Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/48

44 knew little of the value of the human soul, the equality of all before God, the equal rights of strong and weak, their equal claims for a manly education—from them we have derived the notion, that only a few need a liberal, generous education, and that these few must be the children of wealth, or the well-born sons of genius, who have many hands and dauntless courage, and faith to remove mountains, who live on difficulties, and, like gravitation itself, burst through all impediments. There will always be men whom nothing can keep uneducated; men like Franklin and Bowditch, who can break down every obstacle; men gifted with such tenacity of resolution, such vigour of thought, such power of self-control; they live on difficulties, and seem strongest when fed most abundantly with that rugged fare; men that go forth strong as the sun and as lonely, nor brook to take assistance from the world of men. For such no provision is needed. They fight their own battles, for they are born fully armed, terrible from their very beginning. To them difficulty is nothing. Poverty but makes them watchful. Shut out from books and teachers, they have instructors in the birds and beasts, and whole Vatican libraries in the trees and stones. They fear no discouragement. They go on the errand God sent them, trusting in him to bless the gift he gave. They beat the mountain of difficulty into dust, and get the gem it could not hide from an eye piercing as Argus. But these men are rare, exceptions to the rule, strong souls in much-enduring flesh. Others, of greater merit perhaps, but less ruggedness of spirit, less vigour of body, who cannot live with no sympathy but the silent eloquence of nature, and God's rare visitations of the inner man, require the aid of some institutions to take them up where common schools let them fall, and bear them on till they can walk alone. Over many a village churchyard in the midst of us it may still be writ, with no expression of contingency—