268 STATE BOARD OF AGEICULTUEE. 



But, in the topic selected for this discussion, an average limit is suggested by 

 the very questions asked, and I propose, in answeriiig- these questions, to call 

 that an education, which may be gained in a four years' course of academic 

 study so contrived as to insure prime attention to discipline of mind, A longer 

 course and more extended re earch may be the average limit elsewhere, and in 

 future days we may find the longer apprenticeship for life's work desirable ; but 

 in this day's struggles with nature, and with our work urging us daily, we can 

 scarcely wait for even so much as four years of training. The most of us do 

 not wait, and mourn that we cannot, perhaps, or at least wish tliat we had the 

 leisure for a culture which we admire and almost envy. For all these I propose 

 the two questions of my theme, after pointing out what we are talking about, 

 and if the answer to the first somewhat forestalls the second, let us not be disap- 

 pointed, for what we really need we can afford. 



The first question is, " who needs this symmetrical training to think? " 



Perhaps all are ready at once to answer ; yet it will do us no harm to spend a 

 few moments in looking it fairly in the face as put to each of us, A few gen- 

 eral principles may help us to see the real necessities of the world and of our- 

 selves. 



First we have the universal demand of the race for cultivated men. You 

 and I need that somebody should be educated, that the world may not drop 

 back into barbarism and drag us with it, "Would it not be better to say, we 

 need to be educated, that we may aid mankind in the struggle for progress? 

 — we need education for philanthropy's sake? We all know how the world for 

 lis has come out of darkness into light, out of want into almost luxur}-, making 

 us the "heirs of all the ages ; but we do not always think how each step in the 

 advance has been along with, if not the direct result of, somebody's mental 

 training in youth or early manhood. Otherwise, "wisdom comes only with age 

 when we've no use for it," 



To undertake to give the part which educated men have had in this progress 

 would be to attempt a history of civilization complete, which no one has yet 

 written. Those who have given us a limited view have felt this truth, that 

 individual mental growth attends each advance, Guizot says, "If we now ex- 

 amine the history of the world, we shall find that every expansion of human 

 intelligence has proved of advantage to society," He accounts for the fact, 

 too, saying, "when a man acquires a new truth, — when his being in his own 

 eyes has made an advance, has acquired a new gift, immediately there becomes 

 joined to this acquirement the notion of a mission. He feels obliged, impelled, 

 as it were, by a secret interest, to extend, to carry out of himself, the change, 

 the melioration Avhich has been accomplished within him," Buckle, another 

 noted Avriter in the same field, sums up his conclusions thus: "For as wq 

 have clearly seen, the advance of civilization depends solely on the acquisitions 

 made by the human intellect, and on the extent to wliich those acquisitions were 

 diffused," To guard us against mistaking the character of this acquisition, he 

 says, "Eeal knowledge, the knowledge on which all civilization is based, solely 

 consists in an acquaintance with the relations which things and ideas bear to 

 each other and to themselves ; in other words, in an acquaintance with physical 

 and mental laws," "The business of education," he continues, "is to accel- 

 erate this great movement, and thus increase the fitness and aptitude of men 

 by increasing the resources which they possess," 



Thus one great student of the world's progress finds it to depend on either 

 individual culture or social freedom, each reacting to produce the other ; while 



