The work done by Horace Mann for education includes his labors as president of Antioch College from 1852 to 1859. He maintained that the chief end of education is the development of character; and he sought to make the college an altruistic community, in which teachers and students should labor together for the best good of all. He put into practice the nonsectarian principle, made the college coeducational, and developed the spirit of individual freedom as one of cardinal importance in education. "The ideas for which he stood," has written one who has carefully studied his work in all its phases, "spread abroad among the people of the Ohio valley, and showed themselves in various state institutions, normal schools, and high schools that were planted in the central west. Altogether, apart from Mr. Mann's visible work in Antioch College may be found agencies which he set at work, whose influence only eternity can measure. It was a great thing to the new west that a high standard of scholarship should be placed before her sons and daughters, and that a few hundred of them should be sent out into every corner of the state, and ultimately to the farthest boundaries of the nation, with a sound scholarship and a love for truth there and then wholly new. His reputation for scholarship and zeal gave his opinions greater weight than those of almost any other man in the country. As a result the most radical educational ideas were received from him with respect; and he carried forward the work of giving a practical embodiment to co-education, non-sectarianism, and the requirements of practical and efficient moral character, as perhaps no other educator could have done. His influence among people, and the aspirations which he kindled in thousands of minds by public addresses and personal contact, did for the people of the Ohio valley a work, the extent and value of which can never be measured."[21] [Sidenote: Elizabeth Peabody and the Kindergarten.]