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INTRODUCTION. |
15 |
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or neglect. Consider, for instance, the subject of education, to which I propose to call the reader's attention in the following pages. The importance of this was understood three thousand years ago. Solomon sets it down as an adage that "if you train up a child in the way in which he should go, when he is old he will not depart from it." That man comes into the world to receive his character by a process of teaching and training, which we call education, is a thing too obvious to have escaped the attention of any age. Its importance, therefore, must have been always admitted and understood. Yet how slow has been the progress of mankind towards right action on this subject. The world has rolled on for six thousand years, empires have risen, the arts have flourished, civilization has spread far and wide, and all this time the power of education has been known; yet to this very hour there has been but one monarch of the old world who has attempted to bestow the benefits of enlightened instruction upon a whole community; and even this individual, the present king of Prussia, as I shall hereafter show, may be suspected of a sinister design in his scheme of general education.
But while the rulers of the Eastern Hemi- |
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