Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/617

Rh over everybody concerned the shadow of coming changes, and work which would have been done resolutely and manfully, if no idea of Government interference had existed, remained undone, because the constant tendency of Government to enlarge its operations was felt everywhere. The history of our race shows us that men will not do things for themselves or for others if they once believe that such things can come without exertion on their own part. There is not sufficient motive. As long as the hope endures that the shoulders of some second person are available, who will offer his own shoulders for the burden? It must also be remembered that, unless men are left to their own resources, they do not know what is or what is not possible for them. If Government half a century ago had provided us all with dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators to-day to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves.

And now, leaving much unsaid, I must ask what practical steps should be taken by those workmen who suspect that state education is but a part of that coercive drill which one half the human race delights to inflict upon the other half. First of all, get rid of compulsion. It has been made the instrument of endless petty persecutions. It is fatal to the free growth of an intelligent love of education; to that moral influence which those of us who have learned the value of education ought to be exerting over others; to a true respect of man for man; for each man's right to judge what is morally best for himself and for those intrusted to him. It is an attempt to make one of those short cuts to progress which end by making the goal recede from us. It is an exaggerated idea—as exaggerated, ill-considered, and probably as short-lived as some other ideas of the present moment—of the value of book-education, founded on a rigid and official idea that home duties and labors must in all cases be put aside before the official requirements. It is a copy of a Continental institution, taken from a nation that, living under a paternal Government, has not yet learned to spell the letters of the word Liberty. The example of Germany and its highly organized state education is not alluring. In no country, perhaps, is there less respect of one class for the other class, or greater extremes of violent feeling. Where you subject people to strong official restraint, you seem fated to produce on the one side rigidity of thought and pedantry of feeling, on the other side those violent schemes against the possessions and the personal rights of the rich which we call socialism. Careful respect for the rights of others, vigorous and consistent defense of one's own rights, a deeply rooted love of freedom in thought, word, and action—these things are simply impossible wherever you intrust great powers to a Government, and allow it to use them not simply within a sphere of strictly defined rights, but as supreme judge of what the momentary convenience requires.

Secondly, get rid of all dependence upon the central department. If you do not as yet perceive that public money can not wisely, in