and the generation to follow — and to warn the direc- 
 tors of Education of the fearful responsibility which rests 
 upon them — a responsibility which it is but charity to pre- 
 sume very many of them do not even dimly comprehend. 
 For, assuredly, they could not know that the hundreds of 
 young men committed by anxious love to their charge were 
 growing up in almost total ignorance even that they had 
 physical constitutions to nurture and bring to vigorous matu- 
 rity — in utter ignorance, quite commonly, of many of the 
 inflexible laws on which their physical well-being depend — 
 and not adopt some adequate measures to counteract and 
 avert the danger. And yet, how little is systematically done, 
 how little is even consistently, authoritatively said, in our 
 seminaries of Learning, of the necessity and nature of a true 
 Physical Education ? Shall this deficiency continue ? 
 
 True Education is Development. It does not create the 
 statue froin the marble — it only finds it therein and exposes 
 it to the unimpeded, admiring gaze. But in what do our 
 Educational processes tend to develope the physical man ? 
 From the high, uncomfortable bench on which the child sits for 
 hours at the common school in abhorred constraint and suffer- 
 ing, watching in envy the flitting of every bird by the window, 
 to the highest University, so called, we find scarcely a recog- 
 nition that his mind is encased in a tenement of flesh and 
 blood. He has teachers of Reading and of Grammar — Pro- 
 fessors of Mathematics and of Ethics — of Languages and of 
 Metaphysics — but the teachers of the laws of his oWn struc- 
 ture and relations to Nature — the Professors of Health, of 
 Strength, of Longevity, I think are mainly yet to be appoint- 
 ed. Yet this ought not to be. The position of the young 
 2 
 
10 
 
 student is surrounded with peculiar perils. From the field, the 
 forest, the bustling ways of home and neighborhood, he is 
 transplanted at once to academic shades, whose genius de- 
 mands quiet, meditation, seclusion. No longer is the climbing 
 of rugged hills, or the leveling of stubborn woods, the pre- 
 paration for the evening's study and the night's rest. He is 
 instantly confronted with two formidable dangers — that of 
 falling into habits of physical indolence and excessive study, 
 inducing indigestion and its long train of enfeebling horrors ; 
 or his lithe frame revolts at the galling bondage, and he 
 becomes a hater of books, a neglecter of studies, and gradu- 
 ally addicts himself to habits of turbulence and wild excess. 
 Henceforward his career need not be indicated — its course 
 and its end are inevitable. 
 
 I must press this point farther, for I feel that a reform with 
 regard to it is most essential to the usefulness and honor of 
 our seminaries. In too many instances has a Collegiate 
 course, in view of all its consequences, proved a positive 
 curse to a large proportion of the Class which sanguinely 
 entered upon it as the unmistakable high road to eminent 
 usefulness, recompense and fame. Alas ! a deadly serpent 
 lurked in those calm, bright bowers which seemed to their 
 first eager glances so alluring. A few days of eager study 
 jaded their spirits and unstrung their nerves ; a languor and 
 lassitude crept over them ; they fell into the company of those 
 who had traveled that road before them, who suggested — 
 " All study is dry work — let us solace ourselves this evening 
 with a bottle and a feast." Thus is laid the foundation of 
 habits which have dragged too many a youth of rare promise 
 down to an untimely and dishonored grave — which have 
 quenched the fond, proud hopes of admiring relatives in a 
 deluge of sin and shame. 
 
 Now it is the idlest folly to waste words in declaiming 
 against these evils — we must trace them to their source and 
 apply there an adequate preventive. We must begin by 
 
11 
 
 teaching our Young Men the nature of their own frames, and 
 the shocking violence they do to that nature by overtaxing its 
 powers, and then drugging it with narcotics and stimulants to 
 reanimate them. We must demonstrate to them the fact that 
 any use of stimulants is a certain and fearful evil — that the 
 effect we term drunkenness is only a benevolent effort of 
 Nature to expel the monster which has been treacherously ad- 
 mitted to her most sacred and vital recesses — and that the evil 
 commences with the first particle of such substances which is 
 thrust upon her, and the penalty is signal and certain although 
 the second glass were never taken. All these truths and the 
 kindred objections to narcotics, may easily enough be scien- 
 tifically demonstrated — the mischief is that they are not. A 
 man properly instructed, and as yet uncorrupted, would no 
 more think of swallowing Alcohol than live coals or arsenic. 
 And yet many have actually acquired the basest of habits — that 
 of partaking of notoriously hurtful substances merely to produce 
 a temporary and pernicious elevation of the spirits — within 
 the precincts of our very Universities ! Shame is it to human 
 ignorance — shame especially to those whose duty it was to 
 dispel that ignorance in the case of these victims, and yet 
 neglected it ! They cannot be excused, but we may drop a 
 tear of pity for the victim of their neglect, so distorted and 
 misdeveloped that he knows how to construe Greek, yet does 
 not know enough to reject and loathe Tobacco ! 
 
 You have already anticipated my statement that to a true 
 and healthful development of the Man, I deem a constant 
 participation in Manual Labor indispensable. Labor ! blessed 
 boon of God, to alleviate the horrors and purify the tenden- 
 cies of our fallen state ! when shall its benefits and its joys be 
 brought home to each and to all ? We may make it a curse 
 and a burthen by so regarding it, as we may any other bless- 
 ing from Heaven, but the truth is irrepressible that only he 
 who is familiar with Labor and loves it can either improve or 
 enjoy life. The man whose only stimulant to exertion in aity 
 
12 
 
 field is the hope of individual gain, can hardly have risen 
 above the condition of a slave. We must learn to be true 
 workers — our frames need it — our unperverted impulses 
 demand it — our very souls, if unstifled, cry out for it. Most 
 earnestly, then, do I record my protest against the all but 
 universal prescription which divorces entirely profound Study 
 from Manual Labor — which, in its attention to the intellec- 
 tual and moral nature of the student, forgets that he has also 
 a physical frame to be developed and invigorated. Of course, 
 you will not understand me as assuming that the usual routine 
 of student life forgets or disregards the necessity of physical 
 exercise — I know better. I will not doubt that wherever 
 thoughtful, conscientious and cultivated men have charge of 
 the education of youth, there are, there must be, abundant 
 inculcations of the necessity of exercise and the value of 
 health ; also of the danger of losing the latter through the 
 neglect of the former. I will not doubt that abundant oppor- 
 tunities and facilities for exercise are everywhere afforded. 
 Yet what is the result? Do the mass of our young men 
 finish their studies with stronger constitutions, sturdier frames, 
 more athletic limbs, than they brought away from their pa- 
 rental firesides ? Not within the sphere of my observation — 
 far otherwise. I have known many dyspepsias, consumptions, 
 debilities, which traced their origin to the seminaries : I do 
 not remember any that were cured there ; I have known the 
 stout lad in the district school who graduated a feeble invalid 
 from the university. My conviction is that the Physical de- 
 partment of Education has decidedly retrograded since the 
 days of Greek freedom and glory. Our prevalent error is not 
 one of method and detail — it is fundamental. We have lost 
 the true basis ordained of God for the harmonious and health- 
 ful development of the whole human being, in separating the 
 education of the Head from the education of the Hands. We 
 have dared to disregard that Divine fiat, first of punishments 
 JWr'tiicrefore first also of mercies — ' In the sweat of thy 
 
