Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/93

Rh space, with circumscribed resources and means, and the whole earth! but what indeed is the whole earth more than a small, a very small island floating in the ocean of the universe? Has it anything more than circumscribed resources? Can it, even if the whole of its surface were ploughed up, be anything else than a nursery, where the trees would soon choke one another if they were not thinned out; a colony for pilgrims who must emigrate to new worlds?

Ah! next to being nourished by this our earth I know no more joyful privilege than the hope of being able to leave it, to be able to emigrate from it to a larger, freer, better world. But if national economy and science did no more than render death a peaceful member of society, who came merely to the aged, and came like their best friend, sleep, that would be glorious!

Horace Mann, the great promoter of education, is a man of strong, immeasurable hope. I was depressed in mind when I talked with him, but he inspired me with a feeling of new courage. On his forehead (one of those vernal foreheads which are arched upwards with aspiring ideas) one sees the man who, merely through the influence of his brain, has erected large airy halls of learning throughout the Northern States, and who has elevated the whole social system. His views are summarily these—

We inherit capacity of mind, and good and bad qualities from our parents; one generation inherits from another. The sins and the virtues of the parent, according to the words of the Scriptures, are visited, punished, or rewarded in the person of his children, and children's children. By diffusing the influence of good education through the whole people, will the whole people be elevated, and the next generation similarly treated, and having inherited a higher nature, will be elevated still more, and so on infinitely.