The guiding of thought and the deft coordina-
tion of deed is at once the path of honor and humanity.
And so, in this great question of reconciling three vast and
partially contradictory streams of thought, the one panacea of
Education leaps to the lips of all:--such human training as will
best use the labor of all men without enslaving or brutalizing;
such training as will give us poise to encourage the prejudices
that bulwark society, and to stamp out those that in sheer
barbarity deafen us to the wail of prisoned souls within the
Veil, and the mounting fury of shackled men.
But when we have vaguely said that Education will set this
tangle straight, what have we uttered but a truism? Training
for life teaches living; but what training for the profitable
living together of black men and white? A hundred and fifty
years ago our task would have seemed easier. Then Dr.
Johnson blandly assured us that education was needful solely
for the embellishments of life, and was useless for ordinary
vermin. To-day we have climbed to heights where we would
open at least the outer courts of knowledge to all, display its
treasures to many, and select the few to whom its mystery of
Truth is revealed, not wholly by birth or the accidents of the
stock market, but at least in part according to deftness and
aim, talent and character.
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