13 
 
 face shalt thou eat bread ! ' Shunning this appointed path, 
 we have sought out inventions, which we term Exercise, 
 Recreation, Relaxation. Heaven placidly but inexorably disal- 
 lows them. I do not say that for the cramped, soul-dwarfed, 
 undeveloped miner, delving for six days of each week in some 
 stinted Egyptian labyrinth in the bowels of the earth, there 
 may not be appropriate recreation in the free air and sunshine. 
 Malign Circumstance has grudged him a full development — 
 his class are significantly advertised for as ' Hands wanted ' 
 — not men. But to the true and whole man each successive 
 duty is the proper relief from the preceding, and in the regu- 
 lar alternation of labors — now those which tax mainly the 
 Intellect, next those which appeal mainly to the Sinews — is 
 the needed relaxation best attained. Thus only shall Life be 
 rendered consistent and harmonious — thus shall each hour 
 be dignified and rendered heroic. The division of the Race 
 into two unequal, contrasted classes — the few Thinkers, the 
 many Workers — has been and is the source of many and 
 sore evils, including the loss of the fitting and manly inde- 
 pendence of each. It is the source of infinite servility, false- 
 hood and mean compliance. Not till we shall have emanci- 
 pated the Many from the subjection of taking their thoughts 
 at second-hand from the Few, may we hope to accomplish 
 much for the upraising of the long trampled masses. Not till 
 we have emancipated the Few from the equally degrading 
 necessity of subsisting on the fruits of the physical toil of the 
 Many, can we secure to the more cultivated and intellectual 
 their proper and healthful ascendency over the less aflJluent in 
 mental wealth. The plowman recognizes and appreciates 
 Genius, Talent, Learning ; but he finds that these are too 
 often directed to the acquisition of wealth and luxury by 
 means which add little to the aggregate of human comforts, 
 and rather subtract from his own especial share of them. The 
 reprobate dreads the rebuke of the anointed reprover of sin ; 
 but says, ^ He will hardly venture to arraign pointedly the 
 
14 
 
 transgressions of one who contributes liberally to the salary 
 which barely supports his expensive family.' Thus the divorce 
 of Learning from Manual Labor — the absolute dependence of 
 the Educated on the Uneducated class for the means of sup- 
 plying its physical wants — becomes the source of endless and 
 fatal compromises of Principle and perversions of Intellectual 
 power. 
 
 It avails nothing to point me to the failure, if it shall be so 
 termed, of past attempts to reunite Study with Physical exer- 
 tion — the affluent mind with the ready and skilful hand. 
 These failures only prove the inadequacy of the effort, not 
 that the object is unworthy, nor even unattainable. They 
 have been impelled too often by low ideas of their own scope 
 and purpose — by a consideration of the necessity to the stu- 
 dent not so much of Labor as of Bread. Commenced in this 
 spirit, the number of workers will inevitably dwindle till only 
 those labor who must subsist on the fruits of that labor ; soon 
 the class distinction of Gentlemen and Peasants reappear; 
 invidious comparisons, sneers and sarcasms beget hatreds and 
 collisions ; and one class or the other — probably both — 
 make their exit ; the institution explodes ; and the superficial 
 multitude unhesitatingly pronounce the idea of uniting Labor 
 with Study proved impracticable and absurd ! 
 
 The fatal error here was obviously that of putting the new 
 wine into old bottles. The impulse to the enterprise was not 
 a conviction of the necessity, healthfulness and dignity of La- 
 bor — not even the idea of Duty as commanding a participa- 
 tion in the toil needful to the sustenance and comfort of Man 
 — but at bottom the pauper's necessity, the slave's dread of 
 the lash. This may facilitate and ensure the production of 
 corn — never of true men. Not until Labor shall be joyfully 
 and proudly accepted as a genial and beneficent destiny — as 
 the needful exercise and complement of our else undeveloped 
 or perverted faculties — may we rationally hope for any per- 
 manently satisfactory result. 
 
15 
 
 And here you will permit me to hazard a criticism on so 
 much of our educational processes — no great portion of 
 any college course, I will hope — as are undertaken for the 
 sake, it is said, of ' disciplining the mind.' I ask a student- 
 friend why he, who is aspiring to the Christian Ministry, 
 should devote so much time to a science so little pertinent to 
 his future calling as Mathematics, and he answers that the 
 study of Mathematics is an admirable discipline for the mind ! 
 Need I say to you that I neither appreciate the force of the 
 reason nor discern the benefits of the discipline ? I do not 
 say that this or any other science may not be eminently calcu- 
 lated to subserve the purpose contemplated — I simply demur 
 to the necessity or fitness of pursuing mental discipline apart 
 from healthful mental activity in the sphere of practical life. 
 Does the youth contemplate the pursuit of Astronomy, Engi- 
 neering, or any sphere of usefulness requiring the aid of the 
 exact sciences — then let him devote his student years in 
 part to Mathematics, and master them thoroughly. But if he 
 contemplate pursuing either of the three leading professions, 
 Theology, Law or Physic — I distrust the wisdom of such a 
 devotion of his time. This life is too short to justify the 
 acquisition of abstruse sciences on such grounds. The mind 
 is best disciplined when it finds its pleasures in its duties — 
 when all its laborious acquisitions are turned to direct and 
 palpable account — when its every impulse is toward utility 
 and beneficence. We give tl^e child playthings because we 
 know not or have not what we should give him — did we 
 know all things, command all things, we should improve his 
 every desire to subserve directly some useful end. His toys 
 would be tools, or at least demonstrations of some truth adapt- 
 ed to his opening mind. He should be wiser for every walk 
 — more skillful for each hour's diversion. In our ignorance 
 or fond thoughtlessness, we waste half the golden opportuni- 
 ties of the most impressible period of life, and misimprove a 
 portion of the remainder. It were well to remember that a 
 
16 
 
 benign Creator has enfolded the mental casket we contem- 
 plate, and that it needs not to be pressed and fashioned, but 
 simply developed. The disciphne it requires, if unstifled, 
 unperverted, is induction into whatever is peculiar to that 
 sphere of laudable endeavor to which it is specially devoted. 
 And here let me state fairly the objection of the Utilitarian 
 school to the acquisition of the Dead Languages, which I find 
 often commented on and controverted without being at all 
 apprehended. We do not, we never did, deny the utility of 
 these Languages to many — it would ill become us to do so 
 
 — ill become any rational beings. We admit — nay, insist, 
 that there are large classes to which a thorough knowledge of 
 one or more of the Languages in which the noblest, most 
 inspiring ideas of Antiquity lie inurned, is indispensable. The 
 Christian theologian needs a mastery of Greek and Hebrew; 
 the Physician, the Botanist, the thorough Lawyer, of Latin. 
 But, beyond and above these, the world needs and is deeply 
 indebted to the illustrious body of Scholars, Learned Men, 
 who as Professors, (O most desecrated term !) Historians, 
 Philosophers, Poets, Critics, are constantly irradiating and 
 instructing the Present by the light of the Past. Noblest, least 
 obtrusive of our teachers, — we could not dispense with these 
 
 — we are in no danger of honoring them too highly. But it is 
 not given to every man — it is permitted to few — to be of 
 these, and it is preposterous to subject the multitude of com- 
 paratively educated persons to their ordeal in the idle hope of 
 producing any such result. You cannot make Scholars of 
 these — you have enough to do to render them passable attor- 
 neys and doctors, in the common way. And if they are to be 
 such and nothing more, you must allow me to believe that 
 their College years might be better devoted than to the 
 acquisition of Greek and Latin — oftener practically forgotten 
 in two years than really learned in three. The simple and 
 notorious fact that they usually are so forgotten — that they 
 are to most educated men (so called) in the busy walks of 
 
17 
 
 life but a foggy reminiscence of dull days wasted and dry 
 tasks slighted, is their sufficient condemnation, 
 
 The truth is that the fatal evil of pecuniary dependence is 
 not always unfelt even by those who hold the responsible 
 position of directors of the highest education of our youth. 
 A President or Professor who should frankly tell the parents 
 of a proffered student that their son might make an excellent 
 blacksmith or carpenter, but would neither be eminent nor 
 happy at the bar nor in the pulpit, would probably incur 
 resentment and a withdrawal of patronage — and yet how 
 often ought such truth to be frankly, kindly told ! It would 
 frequently save much waste of energies and means, much 
 weariness and heart-ache. The true, though rugged man 
 who has nobly gathered a competence by following the plow, 
 would feel offended if assured that his son was so fit for no 
 other vocation as that of a farmer — though that were a gen- 
 uine tribute of respect to the dignity of the vocation, and the 
 honest worth of the youth. 
 
