Chapter 15

It would be less than what is due to suffering humanity, to leave this topic without observing, that if a numerous division of the community should be sinking under severe, protracted, unmitigated distress, distress on which there appears to them no dawn of hope from ordinary causes, it is not to be held a disparagement to the value of education, if some of those who have enjoyed a measure of that advantage, in common with a greater number who have not, should become feverishly agitated with imaginations of great sudden changes in the social system; and be led to entertain suggestions of irregular violent expedients for the removal of insupportable evils. It must, in all reason, be acknowledged the last lesson which education could be expected to teach with practical effect, that one part of the community should be willing to resign themselves to a premature mortality, that the others may live in sufficiency and tranquillity. Such heroic devotement might not be difficult in the sublime elation of Thermopylae; but it is a very different matter in a melancholy cottage, and in the midst of famishing children. [Footnote: This was almost the desperate condition of numberless families in this country at a period of which they, or the survivors of them, retain in memory an indelible record; and we think it right to retain _here_ also that record. While thankful for all subsequent amendment, we say again, Look at Ireland.]

After thus referring to matter of fact, for contradiction of the notion, that the mental cultivation of the lower classes might render them less subject to the rules of good order, we have to say, in further reply, that we are not heard insisting on the advantages of increased knowledge and mental invigoration among the people, _unconnected with the inculcation of religion._

Undoubtedly, the zealous friends of popular education account knowledge valuable absolutely, as being the apprehension of things as they are; a prevention of delusion; and so far a fitness for right volitions. But they consider religion, (besides being itself the primary and infinitely the most important part of knowledge,) as a principle indispensable for securing the full benefit of all the rest. It is desired, and endeavored, that the understandings of these opening minds may be taken possession of by just and solemn ideas of their relation to the Eternal Almighty Being; that they may be taught to apprehend it as an awful reality, that they are perpetually under his inspection; and as a certainty, that they must at length appear before him in judgment, and find, in another life, the consequences of what they are in spirit and conduct here. It is to be impressed on them, that his will is the supreme law; that his declarations are the most momentous truth known on earth; and his favor and condemnation the greatest good and evil. Under an ascendency of this divine wisdom it is, that their discipline in any other knowledge is designed to be conducted; so that nothing in the mode of their instruction may have a tendency contrary to it, and everything be taught in a manner recognizing the relation with it, as far as shall consist with a natural, unforced way of keeping this relation in view. Thus it is sought to be secured that, as the pupil's mind grows stronger and multiplies its resources, and he therefore has necessarily more power and means for what is wrong, there may be luminously presented to him, as if celestial eyes visibly beamed upon him, the most solemn ideas that can enforce what is right.

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Such is the discipline meditated, for preparing the subordinate classes to pursue their individual welfare, and act their part as members of the community.--They are to be trained in early life to diligent employment of their faculties, tending to strengthen them, regulate them, and give their possessors the power of effectually using them. They are to be exercised to form clear, correct notions, instead of crude, vague, delusive ones. The subjects of these ideas will be, a very considerable number of the most important facts and principles; which are to be presented to their understandings with a patient repetition of efforts to fix them there as knowledge that cannot be forgotten. By this measure of actual acquirement, and by the habit formed in so acquiring, they will be qualified for making further attainment in future time, if disposed to improve their opportunities. During this progress, and in connection with many of its exercises, their duty is to be inculcated on them in the various forms in which they will have to make a choice between right and wrong, in their conduct toward society. There will be reiteration of lessons on justice, prudence, inoffensiveness, love of peace, estrangement from the counsels and leagues of vain and bad men; hatred of disorder and violence, a sense of the necessity of authoritative public institutions to prevent these evils, and respect for them while honestly administered to this end. All this is to be taught, in many instances directly, in others by reference for confirmation, from the Holy Scriptures, from which authority will also be impressed, all the while, the principles of religion. And religion, while its grand concern is with the state of the soul towards God and eternal interests, yet takes every principle and rule of morals under its peremptory sanction; making the primary obligation and responsibility be towards God, of everything that is a duty with respect to men. So that, with the subjects of this education, the sense of _propriety_ shall be _conscience_; the consideration of how they ought to be regulated in their conduct as a part of the community, shall be the recollection that their Master in heaven dictates the laws of that conduct, and will judicially hold them amenable for every part of it.

