"
We may hence take instruction, first, in the matter of educating our
children. We have but half done our duty as parents, when we have
joined with such of our neighbors as better appreciate, or readier
furnish the means, of good instruction, to unite our children in a
select school, furnished with competent masters and ample apparatus.
The children of one neighborhood educate one another mainly. They
receive from one another more of those impressions which form the mind
and fix the after character, than all they get from their masters.
The carefully trained will receive a deleterious impression from the
neglected portion, despite of care to ward off evil influences. Or,
however successfully care may be applied, that is but negative success.
Our children still want the kindly stimulus to mental growth, to be
realized in a whole community of young minds, all sharing the like wise
training.
We may hence take occasion, secondly, to mark (what is not so obvious),
that through life the same law binds us: the law, that our intellectual
life depends more on the state of society in which we exist, than on
our direct efforts at self-culture. Individual effort may give one
great preeminence before his associates in any of the acknowledged
sciences, though even in such their success facilitates his; and if he
prizes the knowledge--the truth--for itself, rather than for the
attending glory, he will find in another's success, that, "whether one
member be honored, all the members rejoice with it.
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