Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)Parker, Theodore
Religion
Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)
Parker, Theodore
Sermons, American; Unitarianism
Education is the developing and furnishing of the faculties of man. To
educate the people is one of the functions of the State. It is generally
allowed in the free States of America, that the community owes each
child born into it a chance for education, intellectual, moral, and
religious. Hence the child has a just and recognized claim on the
community for the means of this education, which is to be afforded him,
not as a charity, but as a right.
The fact indicates the progress mankind has made in not many years. Once
the state only took charge of the military education of the people; not
at all of their intellectual, moral, or religious culture. They received
their military discipline, not for the special and personal advantage of
the individuals, Thomas and Oliver, but for the benefit of the state.
They received it, not because they were men claiming it in virtue of
their manhood, but as subjects of the state, because their military
training was needful for the state, or for its rulers who took the name
thereof. Then the only culture which the community took public pains to
bestow on its members, was training them to destroy. The few, destined
to command, learned the science of destruction, and the kindred science
of defence; the many, doomed to obey, learned only the art to destroy,
and the kindred art of defence.
The ablest men of the nation were sought out for military teachers,
giving practical lessons of the science and the art; they were covered
with honor and loaded with gold. The wealth of the people and their
highest science went to this work. Institutions were founded to promote
this education, and carefully watched over by the state, for it was
thought the Commonwealth depended on disciplined valor. The soldier was
thought to be the type of the state, the archetype of man; accordingly
the highest spiritual function of the state was the production of
soldiers.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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