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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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Industrial Universities for the People 367 subordinate powers and organs, and produce a bedlam rather than a kingdom on earth—a despotism either of the tyrant, the ehurch or the mob, or of all these combined; not a government. And this effect will inevitably follow, as sure as God lives and reigns, even though a nation write its soil and sea over with parchment, declarations and manifestoes, and rend air and sky with clamorous shouts of "Equality, Liberty and Fraternity." "Be not deceived: God is not mocked.'' "That which a man soweth, shall he also reap." In former times not very remote from our own day, mere learning—book knowledge— scholasticism, was considered the great end of education, and all such systems of culture direct the mind too much towards books, and too little towards facts. The pupil is taught to think of letters and words rather than of things and events—to remember on what part of the book page he saw the form of words, better than he knows on what part of the world's page, the events took place,.if at all. All the way along, from a—b, ab, and long a in hate, and a seven years' war at spelling up through spelling books, grammars and dictionaries, English, Latin and Greek, till he at last took his diploma, it was one everlasting agonism at verbiage, as though God, angels and men—the sky above and the earth beneath, were all moonshine; and spelling, grammar, talk—the prime proprieties of man's utterance facile and precise—were the only realities in the universe. A real grammar-school-boy of such schools, can brave no other idea than that God made the world dut of the nine parts of speech, and in English, at least, spelled it all wrong. And so throughout the whole course, books, books, books, form the great staple and instruments and ends of culture; and the living voice, speaking of living facts and presenting living realities to the mind of the pupil, but a very small part of it. By such methods the mind is trained to undue deference to the authority of the book, with little capacity to look after the fact—and men's opinions and usages, instead of God's laws and ordinances govern the world: and generally, in those communities where this mere book learning is most dominant, the minds of men are most depressed and enslaved to tyrant custom,!! For example—compare Germany and England, and New England and Illinois. It
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