244 Education as a Factor in Civilization. 



Spain, nor is our prison population composed wholly of 

 illiterates or foreigners. In New York six millions of 

 dollars a year are hardly sufficient to pay for police and 

 prisons, while a little over half that sum is considered 

 ample for schools. Germany was the first nation to dis- 

 cover that prevention, the moral medication which seeks 

 to remove causes rather than symptoms, is the only sane 

 method of curing crime. If ignorance is the cause of 

 crime, has not society as much right to place a child in 

 school as it has in later years to put that same child in 

 prison ? The law ordains vaccination, why not educa- 

 tion ? Kingsley has said that, " when the devil cannot 

 find a knave for his purpose, he secures a fool, which answers 

 just as Avell " ; and Lord Brougham, years ago, stated in the 

 House of Lords, "If, from an early age, a proper system 

 of instruction is pursued, it will be as difficult for a child 

 to become a criminal as for one of your lordships to go 

 out and rob on the public highway." With the exceptions 

 of Holland and Belgium, education is now compulsory in 

 every foreign country. The monarchical governments of 

 Europe are sagacious enough to perceive that as intelli- 

 gence and opportunity for its use are rapidly increasing 

 on the earth, it is the part of wise legislation to direct this 

 intelligence in such a way as to insure political safety. 

 Can this American republic afford to do less than this ? 

 Without education there can be no intelligence ; without 

 intelligence there can be no enlightened ballot, and without 

 the ballot there can be no preservation of the form of gov- 

 ernment conceded to be the highest evolution yet attained 

 of liberty, law, and order. 



The university was the sole educational institution of 

 tlie Middle Ages, when the classics furnished all there was 

 to be learned. But the life and world of to-day is 

 hardly that of the fathers. Gladstone is authority for 

 tlie statement that from 1800 to 1850 there Avas produced 

 as much permanent wealth as during the entire eighteen 

 hundred years preceding. It is not easy to grasp this stu- 

 pendous fact in all its relations to the social and intellect- 

 ual deve]()pment of man. One hundred years ago there 

 was hardly any science entitled to the name. Biology 

 and ethnology are the growth of our own century. The 

 study of chemistry has been itself transmuted during tlie 

 past fifty years. Botany, geology, astronomy, as avcU as 