 We are here confronted by the low idea which everywhere 
 prevails of the true rank of useful manual toil — by none so 
 cherished, as by those who themselves toil, except by the empty 
 demagogue who windily babbles in bar-rooms of the rights 
 and dignity of Labor, hoping to compass thereby the means 
 of avoiding Labor. The farmer will not feel gratified, though 
 he should, if assured that he can give his son no fitter, no 
 better caUing than his own ; the hope of the family must be 
 trained to the chicanery of Law or the futility of Medicine 
 in order that he may duly honor his kindred, though he may 
 be reluctant to enter, or at best have manifested no genius or 
 taste for the calling thus thrust upon him. This is in the true 
 spirit of the illiterate farmer who insisted on having a sermon 
 in Greek, on the ground that he paid the clergyman for the 
 best, and would have it. Thus our higher Education becomes 
 a bed of Procrustes — excellent for the few whom Nature 
 has just adapted to it — but a very different affair for all be- 
 3 
 
18 
 
 side. We shall learn yet to study the unfolding genius of the 
 youth — to be guided by this rather than attempt to overrule 
 it — and to leave to the directors of Education a larger dis- 
 cretion in the premises than they have usually hitherto enjoyed. 
 In the lamentable divorce of Learning from Labor — of the 
 highest Intellectual culture from the greatest Industrial capa- 
 city and efficiency — do I detect the origin of that deplorable 
 discord which prevails between the teachings of our Schoolmen 
 and the edicts of Legislators, between the lessons of our Liter- 
 ature and the spirit of Communities and States, with regard 
 to Political Economy. Vainly do our Colleges, the wide 
 world over, indoctrinate nearly all the leading minds of the 
 age with the distinctive principles of Adam Smith and his 
 followers — their labor may be lighter than that of Sysiphus, 
 but their fortune is inevitably like his. On a few minds, 
 remarkable rather for speculative than for practical ability, 
 they make a durable impression ; but with the majority their 
 plausible inculcations are overborne by the observation and 
 experience of a few succeeding years. Those originally 
 most captivated by the theory of 'Laissez /aire,' soon dis- 
 cover, on passing out into the actual world, that all Life is, all 
 Legislation must be, in contradiction to its spirit. A man 
 who should be left to grow up on this fundamental principle 
 of the Free Trade philosophy, would, if by some miraculous 
 chance he survived to maturity at all, be a most unmitigated 
 savage, and a bad specimen even of that forlorn condition. 
 A great Nation which should really and fully adopt the cor- 
 responding theory of National Economy, and, by dispensing 
 with all Industrial and Commercial Legislation of its own, 
 leave its Labor and Trade wholly at the mercy of Foreign 
 regulation, would soon have little left wherewith to tempt the 
 cupidity of Foreign policy. There never yet was, there never 
 can be, a Government of a civilized, accessible, enlightened, 
 wealthy Nation which acted consistently and thoroughly on 
 the principle of Free Trade for a single generation — no, not 
 
19 
 
 for ten years. Superficial men may dilate on the unsafeness 
 of following Theory, the discrepancies between Theory and 
 Practice, and the like fig-leaves of seeming Wisdom where- 
 with Folly is wont to enrobe herself — but there is in truth no 
 such discrepancy. A sound theory is always a safe one — it 
 may fearlessly be reduced to practice and followed to the end. 
 When a Statesman rises in your halls of Legislation and tells 
 you that a certain theory is indeed sound and worthy of gen- 
 eral acceptance, but it must be postponed in this particular 
 instance, because of the depression of Trade, the distresses 
 of the Laboring Classes, or on any such ground, be sure that 
 either he or his theory is hollow and untrustworthy. More 
 probably both of them are so. For, were the theory sound, 
 the earliest moment would be the best moment to reduce it to 
 practice, and whatever the embarrassments existing, they but 
 furnish additional arguments for its instant adoption. Their 
 existence argues a wrong somewhere, and demands that every 
 known wrong be instantly redressed. To say that a theory 
 is sound, and yet act in contradiction thereto, is to dethrone 
 eternal Right and exalt a fleeting, unstable, unrighteous Expe- 
 diency in its stead. Whatever is true in Theory is desirable 
 in practice, and desirable to-day. 
 
 But the elemental Free Trade assumption is not true. 
 ' The best government is ' not ' that which governs least,' or 
 no government at all were clearly better still. ^ Trade will ' 
 not ^ regulate itself so as to secure even *the greatest good 
 of the greatest number,' though I insist that it is not the good 
 of the greatest number but of the whole number which com- 
 munities and governments are bound unceasingly to seek and 
 to secure. It is not true that the largest possible average or 
 general reward of Industry is that which it would secure in 
 the total absence of Governmental regulation. The grain- 
 grower of the valley of the Wabash or Illinois, for example, 
 could never receive the fullest reward of his toil, the largest 
 return for his bounteous harvests, while the producer of his 
 
20 
 
 cloths, his wares, his glass, his cutlery, &c. remained on the 
 other side of the Atlantic, The fact that they do remain 
 there compels a large export thither of his bulky Agricultural 
 staples, at an enormous cost for transportation, and inevita- 
 bly involves a corresponding and permanent depression of the 
 prices of those staples. If England may obtain Wheat from 
 the Black Sea and the Baltic at an average cost of one dollar 
 a bushel, (as she can, very nearly,) then his must be largely 
 sold in England at that price, though the cost of transporting 
 it thither amounts to three-fourths of that sum. The residue, 
 small as it is, must be the standard price of his wheat at the 
 point of production. But change your policy so as to bring 
 the producers of most of the fabrics which minister to his 
 convenience and comfort from Sheffield and Birmingham to 
 the banks of his own gentle rivers, or of their more impetu- 
 ous tributaries, or divert a portion of the grain-growers already 
 there into the various pursuits of Manufacture, and now you 
 have ensured a higher price for Grain and a larger reward to 
 the industry of its producer. He will not merely receive 
 more money for his yearly product than he could have done 
 for a long, indefinite period if Manufactures had been left to 
 grow up around him, by the slow, capricious efforts of 
 unaided individual enterprise, exposed to the relentless hos- 
 tility of their alarmed and skillful, wealthy and powerful For- 
 eign rivals, but he will receive a far greater aggregate of the 
 various articles he desires in exchange for his own surplus 
 productions. The reason why this is inevitable is that the 
 number of actual producers, the amount of aggregate product, 
 is immensely greater than formerly. Of a thousand workers 
 there were originally three hundred in Illinois producing 
 Grain, two hundred in Europe fabricating various products to 
 be exchanged for the Grain, and the remaining five hundred 
 employed as wagoners, boatmen, sailors, forwarders, mer- 
 chants, etc., in interchanging the Provisions and the Manu- 
 factures between their respective producers, and living (as 
 
