STATE EDUCATION: A NECESSITY. 6^7 



power must be the sovereign will. The Cloister and the Castle, the 

 Church and the State, at different stages have severally presented their 

 peculiar claims to 'wield the scepter of education. And the supreme 

 control is now, in England and in America, fast passing from the 

 Church to the state. Is the growth in this direction sound and nor- 

 mal ? The integral elements certainly have more freedom, the intel- 

 lectual powers more activity, and the forces and laws of nature are 

 made more thoroughly subservient to the wants of the whole. We 

 can not, therefore, say that in this direction the movement is abnormal, 

 or that a result of a disastrous character will arise. The state organ- 

 ism indeed seems, so far, the most efficient. And England, believing 

 in its healthy growth, even in elementary knowledge, now makes a 

 strong appeal, not to the Church but to the state (not in its unorgan- 

 ized elements, but in its sovereign capacity) for the education of all 

 her people. Is the appeal unwise? Can the results be anything but 

 beneficial ? 



It is safe to believe that as human society advances it develops 

 step by step relations of a wider, better, and different character ; trans- 

 ferring responsibilities once peculiar to the lower to the next higher 

 relation. The child of the family in turn becomes the man of the 

 tribe, and the member of the tribe becomes the citizen of the state or 

 nation. In this forward movement the family may have had absolute 

 control during the age of childhood. In the next stage parental gov- 

 ernment is modified, or terminr.ted, and yields to the dominant claims 

 of the tribe. In the still wider national relation, the tribal govern- 

 ment, embracing whatever there may be of culture in war and peace, 

 at once yields to the supreme demands of the state or nation. 



The child passes in any organized society through all the grades in 

 the related social state. In the same order also government passes on, 

 until it rests in the control of sovereignty, the state. And the right 

 of the state to tho custody and control of the citizen is as complete as 

 the right of the parent to the control of the infant child. These are 

 only the natural laws belonging to the several relations in the growth 

 of society in all artificial conditions, under all governments. State 

 control, therefore, comes into rightful exercise of authority over the 

 education of every human being entitled to the privileges and protec- 

 tion of government. The particular age at which state authority may 

 rightfully interfere in this relation is a matter of state policy and 

 sovereign discretion. 



All arguments, therefore, of the writer against either the right or 

 the policy of the state, in exercising control over the education of the 

 subject, rest upon a theory quite erroneous, upon the superior right 

 of the parent over the control of the entire education of the coming 

 citizen of the higher organization. 



Mr. Herbert asks the pertinent question, " Could education be sup- 

 plied without official assistance ? " This question he answers in the 



