WUAT THE Age Owes to America. 
349 
trait in our national character, as the faithful provision and exten- * 
sion of the means and opportunities of this education are the cher¬ 
ished institutions of the country. Learning, literature, science, art, 
are cultivated, in their widest range and highest reach, by a larger 
and larger number of our people, not, to their praise be it said, as 
personal distinction or a selfish possession, but mainly as a gener¬ 
ous leaven, to quicken and expand the healthful fermentation of the 
general mind, and lift the level of popular instruction. So far from 
breeding a distempered spirit in the people, this becomes the main 
prop of authority, the great instinct of obedience. “ It is by edu¬ 
cation,” says Aristotle, “ I have learned to do by choice what other 
men do by constraint of fear.” 
SPIEIT OF OUE PEOPLE. 
The “breed and disposition” of a people, in regard of courage, 
public spirit and patriotism are, however, the test of the working 
of their institutions, which the world most values, and upon which 
the public safety most depends. It has been made a reproach of 
democratic arrangements of society and government, that the senti¬ 
ment of honor, and of pride in public duty, decayed in them. It 
has been professed that the fluctuating currents and the trivial per¬ 
turbations of their public life discouraged strenuous endeavor and 
lasting devotion in the public service. It has been charged that, 
as a consequence, the distinct service of the state suffered, office 
and magistracy were belittled, social sympathies cooled, love of 
country drooped, and Selfish affections absorbed the powers of the 
citizens, and eat into the heart of the commonwealth. 
The experience of our country rejects these speculations as mis¬ 
placed, and these fears as illusory. They belong to a condition of 
society above which we have long since been lifted, and toward 
which the very scheme of our national life prohibits a decline. 
They are drawn from the examples of history, which lodged power 
formally in the people, but left them ignorant and abject, unfur¬ 
nished with the means of exercising it in their own right and for 
their own benefit. In a democracy wielded by the arts, and to the 
ends of a patrician class, the less worthy members of that class, no 
doubt, throve by the disdain which noble characters must always 
feel for methods of deception and insincerity, and crowded them 
from the authentic service of the state. But, through the period 
