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cious. There is no instrumentality competent to this service, save the living spirit of the instructer. The powers of his mind, as sunbeams and dropping rains are first to stir the vitalities of the buds of being to be reared, next to swell the channels of nutrition, then to send through them into all the system, the proper and wholesome aliment which is to pass into the mental structure. In this process, the growth will be the pupil's own, while the nourisher and the guide is the mind of the teacher.

Children are flexible, impressible and imitative. These characteristic attributes point us to the same agent as the only direct source of education. If the teacher's mind be open and clear, proceed with certainty in its courses, keeping just in advance, as a flexible creature, the scholar commits himself to move whither that mind would lead, and adopt what it dictates with entire confidence, apprehending no difficulties, stopping at none. As an impressible being, habits and qualities are given to the pupil's mind, by contact with that of the instructer, with much of that readiness and accuracy with which thoughts are written on paper, or form given to plastic clay. This will be regarded by some as a mere vision of poetry, or a flourish of rhetoric. It is poetry, but not illusion. It is poetry, for it is the bodying forth to our conceptions, of a spiritual idea in a vivid and speaking image. But no less is it reality. Mind is thus transferred to susceptible mind; and, though other influences may supervene and the impression seem to be lost, it will afterwards re-appear, even without apparent cause, as if some invisible spirit had been retracing the lines. Not more surely does the flower open and turn to the sun, or the earth answer with a greener surface to the summer shower, than does the mind of the scholar wake and grow at the presence and the call of his teacher's intellectual powers.

As an imitative being, these powers exert over him a still more visible influence. His ardor instantly burns when that of his teacher is kindled; his faculties act with vivacity and power, whenever those of his teacher are aroused.

Almost without exception, the play of mental powers on the part of an instructer, will be answered to in the clear spirit of the learner, as trees and clouds are in the waters below them.

This great law being established, that mind educates mind, the mind of the educator the mind of the educated, the res

ponsibility of teachers is a natural and unavoidable inference. No matter how much patronage; no matter how many or how valuable facilities may be provided, unless between them all and those to be benefited be interposed the instructer's mental powers, as a bland and efficient medium, facilities are wholly in vain. There is no substitute for those powers in the business of education. So also, as nothing else can perform what is assigned to the mind of the teacher, and nothing partake with him in it, is there no division of responsibility. It is all his own. It is of the most important char

acter.

There is another view to be taken. If that which is to educate is the mind of the teacher, then all education depends essentially upon the condition of that mind; upon the qualities and acquisitions which it brings to the great duty allotted to it. We spread now our thoughts abroad and throw the mind's eye in upon all the places of instruction in the country; we see a generation of susceptible beings cast upon the intellectual powers of their teachers as a nurturing bosom, a light to walk in, and an example to follow. After a few years they will be returned to society, and be set down upon the broad theatre of life to move on its crowded and important affairs as the principal actors. What amount of intelligence and what intellectual character they shall bring with them to their places and employments among the people, depend upon the mental qualifications of those to whom their instruction was committed. Whether, therefore, those minds which educate the community shall be disciplined or rude, rich in knowledge or ignorant, patient or irritable, capacious or contracted, ardent or dull, apt to teach or incommunicable, is, on the part of teachers, a matter of the first importance.

The intelligence and intellectual character of the community rise and fall with the qualifications, the furniture and fidelity of the instructers of its children. Theirs is the power and the privilege, therefore, by elevating their own qualifications, to point the nation to the high sphere of intelligence it shall move in; the intellectual power it shall wield for good or ill. In the matter of qualifications, as well as in the immediate business of instruction, there is a responsibility resting upon teachers of no ordinary character.

2. The literary responsibility of teachers receives confirmation from the valuable effects of popular education.

One effect of informing the general mind is a larger and more skilful appropriation of the powers of nature to the uses of life. There is a great amount of physical strength, by misdirection, expended for that which is not bread. A still greater amount is lying wholly unemployed. Diffused intelligence opens to the people promising fields for the useful occupation of it all. It points to those improvements in agriculture by which the existing muscular power may derive greater amounts of valuable products from the fertile bosom of the earth. It suggests the cultivation of fewer acres; teaches how to neutralize the noxious qualities of soils; to add necessary ingredients; to distribute to each situation what will be produced there in the greatest perfection. Thus popular education enables the people to draw more largely upon nature for the supply of its basket and its store.

