to aim at scaling to positions above those in which the school found them, a thing that would be well enough were it not inevitable that, in the general scramble, the positions aspired to are at the same time too frequently those above their capabilities, and quite too full without them:  as, in few words, inspiring youth with a disrelish for those less responsible pursuits to which a large majority should devote their lives, rather than with a desire to qualify themselves for their proper work.  The tendency is admitted; and it has become, in overcrowded professions and commercial pursuits, the fruitful source of superficiality, of charlatanry, of poverty at once of pocket and of honor, of empty speculations, and of the worst crimes.

But, appreciating the unquestionable fact that universal education is to be henceforth the rule in the most advanced nations, and that, in spite of its apparent consequences or our fears, and remembering also that the experience is, for the world, a new one, is there not some hope left us in the thought that possibly the alarmists have been attributing to the fact of popular education itself what in truth is only a temporary consequence of a false, an abnormally-educating method and procedure on the part of our schools?  Nay, more; does not the latter afford the true solution of the evil?  We believe it has been shown that our teaching methods not only fail in great part, but in a degree positively mis-educate; that the very ‘head and front’ of this failure and non-developing appears in the want of bringing into just prominence the discriminating and the applicative powers of the mind, the judgment, and reason; in a word, the thinking as distinguished from the merely receptive and retentive powers.  Now, what are we to expect from a people too many of whom are put in possession of stores of fact quite beyond the degree in which their capacities to discriminate clearly, to judge wisely, and to draw conclusions rationally have been strengthened and furnished with the requisite guiding principles?  What but a shallow shrewdness that should run into all the evils we have above named?  But discipline all to think and reason more and more justly and assuredly upon their facts, and to men so educated, the very thought of an inordinate crowding of the so-called genteeler avocations, to the neglect of the more substantial, becomes appreciated in its true light, as absurd and unfortunate in every way, and, in all its bearings upon the individual as well as the social welfare.

So, let us have popular education; and let a due proportion of fit minds enter the professions, the posts of office, and commercial pursuits; let a few even live by mere work of thought; but let all enjoy the luxury of a degree of thought and rationality that shall forbid their richest blessing turning to their rankest curse.  That such must be the result of a true education, our faith in a wise Providence forbids us to doubt.