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
The public pedagogue does not go out every morning
before breakfast and, with ferula for Archimedean lever and
Three R's for fulcrum, prize open the gates of day. The
organization of infants of every conceivable degree of
intellectuality into classes, and their formal elevation
through successive "grades" by means of cunningly
devised educational jack-screws or block-and-tackle, does
not constitute the complete dynamics of the universe,
President Winston to the contrary, notwithstanding.
Knowledge must exist somewhere before there be any
pedagogue to impart it; and though, under the name of
Truth, it hide in Ymir's Well, those whose souls are athirst
therefore will assuredly find it, though denied all mechanical
furtherance. Education is simply the acquirement of useful
information, it matters not how nor where nor when.
Deprive any man--even a 'varsity president--of all
knowledge but that obtained in the schools and he were
helpless as an infant abandoned in mid-ocean. He could
not so much as distinguish between peas and beans,
between dogs and wolves, by the descriptions furnished by
naturalists. That man who has lived to learn wisely and
well has reached the Ultima Thule of terrestrial knowledge,
the ne plus ultra of human understanding. More can no
college professor or 'varsity president impart. If he know
not this he is uneducated, though he be graduate of every
university from Salamanca to the Sorbonne, and from
Oxford to Austin.
Organization connotes mutual interdependence of the
component parts, limitation of individualism, the
circumscription of personal liberty. To a certain extent this
is advantageous to man--without it civilization, human
progress, were impossible; but to draw a line between wise
use and abuse were a task of some difficulty. President
Winston assures us that the British Government is the best
in the world, yet it is a chaos compared to the organization
of the Russian autocracy. Because we find beneficial that
organization which makes cooperation possible, would he
carry it to the extent of communism? Because
concentration of capital reduces cost of production, does he
approve of that organization which enables trusts to juggle
prices? When organization has reached that point where
one-third of our wealth-producers must stand idle because
denied the privilege of producing the wherewithal to feed
and clothe and house themselves, it might be well for
'varsity presidents to apply the soft pedal to their paean
of praise and inquire diligently whether it be possible to get
entirely too much of a good thing. Too many accept St.
Paul's concession of a little wine for the stomach's sake for
license to become sots.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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