The ability which such an education creates and diffuses through the community, to discover her materials and forces, and then employ them in aid of the labors of man, is still more valuable to us. You may see an illustration of the appropriation of nature to facilitate and to perform the necessary operations of life, in all the improvements made, from the wooden bow and stone-pointed arrow, to the equipment of a modern soldier or hunter; from the rusty piece of iron sharpened by rubbing upon a stone, to the polished knife and razor: from the six pound pestle and hollowed stump of a tree for cracking corn to the modern flouring mill, grinding and packing hundreds of barrels of flour every twenty-four hours; from the simple wheel of our grandmothers, twisting with slow revolution its single thread, to the cotton factory with invisible velocity, twisting its thirty thousand; from the hollowed log or bark canoe, to the ship of a thousand tons, spreading her wings for the circumnavigation of the globe. All these improvements are but the appropriation of the materials and agencies which nature offers to facilitate and perform our necessary operations. Even the ordinary labors of life are aided to a great extent from this source; mere muscular strength accomplishes but an insignificant part of them. For the purposes of travelling, transporting, and all kinds of manufacturing, nature is made from her exhaustless treasury of forces to supply her mightiest agencies, and drive the vast and complicated machinery almost alone.

The steam engine, perhaps, affords the best illustration of

the important part she has been compelled to perform in carrying forward the affairs of life. This wonder-worker "has arrived to such a state of perfection as to appear a thing almost endowed with intelligence. It regulates with perfect accuracy and uniformity the number of its strokes in a given. time; it counts and records them to tell how much work it has done. It regulates the quantity of steam admitted to work, the briskness of the fire, the supply of water to the boiler, and the supply of fuel to the fire; it opens and shuts its valves with absolute precision as to time and manner; it oils its joints, and when any thing goes wrong which it is unable itself to rectify, it warns attendants by ringing a bell. With all these talents and qualities, and when possessing the power of six hundred horses, it is obedient to the hand of a child. It never tires, wants no sleep, is equally active in all climates; it will do work of any kind; it is a water-pumper, a miner, a sailor, a land traveller, a printer, a paper-maker, a cotton spinner, a weaver, a blacksmith and a miller; and many of its powers and uses are yet to be discovered."

This is a specimen of the facility with which inanimate force may be employed, and of the multiplicity of useful services it may be made to perform.

A reference to France and England will show what advantage a people gains by appropriating to themselves these

services.

The man-power of France is to that of England as six millions to seven millions. But the latter, England, by drawing on nature has swelled her aggregate of animate and inanimate force to twenty-eight millions, while France, from the same source has increased hers to no more than eleven millions.

It is to be remembered that the twenty-one millions of effective force derived by the former from the powers of nature, are obtained by means of the more palpable and important of her machinery, and constitutes, in truth, but a small item in the whole sum of her appropriations from this quarter. It is to be remembered, too, that nature will honor her draft if it be a hundred folded.

If it be inquired by what means Great Britain obtains, and any other nation may obtain, such contributions to her power from the external world, without mentioning all, it may be safely stated that for the most efficient and important among

them, is the one already alluded to, the general education of the people. Teachers, as the sources of popular intelligence, produce the state of society in which man presses the elements around him so largely and successfully into his service. The inventions themselves, which have brought the outer world into this subserviency to the uses of life, have very many of them been made by the well informed operatives. And inventions, however numerous, practicable and perfect, without intelligence generally diffused among the people, can be actually applied to the operations for which they are fitted, only to a very limited extent. Moreover, the demand for the aid of nature, without which her powers would lie unemployed, is created wholly by the education of the mass of the people. The untutored Indian tribes want no plough or cotton-gin; no canal, flouring-mill, or locomotive; they ask for no carpet, glass or woollen factory.

They would sit down and weep to see these* piles of brick and mortar; these pent up waters; this whirling, whizzing and endless confusion, where once were rock and shade, and sparkling river in its own native channel, the resort and enjoyment equally of the deer and the hunter. So the African and Tartar nations, and the millions of the Chinese Empire, have neither any want of these aids nor any power to use them for their benefit. There is no demand among them, and, therefore, no supply. The result is nearly the same in states of society where a few are enlightened and scientific while the mass of the people are ignorant, as in Spain, South America, and Mexico. If inanimate force is partially used, most of the labors of life are left to be performed by mere muscular power.

School teachers, by diffusing general education and intelligence are the persons who induce and enable the people to turn the keys of nature and make her play so liberally into their hands. Indeed they arm the band of enterprise and industry with a power which, at present, has no visible or assignable limits. In this country, presenting peculiar facilities for the purpose, they may throw abroad an educational influence which, not long hence, shall result in multiplying the effective force of our fourteen millions into that of a hundred times fourteen millions.

* Delivered at Lowell, Ms.

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