Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/40

36 But we have only to change the names a little, and, instead of lawyers, physicians, and clergymen, to read “the greater part of labouring men and women,” and this fabulous country is in the midst of Massachusetts, not the heart of Africa. Of us is the fable told, and on this body of men depends the ark of our political salvation. In New England the men of these three professions are generally the best educated men in the land. They go diligently through a long process of general training, well adapted to exercise and strengthen the memory, judgment, and imagination, and afford a variety and compass of useful knowledge. They spend years, likewise, in gaining the information and skill requisite for their peculiar craft. We have colleges for the general training, and other seminaries for the special education of these men; for all see the advantage which accrues to the public from having educated lawyers, physicians, and clergymen, in its ranks. But meantime the education of all the others, as a general rule, is grossly neglected. But there seems little reason, if any at all, why men destined for these three professions should be better educated than farmers and mechanics. An educated lawyer, his mind stored with various information, memory, fancy, judgment, and all his faculties quick and active, with skill to turn them all to the best account in his special calling, is, no doubt, a safeguard, an ornament, and a blessing to any country; and he is this, not because he is a lawyer, but a free, educated man, living man-like, and would be just as useful were he a blacksmith or a carpenter; for it is not the place a man stands in which makes him the safeguard, ornament, and blessing, but the man who stands in the place.

It is time that we in New England had given up that old notion, that a man is to be educated that he may by his education serve the State, and fill a bar or a pulpit, be a captain or a constable; time we had begun to act, and in good earnest, on this principle, that a man is to be educated because he is a, and has faculties and capabilities which God sent him into this world to develop and mature. The education of classes of men is, no doubt, a good thing, as a single loaf is something in a famished household. But the education of all born of woman is a plain duty. If reason teaches anything, it is this. If Christianity teaches