all must be provided for. Not by pauper schools, for that would be to burn into the public mind of the youth his misfortune, and he never would outgrow the stigma. Neither is it safe to leave the edu cation of the youth to religious zeal or private benevolence, for then inequalities of the most disastrous kind will slip in, and our State find elements heterogeneous to it continually growing up.

The government of a republic must educate all its people, and it must educate them so far that they are able to educate themselves in a continued process of culture extending through life. This implies. the existence of higher institutions of public education. And these, not so much with the expectation that all will attend them, as that the lower schools, which are more initiatory in their character and deal with mere elements, depend for their efficiency upon the organization of higher institutions for their direction and control. Without educating in higher institutions the teachers of lower schools, and furthermore without the possibility hovering before the pupils of ascent into the higher schools, there can be no practical effect given to primary schools.

If the monarchies of Europe think to put off the people with mere polytechnic and industrial education, they will find that they have fostered a directive power that will grope for and find the helm of State, and then attempt to administer the government. The mistake will then become visible. Man will not submit to be educated simply as a director of machines and instrumentalities of industry. He soon aspires to direct himself and be self-governed. To be sure there is a long step from the mere hand-laborer, the one who turns a crank or carries a hod, the galley-slave who works chained to his car,-there is a long step from the mere physical laborer to the director of a machine, to the engineer, the overseer of a loom, or the manager of a telegraph. The former is all hands; his own brain even is a mere hand, governed by the brain of another, who directs him. But when directive power develops so far as to direct and govern machine-labor, nay, even when it is so far cultured as to reach the principles of natural science and be capable of applying these in mechanic inventions, even then it is not at its summit of realization. It will stop at nothing short of the spiritual culture that makes it alike directive. and governing in the sphere of mind, the realm of social, moral, and intellectual existence.

Human instruments, whether mere hod-carriers or locomotiveengineers, will not stay contentedly as instruments; they aspire to transcend their hard limits, be they ever so near or never so far off. The higher already, the greater the aspiration. Blind aspiration, from which enlightenment is carefully shut out, leads to July revolu

tions and reigns of terror; over the ashes of the burnt-out volcano of popular frenzy marches Napoleonic imperialism with cold, unsympathetic step toward the return of Bourbonism and absolutism.

Not only mechanical directive power shall be taught in the people's schools, but also spiritual directive power. The snobbery that patronizingly talks of the education of the lower "clahses" does not know that the industrial civilization it affects to admire is an instrument that only Democracy can wield; - leave out the humanities from that education, and you leave out the culture that can guide its course, and Communism and Socialism and abstract theories will find their way quickly into the heads of the laboring classes. No merely industrial education can prevent the mind of the people from being flyblown with crazy political aud social theories, destructive to the State. Not merely natural philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, and biology must be studied, but likewise the science of society of the State, of art, religion, and philosophy, in all their phases. The great educators of the race,-Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe, Plato, Aristotle, Leibnitz, and Newton, - these must be made accessible to the people. Each child must be waited on by the institutions of man and invited to see the spectacle spread out before him from the lofty summit of civilization; bis human brothers that have added a cubit to the world's stature by their heroic labors, must be pointed out to him; the methods and results of their attainments must be revealed to him; noblest aspiration and earnest self-sacrificing endeavor must be aroused in him as the means of achieving his individual task in life. The whole world of the past and present is made, by education, the auxiliary of each man, woman, and child.

Is it not the duty of the State to make the practice of the good possible? This is the definition which a western statesman has suggested as a substitute for that other definition which says that a State exists for the protection of property,-"The State exists in order to make the practice of the good possible."

Says Macaulay, in the speech from which I have already quoted :

"I hold that it is the right and duty of the State to provide for the edu cation of the common people. . . . I say that the education of the people ought to be the first concern of a State, not only because it is an efficient means of promoting and obtaining that which all allow to be the main end of government, but because it is the most efficient, the most humane, the most civilized, and in all respects the best means of attaining that end. Sir, it is the opinion of all the greatest champions of civil and religious liberty, in the old world and in the new. [Here he refers to the Pilgrim Fathers, and their insight into the necessity of popular education.]

.. Those men, forever illustrious in history, were the founders of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But though their love of freedom of conscience was illimitable and indestructible, they could see nothing servile or degrading in the principle that the State should take upon itself the charge of the education of the people. In the year 1642 they passed their first legislative enactment on this subject, in the preamble of which they distinctly pledged themselves to this principle, that education was a matter of the deepest possible importance and the greatest possible interest to all nations and to all communities, and that as such it was, in an eminent degree, deserving of the peculiar attention of the State."

To the believer in caste we would finally address ourselves. We would say: All the studies of the common school are conservative in their character, because they all open the windows of the soul and give the mind insight into the substantial character of the institutions of civilization. They all tend to produce the conviction that the well-being of man is best furthered by the very instrumentalities that have been discovered and elaborated by the race, and especially by modern civilization. Reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, and grammar, all open the soul to light on the question of subduing nature, or on the question of the character and destiny of the human mind as revealed in language or social usages, or political forms and changes. The good school, moreover, teaches industry effectually. But its industry is that of directive intelligence, because the progress of civilization supplies more and more the machinery to perform menial service, and makes it necessary to educate all into directive intelligence. Your opposition to the system of public schools may result in their loss of popular favor.

