of mankind upon earth. So, as soon as practicable, he closed up his law office without a pang, and turned to his new mission, saying as he did so, "The interests of a client are small compared with the interests of the next generation. Let the next generation, then, be my client."

There is still another view to be taken of the subject. What struck Mr. Mann as most extraordinary in relation to the office was, that every man who approached him on the subject, with the exception of Dr. Channing, asked about the salary that he was to receive, or raised the question of honor; while no man seemed to recognize the possible usefulness of the office, or the dignity and elevation which is inwrought into beneficent action. Many of his friends. thought his course distinctly foolish. But he went on his way unmoved. "If the title is not sufficiently honorable now," he wrote, "then it is clearly left for me to elevate it; and I had rather be creditor than debtor to the title." He wrote to his sister: "If I can be the means of ascertaining what is the best construction of houses, what are the best books, what is the best arrangement of studies, what are the best modes of instruction; if I can discover by what appliance of means a non-thinking, non-reflecting, nonspeaking child can most surely be trained into a noble citizen ready to contend for the right and to die for the right, if I can only obtain and diffuse throughout this State a few good ideas on these and similar objects, may I not flatter myself that my ministry has not been wholly in vain?"

CHAPTER V

THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE

MR. MANN served as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education twelve years. It is proposed in this chapter to give a general account of his administration of the office, and then in succeeding chapters to present fuller accounts of two or three of its more important features. First, however, it will be well to describe the more important work that Mr. Mann's forerunners had left undone; or, in other words, to state the principal questions that immediately confronted him, growing out of the existing state of affairs.

1. The whole State needed to be thoroughly aroused to the importance and value of public instruction.

2. The public schools needed to be democratized; that is, the time had more than come when they should be restored to the people of the State, high as well as low, in the good old sense of the name.

3. The public necessities demanded an expansion of public education in respect to kinds of schools and range of instruction.

4. The legal school organization and machinery, as existing, were not in harmony with the new social conditions. Moreover, current methods of administration were loose and unbusinesslike.

5. The available school funds were quite insufficient for maintaining good schools, and called loudly for augmentation.

6. The schools were, to a great extent, antiquated and outgrown in respect to the quantity and quality of the instruction that they furnished, as well as in methods of teaching, management, discipline, and supervision.1

These are comprehensive propositions, flowing into one another. No attempt has been made to state them in the order of their ultimate importance, but rather in the order of their urgency, and in the order of Mr. Mann's fitness to deal with them and of the success that crowned his efforts. While he accomplished much for the schools of Massachusetts and the country as schools, that is, as places where youth are prepared for life, his most obvious and effective

1 On the side of supervision this was the situation in 1837, as Mr. Mann afterwards described it, drawing his facts from the town reports: (1) "In two-thirds of all the towns in the State teachers were allowed to commence school without being previously examined and approved by the committee as required by law. (2) In many cases teachers obtained their wages from the treasurer without lodging any duplicate certificate with him, as the law requires. (3) The law required committees to prescribe text-books. In one hundred towns a third part in the Commonwealth - this duty was neglected, and all the evils incident to a confusion of books suffered. (4) The law required committees to furnish books to scholars whose parents were unable or had neglected to provide them. In forty towns this was omitted, and poor children went to school without books. (5) The law required committees to visit the schools a certain number of times. From their own statements it appeared that out of three hundred towns about two hundred and fifty did not comply with the law. (6) On an average one-third of all the children of the State between the ages of four and sixteen were absent from school in the winter, and two-fifths of them in the summer."

work as an educational reformer was directed to their external features and to the system. He must be blind indeed who does not see the distinction between two classes of men; between such educators as Stein and Pestalozzi, Guizot and Fröbel. The relative rank of the two classes is but a speculative question. If Pestalozzi, Fröbel, and their like, give the world new ideas, it is Stein, Guizot, and their like, who make these ideas fruitful in the fullest sense by organizing them into institutions. Indeed, the Greeks did not differentiate as we do. Plato and Aristotle put much of their pedagogical thought in political treatises. Furthermore, the class in which Mr. Mann stands necessarily determines the character of any work that deals adequately with him. Such a work must be the story of practical activities, not the exposition of a philosophical or pedagogical system.

Within a week of his acceptance of the office the new Secretary began a course of reading bearing upon his new duties. He reflected that no man could apply himself to any worthy subject, either of thought or of action, but that he would forthwith find it develop into dimensions and qualities of which before he had no conception. His first book was James Simpson's Necessity of Popular Education, his second one Miss Edgeworth's Practical Education. He found his new reading thoroughly delightful; nothing, he said, could be more congenial to his taste, feelings, and principles. He also began to study school apparatus, writing at the time in his Journal that, on the point of bringing apparatus into common use, and thus

substituting real for verbal knowledge, he must endeavor to effect a lodgement in the public mind.

Immediately on his acceptance, Mr. Mann began to work out a plan of operations that, when completed, was in perfect accord with the spirit of the law that created his office. He laid out a campaign that was educational in a double sense: it looked ultimately to the children and youth of the State, but immediately, though in a somewhat different sense, to the people of the State. Obviously, the first thing to be done was to awaken the public mind from its deep sleep. First on his programme, therefore, stood a circuit of visits extending through the State, inviting conventions of instructors, school committees, and all others interested in the cause of education, to be held in the different counties, and at such time availing himself of the opportunity to recommend some improvements, and generally to apply a flesh brush to the back of the public. His undertaking embraced much more than at first appears. There was in Massachusetts, as he believed, a great amount of scepticism as to the fundamental principles of American government and society. Some thought it futile, and some undesirable, to attempt to elevate the masses. As one objector put it, the British government was the best in the world; classes were essential to society; some should be cultivated and refined, but others would meet their ends in toil and suffering, in living and dying in vulgarity. Such views as these were thoroughly abhorrent to Horace Mann. His political principles were in complete accord with his moral sentiments. He was a democrat in the best sense of