The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
Having thus seined President Winston's rhetorical sea, let
us examine our catch and determine what is valuable food
and what mere jelly-fish. That the schoolmaster is a very
important factor in the social system there can be no
question. Let him have all the honor to which he is entitled;
but let him not seek to appropriate that which belongs to
others. The pedagogue is not the fount of wisdom: he is
but the pipe--of large or small caliber as the case may be--
through which the wisdom of others flows to fertilize the
intellectual fields. How much, prithee, have all the
public pedagogues of America--including the president of
the Texas 'varsity--added to the world's stock of wisdom
during the last decade? Does it begin to dawn upon
President Winston that there is another very important
factor in the world's progress, viz., the Newtons, Bacons,
Koperniks, Watts, Edisons, Shakespeares, Burkes, Keplers,
Platos, Jeffersons and others who, by patient research or
the outpourings of super-gifted minds have furnished forth
the pedagogue's stock-in-trade? Science and Art,
Philosophy and Religion--all that contributes to man's
welfare, material or spiritual, originated in obscure closets
and caves, in the open fields, beneath the star-domed vault
of night, and during all these ages have received chief
furtherance from individual genius or application, the
schools but recording the progress made, spreading abroad
more or less skillfully, the sacred fire wrested from Heaven
by intellectual Titans. Still the pedagogue may well be
proud of his profession, for it is a privilege to think--or even
think at--the thoughts of men of genius, to officiate as their
messengers to mankind. Let these royal heralds flourish
their birchrods in every bypath, cry "The King!" and thereby
get much honor. Winston says that education and
organization are really the same, because one is a means
to the other. How that may be I know not. An avowal of
love is usually a means to a baby; still it were a work of
supererogation to put diapers on a proposal of marriage.
Organization is ever education of a certain sort; but
education is not always organization. Many of the world's
wisest have stood, like Byron, AMONG men, but not OF
them--"In a shroud of thoughts which were not their
thoughts."
Oxen organized in teams may accomplish more than
working single; but you cannot yoke Pegasus and a plow-
horse--Bellerophon's winged mount peremptorily refuses
to be "organized" and turn rectilinear furrows, but
plunges through Time and Space in an orbit of its own
making--often mistaken by the patient organizers for a
lawless comet, its appearance a dire portent. You cannot
drive Shakespeare and Charles Hoyt in double harness, nor
make the mock-bird and night-hawk sing in harmony.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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