And is not a discipline thus addressed to the purpose of fixing religious principles in ascendency, as far as that difficult object is within the power of discipline, and of infusing a salutary tincture of them into whatever else is taught, the right way to bring up citizens faithful to all that deserves fidelity in the social compact?

But perhaps far less of sacred knowledge than all this pleading admits and assumes to be indispensable to them, will answer the end. For it is but a slender quantity of it that is, in effect, proposed to be imparted to them by those who would give them very little other knowledge. They will talk of giving the people an education specifically religious; a training to conduct them on through a close avenue, looking straight before them to descry distant spiritual objects, while shut out from all the scene right and left, by fences that tell them there is nothing that concerns them there. There may be rich and beautiful fields of knowledge, but they are not to be trampled by vulgar feet.

Now, may we presume that by knowledge, or information, is meant a clear understanding of a subject? If so, it is but little religious information that _can_ be imparted while that of a more general nature is withheld. The case is so, partly because, in order to a clear conception of the principal things in the doctrine of religion, the mind wants facts, principles, associations of ideas, and modes of applying its thoughts, which are to be acquired from the consideration of various other subjects; and partly because, even though it did _not_, and though it _were_ practicable to understand religious truths clearly without the subsidiary ideas, and the disciplined mental habit acquired in attention to other subjects, _it is flatly contrary to the radical disposition of human nature_ that youthful spirits should yield themselves to a bare exclusively religious discipline. It were supposing a reversal of the natural taste and tendency, to expect them to apply their attention so patiently, so willingly, so long, and with such interest, to this one subject, as to be brought to an intelligent apprehension through the almost sole exercise of thinking on this. By thinking on this!--which is the subject on which they are by their very nature the least of all inclined to think; the subject on which it is the most difficult as well as the most important point in education to induce them to think; the subject which, while it is essential to give it the ascendency in the instruction of both the lower classes and all others, it requires so much care and address to present in an attractive light; and which it is so desirable to combine with other subjects naturally more engaging, in order to bring it oftener by such associations into the thoughts, in that secondary manner, which causes somewhat less of recoil.

It is curious to see what some persons can believe, or affect to believe, when reduced to a dilemma. On the one hand, they cannot endure the idea of any considerable raising of the common people by mental improvement, in the general sense: that were ruin to social order. But then on the other, if it must not be plainly denied, that the said common people are of the very same rational nature as the most elevated divisions of the race; and that their essential worth must be in this spiritual thinking being, which worth is lost to them, if that being is sunk and degraded in gross ignorance, it follows that some kind of cultivation is required. Well then; we must give them some religious knowledge, unaccompanied by such other knowledge as would much more attractively invite them to exercise their minds, and _it will be practicable and easy enough_ to engage their habitual attention to that very subject, almost exclusively, to which the natural taste of the species is peculiarly averse.

In exposing the absurdity of any scheme of education for the inferior classes, which should propose to make them intelligent about religion while intelligent about nothing else except their ordinary employments, we do not forget the instances now and then met with of pious poor men who, while very uncultivated in the general sense, evince a remarkable clearness of conception on religious topics, and in the application of these topics to their duties as men and citizens. But "remarkable" we involuntarily call these phenomena, whenever adverting to them. We naturally use some expression importing a degree of wonder at such a fact. We think it a striking illustration of the power of _religion itself_, and not of the power of religious instruction. The extreme force with which the vital spirit has seized and actuated his faculties, has in a measure remedied the incapacity he had otherwise been under of forming clear ideas of the subject. Even, however, while acknowledging and admiring this effect of a special influence from heaven, we still find ourselves involuntarily surmising, in such an instance, that the man must also have been superior in natural capacity to the generality of ignorant persons; so much out of the common course of things we account it for a man who knows so few things to know this one thing so well. We account it so from the settled conviction received through experience, that it is very unlikely a man ignorant of almost all other things _should_ well understand _one_ subject, of a nature quite foreign to that of his ordinary occupations.