21 
 
 they must) out of the aggregate product. Now, with the 
 workshops attracted to the westward of the Alleghenies, there 
 are but one hundred required to effect those exchanges, 
 releasing four hundred from various non-productive functions, 
 and reinforcing by so many the body of actual producers of 
 wealth. The consequence, most manifestly, is an increased 
 production and accumulation of wealth, to be evinced not in 
 store-houses filled to bursting with unneeded food and cloth- 
 ing, but in the improvement of wild or waste lands, the erec- 
 tion of buildings, and the multiplication of books, schools, 
 implements, and every thing which conduces to human com- 
 fort and well-being. There is no mystery, no magic, no 
 juggle in the increase of National Wealth by an enlightened 
 and judicious Protection of Home Industry — an increase of 
 the wealth not of one nation merely, but of the People of all 
 Nations. It operates by giving Idleness employment, and 
 rendering Labor more effective. There is nothing narrow, 
 partial, envious, exclusive, in the policy of Protection, rightly 
 understood and rightly pursued. That we should systemati- 
 cally produce for ourselves and not purchase from other coun- 
 tries whatever articles may with substantially as little labor be 
 produced here as elsewhere, is the dictate not only of a wise 
 Patriotism but of a generous Philanthropy. It is the perma- 
 nent, universal interest of the Toihng Millions of all climes 
 that the exchanges of their productions be rendered as direct, 
 simple, unexpensive, as possible ; but a bloated and superflu- 
 ous Commerce, regarding simply its own profits and not the 
 general good, may, in the absence of Protective Legislation, 
 defeat this consummation, or at least postpone it for years. 
 We may clearly be able — we are able — with our Home 
 Market secured to us by such legislation, after vanquishing 
 the difficulties presented by utter inexperience, to fabricate 
 our own Hardware and Glass, our Pins and Penknives, much 
 cheaper than we could purchase them from England — no 
 matter though they were made somewhat lower there — and 
 
22 
 
 yet we should not be able in fifty years to naturalize and esta- 
 blish, under the batteries of destructive Foreign rivalry, so as 
 to be beyond the reach of its capricious competition, the 
 various arts and processes required for their production. A 
 hundred farmers of Illinois, combining or resolving singly to 
 purchase only Home Manufactures, might not raise the market 
 price of their Agricultural staples one per cent, though the 
 agreement of the Community, expressed through a Protective 
 Tariff, to consume only or mainly Domestic fabrics, securing 
 the Home Production of those fabrics and the consequent 
 Home Consumption of the Agricultural staples, would inevita- 
 bly raise the price of the latter by fifty to a hundred per cent. 
 To repeat, then, the parrot phrase that ' Trade will regulate 
 itself,' meaning that individual avarice and anarchical compe- 
 tition will work out the most beneficent general results, is a 
 futility unworthy of this enhghtened age. As well leave a 
 necessary canal to dig itself, or be scraped out from time to 
 time by the voluntary efforts of those who chance to live on 
 its borders. The seeming personal interest of many of them 
 will often be directly adverse to its construction at all, im- 
 pelling them to impede rather than advance it. General 
 good is only to be attained through general effort — system- 
 atic, harmonious and far-sighted. Left to the mercy of indi- 
 vidual selfishness and caprice, it will rarely be compassed at all. 
 
 But I do not merely challenge the Economical soundness 
 of the Free Trade system — my objection is deeper, broader, 
 and more vital. I object that it fails to recognize and respect 
 the more important use and purpose of Industrial effort. I 
 object that it regards Labor only as a necessary means of 
 supplying Man's sensual wants, and not at all as Divinely 
 appointed for the discipline and development of our Race. It 
 regards the Corn and the Cloth as the only results of Indus- 
 try ; and takes no account of that nobler product, the Man. 
 
 It everywhere assumes as unquestionable that if our Peo- 
 ple, or those of any section, as a mass, a community, can 
 
23 
 
 realize a greater aggregate of wealth by devoting their ener- 
 gies wholly to some single function or department of Industry 
 
 — the growing of Cotton, for example — then it would be 
 clearly their interest and duty to do nothing but grow Cotton, 
 and with this purchase everything else they need or desire, 
 made ready for use abroad. But this I most strenuously 
 deny. We might so have more goods for a season, but less 
 good — more sensual gratification, but less Intellectual expan- 
 sion and force. A new art, a new caUing, introduced among 
 a people, is a new seminary for that people. It awakens 
 inquiry, elicits ideas, suggests improvements even in old pro- 
 cesses and inveterate habits. It has a decided value, though 
 not precisely calculable in dollars and cents. The boorish- 
 ness of manners, the* vacuity or stupor of mind, of a youth 
 trained in the dull routine of a single pursuit and ignorant of 
 the processes of all others, contrasts strikingly with the rapid- 
 ity of thought, freedom of manner, and fertility of resource, 
 of his fellow who has been reared in observing contact with 
 the multiform processes of a hundred surrounding avocations. 
 It is thus that the City lad usually appears to advantage 
 beside the rustic who has grown up in some secluded valley, 
 even when the latter is the more favored by nature and more 
 informed by the study of the schools. The vast domain of 
 Industry is and must be the University of the great majority 
 
 — it is of the highest public importance that none shall be 
 restricted therein to a single acquirement, but that the educa- 
 tion it affords shall be diversified and thorough. 
 
 But it is not merely true that the ultimate uses and full 
 beneficence of the Divine appointment of Labor as the proper 
 condition and essential element of human development and 
 well-being can only be realized where that Labor is diversified 
 and elevated, not monotonous and degraded — it is also true 
 that, though the majority might possibly find a pecuniary and 
 sensible advantage in a National Industry restricted to one or 
 two pursuits, there would be numerous classes condemned to 
 
24 
 
 helplessness and dependence thereby. Let a whole commu- 
 nity be purely Agriculturists, purely Iron-workers, or entirely 
 devoted to any branch of Industry, and there must be a large 
 proportion of its members who from inadequacy of strength 
 or of skill, from considerations of age or of sex, will be un- 
 suited for efficiency in that especial field of effort — conse- 
 quently, for the most part idle or but partially employed and 
 meagrely rewarded. There will be seasons when, owing to 
 unfavorable markets, the whole Industry of such a community 
 will be suspended or unrecompensed, as well as classes which 
 habitually earn little or nothing. Under such circumstances, 
 the laborer becomes the thrall of the capitalist, just as the 
 Egyptians did of Pharaoh during the seven years of famine ; 
 while those whose capacities are not suited to the demands of 
 the branches of industry there mainly pursued, are habitually, 
 inevitably dependent on others for the means of subsistence. 
 A new branch of Industry naturalized in any country is a vir- 
 tual Declaration of Independence for a portion of its before 
 subject people. There can be no emancipation of the Labor- 
 ing Mass from a virtual bondage without a liberal and thor- 
 ough diversification of Industrial pursuits ; and though this is 
 profitable in every way, it is too vastly important to be 
 deferred to any mere pecuniary consideration. If it were 
 true that it must cost us more, according to the narrowest dol- 
 lar-and-cent reckoning, to manufacture for ourselves than to 
 buy of others the products of manufacture, the interests of 
 Labor and of Man would still imperatively require us to secure 
 the supplying of our own wants, so far as Nature interposed 
 no obstacle, by the skill and effort of our own People. Not 
 individual Man only, but the Nation as an aggregate, demands 
 that symmetrical and thorough Development which is to be 
 attained only through a many-sided Industry. 
 
