ic will
accept, without question, almost any maxim or problem, provided it be
formulated in such a manner as to convey some specific meaning that does
not demand reflection or complex examination. For the same reason no
small portion of the public will reject anything that at first sight
seems to exceed the measure of their understanding. Knaves and
charlatans, knowing this, impose on the public by flattering their
intelligence, that they may accomplish their own ambitious and selfish
ends. In this way a multitude of pernicious religious, social, and
political maxims have come into vogue, especially in reference to the
question of public instruction. Yet on the sound principles concerning
this question of education, and on the right understanding of them,
depend not only the temporal and eternal happiness of the people, but
also the future maintenance and freedom, nay, even the material
prosperity, of the Republic.

In the discussion of the system of education it will no longer do to use
vague, unmeaning expressions, or to advance some general puzzling
principles to keep the public in the dark on this important point. It is
high time that the public should be thoroughly enlightened on the
subject of education. Everybody is talking about education,--the
advantages of education, the necessity of education; and yet almost all
have come to use the word in its narrowest and most imperfect meaning,
as implying mere cultivation of the intellectual faculties, and even
this is done in the most superficial manner, by cramming the mind with
facts, instead of making it reflect and reason. The great majority even
of those who write upon the subject take no higher view.

The term _education_ comprehends something more than mere instruction.
One may be instructed without being educated; but he cannot be educated
without being instructed. The one has a partial or limited, the other a
complete or general, meaning. What, then, is the meaning of Education?
Education comes from the Latin "educo," and means, according to Plato,
"to give to the body and soul all the perfection of which they are
susceptible"; in other words, the object of education is to render the
youth of both sexes beautiful, healthful, strong, intelligent and
virtuous. It is doubtless the will of the Creator that man--the
masterpiece of the visible world--should be raised to that perfection of
which he is capable, and for the acquisition of which he is offered the
prope