ntain of eternal truth? May not the laborer study
and understand the pages which he is writing in his own breast?

In these remarks, I have aimed to remove the false notion into which
the laborers themselves fall, that they can do little towards acquiring
force and fulness of thought, because in want of books. I shall next
turn to prejudices more confined to other classes. A very common one
is, that the many are not to be called to think, study, improve their
minds, because a privileged few are intended by God to do their
thinking for them. "Providence," it is said, "raises up superior
minds, whose office it is to discover truth for the rest of the race.
Thinking and manual toil are not meant to go together. The division of
labor is a great law of nature. One man is to serve society by his
head, another by his hands. Let each class keep to its proper work."
These doctrines I protest against. I deny to any individual or class
this monopoly of thought. Who among men can show God's commission to
think for his brethren, to shape passively the intellect of the mass,
to stamp his own image on them as if they were wax? As well might a
few claim a monopoly of light and air, of seeing and breathing, as of
thought. Is not the intellect as universal a gift as the organs of
sight and respiration? Is not truth as freely spread abroad as the
atmosphere or the sun's rays? Can we imagine that God's highest gifts
of intelligence, imagination, and moral power were bestowed to provide
only for animal wants? to be denied the natural means of growth, which
is action? to be starved by drudgery? Were the mass of men made to be
monsters? to grow only in a few organs and faculties, and to pine away
and shrivel in others? or were they made to put forth all the powers of
men, especially the best and most distinguishing? No man, not the
lowest, is all hands, all bones and muscles. The mind is more
essential to human nature, and more enduring, than the limbs; and was
this made to lie dead? Is not thought the right and duty of all? Is
not truth alike precious to all? Is not truth the natural ailment of
the mind, as plainly as the wholesome grain is of the body? Is not the
mind adapted to thought, as plainly as the eye to light, the ear to
sound? Who dares to withhold it from its natural action, its natural
element and joy? Undoubtedly some men are more gifted than others, and
are marked out for more studious lives. But the work