STATE EDUCATION: A HELP OR HINDRANCE? 599 



over everybody concerned the shadow of coming changes, and work 

 which would have been done resolutely and manfully, if no idea of 

 Government interference had existed, remained undone, because the 

 constant tendency of Government to enlarge its operations was felt 

 everywhere. The history of our race shows us that men will not do 

 things for themselves or for others if they once believe that such things 

 can come without exertion on their own part. There is not sufficient 

 motive. As long as the hope endures that the shoulders of some 

 second person are available, who will offer his own shoulders for the 

 burden ? It must also be remembered that, unless men are left to their 

 own resources, they do not know what is or what is not possible for 

 them. If Government half a century ago had provided us all with 

 dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators to-day 

 to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves. 



And now, leaving much unsaid, I must ask what practical steps 

 should be taken by those workmen who suspect that state education 

 is but a part of that coercive drill which one half the human race de- 

 lights to inflict upon the other half. First of all, get rid of compulsion. 

 It has been made the instrument of endless petty persecutions. It is 

 fatal to the free growth of an intelligent love of education ; to that 

 moral influence which those of us who have learned the value of educa- 

 tion ought to be exerting over others ; to a true respect of man for 

 man ; for each man's right to judge what is morally best for himself 

 and for those intrusted to him. It is an attempt to make one of those 

 short cuts to progress which end by making the goal recede from us. 

 It is an exaggerated idea as exaggerated, ill-considered, and probably 

 as short-lived as some other ideas of the present moment of the value 

 of book-education, founded on a rigid and official idea that home du- 

 ties and labors must in all cases be put aside before the official require- 

 ments. It is a copy of a Continental institution, taken from a nation 

 that, living under a paternal Government, has not yet learned to spell 

 the letters of the word Liberty. The example of Germany and its 

 highly organized state education is not alluring. In no country, per- 

 haps, is there less respect of one class for the other class, or greater 

 extremes of violent feeling. Where you subject people to strong offi- 

 cial restraint, you seem fated to produce on the one side rigidity of 

 thought and pedantry of feeling, on the other side those violent schemes 

 against the possessions and the personal rights of the rich which we 

 call socialism. Careful respect for the rights of others, vigorous and 

 consistent defense of one's own rights, a deeply rooted love of freedom 

 in thought, word, and action these things are simply impossible wher- 

 ever you intrust great powers to a Government, and allow it to use 

 them not simply within a sphere of strictly defined rights, but as su- 

 preme judge of what the momentary convenience requires. 



Secondly, get rid of all dependence upon the central department. 

 If you do not as yet perceive that public money can not wisely, in 



