Another obstacle to a national system was the fact that the colleges founded before the Revolution--William and Mary, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia--were practically supported and controlled by different churches--Congregational, Presbyterian, or Episcopalian. Churches are not easy to combine. Still another obstacle, and a more important one, was the sentiment of local independence, the spirit of home rule which played such a prominent part in the _mise en scène_ of the American drama. Each of the distinct States composing the Union was tenacious of its own individuality, and jealous of the local rights by which alone that individuality could be preserved. The most significant and potent of these rights was that of educating the children and youth of the community. The States which entered the Union later brought with them the same feeling of local pride and responsibility. Ohio with its New England traditions, Kentucky with its Southern traditions, Michigan with its large infusion of French blood and thought, Wisconsin with its vigorous German and Scandinavian element,--each of these communities felt competent and in honour bound to attend to its own educational affairs. So far as the establishment and control of schools, colleges, and universities is concerned, every State of the Union is legally as independent of all the other States as if they were separate European countries like France and Germany and Switzerland. Therefore, we may say that the American system of education is not to have a system. But if we stop here, we rest upon one of those half-truths which are so dear to the pessimist and the satirist. The bare statement that there is no national system of education in America by no means exhausts the subject. Taken by itself, it gives a false impression. Abstract theory and formal regulation are not the only means of unification. Nature and human nature have their own secrets for creating unity in diversity. This is the process which has been at work in American education.