Page:The Atlantic Monthly vol. 69.djvu/743

1892.] development, stunting the soul in its growth,—these are Christian instrumentalities, and are seen to be such by an educated clergy. But an illiterate clergy condemns them as works of Antichrist, because it cannot see the spirit of the doctrines which it preaches. It sounds like a paradox to say that the illiterate is bound by the letter and cannot see the spirit, but it is true.

It is quite important that the higher education of the negro should include Latin and Greek. The Anglo-Saxon civilization in which he lives is a derivative one, receiving one of its factors from Rome and the other from Athens. The white youth is obliged to study the classic languages in order to become conscious of these two derivative elements in his life, and it is equally important for the colored youth. A "liberal" education by classic study gives to the youth some acquaintance with his spiritual embryology.

In 1889, the pupils in private and endowed schools and schools supported by taxation, performing this much-needed work of educating the spiritual leaders among the colored people, were classified as follows:—

These details as reported vary much from year to year, and quite naturally; for those who are receiving a secondary or higher education may intend to teach in schools for a time, at least, and the greater part may ultimately reach the pulpit. Hence they may be enrolled under the head of normal schools properly enough.

It is clear, from the above considerations, that money expended for the secondary and higher education of the negro accomplishes far more for him than similar expenditures accomplish for the white people. It is seed sown where it brings forth a hundred fold, because each one of the pupils of these higher institutions is a centre of diffusion of superior methods and refining influences among an imitative and impressible race. State and national aid as well as private bequests should take this direction first. There should be no gifts or bequests for common elementary instruction; this should be left to the common schools, and all outside aid should be concentrated on the secondary and higher instruction, inclusive of industrial education.

What may be done by the wise administration of an endowment fund has been demonstrated by the history of the Peabody education fund. Its benefactions have been distributed in such a manner as always to stimulate greater local effort, and never to paralyze. During the year 1889-90 the sum of $87,487 was given to aid institutions in ten States. The largest sum, $26,000, was given to the Peabody Normal College in Nashville, Tennessee, a central normal school for the education of white teachers from ten of the Southern States. The sum of one hundred dollars is paid as a scholarship to each regularly appointed pupil, and traveling expenses