WISCONSIN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION. VOL. IV. JANUARY, 1874. No. I. On the Relation of Education to the Individual, to Society, and to the State. [A lecture delivered before the State Teachers' Association at Sparta, Wis, July 8, 1873, by WM. T. HARRIS, Supt. of Schools, St. Loui-.] Into this "great central plain," watered by majestic rivers, and fertile as the his. toric valley of the Nile, now are pouring all nationalities of the world. All sections of the republic find here their centre. From the northern and southern and middle sections of the Atlantic Slope, nay, from the west, the Pacific shore, and from far off Asia, come immigrants hith er. on these prairies, and in the pathless wilderness, this generation "blazes” the trees and stakes the plain in order that its tracks may follow the beaten path, and not prove in vain. In what form shall our community, composed of such heterogeneous elements, live? While this question startles us by its practical importance, we have on the other hand some consolatory reflections. That a composite population tends more to the development of civil liberty than does a homogeneous one, has been reWhile scarcely one generation of marked in all history. It was only after white men has had time to reproduce the fusion of the Cymric Celt first with itself in these states, it has become a the Saxon and Dane, and then with the populous region with metropolitan cities Norman, that the Magna Charta became in many favorable localities. A motley possible and necessary. The new fusion composition is here collecting, out of made on the shores of this continent has which to fuse the future people of this led to new and newer political experivalley. The European is here in large ments, always tending in the direction of numbers, representing all shades of po- the largest personal liberty. Where peolitical freedom and despotism at home; ple of rep gnant manners and customs the German, the Frenchman, the Italian, mingle, the necessity of living in mutual the Norwegian, the Irishman, the Briton. | harmony and co-operation cultivates a The white man, the negro and the "heath- habit of toleration; each one learns to en Chinee," even, all exist, and will exist distinguish between what is merely harmin one community. But how? Out of less idiosyncrasy and what belongs to the the dim future looms up the spectral essential conditions of humanity and question which it is our province here civilization. Thus there is perforce a and now to answer. This generation has profounder mode of thinking cultivated to construct the forms in which the com--"a faculty of seeing identity under munity of the future must live. Pioneers differences"-of recognizing personal virtues under strange exteriors. This is and fear not; do wrong and fear every 1 undoubtedly the spirit that will prevail body." Toleration must go so far as to in all future civilization; for the tele- allow to each man his private judgment, graph and railroad communication-in- even if it is a wrong one; but a toleratellectual and material commerce all over tion which should allow every one to do the world-bring, and are so bringing, in- what he pleased, whether right or wrong, to juxtaposition, all mankind, that each would prove self-destructive at once. one lives, as it were, on the border-land, Man's thought belongs to himself; his and shakes hands with the people across deed belongs to all. This insight lies at his frontier. Everywhere a new synthesis the basis of sound ideas on the subject of national characters is going on. Mean- of free government. It leads me directly ness and narrowness cannot withstand to the consideration of my special theme such influences. Meanwhile, the new on this occasion. product which arises from the mingling of elements is more concrete-richer in what it contains. Each nationality has learned something essential from the other; the unessentials have been put to the trial under new circumstances, and have gradually fallen away. The function of education in its relation to the government, to society and to the indi cidual.-Freedom has two sides-one of absolute toleration, which permits and encourages difference of opinion, and trusts that the freest exercise of thought is the healthiest, and will lead in the Each nationality, each peculiar section- surest way to absolute truth wherein all al trait is clashed against the other, and conviction shall be united as one. The the idiosyncracies perish; the rough other side is that of subordination to law, angles are worn off; the noble traits of wherein each man squares his deeds by character will survive, for they have the the universal rules laid down in the stat most vitality. Thus our valley shall be ute books, and prescribed by the judicial the habitation of the cosmopolitan type function of the government, wherein not of American character. The East pro- only each man squares his own deeds by duces the elements of opposition; it is the laws of the land, but at the same time for the West to unite them in the deeper insists upon it that each and every other unity. While local interests develop in- man shall square his deeds by the same tense partisan views of narrow prejudices form. Since freedom has these two sides all along our Atlantic coast, and in the of toleration and proscription, it bemonarchies of the old world, we who live | hooves us to consider its methods of here must build our community on a basis realization. How is freedom rendered of toleration so large that all may find possible for the individual in the comrefuge in it. It is toleration only that munity? This is an important question takes out the sting of bitterness from at any time, especially important now, for people brought up under a narrow and this is an age of reconstruction. We are bigoted system. Respect your neighbor, assembled at a memorable epoch. In and he is likely to respect you. Vigor view of the future of this country, the ously defend your enemy's right to pri- present is a season of youth, and before vate judgment-this is toleration. it opens a career full of active endeavor But toleration and license are two veryan 1 checkered with manifold experience. different things. The right of private The Necessity of Education.