THE

MASSACHUSETTS TEACHER.

Vol. VI. No. 1.] GEORGE ALLEN, JR., EDITOR OF THIS NUMBER.

[January, 1853.

THE DUTY OF SELF-CULTURE IN ITS RELATIONS

TO TEACHING.

[A PRIZE ESSAY.]

PERSONAL improvement is the duty of every human being. By virtue of his very humanity, every individual of the race, stands under a sacred obligation to make as much of his mental and moral powers, as his position in life will permit. No one has a right to bury in a napkin any talent God has given him, any more than he has to pervert it to an unworthy use. This obvious general duty becomes specific and peculiar in its relation to many callings in life; and every one, we think, will decide that in regard to the business of teaching, it is a necessary and primary qualification. Its limits and methods, however, in that particular relation may, perhaps, give occasion for differences of opinion, where, indeed, any definite opinions at all are held on the subject.

Self-culture relates mainly to three things, manners, mind, morals. Attainments in all these directions are essential to the teacher's success. Failure in either of them is fatal. Nor can culture in one of these directions make up for its absence in any other. The instructor ought in a high sense to be a gentlemen, a scholar, and a Christian. Whoever else can afford to be other than all these, he cannot. And this, we apprehend, will be manifest if we consider the peculiar nature of his calling. What, then, is the distinctive character of the teacher's vocation? A somewhat extended answer to this question will furnish forcible arguments for continued self-culture in all who engage in the work. We must think, that with all the advance. recent years have witnessed in the views and methods of popu

lar education, even teachers themselves have hardly begun to have adequate notions in regard to the importance and inherent greatness of their work. We cannot say less of it than that it involves the highest responsibilities, and is, in the best sense, most honorable. The business of educating has to do with the soul rather than the body; it is, therefore, more concerned with eternity than with time. We do not, for how can we,sufficiently consider what it is to make an impression upon an immortal mind. We are dull in our apprehensions of the peculiar honor there is in fashioning a human spirit into forms of intellectual symmetry and grace, which it shall carry not only through the life that is, but onward into the ever lengthening ages of the life that is to be.

In all civilized countries the votaries of art have been held in honor. He who could make the canvas glow with imitated life, and he who could cut from the cold, dead marble, the almost living, breathing forms of animated existence, have both alike acquired lasting renown. Some of them lived far back in the past. Ages have passed away since the crumbling dust of their masterpieces has mingled with the ashes_of_their tombs; yet their names are held in deserved honor. But there is a coloring that outlasts all time, and eternity will forever add to its brightness. There is a sculpturing too, every line and angle and feature of which, will retain its exact form when the heavens and the earth shall be no more. No less a work than this is every teacher called to perform. Consciously or unconsciously, he is making impressions every day as lasting as the soul. What work, then, more responsible than this? What more honorable, provided it be well performed?

But the teacher need not pass the limits of the present life, to find evidence of the high character of his calling. It bears this character when judged by finite standards, and measured by the relations of time. Leaving wholly out of view those higher relations which connect it with a future existence, and regarding it simply as a business connected with the present life, we know of no nobler employment, none more worthy the efforts of the highest order of intellect. The teacher's forming hand is to be found all along the world's history, in the poets, the philosophers, the statesmen and the heroes of every age. Through these he has shaped the destinies of nations. Unrecognized, unknown perhaps, by the subjects of them, he has sent forth influences that have been felt far and wide. Nor has this obscurity rendered these influences any the less effective. It is a fact, not usually appreciated, that the true origin of great results lies often entirely back of their reputed causes. It is often forgotten that Alexander the Great was long the pupil of Aristotle, as were Alcibiades, Xenophon, and Plato, of

Socrates. "Who," it has been asked, "hears the name of Caius Laelius? And yet Scipio, the conqueror of Hannibal, speaks of himself as but executing the designs of that philosopher." Is it, then, too much to say that had there been no Laelius, there would have been no immortal Scipio, and the great Carthaginian might not have found a conqueror? The greatest of Roman orators, whose fame yet sends its steady light over the abyss of ages, declares that Publius Nigidius, a name that, but for this circumstance, we should hardly have known, was the author of his noblest deeds. And if Cicero could make this confession, how many more of inferior genius could make similar acknowledgments with yet greater propriety? Indeed, however narrow our observation may have been, instances must have come to our knowledge of great power proceeding from those who dwelt in obscurity, even as the earth is heaved, and tossed and cleft asunder, by invisible forces of which we know almost nothing.

