190 THE POPULAR SCIEJSTCE MONTHLY. 



Do you say that this endowment may be too large ? Compare the 

 endowment for the increase of intellectual wealth with any one of a 

 thousand endowments for the increase of material wealth. Look at 

 the hotels of your great cities. Some of them have cost more than the 

 entire outlay in buildings for advanced instruction throughout w^hole 

 States. 



But it may be said, " Why not devote all your resources to agri- 

 cultural experiments and instruction?" I answer — 1. The law of the 

 United States does not allow it. 2. Because in the interest of 

 agriculture itself we should educate men to develop other industries. 

 What is the great want of our Western States at this moment ? 

 Greater agricultural production ? No. What they want is, the de- 

 velopment of great and varied manufacturing industries, so near them 

 that it shall no longer take two-thirds of a bushel of corn to carry the 

 other third from jn-oducer to consumer. 



And, finally, it is objected to the " new education " that it is god- 

 less. There is nothing new in this charge. It has been made against 

 every great step in the progress of science or education. And yet it 

 has certainly been found that although ideas of religion are changed 

 from age to age, the change has tended constantly to make these re- 

 ligious ideas purer and nobler. The majority of the Fathers of the 

 Church held the new idea of the rotundity of the earth incompatible 

 with salvation. Martin Luther thought Copernicus a blasphemer for 

 his new idea that the earth revolves about the sun, and not the sun 

 about the earth. Dean Cockburn declared the new science of Geology 

 a study invented by the devil, and unlawful for Christians. When 

 John Reuchlin and his compeers urged the substitution of studies in 

 the classics for studies in the mediaeval scholastic philosophy, their 

 books were burned, and they themselves narrowly escaped the same 

 fate. 



No, my friends ; every study which tends to improve the industry 

 of mankind makes a man nobler and better. Every study which gives 

 man to know more of the history of his race, gives him to see more 

 and more clearly the finger of Providence in history; every study 

 which brings his mind into contact with the thoughts of inspired men 

 as exhibited in our literatures, builds up his manliness and his godli- 

 ness, and every study which brings him into close contact with Nature 

 in any of its fields not less surely lifts him "through Nature up to 

 Nature's God." 



I have thus sketched very meagrely the growth thus far of the 

 " new education." Its roots are firm, for they take fast hold upon 

 the strongest material necessities of our land ; its trunk is thrifty, for 

 it is fed by the most vitalizing currents of thought which sweep 

 through our time ; nay, the very blasts of opposition to this growth 

 have but strengthened it ; the winter of discontent through w4nch it 

 has passed has but toughened it ; and in agriculture and every branch 