 You will bear with one more illustration of the blindness 
 which has befallen Learning through its divorce from Labor. 
 I allude now to the discussions which have arisen in our day 
 
25 
 
 respecting the organic Reform of Society. We of the Move- 
 ment are not surprised to hear from the lips of Ignorance and 
 a purbhnd Selfishness the cavils which befit and bespeak their 
 sources. We are not surprised nor vexed to hear from such 
 that Industrial Association is but another device to get the 
 goods of the thrifty and prudent within the grasp of the 
 knavish and prodigal — that no house was ever large enough 
 for two families — that no man will work unless impelled to 
 it by appetite or avarice — or any of the sage and well-con- 
 sidered objections which we are required to meet as profound 
 novelties, or novel profundities, day after day. From the 
 class wherein such objections properly originate, we receive 
 and answer them with indomitable patience. Neither ^re we 
 surprised that a well-meaning man, with a brain by nature and 
 habit nicely adjusted to the reception and retention of one 
 idea at a time, is afraid that if he accepts the thought of a 
 Social condition based on brotherhood and love, he must 
 eject his Religion, or his Family ties, or some other cherished 
 possession, to make room for it. We see that the man wants 
 expansion — he must have more room before he can render 
 more hospitality — and we are but moved to more energetic 
 and untiring effort in the great work of whose necessity he is 
 so striking an evidence. But when the objections of the ostler 
 and the nurse confront us from the rostrum and the pulpit 
 — when they overwhelm us in the magisterial dictum of the 
 Professor — when the annihilation that we cannot realize in 
 the Judge's argument overtakes us in the Judge's frown — 
 what shall we think or say ? The narrowness and obliquity 
 of the depressed and benighted was saddening; but when 
 that which should be light but deepens darkness; whither 
 shall we turn for a ray ? Whither but to the great central 
 truth of which we are the imperfect advocates ? 
 
 We of the Movement maintain a position which need not be 
 
 deemed ambiguous and ought not to be regarded with distrust 
 
 or aversion by any generous, lofty mind — by any hopeful, 
 
 loving heart. We maintain that Industry, now too often 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 degraded and repugnant, may be everywhere elevated and 
 rendered attractive, so that not the result only but the process 
 shall be a source of daily joy. We contend that the anarchy 
 between Labor and Capital which now glaringly prevails all 
 around us may be replaced by a better system, wherein a 
 just and settled proportion of product shall be accorded to 
 each, and the present alienating, disorganizing, depraving, 
 universal struggle to secure more wages for less work or more 
 work for less wages, shall be banished forever, taking unfaith- 
 fulness on the one side and extortion on the other along with 
 it. We maintain that, in this bounteous creation of our God, 
 a man standing idle for want of employment, or even of 
 suitable employment, when there is scarcely a square mile of 
 the earth's surface which would not reward ten times the 
 labor ever yet bestowed on it, is a grievous wrong and a bitter 
 reproach to our whole Social Economy, wherein the cunning 
 and the strong secure a certain portion of comfort and luxury 
 to themselves by means which leave the simple and the feeble 
 to famish. We contend that the Rights of Property in the 
 earth, so wisely and necessarily guaranteed to the fortunate 
 possessors, were granted not that the many might be excluded 
 from the common source of sustenance, but that they might 
 be enabled more securely, peacefully, advantageously to de- 
 rive their subsistence therefrom, and that the Right to Labor, 
 and to receive the rewards of Labor, pertains to every indi- 
 vidual where the right to the Soil, originally free and common 
 to all, has been granted away to a part. We maintain that, 
 as no man, clearly, would have a moral right to acquire the 
 ownership of all the earth and, forbidding any to cultivate or 
 dwell on it, starve the Race to death, so no one can have the 
 moral right to do this in part, by monopolizing the land and 
 keeping it unproductive for the gratification of his pomp and 
 avarice, while hundreds around him are suffering for the want 
 of it. In fine, we hold that all individual rights are held sub- 
 ordinate to the demands of Universal Beneficence, and though 
 Human Law may not prescribe the limits of such rights and 
 
27 
 
 provide against any overstepping them, yet the Divine Law 
 condemns every act which finds its end in self-gratification by 
 means which trench on the well-being of others. We main- 
 tain that the isolated family is not the most perfect form of 
 the household — that immense economies, both in production 
 and consumption, are attainable by Combined Effort, directed 
 by combined experience and wisdom — that a true and full 
 Education, such as is not possible under the isolated system, 
 will be all but inevitable in the Combined Order, with its 
 schools beneath the common roof for every department of 
 Knowledge and Art, presided over by instructors chosen from 
 the whole body because of their observed and tested capacity 
 to teach, and not of their indisposition to work — but, above 
 all, its extensive, infinitely diversified, carefully perfected pro- 
 cesses of Industry in action all around the young learner. 
 We maintain that only in such a relation, based on a pro- 
 found sentiment of Human Brotherhood, can be wrought out 
 the emancipation of the Laboring Class from practical servi- 
 tude and the haunting dread of destitution, — from Ignorance, 
 Degradation and the apathy of departed Hope. We main- 
 tain that for Woman, from infancy a toy or a slave, so often 
 condemned to mercenary Xnd loathed marriages, or a useless 
 and joyless loneliness, by an education and by Social usages 
 which deny her the means of essential independence, there is 
 no hope but in a truer Social condition, and enlarged oppor- 
 tunities for Knowledge, liberal Culture and Industrial useful- 
 ness which the Phalanx alone can afford to all. We maintain 
 that only in a Society which puts an end to the interminable 
 vagrancy of Labor anxiously seeking employment, and often 
 seeking long and hungrily in vain — which banishes Commerce 
 and Wages, with their incessant temptations to selfishness, 
 avarice and dishonesty, — which secures Development and 
 Opportunity to all, with Plenty and Comfort to every one who 
 will use the means he possesses of acquiring them — wherein 
 Love to God and Man will constitute the moral atmosphere, 
 and Progress in all good the universal aspiration, — can the 
 
28 
 
 benign purposes of Heaven be fulfilled and the Destiny of 
 Man on earth accomplished. 
 
 If there be any who object that the Social Movement of our 
 time is defective in method or in purpose, we simply invite 
 them to embrace and pursue it by that better method, with 
 that better purpose, which their criticism implies. If there 
 be any who object that only publicans and sinners are en- 
 gaged in it, we ask them to dignify it with their weight of 
 character and hallow it with their sanctity. If they deem its 
 advocates heretical in faith or deficient in piety, how much 
 larger and more inviting is the field wherever they are called 
 to exemplify the influences of a true faith and of a saintly life ! 
 Assuredly, there is no necessary heresy or impiety in effort to 
 supplant Divergence by Convergence of Interests — to replace 
 envious Competition by generous Cooperation — to banish 
 Strife and Want, and establish instead Concord and Plenty ; 
 and if any has been engrafted thereon by injudicious or incon- 
 siderate partisans, it will be easy tp demonstrate the fact by 
 an effort based on better principles, and made in a more 
 catholic spirit. We may be sure that every sincere, unselfish 
 effort to do good is based on a Religion which cannot be false, 
 and a Faith which takes hold on Heaven. 
 
 Now it weighs httle with us that those who never thought 
 seriously, candidly, of this subject for two hours, perceive 
 obstacles in our path which to them seem insurmountable — 
 for we have traversed the quagmires in which they now 
 flounder and know that they are not impassable. It is no 
 tidings to us that time, and effort, and sacrifice, will be requi- 
 site to secure what we contemplate, and that the grave will 
 probably close over the present generation before half that we 
 foresee and struggle for can be attained. Neither can failure 
 in practical trials discourage us, for we anticipate successive 
 and often mortifying failures. The inadequacy of means, the 
 absence of that every-day wisdom learned only in the school 
 of experience, the imperfection of men, all unite to assure us 
 on this point. But we are sustained by an undoubting faith 
 
29 
 
 that whatever of possible good has been revealed to the un- 
 derstandings of men may be rendered practical by devoted 
 and patient exertion. Through sacrifices, discouragements, 
 reverses, and failures, the great work steadily advances step 
 by step to its ultimate triumph. A hundred failures will not 
 suffice to arrest it ; a thousand lives are already pledged to its 
 steadfast prosecution ; and many thousands will be ready ere 
 these are wholly spent. This wounded, bleeding body of 
 Humanity shall yet be raised up and healed — the benefi- 
 cence of God has decreed it ; the silent transformations of the 
 ages have prepared the way for it. For a time may the 
 Priest and the Levite distrustfully pass by on the other side ; 
 but they shall yet recognize in this the work which they were 
 appointed to aid and to compass, and shall exultingly share 
 in the glory and the joy of its consummation ! 
 
