STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. I39 



With all these lower bodily and higher moral, and emotional, and volun- 

 tary powers of the soul, the school-room, as such, can do but compara- 

 tively little for want of the indispensable means for such ends. 



It is true that those boys, wlio are compelled of necessity to rely 

 mainly on themselves and their own industr) , skill, and thrift for sub- 

 sistence, while in the schools, receive incidentally some natural and 

 proper discipline of these higher powers of will and self-government, 

 self-support and self-control; hence we have all come to expect, that 

 such boys in the schools are the ones that will in some line make their 

 mark for good in the world. The reason is, they have been really 

 educated in the higher and more natural forms of moral and social cul- 

 ture, as well as in the lower forms of the bare con\ entional and intel- 

 lectual drill of the school-room. The two highest thirds of their complex 

 nature are not left to go to utter waste in an incessant chase after mere 

 intellections. But all this comes not at all out of the prescribed drill, 

 but rather in spite of it. It is true also that whenever the teachers or 

 the classes, and the social surroundings of the school or college, are 

 composed of and led by men of great vigor and force of mind, and will, 

 antl HEART, the natural and inevitable inspirations of such teachers and 

 such surroundings will arouse and animate, re-inspire and quicken all 

 the dormant energies of the pupil, whatever may be their drill in the 

 school-room; or even if, like Plato and the old Greeks, tliey walk about 

 in the shade and have no drill at all. But the deadest thine: in this dead 

 world of ours is a dead teacher reading the dead words of a dead lan- 

 guage to a dead boy out of a dead book. If they do not literally die all 

 in a heap together, it is a miracle of Divine grace, though one can not 

 readily devise what the Lord wishes to keep them alive for. It is one of 

 the mysteries not yet revealed. It is true also that those boys who, as 

 things now for the most jjart are, seek this more extended drill, are 

 naturally and necessarily the picked boys from select and well-to-do 

 families, who as natjiralty and necessarily become the social, civil, and 

 intellectual leaders of the land, whatever school drill they might be sub- 

 jected to, or whether to any at all or not. Our schools and school men 

 take an immense amount of very cheap sophistical credit to themselves 

 on this simple grf)und. If we had no schools at all of any sort whatever, 

 the same boys, out of these same families, would, for the most part, 

 inevitably constitute our civil and social leaders. So, after all, we are 

 beginning to see that the same prescribed drill will no more inspire all 

 souls than the same dose of calomel will cure all diseases, or the same 

 homily on predestination save all sinners. 



On these jirinciples in physics, we have brought out and applied some 

 really true American ideas and results; hence, our locomotives, railroads, 

 telegraphs, iron-clads, and manifold mechanisms. In politics we have 

 created, for the most part, a truly new and fine American skeleton, still 

 waiting to be clothed upon with American flesh and inspired with a true 

 American soul. In faith we have gathered a perfect Babel of all the 

 sects under heaven — Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan, and Pagan; all 

 equally inspired of God, and equally incapable of inspiring anybody or 



