Irresistible Tendencies

WHEN Shakespeare made Brutus say to Cassius,

he seems to have expressed in characteristically striking phrase a truth of general if not universal application.

Another way of expressing substantially the same great fact is embodied in the epigrammatic saying, “ Tendencies are stronger than men.” It is, I think, unquestionably true that in the affairs of society and in the affairs of nations, as well as in the affairs of individual persons, there are great movements, great tendencies, great drifts, or “ tides,” which cannot be resisted without leading to " shallows ” and “ miseries.” To a few of these irresistible tendencies attention may not inappropriately be called at the present time.

And first of all we are confronted with that irresistible spirit of individualism which came into modern society about four hundred years ago, and which is probably not only the most interesting, but also the most fundamental and influential characteristic of modern times. Whatever we may think of the advantages of that spirit, or of its disadvantages, we shall all have to acknowledge its importance. It had its origin in the general movement of the Renaissance, and was strongly formulated in the creed and teachings of Luther; then, for the first time, the individual man was so emphatically and so comprehensively set forth as the responsible unit of society as to attract universal attention, if not universal acceptance. The precipitation of that thought into society with so much energy and persistency must be regarded as the cause, directly or indirectly, of very much that has happened in modern society. It resulted in revolutionizing civil life more completely, perhaps, than it revolutionized religious life ; for in civil life it soon made itself felt everywhere, whereas in religious life it was for a long time, at least, somewhat limited in its scope. Not only was this idea at the bottom of all the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but in the trend of political affairs, though its influence was not so obvious, it was none the less certain, and was even more comprehensive in its far-reaching effects. To understand the nature and significance of this great transformation, we have only to cast a moment’s glance at a few of the most obvious conditions of social and political life before that time and after it.

As is well known, in ancient history the unit of civil society was, not the man, but the city ; and for nearly a thousand years before the fifteenth century the unit was the feudal organization. Throughout the Middle Ages the peculiarity of this organization was an obligation of protection on the part of the lord, and of service on the part of the vassal. It was founded in the idea of mutual helpfulness, and all parts of the system were so interlaced and interlocked that individuality found practically no recognition. If we look into any of the wars of the Middle Ages, we shall not fail to see that there is very little voluntary will, but that all seems to consist of the united movements of the feudal lords and their subordinates acting as a whole. The spirit of chivalry, a late product of feudalism, was only a conspicuous exhibition of an impulse to break away from the spirit which bound all men together, — the first impulse toward individuality.

But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this impulse manifested itself everywhere. While it was most powerfully resisted, and consequently was least successful, in southern Germany and in France, it became dominant after terrible struggles in northern Germany and in England. What was the history of England from the accession of Elizabeth to the death of George III. but the history of the evolution of this individualism ? And even since the civil and political rights of individual men were established and recognized, what has been the history of Great Britain but the application of these rights to the affairs of the empire ? The flood of great reforms which have crowded the statute books of that realm for the present century is a convincing answer to the question. It was a long struggle, but it was irresistible.

Then turn to the history of France. In the first contests between individualism and centralized authority, centralized authority was overwhelmingly successful. The brilliant and popular indifference of Henry IV. turned everything in the direction of the government. The farreaching statesmanship of Richelieu made possible the dominant magnificence of Louis XIV. The nation was dazzled into a century of acquiescence. But the fire was not extinguished ; it was only smothered and kept out of sight. At length, when the whole atmosphere seemed to be nothing but noxious and explosive gases, the spark came, and the desolating explosion of the Revolution ensued.

The results of this stupendous event were obscured by the erratic dominance of Napoleon ; but even his masterful energy could not stem the irresistible current. The consequences did not come at once. History is never impatient or in haste. Even in England it was more than a hundred years after the death of Cromwell before the tree he had planted bore fruit ; and it has already been more than a hundred years since the fundamental beliefs which exploded the political magazine of France were promulgated. It is perhaps needless to add that they have not even yet come to be completely embodied in the working political methods of the nation.

