Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/55

Rh cultivate the mind alone soon fail of the end. The ship spreads wide her canvas, but has neither ballast nor helm. It has been said the education of the labouring class is safe neither for the nation nor the class; and if only the understanding is cultivated, there is a shadow of truth somewhere about the remark. An educated knave or pirate is, no doubt, more dangerous than a knave or pirate not educated. It appears in some countries that crime increases with education. This fact has caused the foes of the human race to shout long and loud, and the noise of their shouting comes over the Atlantic to alarm us. The result could have been foreseen when the education was intellectual chiefly. But even then great crimes against the human person become rare; and who shall say the increased crimes against property have not come from the false system on which property is held, quite as much as from the false system of education? Still the grand rule holds good, that intellectual education alone is fearfully insufficient. Let the whole nature of man be developed. Educate only the moral nature, men are negatively virtuous, as a dead man will neither lie nor steal. They who seek only religious education soon degenerate into bigots, and become the slaves of superstition, the tools of designing and crafty men, as both ancient and recent history assures us. Man only is manlike, and able to realize the idea for which he was made, when he unfolds all of his powers, mind, heart, and soul; thinks, feels, and worships as reason, conscience, and religion demand; thus uniting in himself the three great ideas of the true, the good, and the holy, which make up the sum of beauty, the altogether beautiful of mortal life.

It is to be believed the American mind will one day be turned to its greatest object, the rearing up of a manly people, worthy to tread these hills, and breathe this air, and worship in the temples our fathers built, and lie down in their much-honoured graves. Who shall say the dream of men, now regarded as visionary, shall not one day become a reality blessed and beautiful? If the unconquerable energies of our people were turned to this work; if the talent and industry so profusely squandered on matters of no pith or moment, or wasted in petty quarrels, during a single session of Congress; if half the