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ascribed ? Is it not because the powerful have mostly vised thei * power for their own advantage ? Is it not because knowledge has been made the heritage of the few * or doled out to the many with a parsimonious spirit ? Is it not because the poor in body have been kept poor in mind also ? because they have been treated rather as beasts of burden than sons of God ? because the object
has been to make them passive instruments of luxury and despotism , rather than active , free , and well-furnished agents in the social commonwealth ? But let education be given them ; let it respect all their native capabilities , and a new creation will arise around us , depravity will be diminished , good multiplied ; and the poorest will become , as God intended ^ rich in a holy spirit and a good life .
Surely it can hardly need a formal proof that the education of the poor should extend to all their capabilities . Look throughout nature—is there a sense given of God without a provision for its gratification—is there a natural want left unsupplied by the great benefactor of the Universe ? I cannot then believe but that , in giving the capacity , he meant that the mind should receive the treasures of knowledge—but that he designed the mind to be fed
with its appropriate nutriment—but that he—He who sent the gospel , before all others , to the poor , intended that the soul of the poor should , equally with that of the rich , rise in holy adoration to his mercy-seat , and partake of the riches of his love throughout eternity . Apply the argument to men at large . Why these endowments , if never to be developed and gratified ? Apply it to the opulent . Why these endowments , if never to be developed
and gratified r And if the opulent claim the privilege of an education embracing all their native susceptibilities—how much more justly may we claim it for the poor , whose circumstances in life ere less auspicious— -who have greater trials—greater temptations - —whose privations are more numerous ? With greater wants are they to have less supplies ? If power answers in the affirmative - —equity exclaims against the ungenerous and unjust reply .
An education that does not comprise all the susceptibilities of man scarcely deserves the name . There is , in fact , no such division between the mind , the heart , and the soul as theory and the convenience of language make . These several terms are but words to express the various aspects under which the human being may be regarded . They spring not from man ' s nature , but our distinctions . If so , then , when you have pronounced in
favour of education , you have declared that man—the whole man —that the mind , the heart , the soul should be alike educated . And the evils which result from a partial education are at once the penalties of our neglect , and the exposure of the groundlessness of our distinctions . Let the mind be developed and the heart neglected , and the power acquired by the first is rendered useless t > t \ baneful by the weakness . or depravity of the Becond ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1832, page 163, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1808/page/19/
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