But, however infirm and unfortunate in other directions, there is one respect in which France has been superior to England. Her political literature has been far more powerful, far more persuasive, and far more influential. The writings of Hobbes and Locke and of the other exponents of English revolutionary ideas left very little impression on the popular imagination ; but the winged words of Rousseau and Helvetius and Voltaire flew into every land, and lodged in every thinking mind. No student of the history of political ideas can fail to see that these writings were the great Storehouse from which our own Jefferson supplied himself with the thoughts, and even to a considerable extent with the maxims, which he so deftly wove into the Declaration of Independence, and which afterward, notwithstanding his fickleness on a hundred other subjects, he retained to the very last as the basis of all his political beliefs. And that one tenacity constitutes his claim to permanent respect as a political leader and founder.

It was because of this persuasive influence on Jefferson and others that with the establishment of the United States a new government was for the first time set up, whose corner stone, whose fundamental idea, was that individualism which for three centuries had been striving and fighting to get itself born and recognized.

Let us not suppose that the influence of this idea has been confined to the United States and Great Britain ; on the contrary, let us grant that while it dominates in these nations as nowhere else, still in fairness it must be said that there is no nation this side of Asia that does not recognize in some measure, at least, the rights in political and civil affairs of the individual man. Notwithstanding all opposition, representation is irresistibly coming to be more and more common in Russia, in Spain, in Italy, in Austria ; and this fact is but a tribute to the great and irresistible movement. Even in those governments which adhere with most tenacity to old ideas and old methods the new leaven is working, and the time is apparently not far off when it is to leaven the whole mass.

Now let us look at some of the effects of this irresistible movement. As soon as we admit that the individual is the primal entity or atom of society, we perceive for the first time that he has become a responsible force. For the first time he has a powerful incentive to strive primarily for himself, and he seeks all the advantages that come from such a condition. It implies the right to struggle alone, or, at will, to struggle with others. And this is the essential quality of human liberty.

It is the baldest commonplace to say that this is an inventive age ; but attention has not very often been called to the fact that, with its fundamental philosophy, it could hardly be otherwise. It is only individuality that is inventive. Genius will never work in harness, and invention is the child of solitude and incentive. It is only, as we have seen, after centuries of struggle, and within the last hundred years, that the individual has ceased to be primarily a part of a great whole, and has become primarily an individual unit. From the fifteenth century to near the end of the eighteenth he was ever struggling to become free, but never coming to the knowledge of freedom. In this century, however, every man, whatever his relations, is working primarily for himself, and secondarily for the society with which he is associated. To improve his pecuniary conditions, to increase his political power, to enlarge his social influence, to elevate and educate his family, — these are now his primary ambitions. This is the spirit which has made the present age an age of invention. When the philosophical basis of the movement is considered, it is not at all singular that in the nineteenth century the inventions and improvements of fundamental usefulness have been so many and so important as perhaps to justify the claim of Wallace that they have exceeded those of all the other centuries from the dawn of history.

This irresistible tendency to individuality has borne other fruits besides those of invention. In the first place, it is rapidly transforming the methods as well as the theories of education. Look for a moment at the early conditions of educational history. In founding the universities and other large schools in Europe, the motive everywhere was to educate men for the service either of the church or of the state. Educated men were the agents by whom the government and the church ruled, or, if the word is preferred, served the people. The four professions — theology, law, medicine, and philosophy — were the means by which the governments, civil and ecclesiastical, were to equip themselves to do their work. They were not established as the open and free opportunity for individual ambition and desire. Even in England the same impulses prevailed. Till far into this century there was in Great Britain no public school system ; and not only Oxford and Cambridge, but also such great schools as Eton and Rugby and Harrow and Westminster, were practically closed to the masses of the people. The fact that until within our generation the test of the Thirty-Nine Articles was insisted on at the universities reveals to us very perfectly the whole spirit of the situation. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that all the schools were founded and supported for the purpose of providing clergymen for the Established Church, and educated gentlemen of wealth and leisure for members of Parliament. This is only another way of saying that the great schools of the country were merely the means for supplying the church and state with trained agents for the exercise of their authority.

It was but natural that these fundamental ideas should come with the colonists to America. Before any provision had been made for common schools John Harvard founded the college at Cambridge, in a spirit not very different from that in which William of Wykeham had founded New College at Oxford; and the people of Massachusetts Bay Colony, already feeling the throb of sovereignty in their veins, provided management and support for the new school, as Parliament had done for the schools in England. A similar impulse founded William and Mary, and Yale. It was simply the English idea adapted to colonial conditions. But as the colonies came to be more and more self-reliant, they grew more and more to see that comprehensive provisions for education were indispensable. Either consciously or unconsciously, the people came to realize that with their new sovereignty they must take upon themselves the care of education, as other sovereigns had done.

