Equality | Page 7

a flourish of the magic wand of a system, if man may
arbitrarily make the right, if nations can be put through evolutions like
regiments of troops, what a field would the world present for attempts
at the realizations of the wildest dreams, and what a temptation would
be offered to take possession, by main force, of the government of
human affairs, to destroy the rights of property and the rights of capital,
to gratify ardent longings without trouble, and to provide the
much-coveted means of enjoyment! The Titans have tried to scale the
heavens, and have fallen into the most degrading materialism. Purely
speculative dogmatism sinks into materialism." (M. Wolowski's Essay
on the Historical Method, prefixed to his translation of Roscher's
Political Economy.)]--We need to remember that the Creator of man,
and not man himself, formed society and instituted government; that
God is always behind human society and sustains it; that marriage and
the family and all social relations are divinely established; that man's
duty, coinciding with his right, is, by the light of history, by experience,
by observation of men, and by the aid of revelation, to find out and
make operative, as well as he can, the divine law in human affairs. And

it may be added that the sovereignty of the people, as a divine trust,
may be as logically deduced from the divine institution of government
as the old divine right of kings. Government, by whatever name it is
called, is a matter of experience and expediency. If we submit to the
will of the majority, it is because it is more convenient to do so; and if
the republic or the democracy vindicate itself, it is because it works
best, on the whole, for a particular people. But it needs no prophet to
say that it will not work long if God is shut out from it, and man, in a
full-blown socialism, is considered the ultimate authority.
II. Equality of education. In our American system there is, not only
theoretically but practically, an equality of opportunity in the public
schools, which are free to all children, and rise by gradations from the
primaries to the high-schools, in which the curriculum in most respects
equals, and in variety exceeds, that of many third-class "colleges." In
these schools nearly the whole round of learning, in languages, science,
and art, is touched. The system has seemed to be the best that could be
devised for a free society, where all take part in the government, and
where so much depends upon the intelligence of the electors. Certain
objections, however, have been made to it. As this essay is intended
only to be tentative, we shall state some of them, without indulging in
lengthy comments.
( 1. ) The first charge is superficiality--a necessary consequence of
attempting too much--and a want of adequate preparation for special
pursuits in life.
( 2. ) A uniformity in mediocrity is alleged from the use of the same
text-books and methods in all schools, for all grades and capacities.
This is one of the most common criticisms on our social state by a
certain class of writers in England, who take an unflagging interest in
our development. One answer to it is this: There is more reason to
expect variety of development and character in a generally educated
than in an ignorant community; there is no such uniformity as the dull
level of ignorance.
( 3. ) It is said that secular education--and the general schools open to
all in a community of mixed religions must be secular--is training the

rising generation to be materialists and socialists.
( 4. ) Perhaps a better-founded charge is that a system of equal
education, with its superficiality, creates discontent with the condition
in which a majority of men must be--that of labor--a distaste for trades
and for hand-work, an idea that what is called intellectual labor (let us
say, casting up accounts in a shop, or writing trashy stories for a
sensational newspaper) is more honorable than physical labor; and
encourages the false notion that "the elevation of the working classes"
implies the removal of men and women from those classes.
We should hesitate to draw adverse conclusions in regard to a system
yet so young that its results cannot be fairly estimated. Only after two
or three generations can its effects upon the character of a great people
be measured: Observations differ, and testimony is difficult to obtain.
We think it safe to say that those states are most prosperous which have
the best free schools. But if the philosopher inquires as to the general
effect upon the national character in respect to the objections named, he
must wait for a reply.
III. The pursuit of the chimera of social equality, from the belief that