The high school does not propose to educate its pupils any further than to fit them for entrance into the schools just named; and hence.. to raise them to a standard of education which alone will make them valuable members of the university, the college must step in as the mediating factor. The college is to furnish to such persons the highest culture attainable to each one in the special department of science he may choose: mathematics, physics, natural history, geography, astronomy, philology, history, æsthetics, etc.

Having passed through the college, the student has served his apprenticeship of learning, and, becoming a master, enters into full and equal intercourse with all other men of science by means of the university.

UNIVERSITIES.

The national university is to be, not so much a school—that is, a place for teaching-as rather a place for the appliance and further new development of the highest grade of learning, the gathering-place of the chief men of the various sciences, and of all who desire to devote their life exclusively to science, for common intercourse and improvement, the central point from which each university, in conjunction with the universities of all other States, is to carry on the ultimate aim of all States: to subjugate nature to the highest attainable extent unto the control and directive power of men, and to develop the highest culture and clearness i men, thereby realizing their greatest good and happiness.

Here the most perfect instruments in this war of subjugation should be collected and arranged; here constant experiments and observations be conducted, and the result of all other private and public experiments and observations be gathered and reported again to all other universities and institutions, as may be requisite; here the most complete libraries, art-galleries, museums, etc., should be established; and here, finally, the teachers of the highest science of philosophyshould find their sphere of action opening up its treasures to the highest developed minds, and giving, from its universal form and substance, to every other science its fundamental principles and the form of its procedure.

In this way all universities of the world may gradually form an organized body of all the world's learning and knowledge, each separate one a nucleus and representation of all, and reflecting back upon

all its own additional light and acquirement; realizing Leibnitz's great conception of an organized body of scientific men over the whole earth, working together disinterestedly for one common object, and each one doing the peculiar work assigned to him, so that no valuable time and labor may be lost in having the same thing done by many, as occurs constantly under the present unorganized system of things.

A nation having such a university, and giving the best scholars of the country there assembled proper communication and influence with that part of the State organization for which they may be respectively specially qualified, would soon achieve results to excite the admiration and emulation of all its neighbors. With such a trained corps of scientific men, physical disease and hereditary maladies could doubtless be almost annihilated, the forces of nature tamed and regulated beyond the most sanguine dreams of this day, and the finances and property laws of the State so codified as to secure law, order, justice, happiness, and prosperity.

For the power of man is infinite, and when he once opens his eyes to see clearly, he will discover means and remedies for every evil that afflicts the race. The superstitious notions of the past on all matters of religion, or law, or medicine, or social and political organization being once removed, it will become apparent that the distrust in his own perfectibility on the part of man was unfounded, and that every problem of the race is capable of solution, and must be solved, and that it could not be a problem given to the race by the Divinity, had not the race the power to solve it.

There is no necessity for misery, crime, and disease, and a social and political organization can and must be invented that will prevent them; there is no necessity for living in dread of the forces of nature, and measures must be discovered by which to overcome them; there is no necessity for the spiritual gloom and fears that send so many to insane asylums and premature graves, and a science of all knowledge must remove the last remnant of darkness from men's minds, and spread everywhere and over all time spiritual and intellectual light and clearness, developing the true inspirations.

To make these discoveries, organize these measures, and spread this light, and thus to realize the highest good, wisdom, happiness, and perfection for all inhabitants of the State, should be the task of the universities; and as they will be established by the State organi

zations herein proposed, one of the main objects of its teachers will necessarily be to perfect the organic laws of this system, and recommend an extension of its harmonious working, as experience may determine, for the preservation of the rights and liberties of men for all time to come.

CHAPTER IX.

CONCLUDING REMARKS.

The only objection that has been brought forward against the system of education proposed is that, on the extensive plan sketched out for it by me, it would necessarily interfere too much with individual freedom, and the natural control of parents over their children and their religious convictions. It seems to me, however, that this fear is entirely ungrounded, especially as I take distinct ground against compulsory education.

My position on this subject is simply this: that a rational government cannot be upheld by a people whose intellectual faculties have not been to some extent cultivated, and who have not been brought up to some kind of labor whereby they can earn their livelihood.