Now, this spirit was brought together and embodied, as nowhere else, in that remarkable provision for education which constitutes the chapter on Education in that constitution of Massachusetts which was adopted in 1780. Not the least interesting features of that chapter were the reasons given for the generous provisions that were to be binding on the Commonwealth. From these it will be seen that what has been called “ the emancipation of Massachusetts ” had as yet only partially taken place. The principal reasons were as follows: “ Whereas in this university . . . many persons of great eminence have by the blessing of God been initiated in those arts and sciences which qualified them for public employments, both in church and state ; " " and whereas the encouragement of arts and sciences and all good literature tends to the honor of God, the advantage of the Christian religion, and the great benefit of this and the other United States of America ; ” and then, most important of all: “ Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary to the preservation of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country and among the different orders of the people ; it shall be the duty of legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this Commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them ; especially the University of Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the towns.”

Here, then, were three reasons why Harvard College and other institutions of learning should be fostered by the state. The first was that Harvard had successfully provided men for public employment in church and state ; the second was that the public encouragement of learning would tend to the honor of God, the advantage of the Christian religion, and the great benefit of the country; and the third was that wisdom, knowledge, and virtue, generally diffused, were necessary to the preservation of rights and liberties. The first was what might be called an English or European reason, the second was neutral, while the third was distinctively American.

Now, every student of American history knows that this provision, duly modified, was introduced into the famous Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the Northwest Territory. The famous declaration, “ Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged,” was a mandate for all future time. But it was far more than that: it was the embodiment of the consciousness of the people that education was not now simply a means of fitting men for " public employment both in church and state,” but a means for the general and individual welfare of all the people. The reasons for this mandate, given in Art. III. of the Ordinance, were, “ Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind,” etc. In this final phrase was expressed a motive which had not hitherto appeared.

It is not necessary to suppose that the fathers, in adopting this provision, understood its full significance, or that they foresaw what was to occur in the advance of this irresistible tendency. Nor is it necessary to mark the various steps in the progress of educational evolution. It is enough to point out the fact that the movement has been the logical outcome of that irresistible tendency toward individualism which, as already stated, has been the most marked characteristic of all modern history. The development of state universities and the development of public libraries, the two most remarkable phenomena of modern educational advancement, are but the logical and natural and inevitable expression of this great evolutionary movement.

But the impulses of individuality have not been content with invention and education. In fact, it may be said that these have been only means for the attainment of ends. Liberty always and everywhere insists on the use of all legitimate material at hand for the attainment of its purposes. Such materials are ability, education, foresight, invention, personal influence, and material resources. All these are naturally and inevitably tributary to individual success.

The most of these elements are so obviously the servants of personal advancement that they need no discussion ; but the influence of the element of invention, certainly one of the most potent of all, may well receive a moment’s notice.

If we consider carefully the part of the applications of steam and electricity to the social relations of mankind, we shall see that we are accustomed to think of them chiefly as agents for the development of wealth. But they have been equally potent in influencing the distribution of it. A man emerges from his laboratory with an invention. He is helpless without capital to put it into efficient use. The first locomotive was useless until cars had been constructed and a track had been laid. Here was a combination of forces which was as much the legitimate child of individualism and liberty as was the invention itself. So it will generally be found in the business combinations of modern time. Men form combinations, great or small, political, commercial, manufacturing, or what not, whenever they are satisfied that it is for their interest to do so ; and the very essence of individualism and of liberty demands that such a course should be permitted and encouraged. This great fact has been so universally recognized that in every free country combinations have been the distinctive feature of modern industrial life. And they have been a result in no country but a free country. The tendency has been irresistible, because it has been the logical sequence and outgrowth of individualism and invention. For example, within a few years after the invention of the telegraph there were a hundred companies, and a dispatch from the seaboard to the Mississippi had to pay tribute to a dozen different corporations. A law to prevent their combination would not only have done violence to the principles of individual liberty, but would also have continued to levy an unwarranted tax upon the community. ,

What took place in the consolidation of the telegraph lines has taken place in a thousand other spheres. The great railroad lines, the steamship corporations, the mining interests, the iron and steel industries, even the department stores, are the natural, the inevitable outgrowth of prevailing conditions. Here too the tendency is as irresistible as it is natural.