 I have thus far invited your attention to some of the de- 
 fects, as they strike me, of our educational methods and aims, 
 as exemplified in the practical errors and deficiencies in which 
 they result. I need not, surely, now reverse the picture and 
 exhibit at length the amendments I would with diffidence 
 suggest. That Education should be based on Labor and 
 directed thoroughly, discriminately, to practical ends — this 
 is the immovable and universal foundation. If a youth is 
 destined to be a Professor, a Physician, a Lawyer, a Poet, a 
 Clergyman, let his higher education at every step contemplate 
 that fact ; but let all his education, from infancy to maturity, 
 regard the development and perfection of the Man. And 
 as one battle contributes more than ten reviews or sham 
 engagements to form the soldier, so one acquirement which 
 commends itself to the student's regard by a direct and palpa- 
 ble utility shall prove of more worth to him than a dozen 
 which he is constrained to labor at as part of a prescribed 
 routine, and (as he is told) to " discipline his mind." It is 
 in life only that we learn how to live. The great ends of all 
 study, of all acquirement, are ability and disposition to dis- 
 charge more effectually our duties as men and as citizens. 
 
m 
 
 The benefits of a true education commence with the indi- 
 vidual, but pass directly and inevitably to the community. 
 He who is not a better brother, neighbor, friend, and citizen, 
 because of his superior knowledge, may very well doubt 
 whether his knowledge is really superior to the ignorance of 
 the unlettered many around him. He whose education has 
 not taught him to shun Vice and loathe Hypocrisy, — has not 
 taught him to prize lightly the pleasures of Sense, the pos- 
 session of boundless Wealth, and the pomp of Public Station, 
 has been taught to little purpose, and should be sent back to 
 his hornbook. 
 
 Far be it from me to decry Ambition. There is a generous 
 and lofty aspiration for the blessing of the present, and the 
 admiring regard of future generations, which has doubtless 
 been the main-spring of many a self-denying act of devotion 
 to human welfare — of many an illustrious and eminently 
 useful career. Let this be held in due honor, that those who 
 do not find in the consecration of their every faculty, every 
 hour, to the good of their Race the proper and ample reward 
 of such consecration, may unite in the good work, though 
 from a motive less exalted. I can comprehend an ardent 
 desire for Public Station and even for Riches, springing from 
 a consciousness of capacity to wield the power thence accru- 
 ing to the signal benefit of mankind. It is this which excuses 
 the thirst for oflice we often detect in men who by nature are 
 clearly above receiving either consideration or renown from 
 any post whatever. Yet I trust this will not much longer 
 continue — that the increase and diffusion of Knowledge, 
 ensuring a more just and general discrimination of the real 
 from the factitious, will gradually work a separation of real 
 Power, as well as of popular homage, from Station undignified 
 by the Virtue and Ability which should be essential to its 
 attainment. Our Country has enjoyed — shall I say, has 
 enjoyed ? — a remarkable example of the impotency of mere 
 station, however lofty, to confer respect or substantial power 
 — may we not hope that the salutary lesson will be widely 
 and lastingly heeded ? 
 
31 
 
 Yet I confess that I find or fancy a perverted and groveling 
 Ambition alarmingly prevalent among our Educated Young 
 Men, and that the hope of awaking in some minds a nobler 
 and loftier impulse has been instrumental in bringing me be- 
 fore you. It seems to me that, while our higher Culture is 
 far more vague and indiscriminate than I could wish it, the 
 purposes and aims of those who acquire that Culture, are too 
 generally special and personal to an extent equally faulty and 
 even more pernicious. Nine-tenths of our Educated Youth 
 pass through College to fit themselves for this or that profess- 
 ion—very rarely that they may be simply better men. If 
 they intently explore and unseal the fountains of Knowledge, 
 it is not that they, and all men, and the parched earth, may 
 be freely refreshed by the bubbling element, but that they 
 may sell it by the penny's worth to the thirsty wayfarer. I 
 am not satisfied with the aspect here presented. I do not 
 object to the adequate reinforcement of the Professions from 
 the ranks of the Educated ; but I demur to the devotion of 
 the Educated Class, of the entire facilities and means of a lib- 
 eral Culture, to the filling of the Professions. It seems to me, 
 if not a profanation, at least an impotent conclusion, when a 
 young man who has spent some years in intimate and delight- 
 ed communion with the Philosophers, Poets and Sages of all 
 times, subsides into a mere dispenser of medicines or drawer 
 of declarations. I would not undervalue the Professions as 
 spheres of usefulness, though I am in small danger indeed of 
 overvaluing them ; but I insist that the Man and the Scholar 
 shall not be swallowed up in the Lawyer or the Doctor. I 
 insist that he shall not consider the Profession the object and 
 end of his Education, but shall still employ the latter to 
 qualify him for higher and more varied usefulness through all 
 the scenes of life. What he has learned from Plato and 
 from Newton, from the master-minds of our Race, let him, as 
 opportunity shall offer, dispense freely and gladly to his less 
 favored neighbors, till they too shall recognize and bless pro- 
 found Learning as the guidance and the solace of mankind. 
 
32 
 
 I have come naturally to the consideration of the position 
 of the Educated Class in our existing Society, and the influ- 
 ence they therein exert. Will any contend that this is what 
 it should and must be ? Is our Public Opinion usually shaped 
 and directed by that of the more elaborately Educated ? I 
 think no one will pretend it. There are points wherein, no 
 settled or strenuous opposition being offered, the sentiment of 
 the College-bred class is accordant with that of the uneduca- 
 ted ; but let a vital question arise, on which the oracles of the 
 grog-shops shall generally take ground against the oracles of 
 the schools, and can we hesitate as to which will triumph? 
 Were our Educated Class really the leader of Opinion in the 
 Country, could such atrocities as Lynch-Law and Repudia- 
 tion ever be countenanced ? There is manifestly unsoundness 
 here — evil which needs to be probed and cured. The Edu- 
 cated Class is far less potential than it should be ; the mischief 
 may be the Country's, but the fault is primarily its own. Its 
 sources I have throughout been endeavoring to detect and ex- 
 pose to your apprehension. It has been said by one of the 
 most eminent scholars* of our time and country that " It is 
 difficult for cultivated Pride to put its ear to the ground and 
 listen to the teachings of lowly Humanity." I see how this 
 may be difficult for Pride of any sort, but I deny that the voice 
 of Humanity, however lowly, ought to be less welcome or less 
 intelligible to the truly cultivated than to the uncultivated ear 
 — far otherwise. But there is a half-truth at the bottom of 
 this sentiment, and it bears to us an admonition. There is too 
 little cordial sympathy — too little familiar and friendly inter- 
 change of thought — between the better educated and the 
 imperfectly instructed. There are too many barriers of form 
 and usage between them. Each might learn much from the 
 other — profit much by a nearer relation. Each may find ad- 
 monition in the experiences of the other, if freely imparted. 
 In the great convulsions now dimly apprehended but certainly 
 
 * Hon. Geo. Bancroft — Address of Massachusetts Democratic Convention. 
 
33 
 
 at hand, the well-meaning and right-thinking of each class 
 will find a union essential to both. That enlightened Conser- 
 vatism, which asks what it is that we should conserve, and 
 what there is of abuse or injustice that should be cut away in 
 order that what is valuable and precious mai/^be conserved—- 
 that genial Reform which recognizes Harmony and Love as 
 the elements of all true Progress, and shrinks from any 
 changes impelled by Hatred and compassed through Disorder 
 — are learning to know each other as brethren and natural 
 allies. On the altar of a common danger, a common interest, 
 may their union be indissolubly consummated ! 
 