Their loss of popular favor will result in stinting their support, and decrease of appropriations will drive away the best and most enterprising teachers. But the final result will be averse to the education of the less intelligent classes. They will come by degrees to undervalue education altogether. The common schools being under the ban, there will be no pressure of public opinion to cause attendance upon them. Besides, they will be in reality inferior, because their excellence depends upon their patronage by the better classes in a large measure. That school which educates all classes in it is the most wholesome in its influence, because it helps the lower social rank by association with finer manners, while it helps the higher social rank by bringing it into a better knowledge of human nature by associating it with simpler and more direct manifestations of character, the poor classes being better studies for human nature, because more impulsive and less under the control of social forms which disguise

the manifestation of native inclinations and impulses. Inasmuch as the hope of civilization depends upon the elevating influence of the educated and cultured classes upon the lower and lowest strata, it follows that our educational system should see to it that the cultured class thoroughly understands and sympathizes with the lower classes, who lack knowledge or wealth, or both. I say sympathize, because I take it for granted that no American deems it desirable or possible to oppress the lower classes, and keep them down. We have universal suffrage, or something approaching to it. What we permit our neighbor to be, that we set up as the arbiter of our political well-being; for his ballot will determine our government.

The caste principle can find no encouraging sign for it above the horizon of the world's history. The foxes indeed have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the advocate of the principle of social inequality as the goal of education has no place where he can lay his head on this planet, and enjoy a sweet and refreshing repose. If he goes to Russia, there is the Nihilist and the boiling-up of the nethermost depths in the name of revolution and negation. If we must regard civilization as necessarily implying caste and inequality, says the Nihilist, let us place dynamite under the whole structure and blow it into the air. No peace there.

If the lover of caste and inequality as the goal of humanity goes to India, seeking his ideal in the country whose part in the progress of history was to differentiate this caste principle, and show it in its reality, causes and consequences growing on the same tree, there, too, he may no longer find the divine Brahminic code permitted in its fullest sway. It is in process of withdrawal from the face of the earth, thanks to the British administration of criminal law, and the conceded right to freedom of conscience. For the British aristocrat does not believe in the divine right of the Brahmin, descended from Brama's head, but finds the warrior's caste and the merchant's caste of equal or superior right, and he feels the necessity of recognizing the new avatara,-the eleventh avatara of Vishnu, under the form of the steam-engine,- the avatara of productive industry; and so he confers knighthood on great inventors and manufacturers,-as on Sir Henry Bessemer. As for the exclusiveness of the Brahmin caste, as it exists in England or Boston, why, any one may become a Brahmin, or learned pundit, by sacrificing with midnight oil to the knowledge of the modern Vedas; namely, to literature, science, or history. In India the believer in caste wavers, and then goes over to Mohammedanism, or at least over to Buddhism, which is the Nihilism of ancient times. For the Buddhist placed the dynamite of his doctrine

of Nirbana under the caste system of India 2300 years ago. Those Nihilists were then driven out of India, but they can now have all their rights and privileges under Britsh rule.

Shall the lover of caste go to China? Alas, no! In China there is the possibility of ascending to any position short of that of Emperor by success in passing the four-fold system of examinations which are established underneath the national system of education. There is no rigidity to the caste system of China, seeing that it permits all to ascend, even from the lowest, and leaves it to each to determine. his status by his scholastic triumph over the difficulties in the Chinese alphabet and the classics of Confucius and Mencius.

Does the critic of our school system who believes in caste, and asks, "Is it wise or best to educate our children beyond the position. which the vast majority of them must always occupy?" suppose that reading, writing, and arithmetic are studies too high for the lowest mechanic or day-laborer in a country where his vote counts as much as that of the wisest and richest man? Or does he, perhaps, suppose that all the people are already past the three R's, and briskly advancing into the intricacies of philology and classical archeology? Who has told him this? The census of our country for 1870 said: "Of the population over ten years of age, 5,658,144 cannot write; 4,880,271 of these are native born, and 777,873 are of foreign birth; 2,750,000 of these illiterates are colored. The total population of the nation over ten years of age is 28,228,945. Hence 20 per cent. of the population over ten years of age could not write in 1870. In Massachusetts, even, there were 97,742 who could not write,-89,830 of these being of foreign birth, and only 7,912 being natives. Seven thousand is a large number for a State like Massachusetts. Twentythree thousand illiterates were in Boston!

The census of 1880 tells us, again, that there are 6,239,958 persons unable to write, out of a total population of 36,761,607 persons of ten years of age and upward. Of these, 28,424 are in Connecticut!

The number in our common schools who are studying reading, writing, and arithmetic, chiefly, with a little geography and much less grammar, is so large that the balance who are studying the higher branches is pitiably small in comparison. In the great cities the number engaged in high-school and college studies is only one in ten in the most advanced of cities, and only one in fifty in the average of cities. And yet our dreamer of caste and inequality mutters in his sleep: "The cruel suspicion is forced upon us that our present educational system largely unfits young people to deal with the actual necessities of those who are to earn their own living. It takes