It is superfluous to observe, that such instances of a very considerable comprehension of religious truth, obtained in spite of what naturally makes so much against its being attainable, cannot affect the calculation when we are devising schemes which can only work according to natural laws and with ordinary powers. They who devise and apply them will rejoice at these evidences that there is an Agent who can open men's minds to the light of religion independently and in the absence of other intellectual advantages. But the question being how to bring the people, by the ordinary means of education, to a competent knowledge of religious truth, we have to consider what way of attempting to impart that knowledge may be the best fitted, at once to obviate the natural indisposition to the subject, and to provide that when it does obtain a place in their understanding, it shall not be a meagre, diminutive, insulated occupant there, but in its proper dimensions and relations. And if, in attentively studying this, there be any who come to ascertain, that the right expedient is a bare inculcation of religious instruction, disconnected, on system, from the illustrative aid of other knowledge, divested of the modification and attraction of associated ideas derived from subjects less uncongenial with the natural feelings,--they really may take the satisfaction of having ascertained one thing more, namely, that human nature has become at last so mightily changed, that it may be left to work itself right very soon, as to the affair of religion, with little further trouble of theirs.

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The special view in which we were pleading, on behalf of popular education, that religious instruction would form a material part of it, was, that this essential ingredient would be a security against its being injurious to the good order and subordination in society. It is the more necessary to be particular on this, as some of those who have professed to lay much stress on the _religious_ instruction of the people have seemed to have little further notion of the necessity or use of religion to the lower classes, than as merely a preserver of good order. In this character it has been insisted on by persons who avowed their aversion to every idea of an education in a more enlarged sense. We have heard it so insisted on, no such long while past, by members of the most learned institutions, at the same moment that they expressed more than a doubt of the prudence of enabling the common people to read, literally to _read_, the Bible. But assuredly the good order of a populace left in the stupid general ignorance to which some of these good friends of theirs would have doomed them, cannot be preserved by any such feeble infusion of religious knowledge as these same good friends would instil into their mental grossness. As long as they are in this condition, there must be some far stronger power acting on them to preserve that good order. And if there actually _has_ been such a power, hitherto competent to preserve it, with only such an impotent scantling of religious knowledge in the majority of the mass, and competent still to preserve it, a great deal of hypocritical canting might have been spared, on the part of those whose chief or only argument for teaching the people religion is the maintenance of that good order.

But all this while we are forgetting to inquire how much is to be understood as included in that good order, that deference and subordination, which the possession of more mind and knowledge by the people might disturb or destroy. May not the notion of it, as entertained by some persons, be rather an image of the polity of an age long past, or of that which remains unaltered as if it were a part of eternal nature in the dominions of the East, than a model for the conformation of society here in the present times? Is it required, that there should be a sentiment of obsequiousness in the people, affecting them in a manner like the instinct by which a lower order of animals is in awe of a higher, by which the common tribe of beasts would cower at the sight of lions? Or, is the deference expected to be paid, not on any understanding of reciprocal advantage, but absolutely and unconditionally, as to a claim founded in abstract or divine right? Is it to be held a criminal presumption in the people, to think of examining their relations to the community any further than the obligation of being industrious in the employments to which it assigns them, and dutiful to its higher orders? Are they to entertain no question respecting the right adjustment of their condition in the arrangements of the great social body? Are they forbidden ever to admit a single doubt of its being quite a matter of course, that everything which could be done for the interests of their class, consistently with the welfare of the whole, _is_ done; or, therefore, to pretend to any such right as that of examining, representing, complaining, remonstrating, or an ultimate recourse, perhaps, in a severe necessity, to stronger expedients?

