Equality | Page 7

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 it should logically follow political equality; resulting in extravagance, misapplication of natural capacities, a notion that physical labor is dishonorable, or that the state should compel all to labor alike, and in