The Catholic World, Vol. 13, April to September, 1871Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 13, April to September, 1871
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
follow blindly their leaders, natural or artificial. Consequently,
the education of the leaders is of far greater importance than the
education of those who are to be led. All men have equal natural
rights, which every civil government should recognize and protect,
but equality in other respects, whether sought by levelling downward
or by levelling upward, is neither practicable nor desirable. Some
men are born to be leaders, and the rest are born to be led. Go where
we will in society, in the halls of legislation, the army, the navy,
the university, the college, the district school, the family, we
find the few lead, the many follow. It is the order of nature, and
we cannot alter it if we would. Nothing can be worse than to try to
educate all to be leaders. The most pitiable sight is a congressional
body in which there is no leader, an army without a general, but
all lead, all command--that is, nobody leads or commands. The best
ordered and administered state is that in which the few are well
educated and lead, and the many are trained to obedience, are willing
to be directed, content to follow, and do not aspire to be leaders.
In the early days of our republic, when the few were better educated
than now and the many not so well, in the ordinary sense of the term,
there was more dignity in the legislative, judicial, and executive
branches of the government, more wisdom and justice in legislation,
and more honesty, fidelity, and capacity in the administration. In
extending education and endeavoring to train all to be leaders, we
have only extended presumption, pretension, conceit, indocility, and
brought incapacity to the surface.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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