How TO Educate thk Laborer. 447 



We are all acquainted with facts ; tliese, like the [)ile of 

 raw materials are very useful, and constitute, in tlie mind 

 of the great mass of the people, what they term practical 

 knowledge, but, as facts, they are just as useless as the 

 unwrought material in the forest or in the bowels of the 

 earth. 



The mind must acquire the power to select, classify and 

 bring each fact into its true relation to the other facts, and 

 see that it accepts the right position in reference to the 

 whole subject to which the attention may be given. 



Tliis habit of mind acquired and carried to a certain 

 extent constitutes the foundation on which all trades or 

 professions must be erected, and without it there must, 

 necessarily, l)e much unrest and dissatisfation in one's voca 

 tion. 



The object of mental training is to call out the man, 

 not to make him a farmer or a carpenter, not to make him 

 a physician or a clergyman, not to make him a lawyer or 

 an engineer — but to give him a discipline, the power to 

 take up any subject that may come within the range of his 

 thought, to separate this into its parts, to examine carefully 

 each of these parts by itself, to notice the difference or 

 similarity between them q;nd to mark, accurately, the rela- 

 tions they sustain to each other and to the whole. 



The fundamental principle in education is not to give 

 the man a special training to pursue some particular 

 <;alling in life, but to furnish him with a general culture 

 that will prepare him for any vocation, and to give him 

 the ability to take up any business that may present 

 itself — to give him the power to investigate and understand 