Of this hidden power of the teacher for good, and, let it be remembered, it may be for evil likewise, we give a single illustration. We once knew a teacher who, in the judgment of those best acquainted with him, possessed the rarest intellectual powers, which he had cultivated with long and varied discipline. For him it was a pastime to read in the mother tongue of Plato and Plutarch, the deep philosophy of the one, and the lofty morality of the other. There is hardly any field of knowledge to which he was a stranger. He seemed to be at home on the classic page, among the higher mathematical studies, or while engaged in unfolding those subtle distinctions which underlie that sublimest of all sciences, the science of the human soul. And no mind truly awake could listen long to his "wide and large discourse of reason," and not feel something of that awe-inspiring reverence, which the presence of the highest forms of intellectual greatness seldom fails to awaken. And yet he was known comparatively to but few. His personal influence over the world at large was but small. The masses were alike ignorant of his worth and his greatness. With a modesty equal to his unusual attainments, he shrank from display; and having no desire of authorship, and passing away from us in the meridian of his days, but few of the results of his profound investigations will go down to posterity on the printed page. But will he have lived in vain ? Far otherwise; for deep in hundreds of young and noble hearts, made yet nobler by his sublime teachings, were treasured the living thoughts his "winged words" bore thither, and there will they be cherished in undying remembrance. Love for Truth and Honor and Duty was inspired in minds that are to influence men from high places of authority and trust; from

up

the pulpit, the bar and the halls of legislation. Through his pupils will his influence be transmitted to other minds, and thus has he set in motion a tide of healthful agencies that will ebb and flow to the end of time. Not far from the quiet waters of a New England lake, stands a massive granite shaft erected to his memory by his loving pupils. It bears no flaunting eulogy upon its tablets. It rises in solid yet simple grandeur, an apt symbol of his life, whose name, with the day of his birth and of his death only, is cut in relief upon the solid stone. As we stood, not many months ago, beside that monument, with sentiments akin to those of the pilgrim who has reached some long-sought distant shrine, we could but feel how fitly it illustrated the enduring influence of him whose ashes are reposing at its base.

Let it not be supposed that the importance or the responsibilities of the teacher's calling are confined to the higher walks of the profession; or that they belong exclusively to those chiefly engaged in finishing the work. The instructor, at every stage of his business, is concerned with intellectual and moral development; and we are yet to be informed that the earliest part of this business is fraught with less important consequences than that of any later period. Of how little value is elegance of finish, or beauty of exterior ornament, to that edifice, whose foundation was laid at first in the treacherous sand! Or, to use a better analogy, of what avail is any effort to remove an unsightly crook in the sturdy tree, which commenced while yet the tree was a tender shrub? We know not how soon the infant soul begins to receive from the world without its shapings and tendencies. But we do know, that after this time has arrived, its earliest are its most impressible periods. It is, then, that little causes, as we call them, produce great results. A word, a look, a tone, a tear, or a smile, every one does its work. Sunny and joyous tempers have sprung into life under the genial influence of a constantly cheerful countenance and voice. At this period too, harsh and irritable dispositions are bred amid strife, in an atmosphere of moroseness and ill humor. Thus early does the die give the enduring stamp. A very few years suffice to give full vigor to those elements which expand into a Cowper or a Byron; a Washington or a Bonaparte. "The boy is father of the man," says a poet; and most true it is, that the human character receives its form in childhood. Let no one, then, touch the young soul, that wondrous birth of heaven, with a careless or unpractised hand. Whoso does this does it at his peril.

Thus, in whatever view we regard the teacher's vocation, whether in its relations to this or the future life; in its connection with the earlier or later periods of intellectual develop