142 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



and the future, are the only things about which a true wisdom is in any 

 degree concerned. 



Whoever uses books of any sort simply as a means for finding out 

 those great principles, moral, civil, social, natural, and spiritual, that thus 

 perpetually interlock the present with the illimitable past and future, 

 will be wise; whoever uses them for any other end, will at best 

 remain a fool. These principles can be tested not by mere words, 

 but only by laying them along side of great universal facts in nature, in 

 matter, force, or spirit. No mere authority on earth or in heaven, can, 

 for one moment, rescue any possible form of words from the necessity of 

 this test, or render them of the least use to the human race, in the long 

 run, when it is not applied. To sift the books themselves, and put them 

 vigorously through this indispensable test, is pre-eminently the business 

 of every man on this continent, in whatever sphere of life he may labor. 

 For thus alone can we rid ourselves, our children, and our countiy, of 

 those nameless and shameless shams, and deceits, in morals, faith, and 

 philosophy, falsely so called, which are ever the worst, most dangerous, 

 and the most absurd, even though the most learned, things we have to 

 do with. 



So much for books, general school drill, and Christianity, and their 

 place in every scheme of American education, whether agricultural or 

 horticultural, literary or professional. We can not get rid of them if we 

 would. We would not if we could. We should only learn to use them 

 as the God and Father of all designed that we should use them when he 

 gave them to us. Then shall we be an united, a free and enlightened, a 

 happy and a blessed people indeed. 



Entertaining these views, I have no doubt that vast amounts of money 

 and time are at present annually wasted, and worse than wasted, by the 

 American people under pretense of educating their children; and I 

 would really like to see it made a penitentiary offence all over the land, 

 to shut any young person up in the school-room under such pretext of 

 educating him, for more than six months of the year. Whether you 

 drill them on grammar, law, and theology, or on science, horticulture, and 

 mechanics. 



The most vital and iinportant fact of education to any man,, and 

 especially to any American citizen, is to learn to live — to learn and to 

 practice the great lessons of self-government, self-restraint, and self-sup- 

 port, without depending or trespassing upon others; and it is only in 

 very limited and narrow spheres of human life where this greatest of all 

 arts can, to any considerable degree, be taught in the school-room. 



Bearing these universal principles in mind, I can now say all that I 

 need say, on special horticultural education as such, in a few^ words. A 

 pupil should be instructed while in the horticultural school in the general 

 and universal principles of his ov^^n art as such. He does not propose or 

 need to become a special geologist, or meteorologist, or botanist, or 

 chemist, or entomologist, and least of all a scholar, but solely and simply 

 a horticulturist. He does not need to know all the tongues and all the 

 theories of earth, jiir. and sky, as though he expected to become 