This proposition seems to me to be indisputable, and a glance at the condition of any savage tribe will illustrate its truth in daily experience. But that without which government is impossible must be supplied in the establishment of a government, and hence it is the positive duty of every nation to furnish to all its citizens the means of developing all the faculties of their minds and bodies, and of acquiring a vocation in life by the exercise of which they can become useful members of the Commonwealth. Whether such citizens may elect to avail themselves of those means, is a question which must be left to their individual freedom to decide. They are at liberty to grow up in ignorance and laziness, but if they thus become paupers or criminals, they are debarred from pleading as an excuse the absence of education, in the widest sense of the word, as it is used by me. The State has now the right to say to them, which right it would not otherwise have: the means of earning your livelihood and of cultivating your minds to become good citizens and useful mem

bers of our Commonwealth were furnished you by us, and in the bad use of your right to your freedom you chose not to accept these benefits. This refusal on your part has led you to become offenders against the laws of the State, corrupt politicians, vagrants, gamblers, robbers, or murderers. The State can therefore no longer recognize you as belonging to its members, and will have to treat you like criminals as you are, by inflicting the severest tasks of hard labor upon you in industrial prisons, or if need be execute you, as the loyal bees destroy the drones in the hives.

This is the reason why the organization of a public-school system is not only expedient, but a duty which the State owes to its upgrowing citizens, and why it is therefore just to levy a general tax for its support. The people, who form and constitute a State and its government, cannot realize the object which they have in view in that formation, and cannot maintain the government which they have constituted, unless every child in the Commonwealth is enabled to develop all those faculties without which it can never become a good citizen. Hence it is as proper to tax the people of the State at large for the erection and maintenance of free public-schools as it is to tax them for the erection and support of courts, penitentiaries, hospitals, and asylums.

The other argument used in the objection to such a system of free public-schools, namely, that many parents desire their children to receive also religious instruction in schools, and that as the public schools cannot teach religion it is unjust to support them by public taxation, is still more groundless than the plea that a public-school system interferes with individual freedom. It is impossible that injustice should be worked by that system, so long as all children, no matter of what creed, have equally the privilege of attending them and learning all those branches of education regarding which there cannot be any conscientious dispute. The public schools, it is true, do not teach religion, but neither do they interpose any objection to religious instruction. Every parent can have his or her child educated in matters of religion as well with as without the publicschool system; only not in the public schools, where religious teaching would bring Pagan, Buddhist, Jew, Mohammedan, Brahmin, and the numerous sects of Christians into constant conflict. And what earthly reason can be advanced to show why children should be taught religion in the public schools, and not rather in other places

especially provided for that purpose? Why do not all parents who choose to educate their children in religion do so independently of the public schools, precisely as they now send them to special schools of music or painting? It is evident that no satisfactory reason can be assigned why religious instruction should not be given in special institutions established for that purpose by each sect or religion, particularly as these institutions already exist in the different churches, which are, after all, the fittest places for teaching children those religious doctrines which they will be taught there also as they grow up to riper years. The proposition that religious instruction must be taught in common schools is therefore a mere frivolous pretext.

But, say the sectarians, as we have already a number of common schools of our own, wherein the same educational subjects are taught as in the public schools, in addition to religion, is it not fair that our schools should receive their equitable proportion of the taxes which the State raises for the general purposes of public education? The reply is very easy. Sectarian schools are private institutions, and not under the control of the State. The State has nothing to do with them. The State pays for its own asylums and hospitals, for all the sick and poor, but not for the asylums and hospitals of either sect, Jews, Chinese, Catholics, Mussulmen, or Protestants. In the same way the State pays for its schools for all, and not for private schools of any kind. If a Jewish, a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a Catholic congregation or individual choose to start schools or academies, it is their own affair. It is the most unblushing kind of impu- . dence to ask the State to pay or contribute for private schools for particular sects of religionists.

But it is also worthy of attention to reflect, that if this proposition to divide the taxes raised for school purposes between the public schools and the sectarian schools should be adopted, the very object which sectarians who make that proposition have in view would be defeated. For if it were carried out, and if the State government were thus to raise taxes for the maintenance of the sectarian schools, it would certainly also have the right, duty, and power to supervise all the matters connected with those schools. But the governmental interference is the very thing that the sectarians oppose. They therefore directly contradict themselves, and make it more apparent than ever that the arguments which they advance are mere pretences, and that their real object is to break up the public-school system altogether.