But there is obviously another very important aspect of the case. As every great privilege is subject to abuses, liberty in every form must be regulated and directed, or it degenerates sooner or later into license. This necessity is nowhere more apparent than in those industrial combinations which are so conspicuous a feature of the present time. It is the fashion in certain quarters to denounce the trust as intrinsically an evil. That the trust has recognized its opportunities, and has often abused its privileges, I fancy no rational and impartial person will deny. But it is unquestionable that the essential principle of the trust is inherent in human liberty. It would be impossible to claim that there is liberty if the men with a shovel and the men with a cart cannot agree to combine their interests and work together. Yet such a combination in its essential features would be a trust as much as any other. Is Congress to say that a hundred dollars may combine with half a dozen men, but a million dollars may not combine with a thousand ?

Here as elsewhere, however, while liberty may not be overthrown, it must be regulated and restrained. As exercised by individual men it is restrained in a hundred ways. There is no good reason why it should not be restrained when wrongfully exercised by a corporation or a trust. The worst of the evils complained of is the monstrous fact that there is often one capitalization for taxation, and another for dividends. Surely the prevention of such an evil, however difficult, is quite within the natural scope of legislation in a free country. The tendency to combination cannot be prevented, but it must be regulated. Society must not surrender to the difficulties of the case.

There has been another tendency that is the natural outgrowth of the same, or at least of similar conditions. I refer to the modern development of the larger nationalities and to modern international relations.

The earliest circumnavigation of the globe naturally led all enterprising peoples to reach out for new discoveries, for new avenues of trade, and for new possessions. This enterprise has been fruitful just in proportion to the recognition that has prevailed of the fundamental principles of political liberty and perpetuity. Wherever provincial or colonial governments have been organized and administered primarily in the interests of territorial avarice, they have failed; and if they have succeeded at all, their success has been in proportion to the principles of liberty and justice that have been established. Gross injustice has invariably led in the end to successful revolt, while the introduction of the methods of good government has sooner or later led to improvement and stability. The colonies and other dependencies of Spain and England will occur to every one as illustrations of this fact.

There is still another consideration that should not be overlooked; that is, the stupendous fact that civilization has uniformly advanced in the train of conquest. This has been shown whenever a less civilized people has been conquered by one more civilized. Mexico and South America were discovered and conquered by the Spaniards and Portuguese, The rule of the conquerors was one of gross cruelty and rapacity. Few will deny that those countries, however slow their growth, have advanced more rapidly than they would have done had they never been conquered. Were it not for conquest, South America would now be much like Africa. And it would not be easy to name an instance where the result has been different. It was Lowell who so hated war that he said, “ I call it simply murder on a gigantic scale; ” and yet it was he who said also, " Civilization rides on a gun carriage.”

But whatever may be our opinions in regard to the nature of the influence, or the extent of the influence, of conquest on the advance of civilization, we shall all be free to acknowledge that civilization has been constantly pressing into barbarism and taking possession of it. The conquest and the settlement of America by the British, the French, and the Spanish will occur to every one as the most noteworthy examples. The planting of the British flag in the West Indies, in Australasia, in India, is another illustration of the same irresistible movement. Holland and Portugal, in a similar spirit, planted their feet in the East Indies and in Africa.

