114 ON THE EXPEDIENCY AND MEANS OP 



community, a branded solitary in the circle of life.* And this ab- 

 horred inquisitor is the teacher and companion of inexperienced and 

 ingenuous youth. But the condition of the educator is in no instance 

 so baneful as to those good and upright men who strive vainly to ele- 

 vate, by their industry and talents, the dignity and utility of their 

 office. 



In vain they direct the full tide of their energies to advance the 

 well-being and improvement of their pupils ; with all their knowledge 

 and humanity, yet uneducated by early and long discipline to the mys- 

 tery of the office, and perhaps with the fullest benevolence, yet void 

 of that necessary and complex wisdom of the physiology of man, they 

 realize with the labours, the repeated disappointments of Sisyphus. 

 The oppression of domestic cares and professional anxieties soon 

 wears through their first integrity of purpose, like the fabled dragon's 

 teeth that, being sown, came up armed men, their vexations multiply 

 upon themselves, until at last, overwhelmed by the meanness of their 

 office, and the incidental miseries of their circumstances, they slide into 

 a state of irrecoverable moral and intellectual apathy. Those who 

 aimed to be illustrious for their excellence and usefulness, failing of 

 that, turn their deadened minds to their mere worldly success. A 

 contradiction to a general law in the low subaction of the office has 

 created a solecism in truth, and " honesty is found not to be the best 

 policy." The moral virtues must descend to a standard of expedien- 

 cy, and new theories, new plans, new vagaries, eject truth and honesty 

 from the scheme of a degenerate and unprofitable profession. The 



• The manner in which private schools are mostly supplied with assist- 

 ants, by means of school agents, is productive of great abuses ; the teacher 

 and master, who correspond through the agent, are completely at his mercy 

 and discretion. If the assistant advance a sufficient fee, it matters little as 

 to his qualifications, or the injury the school will sustain by his admission. 

 " It is an unfortunate coincidence that, while it is the interest of the master 

 to retain a good teacher as long as he can, it is the interest of the agent to 

 keep up a constant fluctuation and removal of assistants. This end is gained 

 in several ways, whether intentionally or not. 1st. By putting a good man 

 into a bad situation. In this instance the assistant will not stop longer than 

 he can avoid. 2nd. By putting a bad man into a good situation. Here the 

 master will not keep him, if he wishes to stop. 3rd. By offering a better si- 

 tuation, as an inducement for change, to a man who is going to college in six 

 months. The assistants are, of course, always on the look out to better them- 

 selves ; and the agents are, of course, ready to help them if they can." — See 

 page 201 of the gecond publication of the Central Society of Education. 