 I have said that the practical and treasured acquirement of 
 the Educated Glass seems to me too special and individual, 
 while their culture appears indiscriminate and general. Here 
 in one of our rural townships is a limited number of persons 
 — perhaps ten or twenty — who have enjoyed the benefits of 
 a College education. Their literary acquirement of course 
 far surpasses that of the great mass around them. But how 
 are their neighbors and townsmen permitted to realize this ? 
 Is it not quite common that their only experience of it is 
 based on the hard words in an attorney's twenty fohos or an 
 apothecary's account — words subsidiary to a still harder 
 charge at the bottom of it ? May we not hope that this shall 
 be amended ? — that the Educated Class shall yet be related 
 to the less instructed many in a manner very different from 
 this ? Why should not this class create an atmosphere, not 
 merely of exemplary morals and refined manners, but of 
 palpable utility and blessing ? Why should not the Clergy- 
 man, the Doctor, the Lawyer, of a country town be not 
 merely the patrons and commenders of every generous idea, 
 the teachers and dispensers of all that is novel in Science or 
 noble in Philosophy — exemplars of Integrity, of Amenity, 
 and of an all-pervading Humanity to those around them — 
 but even in a more material sphere regarded and blessed as 
 universal benefactors ? Why should they not be universally — 
 as I rejoice to say that some of them are — models of wisdom 
 5 
 
34 
 
 and thrift in Agriculture — their farms and gardens silent but 
 most effective preachers of the benefits of forecast, calculation, 
 thorough knowledge and faithful application ? Nay, more : 
 Why should not the Educated Class be everywhere teachers, 
 through lectures, essays, conversations, as well as practically, 
 of those great and important truths of Nature, which Chem- 
 istry and other sciences are just reveahng to bless the Indus- 
 trial world ? Why should they not unobtrusively and freely 
 teach the Farmer, the Mechanic, the Worker in any capacity, 
 how best to summon the blind forces of the elements to his 
 aid and how most effectually to render them subservient to 
 his needs ? All this is clearly within the power of the Edu- 
 cated Class, if truly educated ; all is clearly within the sphere 
 of duty appointed them by Providence. Let them but do it, 
 and they will stand, where they ought to stand, at the head 
 of the community, the directors of Public Opinion and the 
 universally recognized benefactors of the Race. 
 
 I stand before an audience in good part of Educated* men, 
 and I plead for the essential Independence of their class — 
 not for their sakes only or mainly, but for the sake of Man- 
 kind. I see clearly, or I am strangely bewildered, a deep- 
 rooted and wide-spreading evil which is palsying the influence 
 and paralyzing the exertions of Intellectual and even Moral 
 superiority all over our Country. The Lawyer, so far at least 
 as his livelihood is concerned, is too generally but a lawyer ; 
 he must live by law or he has no means of living at all. So 
 with the Doctor ; so, alas ! with the Pastor ! He, too, often 
 finds himself surrounded by a large, expensive family, few or 
 none of whom have been systematically trained to earn their 
 bread in the sweat of their brows, and who, even if approach- 
 ing maturity in life, lean on him for a subsistence. This son 
 must be sent to an academy, and that one to College ; this 
 daughter to an expensive boarding-school, and that must have 
 a piano — and all to be defrayed from his salary, which, how- 
 ever liberal, is scarcely or barely adequate to meet the de- 
 mands upon it. How shall this man — for man, after all, he 
 
35 
 
 is — with expenses, and cares, and debts pressing upon him 
 — hope to be at all times faithful to the responsibilities of his 
 high calling? He may speak ever so fluently and feelingly 
 against sin in the abstract, for that cannot give offence to the 
 most fastidiously sensitive incumbent of the richly furnished 
 hundred-dollar pews. But will he dare to rebuke openly, 
 fearlessly, specially, the darling and decorous vices of his most 
 opulent and liberal parishioners — to say to the honored dis- 
 penser of liquid poison, " Your trade is murder, and your 
 wealth the price of perdition!" — To him who amasses 
 wealth by stinting honest Labor of its reward and grinding 
 the faces of the Poor, " Do not mock God by putting your 
 reluctant dollar into the Missionary box — there is no such 
 heathen in New Zealand as yourself!" — and so to every 
 specious hypocrite around him, who patronizes the church to 
 keep to windward of his conscience and freshen the varnish 
 on his character, ' Thou art the man ! ' I tell you, friends ! 
 he will not, for he cannot afford to, be thoroughly faithful! 
 One in a thousand may be, and hardly more. We do not 
 half comprehend the profound significance of that statute of 
 the old Church which inflexibly enjoins celibacy on her 
 Clergy. The very existence of the Church, as a steadfast 
 power above the multitude, giving law to the People and not 
 receiving its law day by day from them, depends on its main- 
 tenance. And if we are ever to enjoy a Christian Ministry 
 which shall systematically, promptly, fearlessly war upon 
 every shape and disguise of evil — which shall fearlessly 
 grapple with War and Slavery, and every loathsome device 
 by which man seeks to glut his appetites at the expense of his 
 brother's well-being, it will be secured to us through the in- 
 strumentality of the very Reform I advocate — a Reform 
 which shall render the clergyman independent of his parish- 
 ioners, and enable him to say manfully to all, "You may 
 cease to pay, but I shall not cease to preach, so long as you 
 have sins to reprove, and I have strength to reprove them ! 
 I live in good part by the labor of my hands, and can do so 
 
36 
 
 wholly whenever that shall become necessary to the fearless 
 discharge of my duty ! " 
 
 A single illustration more, and I draw this long dissertation 
 to a close. I shall speak now more directly to facts within 
 my own knowledge, and which have made on me a deep and 
 mournful impression. I speak to your experience, too, 
 friends of the Phoenix and Union Societies — to your future if 
 not to your past experience — and I entreat you to heed me I 
 Every year sends forth from our Colleges an army of brave 
 youth, who have nearly or quite exhausted their little means 
 in procuring what is termed an education, and must now find 
 some remunerating employment to sustain them while they 
 are more specially fitting themselves for and inducting them- 
 selves into a Profession. Some of them find and are perforce 
 contented with some meagre clerkship ; but the great body of 
 them turn their attention at once to Literature — to the 
 instruction of their juniors in some school or family, or to the 
 instruction of the world through the Press. Hundreds of 
 them hurry at once to the cities and the journals, seeking 
 employment as essayists or collectors of intelligence — bright 
 visions of Fame in the foreground, and the gaunt wolf Famine 
 hard at their heels. Alas for them ! they do not see that the 
 very circumstances under which they seek admission to the 
 calling they have chosen almost forbid the idea of their 
 succeeding in it. They do not approach the public with 
 thoughts struggling for utterance, but with stomachs craving 
 bread. They seek the Press, not that they may proclaim 
 through it what it would cost their lives to repress, but that 
 they may preserve their souls to their bodies, at some rate. 
 Do you not see under what immense disadvantages one of this 
 band enters upon his selected vocation, if he has the rare 
 fortune to find or make a place in it ? He is surrounded, 
 elbowed on every side by anxious hundreds, eager to obtain 
 employment on any terms ; he must write not what he feels, 
 but what another needs ; must ' regret' or * rejoice' to order, 
 working for the day, and not venturing to utter a thought 
 
37 
 
 which the day does~not readily approve. And can you fancy 
 that is the foundation on which to build a lofty and durable 
 renown — a brave and laudable success of any kind ? I tell 
 you, no, young friends ! — the farthest from it possible. 
 There is scarcely any position more perilous to generous 
 impulses and lofty aims — scarcely any which more immi- 
 nently threatens to sink the Man in the mere schemer and 
 striver for subsistence and selfish gratification. I say, then, 
 in deep earnestness, to every youth who hopes or desires to 
 become useful to his Race or in any degree eminent through 
 Literature, Seek first of all things a position of pecuniary inde- 
 pendence ; leain to live by the labor of your hands, the sweat 
 of your face, as a necessary step toward the career you 
 contemplate. If you can earn but three shillings a day by 
 rugged yet moderate toil, learn to live contentedly on two 
 shillings, and so preserve your mental faculties fresh and 
 unworn to read, to observe, to think, thus preparing yourself 
 for the ultimate path you have chosen. At length, when. a 
 mind crowded with discovered or elaborated truths will have 
 utterance, began to write sparingly and tersely for the nearest 
 suitable periodical — no matter how humble and obscure — 
 if the thought is in you, it will find its way to those who need 
 it. Seek not compensation for this utterance until compen- 
 sation shall seek you ; then accept it if an object, and not 
 involving too great sacrifices of independence and disregard 
 of more immediate duties. In this way alone can something 
 like the proper dignity of the Literary Character be restored 
 and maintained. But while every man who either is or 
 believes himself capable of enlightening others, appears only 
 anxious to sell his faculty at the earliest moment and for the 
 largest price, I cannot hope that the Public will be induced to 
 regard very profoundly either the lesson or the teacher. 
 