It is not necessary to suppose that in all these movements the motives of the conquering races were purely, or even chiefly, benevolent or philanthropic. The motives which lead to great movements are seldom unmixed. The builders of our greatest enterprises and industries invariably keep an eye upon their own interests; but, nevertheless, their services to civilization are often unquestionable. Take as illustrations the Pacific railroads and our iron and steel manufactories. So it has been in the irresistible advances of civilized nationalities. The weaker, by reason of its incapacity, gives way before the advance of the stronger. Here, as elsewhere, there seems to be a law of the survival of the fittest. We may deplore it as we will; we may denounce it as selfish and brutal; we yet cannot deny the fact that among nations, as among animal life, there is a tendency which appears to rise to a law, that the most worthy shall grow and extend its influence, while the less worthy shall diminish and finally perish. The energy — the selfish energy, if you please — which led Russia, Prussia, and Austria to take advantage of the anarchy of Poland was very nearly related to the selfish energy which led the United States into a war with Mexico that resulted in vast additions to our territorial domain. Of the eight several annexations to our territory since the forming of the government, not one was anticipated by the fathers or provided for in the Constitution ; and this acquisitive spirit has been in exact harmony with the spirit of all the other great nations of the world. If others have not advanced so rapidly as we have, their greater slowness has been because the means and the opportunities have not been at hand. The motives have been similar, if not identical. Every great nation has lived in a glass house, and has had no justification for the hurling of stones at its neighbors. Does any one doubt that this movement, taken all in all, has been beneficent ?

Now, this great current of effort, this unconscious community of method, this irresistible tendency toward aggrandizement, has flowed on into the century of invention, and has availed itself of all the opportunities which invention offers.

Need it be pointed out that the differences between civilization and barbarism have been enormously emphasized and multiplied by the inventions ? The modern abolition of time and space and delay has all worked to the advantage of civilization in this great movement; and it has been largely in consequence of this fact that the movement has recently become much more rapid than ever before. The government at St. Petersburg directs the daily affairs of the heart of Asia as well as of a large portion of Europe. Downing Street is hourly kept informed of military affairs on the Upper Nile as well as of the progress of all political movements in the islands of the Antarctic Ocean. Yesterday afternoon President McKinley gave directions to General Otis, and this morning at seven we read full details of the resulting movement in Manila carried on throughout the forenoon.

It should be added that barbarism has nothing whatever to offset these new influences and added powers. And can it be doubted that the effect of it all will be to emphasize and accelerate this irresistible movement ? Does any one think that the wheels of human progress are to be, or can be, reversed, or even retarded ?

Look at the international signs of the times. Since the Crimean war, Russia has added to her territory from the heart of Asia a domain nearly as large as the whole of the United States ; Germany has acquired on the east coast of Africa as many square miles as we possess east of the Mississippi River; the dependencies of France in Africa are still greater; Holland, Portugal, and Belgium have their share ; and Great Britain, firmly planted at the south and at the north, will soon connect the Cape and the Nile by rail, and erelong make the heart of Africa as accessible as is now the heart of America. In the far East the same tendencies are equally irresistible. The railroad from St. Petersburg to the Yellow Sea covers a hundred degrees of longitude, — twice the distance from New York to San Francisco. This irresistible spirit is knocking at the gates of China, and the everlasting doors, which from the dawn of history have successfully defied all intrusive efforts, are giving way and admitting the civilization of the Occident.

Now, the fundamental fact to which attention should be called is that the whole of this vast movement is an advance along lines similar to all the others that have been mentioned. It is the advance of civilization upon barbarism. It is the Eastern Question, which has ever agitated the world since the time of Xerxes and Alexander the Great, now at length approaching solution. It is the ever irresistible encroachment of the Occident upon the Orient, of the modern spirit upon the spirit of antiquity. It is the substitution of the railroad train for the oxcart and the caravan. It is electricity driving out the rushlight. It is the white man ever civilizing the red man or pushing him out of the way.

Can any one doubt that this great movement is in the interests of a larger and a richer and a higher humanity ?

There is another tendency that is worthy of thoughtful notice. Doubtless the most beneficent of the results of modern science is the ever increasing prevalence of sanitary ideas and methods, and the resulting prolongation of human life. Do we all realize the far-reaching meaning of the extraordinary reduction of the death rate throughout the civilized world ? There is hardly a city in Christendom in which the annual death rate per thousand has not been reduced ten, or twenty, or fifty, or even a hundred per cent in the last twenty-five years. The plague, which for centuries kept down the population of Europe, is now unknown to civilization. The Asiatic cholera has lost its terrors. The various forms of fever, once so general and so deadly, can now be controlled and prevented ; and even pulmonary diseases, the most to be dreaded of all human ailments, which are said to have swept away more than a tenth of the human race, seem on the point of yielding to sanitary and medical control. Look at the census tables even of Europe; the population is increasing by leaps and bounds.

