ornamental top-dressing of philosophy, theology, and classic learning
upon the foundation of an unformed and unstable mental and moral
condition. Somehow, character must be built up, and character depends
upon industry, upon thrift, upon morals, upon correct ethical
perceptions. To have control of one's powers, to have skill in labor, so
that work in any occupation shall be intelligent, to have self-respect,
which commonly comes from trained capacity, to know how to live, to have
a clean, orderly house, to be grounded in honesty and the domestic
virtues,--these are the essentials of progress. I suppose that the
education to produce these must be an elemental and practical one, one
that fits for the duties of life and not for some imaginary sphere above
them.
To put it in a word, and not denying that there must be schools for
teaching the teachers, with the understanding that the teachers should be
able to teach what the mass most needs to know--what the race needs for
its own good today, are industrial and manual training schools, with the
varied and practical discipline and arts of life which they impart.
What then? What of the 'modus vivendi' of the two races occupying the
same soil? As I said before, I do not know. Providence works slowly. Time
and patience only solve such enigmas. The impossible is not expected of
man, only that he shall do today the duty nearest to him. It is easy, you
say, for an outsider to preach waiting, patience, forbearance, sympathy,
helpfulness. Well, these are the important lessons we get out of history.
We struggle, and fume, and fret, and accomplish little in our brief hour,
but somehow the world gets on. Fortunately for us, we cannot do today the
work of tomorrow. All the gospel in the world can be boiled down into a
single precept. Do right now. I have observed that the boy who starts in
the morning with a determination to behave himself till bedtime, usually
gets through the day without a thrashing.
But of one thing I am sure. In the rush of industries, in the race
problem, it is more and more incumbent upon such institutions as the
University of the South to maintain the highest standard of pure
scholarship, to increase the number of men and women devoted to the
intellectual life. Long ago, in the middle of the seventeenth century,
John Ward of Stratford-on-Avon, clergyman and physician, wrote in his
diary: "The wealth of a nation depends upon its populousness, and its
populous
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