Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/194

190 better chance for a bettor education greatens continually, the educational ability of the State enlarging as those two factors got augmented. Tho generation now grown up, is, therefore, able and bound to get a better culture than their fathers, and leave to their own children a chance still greater.

Each child of genius, in the nineteenth century, is born at the foot of the ladder of learning, as completely as the first child, with the same bodily and spiritual nakedness; though of the most civilized race, with six, or sixty thousands of years behind him, he must begin with nothing but himself. Yet such is the union of all mankind, that, with the aid of the present generation, in a few years he will learn all that mankind has learned in its long history; next go beyond that, discovering and creating anew; and then draw up to the same height the new generation, which will presently surpass him.

A man's education never ends, but there are two periods thereof, quite dissimilar, the period of the boy, and that of the man. Education in general is the developing and instructing the faculties, and is, therefore, the same in kind to both man and boy, though it may be brought about by different forces. The education of the boy, so far as it depends on institutions, and conscious modes of action, must be so modified as to enable him to meet the influences which will surround him when he is a man; otherwise, his training will not enable him to cope with the new forces he meets, and so will fail of the end of making him a man. I pass over the influence of the family, and of nature, which do not belong to my present theme. In America, the public education of men is chiefly influenced by four great powers, which I will call educational forces, and which correspond to four modes of national activity:—

I. The political action of the people, represented by the State

II. The industrial action of the people, represented by Business.

III. The ecclesiastical action of the people, represented by the Church.

IV. The literary action of the people, represented by the Press.