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any distinction at all between the intellectual education of the 

 mercantile classes and the intellectual education of the profes- 

 sional classes. 



More and more political and social power falls, year after 

 year, into the hands of the mercantile classes, whose position, 

 therefore, in the race of mental progress should not be less 

 advanced than that of any other influential or ruling class. 



The habit of this country has ever been (and ever should 

 be) to exact from its educated classes a certain scholastic 

 knowledge (taking the term scholastic in no narrow sense), 

 over and above the merely utilitarian knowledge intended to 

 act directly on a profession or calling. 



Difficulties are said to stand in the way of the acquisition 

 of this higher knowledge by the mercantile classes. 



It may be objected, for example, that time cannot be found 

 for it in a mercantile education. But time enough is given to 

 frivolity, folly, and vice, and the plea is consequently bad. 



A second objection may be, that the means do not exist. 

 Yet, in our own mercantile community, abundant means exist 

 for the formation of a College, suited in its times, regulations, 

 and methods to the peculiar wants of the classes to whose in- 

 tellectual culture it would chiefly minister. Learned and able 

 Professors, a Library of Eeference, Collections in Natural 

 History, Philosophical Apparatus, a Gallery of Art, — we have 

 means in profusion, though at present unappreciated, neglect- 

 ed, comparatively useless. 



Again, the means being supplied, it may be objected, that 

 they will not be used ; and in support of the plea, the finger 

 may be pointed at the present condition of the scientific and 

 literary institutions of the place. But consider the matter 

 practically. You give a boy at school a smattering of Latin 

 and Greek ; you push liim, stumbling at every step, through 

 Euclid and Algebra, and perhaps tell him something about 

 Physical Science. His knowledge of Ancient Language is 

 just a knowledge of words. Tn Mathematics be really knows 



