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HORACE MANN 
 
HORACE MANN 
 
PIONEERS IN EDUCATION 
 
 HORACE MANN 
 
 AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL IN THE 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 BY 
 
 GABRIEL COMPAYRE 
 
 CORRESPONDENT OP THE INSTITUTE ; DIRECTOR OP THE ACADEMY 
 
 OF LYONS; AUTHOR OP "PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO 
 
 EDUCATION," "LECTURES ON PEDAGOGY," 
 
 " A HISTORY OP PEDAGOGY," ETC. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 MARY D. FROST 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
!"Lia«*HY of CONGRESS 
 j i wo Co ole? Received 
 
 0C1 1 190f 
 
 xxc! no; 
 
 CO FY B. ' 
 
 TLASfcA- 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1907, 
 
 By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY. 
 
 Published, September, 1907. 
 
CONTENTS AND SUMMAET 
 
 Preface 
 
 Preamble 
 
 I. The life of Horace Mann previous to 1837. — His 
 
 origin. — Poor and laborious childhood. — Preco- 
 cious taste for reading. — The little library founded 
 by Franklin. — The village school. — Mann revolts 
 from the gloomy teachings of Calvinism. — Keen 
 sentiment for the beauties of nature. — Family 
 affections. — His tenderness for his mother. — 
 His devotion to his sister. — His first marriage. — 
 Despair caused by the loss of his wife. — His friend- 
 ships. — Mann as a lawyer. — Mann as member of 
 Congress, senator, politician. — His work for the 
 amelioration of the treatment of the blind. — His 
 campaign against intemperance. — Brilliancy of his 
 public position and sadness of his private life . 
 
 II. Horace Mann, secretary of the Board of Education of 
 
 Boston (1837-1848). — Formation of the Board of 
 Education. — Why Mann was chosen secretary of 
 the Board. — His devotion to humanity and his 
 love of children. — His faith in education. — 
 Limited powers of the Board and of its secretary. — 
 No effective authority. — No means of action ex- 
 cept appeal to public opinion. — From the first day 
 Mann sets to work. — Conventions. — First lecture 
 tour. — Crusade against ignorance. — Not always 
 an audience at his lectures. — The common school 
 journal. — Mann acts by speech and pen. — The 
 
iv CONTENTS AND SUMMARY 
 
 twelve annual reports. — Character of these reports, 
 genuine scholastic manifestoes. — Their historical 
 interest. — Their pedagogic value. — Tables show- 
 ing the condition of Massachusett schools in 1837. — 
 Analyses of the twelve reports. — How Mann pre- 
 pared them. — Questions addressed to competent 
 persons. — The seventh report. — Account of Euro- 
 pean trip. — Favorable impression made upon Mann 
 by German schools. — Somewhat excessive eulogy 
 of German teachers. — Severe judgment on France. 
 — Violent opposition encountered by Mann in his 
 own country. — The non-sectarian school attacked 
 by the American sectaries, as the French lay school 
 was to be later. — Conflict with the Boston school- 
 masters. — Reform of Boston schools. — Founda- 
 tion of normal schools. — Necessity for professional 
 training of teachers. — Pierce, master of the Lexing- 
 ton Normal School. — School libraries. — Impor- 
 tance of good books. — Other pedagogical innova- 
 tions by Mann. — Lectures to teachers. — Graduated 
 tables of the districts. — Mann's disinterestedness, 
 his pecuniary sacrifices. — Results of his twelve 
 years of labor. — He is elected representative from 
 Massachusetts to the Congress at Washington. — 
 
 Resigns his secretaryship 23 
 
 III. Mann's philosophy and general ideas. — No per- 
 sonal philosophy. — Philosophical system borrowed 
 from George Combe. — The author of The Constitu- 
 tion of Man. — What attracted Mann in Combe's 
 theories. — The reasons for his being a phrenologist. 
 — The laws of the development of the mind, symme- 
 try, and activity. — Mann's spirituality. — A strain of 
 mysticism. — A Puritan without theology. — Faith 
 in the immortality of the soul. — Moral psychology 
 of Mann. — The higher faculties, conscience and the 
 
CONTENTS AND SUMMARY v 
 
 feeling of responsibility. — Intellect subordinated 
 to feeling. — Great ideas come from the heart. — 
 Intellectual culture subordinated to moral culture. — 
 Utilitarian tendencies. — Universal education a ^ 
 social debt. — Mann's hesitation in regard to ob- 
 ligatory school attendance. — His eloquence. — 
 Qualities and defects of his style. — His political 
 views. — The honest man and good citizen. — The 
 perils of unenlightened universal suffrage. — Without 
 education no safety 72 
 
 IV. Horace Mann, president of Antioch College (1853- 
 
 1859). — Mann elected governor of Massachusetts. 
 
 — He prefers to assume the direction of Antioch 
 College in Ohio. — His enthusiasm for this new work. 
 
