34 L^Y SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [h* 



Thus tlie question of compulsory education is settled 

 so far as Nature is concerned. Her bill on that question 

 was framed and passed long ago. But, like all com- 

 pulsory legislation, that of Nature is harsh and wasteful 

 in its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as 

 wilful disobedience — incapacity meets with the same 

 punishment as crime. Nature's discipline is not even a 

 word and a blow, and the blow first ; but the blow 

 without the word. It is left to you to find out why 

 your ears are boxed. 



The object of what we commonly call education — that 

 education in which man intervenes and which I shall 

 distinguish as artificial education — is to make good these 

 defects in Nature's methods; to prepare the child to 

 receive Nature's education, neither incapably nor igno- 

 rantly, nor with wilful disobedience ; and to understand 

 the preliminary symptoms of her displeasure, without 

 waiting for the box on the ear. In short, all artificial 

 education ought to be an anticipation of natural educa- 

 tion. And a liberal education is an artificial education, 

 which has not only prepared a man to escape the 

 great evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has 

 trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards, 

 which Nature scatters with as free a hand as her 

 penalties. 



That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who 

 has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready 

 servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all 

 the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of ; whose 

 intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts 

 of equal strength, and in smooth working order ; ready, 

 like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, 

 and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of 

 the mind ; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of 

 the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the 



