Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/218

214 personal—far more than I now dare to calculate I know men object to public schools; they say, education must be bottomed on religion, and that cannot be taught unless we have a State religion, taught "by authority" in all our schools; we cannot teach religion, without leaching it in a sectarian form. This objection is getting made in New York; we have got beyond it in New England. It is true, all manly education must be bottomed on religion; it is essential to tho normal development of man, and all attempts at education, without this, must fail of the highest end. But there are two parts of religion which can be taught in all the school without disturbing the denominations, or trenching upon their ground, namely,—piety; the love of God; and goodness, the love of man. The rest of religion, after piety and goodness are removed, may safely be loft to the institutions of any of the sects, and so the State will not occupy their ground.

It is often said that superior education is not much needed; the common schools are enough, and good enough, for it is thought that superior education is needed for men as lawyers, ministers, doctors, and the like, not for men as men. It is not so. We want men cultivated with the best discipline, everywhere, not for the profession's sake, but for an's sake. Every man with a superior culture, intellectual, moral, and religious, every woman thus developed, is a safeguard and a blessing. He may sit on the bench of a judge or a shoemaker, be a clergyman or an oysterman, that matters little, he is still a safeguard and a blessing. Tho idea that none should have a superior education but professional men—they only for the profession's sake—belongs to dark ages, and is unworthy of a democracy.

It is the duty of all men to watch over the public education of the people, for it is the most important work of the State. It is particularly the duty of men who, hitherto, have least attended to it, men of the highest culture, men, too, of the highest genius. If a man with but common abilities has attained great learning, he is one of the "public administrators," to distribute the goods of men of genius, from other times and lands, to mankind, their legal heirs. Why does God sometimes