 Graduates, Students of Hamilton College ! a parting word 
 with you ! Some of you have completed your studies and 
 are now passing out into the actual world, to be followed in 
 successive years by your brethren whom you now leave 
 
38 
 
 behind you. I will not doubt that you bid adieu to these 
 scenes with lofty purposes of usefulness — with a proper 
 appreciation of the advantages over the great mass of your 
 countrymen which have been here afforded you, and of the 
 obligations which these advantages draw after them. I am 
 not so far removed from youth as to have forgotten all its 
 sanguine visions and generous aspirations. I bid you cherish 
 them each and all, for they are wiser than the cold lesson 
 which disappointment and experienced treachery may after- 
 ward teach us. O be assured, above all things, that no 
 generous and self-forgetting aspiration can ever be unwise or 
 mistaken while the Universe obeys a sceptre and Earth 
 revolves beneath the eye of a benignant Father ! I know 
 not whether I may hope in this hurried communion to have 
 implanted in one breast a clearer or nobler idea of the true 
 purposes and aims of Life — I may not confidently trust that 
 I have imparted to one mind a deeper disdain of those 
 bubbles surnamed Luxury, Ease, Wealth, Power, Popularity, 
 Honors, by which many an ardent and capacious soul has 
 been deluded to its ruin. But you are by position Scholars, 
 and by virtue of that position you must realize — at least, in 
 your calmer and better moments, when that which is immor- 
 tal is not stifled within you — that a true Life is the one thing 
 desirable to Man on earth, for and in itself — that Virtue, 
 being truly suehy transcends all idea of reward, and becomes 
 to the spiritual What gravitation is to the material world — a 
 law which will not be evaded. He who truly, fully appre- 
 hends the one fact that God reigns knows all that can be 
 of morality — knows that no conceivable divergence from the 
 line of strictest rectitude, of loftiest endeavor, can possibly be 
 otherwise than calamitous in and of itself, wholly apart from 
 all extraneous conditions and consequences. I shall not, 
 then, exhort you to follow Purity and Righteousness, since the 
 admonition would imply a possible ignorance on your part of 
 the existence of the All-Wise — of the laws of your own being. 
 But I may warn you, friends 1 of the mistake so commonly 
 
39 
 
 made by our educated youth of lingering long by the wayside 
 of active life, under the pretence — very often alleged in good 
 faith — of a w^ant of opportunity. O, deceive not yourselves 
 thus, young men ! To the rightly constituted mind, to the 
 truly developed Man, there always is, there always must be op- 
 portunity — opportunity to be and to learn, nobly to do and to 
 endure — and what matter whether with pomp, and eclat, 
 with sound of trumpets and shout of applauding thousands, 
 or in silence and seclusion, beneath the calm, discerning gaze 
 of Heaven ? O realize that no station can be humble on 
 which that gaze is approvingly bent — that no work can be 
 ignoble which is performed uprightly and not impelled by 
 sordid and selfish aims. It is a vital defect of our Society 
 and our Culture, which you are bound to wrestle against and 
 to overcome, that while an immensity of effort is ever needed, 
 of true work remains undone, we are too generally dissatisfied 
 with that which lies broad and plain before us, and waste our 
 hours in seeking long and far for something loftier and nobler. 
 We wander to the Poles and the Antipodes, vainly seeking 
 for that which to the man at peace with himself is every- 
 where, to the unquiet nowhere. Vainly sighing for the 
 opportunity of some other, which his genius and ready accept- 
 ance have made the basis of an illustrious and dazzling career, 
 we neglect and sacrifice our own. We speak regretfully of 
 the age of Chivalry, the age of Heroism or of perilous and 
 doubtful struggle for Freedom, as if we did not recognize that 
 Man's struggle with darkness and evil is ever in progress, and 
 that to render any age one of heroism nothing is wanting 
 but heroic souls. Waiting for the dead Past to be acted over 
 again for our selfish gratification and aggrandizement, we 
 suffer the precious and living Present to ghde away from us, 
 undervalued and unimproved. Says a deep, fearless thinker^ 
 of our time, " To-Day is a king in disguise. To-Day always 
 looks common and trivial, in the face of a uniform experience 
 
 '^ Ralph Waldo Emerson — Lecture on ' the Times.' 
 
40 
 
 that all great and happy actions have been made up of these 
 same blank To-Days. Let us unmask the king as he passes." 
 Yes, my young friends, here is our high privilege and our 
 imperative duty — to discern and honor the disguised angels 
 vv^hom God is ever sending to illumine and bless his earth. 
 Not from among the children of monarchs, ushered into being 
 vrith boom of cannon and shouts of revehng millions, but 
 from amid the sons of obscurity and toil, cradled in peril 
 and ignominy — from the bulrushes and the manger come 
 forth the benefactors and saviours of Mankind. So when all 
 the babble and glare of our age shall have passed into a fitting 
 oblivion — vi^hen those who have enjoyed rare opportunities 
 and swayed vast empires, and been borne through life on the 
 shoulders of shouting multitudes, shall have been laid at last 
 to rest in golden coffins, to moulder forgotten, the stately 
 marble their only monuments, it will be found that some 
 humble youth, who neither inherited nor found but hewed out 
 his opportunities, has uttered the thought which shall render 
 the age memorable by extending the means of enlightment 
 and blessing to our Race. The great struggle for Human 
 Progress and Elevation proceeds noiselessly, often unnoted, 
 often checked and apparently baffled, amid the clamorous and 
 debasing strifes impelled by greedy selfishness and low ambi- 
 tion. In that struggle, maintained by the wise and good of 
 all parties, all creeds, all climes, I call you to bear the part of 
 men. Heed the lofty summons, not the frail messenger, and, 
 with souls serene and constant, prepare to tread boldly in the 
 path of highest duty. So shall Life be to you truly exalted 
 and heroic ; so shall Death be a transition neither sought nor 
 dreaded ; so shall your memory, though cherished at first but 
 by a few humble, loving hearts, linger long and gratefully in 
 human remembrance, a watchword to the truthful and an 
 incitement to generous endeavor, freshened by the proud 
 tears of admiring affection, and fragrant with the odors of 
 Heaven ! 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 29JUN' ^9AB 
 
 HflY3-'Bfi-10A|yt 
 
 LOAN PEPT. 
 
 'N STACKS 
 
 JON 151959 
 
 REC'D LD 
 
 JULi i959 
 
 :^^W7^ 
 
 KUgg ' ^ US 
 
 JAN 3 1960 
 
 MAY 1 6 1968 
 
 LD21A-50m-9,'58 
 (6889sl0)476B 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
Gaylamount 
 
 Pamphlet 
 
 Binder 
 
 Gaylord Bros.. Inc. 
 
 Stockton, Calif. 
 
 T. M. Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. 
 
 Y.C ! O^-^f^^