What is to be the sure result upon the population of the globe of this triumphal march of science ? Is not an embarrassing surplus population inevitable? If, in the fifty years just behind us, millions in Europe have been saved from starvation only by finding unoccupied lands in North America, in Australasia, and in South America, where are to be the rescuing lands of the future ? And who are to control them?

The Great Powers are now talking of disarmament, and of the establishment of a system of arbitration by which the horrors of war may be reduced or prevented. Does any one fail to see that if any success comes from this movement it will tend in the same direction, by lessening the death rate and vastly increasing the number of the unemployed population ?

Even now, in our own sparsely settled country, every vocation seems to have glutted the market. In Europe the matter is a hundred times worse. The standing armies reduce the pressure by taking the virility of the nation out of competition for a term of years; but there are enough of the needy left to overflow into America, into Africa, and into the farthermost isles of the sea. What the result is to be when medical science has done its best to abolish sickness and postpone death is open only to conjecture; but certain it is that the prolongation of the average human life is to be counted upon as one of the potent factors in the irresistible tendencies of the times.

Do not all these facts point in the same direction ? Is it not certain that civilization is to take possession of every nook and corner of the globe ? Is it not inevitable that in the near future the doors that have always been shut will be thrown wide open ?

It is hardly necessary to point out the bearings of these tendencies upon questions of national or international policy ; it is perhaps enough to ask whether it is not as true of nations as of men that it is the flood of the tide which leads to fortune.

But the bearings of the subject on questions of private life and private interest are far more important to us as individuals. How vastly more complicated and dilficult have the activities of life been made by these tendencies! Upon how many hundreds and thousands of questions is the intelligent citizen now driven into the necessity of having an opinion! When the telegraph lays upon the breakfast table every morning a history of the whole world for twenty-four hours, we have forced upon our thoughts not simply those more immediate activities which monopolized all the intelligence of the fathers, but in addition all the most important affairs of the state, the nation, and in fact of the whole world. Thus intelligent and effective citizenship is made a hundred fold more exacting and a hundredfold more difficult. How vastly broader is the education demanded by the new conditions !

This demand, moreover, is emphasized by that crowding of the vocations of life to which reference has already been made. The growing stringency of competition teaches us that it is only the fittest that rise even above mediocrity. It is extraordinary aptitude, or extraordinary industry, or extraordinary training, that can achieve any considerable measure of success; and success in a large way can be accomplished only by a combination of all. Ignorance has far less chance than it had a generation ago.

What but a supreme measure of intelligence and wisdom will be adequate to the direction of our public affairs? As the opportunities for organized selfishness and wickedness multiply, so the demands for unselfish and enlightened statesmanship increase ; and if these demands are not satisfied, the voyage of the state will surely be “bound in shallows and in miseries.”

It is thus that the irresistible tendencies of modern civilization have flowed, and are flowing, into modern life. The seed of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has ripened into the harvest of the nineteenth. As the regulation of liberty by law was the principle of the fathers, it is much more necessary that it be the principle of the America of today.

The free state, the free church, the free school, have been called the “ triple armor of American nationality, — of American security.” But the state and the church and the school must not fail to rear men of such intelligence and character that they can see the irresistible tendencies of the times and apply to them the guiding hand of wisdom. If we do not educate men who can wisely and skillfully put the exuberant privileges of liberty under the just restraints of law, we shall sooner or later find that “the undirected will of the people,” as George William Curtis once said, “ is but a gale smiting a rudderless and sailless ship, and hurling it, a mass of wrecks, upon the rocks.” But the will of the same people, subject to the guidance of intelligently constructed law, is the same gale “ filling the trim canvas of a ship that minds the helm, bearing it over yawning and awful abysses of ocean safely into port.” It is for this reason that there is no room for despair. It is such intelligent guidance that is to protect the equal rights of the poorest and the richest, of the most ignorant and the most intelligent, and thus is to shield the nation from the mad assaults of violence, from the dry rot of fraud, and from the wild vagaries of ignorance. And as Fichte said with such vigor to the Germans at the beginning of the century, so we may say at its end, it is education — education by the press, education by the family, education by the church, education by the schools — that is called to this sublime task. It is by these institutions alone that the people are to be safely guided; for it is these alone that are the “ ever burning lamps of accumulated wisdom ” that are able to light the pathway of progress.

Charles Kendall Adams.