Brook Farm: Historic and Personal MemoirsCodman, John Thomas
History
Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs
Codman, John Thomas
Brook Farm Phalanx (West Roxbury, Boston, Mass.)
In the second class of motives we have enumerated there is a strong
tendency to an important improvement in meeting the terrestrial
necessities of humanity. The banishment of servitude, the renouncement
of hireling labor and the elevation of all unavoidable work to its true
station, are problems whose solution seems to be charged upon
Association; for the dissociate systems have in vain sought remedies
for this unfavorable portion of human condition. It is impossible to
introduce into separate families even one half of the economies which
the present state of science furnishes to man. In that particular, it
is probable that even the feudal system is superior to the civic; for
its combinations permit many domestic arrangements of an economic
character, which are impracticable in small households. In order to
economize labor, and dignify the laborer, it is absolutely necessary
that men should cease to work in the present isolated, competitive
mode, and adopt that of coöperative union or Association. It is as
false and as ruinous to call any man "master," in secular business, as
it is in theological opinion. Those persons, therefore, who congregate
for the purpose, as it is called, of bettering their outward relations,
on principles so high and universal as we have endeavored to describe,
are not engaged in a petty design, bounded by their own selfish or
temporary improvement. Everyone who is here found giving up the usual
chances of individual aggrandizement, may not be thus influenced; but
whether it be so or not, the outward demonstration will probably be
equally certain.
In education Brook Farm appears to present greater mental freedom than
most other institutions. The tuition being more heart-rendered, is in
its effects more heart-stirring. The younger pupils, as well as the
more advanced students, are held mostly, if not wholly, by the power of
love. In this particular, Brook Farm is a much improved model for the
oft-praised schools of New England. It is time that the imitative and
book-learned systems of the latter should be superseded or liberalized,
by some plan better calculated to excite originality of thought and the
native energies of the mind. The deeper, kindly sympathies of the
heart, too, should not be forgotten; but the germination of these must
be despaired of under a rigid hireling system. Hence Brook Farm, with
its spontaneous teachers, presents the unusual and cheering condition
of a really "free school."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account