Page:The education of the farmer.djvu/11

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MIDDLE-CLASS EDUCATION IN GENERAL.

" should I educate my son to make him a good farmer?" This is a question more easily asked than answered.

Perhaps it would not be far from the truth to say, "Try to make him a good man, and leave him to make himself a good farmer: aim at the formation of a manly character and of an inquiring mind, and habits of business will follow,"

If this be true, his education depends far less on book-learning than on the training of the mother, the example of the father, the habits of the family, and the choice of friends. These are the human agencies, external to himself, and yet, in one sense, a part of himself, which prepare the man whether for good or evil, for power or for weakness. But boys are not acted upon from without only; each one has received from his Maker a peculiar physical and mental constitution; according to the use he makes of what God has given him, will be his real and abiding character; the circumstances which call out the manly character in one boy enfeeble another, because they are differently used by the two boys.

So that the ultimate effect of the best education depends at last on the self-determining will of each individual, and the relation in which his inmost spirit stands to that invisible world, for which, whether he be master or servant here, he is really training.

The circumstances under which this paper is written preclude any explicit discussion of the religious influences to be used In education, but less than this I could not say without being liable to be misunderstood. Avoiding, therefore, all controversial topics, I shall write throughout without scruple, as addressing readers who recognize Christianity as a fact of our national life. The one point which I do venture to press. In an educational point of view, is the need of consistency. Children are trustful, and must have some rule to go by; they are full of inquiry, but irritated and injured by doubt. If you wish a son to think for himself, and to think charitably when he is old, let him learn