Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 411]

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870

History University of Illinois

A young boy or girl, under this idea, obtains a smattering of language, literature and science, perhaps, in the schools, and then, forsooth, as it is very pertinently and significantly said, "he has finished his education." It is, but too often, strictly true;—it is finished; and all true manhood has, also, been crucified in the process. It is all ended with him, and you have before you your plausible sophist, your accomplished idler, or your educated hireling—another relentless donkey to hold back the great car of social and moral progress, and bray at every new idea that dawns upon the world for the good of man and the glory of God. But motion—progress—is the law of matter and of mind; and all civilization, all true Christianity, all true education and all true manhood, are nothing else but one everlasting progress in true knowledge, wisdom and virtue. It is obvious that the instruction of the school room should be constantly based upon this idea. That it should aim to put every pupil in such a position that his whole life afterwards may be but one continuous, natural and easy progress from one stage of mental and moral development and power to another. Nature's order and God's law, when observed, is, that the child should become the youth, the youth the man, the man the angel; and so, onward and upward forever—ever developing—ever propersons disgorge so great an annual percent into our prisons and almshouses and the drunkard's ignoble grave, as those who have attempted to seek a liberal education, while under our more rational and practical common school system, in which practical knowledge is sought in connexion with domestic duties and industrial pursuits, the facts are exactly the reverse. Has a tree that bears such fruit, true Christianity, or heathen mythology at its roots? Is practical duty, or pedantic display, its life and its aim? The fearful loss of life which these systems of monkish and distorted culture annually produce, is well known to all. But the annals of the crimes and criminals it has generated, is a chapter in our history not yet • fully developed. Mr. Bramwell, an English writer and traveler, is reported to affirm that the universities of Great Britian have contributed more to the pride, aristocracy, vice and debauchery of the empire, and furnished more sots and penitentiary criminals, in proportion to their numbers, than any other class in English society. Did the schools of the Carpenter and fishermen of Gallilee, or even those of Socrates and Plato exhibit such results! Will not the patrons and defenders of those systems of education answer!