Excerpt from The Highest Use of Learning: An Address Delivered at His Inauguration to the Presidency of Amherst College
The cause of education, in this country at least, is almost universally popular. Yet were we to pass around the inquiry among the different classes of society, why they regard it so important, we should probably receive very different answers. One man, himself uneducated, places its chief value in the means it affords of defence against the impositions of the designing and unprincipled. Another values it chiefly because it enables him to take advantage of the ignorance of the world in promoting his schemes of self-aggrandizement. A third looks upon the means which education affords for acquiring property, as its highest use. A fourth regards the personal reputation, respect, and influence, which learning bestows, as its chief advantage. A fifth thinks of it mainly as an instrument of advancing civilization, and multiplying the comforts and luxuries of life. A sixth estimates most highly its influence in elevating the lower classes of the community above the condition of mere animals and drudges, and in making them understand that the body is not the only part of man to be cared for. A seventh places the highest use of learning in its power of disciplining and liberalizing the mind, and delivering it from vulgar fears, superstitions, and prejudices; and in giving to men just views of their rights, relations, and destinies. An eighth thinks most of the boundless fields of enjoyment which knowledge opens to the human mind, of a far more noble and refined kind than any dependent upon animal nature. A ninth makes its most important use to consist in its bearings upon religion, both natural and revealed.
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