Page:The cotton kingdom (Volume 2).djvu/348

 CHAPTER IX.

THE DANGER OF THE SOUTH.

"Before the advent of modern science, any idea of systematic laws of human improvement would have been deemed alike impossible and absurd; but the constant observation of facts, the exact statistics recorded, the progress of science in all departments, has made it possible to conceive of, and probable that there actually exist uniform laws of social movement, based upon any given condition of society. If the elementary social condition be different in regard to religion, government, arts, science, industry, the resulting movements of society will be different. Hence, when we have ascertained by accurate observation upon and record of the social phenomena, that the social movement is uniformly in a certain direction, and that certain results uniformly follow, we shall know in what elements the conditions of society must be changed, in order to change the results. Hence, when this law of social movements is ascertained, the philanthropist, legislator, and jurist will know precisely what must be done, and how, in order to remove the evils, or reform the wrongs, or produce the results they desire. They will know that certain elementary conditions of society must be changed, and they well know that by removing temptations, or laying restraints, or enlightening the mind, or changing the course of industry, or producing new arts, they will change the social tendency, and thus change the results. * * * Society, or that part of it which thinks and acts, can change the results by changing the elementary conditions which produce them. When you know exactly what the change ought to be, it is not very difficult to produce it; nor does it follow that because a thousand crimes must be committed in Ohio, that a thousand particular individuals must commit them. It is true that the individual frequently acts from motives, but is it not just as true that the individual frequently seeks these motives, and presents them to himself?"—From the Report of the Ohio State Commissioner of Statistics, 1859.

"If there is a first principle in intellectual education it is this—that the discipline which does good to the mind is that in which the mind is active, not that in which it is passive. The secret for developing the faculties is to give them much to do, and much inducement to do it."—''Mill's Political Economy.''