A subordination founded in such principles, and required to such a degree, it is true enough that the communication of knowledge is not the way to perpetuate. For the first use which men will infallibly make of an enlargement of their faculties and ideas, will be, to take a larger view of their interests; and they may happen, as soon as they do so, to think they discover that it was quite time; and the longer they do so, to retain still less and less of implicit faith that those interests will be done justice to, without their own vigilance and intervention. An educated people must be very slow indeed in the application of what they learn, if they do not soon grow out of all belief in the _necessary_ wisdom and rectitude of any order of human creatures whatever. They will see how unreasonable it were to expect, that any sort of men will fail in fidelity to the great natural principle, of making their own advantage the first object; and therefore they will not be apt to listen, with the gravity which in other times and regions may have been shown in listening, to injunctions of gratitude for the willingness evinced by the higher orders to take on them the trouble of watching and guarding the people's welfare, by keeping them in due submission.

But neither will it necessarily be in the spirit of hostility, in the worst sense of the word, that a more instructed people will thus show a diminished credulity of reverence toward the predominant ranks in the social economy; and will keep in habitual exercise upon them a somewhat suspicious observation, and a judicial estimate; with an honest freedom in sometimes avowing disapprobation, and strongly asserting any right which is believed to be endangered or withheld. This will only be expressing that, since all classes naturally consult by preference their own interests, it is plainly unfit, that one portion of the community should be trusted with an unlimited discretion in ordering what affects the welfare of the others; and that, in all prudence, the people must refuse an entire affiance, and unconditional, unexamining acquiescence; "except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh," would come to harmonize, and then administer, interests which are so placed unappeasably at strife;--at strife; for, what is so often asserted of those interests being in reality the same, is true only on that comprehensive theory which neither party is prompt to understand, or willing to make sacrifices of a more immediate self-interest to realize; and it is evidently impossible for either, even if believing it true, to concede to the other the exclusive adjustment of the practical mode of identification.

But only let the utmost that is possible be done, to train the people, from their early years, to a sound use of their reason, under a discipline for imparting a valuable portion of knowledge, and assiduously inculcating the principles of social duty and of religion; and then something may be said, to good purpose, to their understanding and conscience, while they are maintaining the competition of claims with their superiors. They will then be capable of seeing put in a fair balance, many things which headlong ignorance would have taken all one way. They will be able to appreciate many explanations, alleged causes of delay, statements of difficulty between opposing reasons, which would be thrown away on an ignorant populace. And it would be an inducement to their making a real exertion of the understanding, that they thus found themselves so formally put upon their responsibility for its exercise; that they were summoned to a rational discussion, instead of being addressed in the style of Pharaoh to the Israelites. The strife of interests would thus come to be carried on with less fierceness and malice, in the spirit and manner, on the part of the people. And the ground itself of the contention, the substance of the matters in contest, would be gradually diminished, by the concessions of the higher classes to the claims of the lower; for there is no affecting to dissemble, that a great mental and moral improvement of the people would necessitate, though there were not a single movement of rude force in the case, important concessions to them, on the part of the superior orders. A people advanced to such a state, would make its moral power felt in a thousand ways, and every moment. This general augmentation of sense and right principle would send forth, against all arrangements and inveterate or more modern usages, of the nature of invidious exclusion, arbitrary repression, and the debasement of great public interests into a detestable private traffic, an energy, which could no more be resisted than the power of the sun, when he advances in the spring to annihilate the relics and vestiges of the winter. This plastic influence would modify the institutions of the national community, to a state better adapted to secure all the popular rights; and to convey the genuine, collective opinion, to bear directly on the counsel and transaction of national concerns. That opinion would be so unequivocally manifested, as to leave no pretence for a doubtful interpretation of its signs; and with such authority as to preclude any question whether to set it at defiance.