-In times judgment is sacred, and to be respected; of reconstruction it is highly appropri the right or license to act as one pleases ate to review the whole theory of educa is a different thing. The right of action tion, from its first premises down. The can never be free, unless it is moulded in necessity of education; what should be the forms of justice and right. Do right its extent; what should be its methods; what its appliances and the spirit that should govern its discipline and instruction; these are the fertile topics that suggest themselves for study in the treatment of our theme. Education is a necessity, for the reason that man is not made by nature, but has to make himself out of his circumstances. As a mere savage, or as he comes from the hand of nature, man distinguishes himself from animals by being naked, and hungry and miserable. His old age is a burden and full of suffering; but the animal lives in unconscious harmony with his physical laws, and his clothing and shelter grow out in his furry hide, or gape for him in the cave or hollow tree, while his food falls from the boughs. plump into his expectant mouth. Yet it is not man the savage who can claim so much. The world was made for man only on condition that he have the intelligence and skill to use it. The natural man who has not ascended above nature, and become its master, is, as before said, more unfortunate and unhappy than the brute. But it is this very unhap piness that stimulates him to aspire. He is ignorant, and yet he has not the brute's instinct to lead him. What can he do but err and break the laws of nature until he discovers one by one their existence and conditions. As a western poet de scribes it, he "Uses his head as a battering ram Against the walls of the universe." But he comes out of this sore experience not only with a new bump on the Should any one look upon man as a outside of his head, but also with a new mere animal, he would scorn the idea idea inside; he has learned a distinction that he was born to use all nature and en-between what is good for him and what joy it, and be prone to consider the om- is not. He has learned a limit to his beniverous hog rather as having a much better title. Nevertheless it is true that nature sums up all her perfections in man, and even transcends herself so that in him she becomes a subject and a person with self-consciousness and immortality; by this man begins the order of Spirit and rules Nature. His very deficiences, as mere animal, are the occasion of his greatness. His lack of natural clothing furnishes him the occasion for searching the globe and robbing animal and plant to supply his wardrobe. He even strips from the poor worm its winding-sheet of silk, and gives it the gaudy color, stolen, likewise, from the insect kingdom. For food he draws on all climes and on all departmentsanimal, mineral and vegetable. Just as the vegetable kingdom shows its higher and more concrete stage of existence by presupposing the mineral king dom upon which it rests, and as the animal presupposes both the mineral and vegetable to support its life, so man crowns all by presupposing the whole of nature as his storehouse and larder. ing; he has learned a law. This is the process by which he becomes conscious of himself, by which he learns his own nature and the nature of the universe. To achieve his destiny, to become aught that is distinctively human, he must be able to combine with his fellow man, and to sum up the results of the race in each individual. First, there is practical combination, civil society organizing in such a way that each man reaps the united effort of the entire community; the laborer, who earns his dollar for the day's work, being able to purchase therewith one dollar's worth of any or all the productions that human labor has wrought out. Then there is theoretical combination, the scholar by diligent study and thought being able to master for himself one by one the great thoughts that have ruled the world-history. There is a third combination, that of the individual with himself, wherein man, by concentrating his energies for a long period, achieves a gigantic result, the product of his whole life directed to one focus. These forms of combination are the institutions of civilization, and they form collectively a new world above and be yond the natural world, and in this new world man lives and moves and has his being as a spiritual existence. This new world of institutions which civilized man inhabits, is far more substantial than the world of nature, which alone exists for the savage. Each individual of the human race has an experience of his own, and since man has first a tongue and then a pen, he communicates his experience to others, and thus a common fund of intelligence is established, which has been called the"fifth element." As earth, air, fire, and water, are good in their way as the f ur elements, so this new element, the element of realized intelligence-is essential to man, and the best of all. It is not necessary for each member of the human race to repeat the experience of his predecessors, for their results have descended to him, and he has acquired them by education, and hence he may stand on the top of the ladder of human culture and build a new round to it, so that his children may climb higher and do the like. Carlyle, in his Sartor Resartus," defines man to be the "tool-using animal." He can turn nature against itself, and devote it to use; he can reduce the processes of nature to means for the achieve ment of his purposes; and he is able not only to use the material world, but he can utilize his own experience. Thus it happens that in his warehouse are found two kinds of tools-we may call them practical and theoretical tools. With these tools he subdues all opposition, and, like the great magicians of old, he lays his spells on time and space, and they serve at his bidding. Animal, mineral, plant, the four elements, all acknowledge his dominion. By his practical tools, such as the ax, the plow, the wagon, or the horse, the ship, the steam engine-he achieves the victory of art. By his theoretical tools-such as language, mathematics, the sciences and philosophy-he reduces the world to transparent forms, and achieves thereby the victory of ideas. Give to man the theoretical tools-the tools of thought-and he will immediately invent the tools of art, and conquer matter and force. Thus man owes his superiority to the command of instrumentalities. These But the animal does not amass experience, and hence does not progress. We never heard a parrot (i. e. one of the feathered kind) setting up a school for the instruction of green ones, nor of an old elephant's starting out on a lecturing tour. But strictly confined to the dreamy life of the senses, and never rising to a general idea, the individual animal matures and dies. Only the species lives instrumentalities are the combined proon; there is no immortality for the indi- duct of the activity of the race. These vidual animal. It requires a being who combinations which we have spoken of can combine in himself the product of as producing the fifth element-that of his entire species by his individual activ-red z dnt l genc are the four cardinal ity-just as man can-to fulfill the con- institutions: The Family, Civil Society, ditions of immortality. He must be The State, Religion. These are the insti able to say, like the Microcosm : tutions in which alone can be realized the substantial freedom of man. They form a vast, complex organism of conventionalities and usages-the growth of all the ages. Taking the practical side "I drained the drops of every cup, |