 — Dreams and reality. — Material difficulties. — 
 Miserable accommodations. — Financial embarrass- 
 ment. — Hostility of those about him. — His cour- 
 age triumphs over all obstacles. — Organization of 
 studies. — Selection of students. — Moral qualities 
 preferred to intellectual gifts. — Innovations in pro- 
 gramme and methods of instruction. — Principles 
 of discipline. — Punishments to be avoided. — 
 Pupils governed by appealing to their conscience. — 
 Liberal regime. — Mann's moral authority. — What 
 he had retained of the Puritanism of his ancestors. — 
 His campaign against tobacco and alcoholic liquors. 
 
 — Experiment in coeducation. — Failing health. — 
 Financial ruin of the college. — Mann's final efforts. 
 
 — His death 95 
 
 V. Mann's influence and the Spread of his Work. — What 
 
 would distress Mann, were he to return to this world, 
 in the present conditions.— What would rejoice him, 
 on the other hand. — Progress of education in the 
 United States. — It has not ceased to conform to**' 
 Mann's ideas. — The Boston Board of Education 
 
vi CONTENTS AND SUMMARY 
 
 led to the creation of a central organ of school ad- 
 ministration in all the States. — That progress has 
 advanced slowly. — Present statistics of schools in 
 the United States. — Increase of high schools. — 
 Influence of Mann over his contemporaries. — His 
 greatest disciple, Henry Barnard. — That France 
 has been inspired by the ideas and example of Mann. 
 — Horace Mann and Felix Pecaut . . . 123 
 
 BlBLIOGKAPHY 133 
 
PREFACE 
 
 " Without any question/ ' Americans say, "the 
 noblest figure in the history of education in our 
 country is that of Horace Mann." He owes this 
 preeminence, not only to the brilliancy of his 
 talents and the authority of his genius, but to the 
 circumstances, the surroundings, in which his talents 
 and genius were called upon to play their part. 
 He may be said to have been "the right man in 
 the right place," and we must add, also, "at the 
 right time." 
 
 The admiration so justly awarded to Mann by 
 his countrymen has not been denied him abroad. 
 Felix Pecaut, to speak of no one else, has said of 
 him: "I wish that Mann's biography might be 
 placed in the hands, not only of all professors, but 
 of all their pupils." 
 
 It is this biography which we offer here, in its 
 essential features: the biography of a man admi- 
 rable in many ways, for candor and purity of soul, 
 for nobility of character, for his devotion to the 
 cause of education and progress, for his kindness 
 
 3 
 
4 PREFACE 
 
 of heart no less than for the wealth of a marvel- 
 lous intelligence, and, above all, for the extent of 
 his activities and the greatness of his scholastic 
 work. 
 
 It is especially as a man of action that Mann 
 was incomparable. Undoubtedly, it was his good 
 fortune to appear at the right moment, just as 
 a widespread movement was abroad, impelling 
 all good citizens to forward the cause of popular 
 education. But to him belongs the credit of 
 accelerating this movement and of leading it with 
 the ardor and enthusiasm of an apostle — one not 
 merely devoted to his work, but passionately ab- 
 sorbed in it. He was the eloquent orator of the 
 cause of popular education, its preacher and trib- 
 une, more concerned, moreover, with the moral con- 
 duct of men than with pure science or theoretic 
 speculation. 
 
 "Call the astronomer from the heights of heaven," 
 he cried to his countrymen; " bring the geologist 
 from the depths of the earth; silence all political 
 and religious controversies ; assemble all the wisdom, 
 talent, and authority that you possess, and then 
 begin to teach the people. 7 ' 
 
 But he did not confine himself to arousing and 
 enlightening public opinion by his ardent preach- 
 ing, to conquering and inspiring it by his faith 
 
PREFACE 5 
 
 in progress and humanity; he was also a skilful 
 organizer, a practical innovator, an indefatigable 
 laborer for the reform of education in his country; 
 and if he did not aspire to build up a theory, a 
 philosophy of education, he did better still, — he 
 created a school system. In that respect he was 
 a great pedagogical founder, i Mann died fifty 
 years ago, but his spirit is still alive and present 
 in the public schools of the United States. And 
 not in America only, but in Europe, and especially 
 in France, scholastic institutions have been in- 
 spired by his thought \ The recent history of the 
 establishment of French lay schools recalls in more 
 than one respect the organization of the American 
 common school as Mann undertook and carried 
 it into execution a half century ago. And this 
 resemblance, this community of views upon educa- 
 tion between the two republics, the younger of 
 which has followed, somewhat tardily, perhaps, 
 but with equal ardor, in the steps of her great 
 sister, are sufficient to revive our interest in a study 
 of the great American educator. 
 
 Mann did not work for his own country alone, 
 he labored for humanity, and, above all, for repub- 
 lican humanity. He was working for republican 
 principles when he wrote his great address on 
 "The Necessity for Education in a Republic, " 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 when he said, "In a republic, ignorance is a crime." 
 He wrought for humanity, — he who, a few days 
 before his death, addressed to his beloved pupils 
 these last words, " Be ashamed to die before you 
 have won some victory for humanity. " 
 
HORACE MANN 
 
 The true life of Horace Mann, the life of an 
 apostle of popular education, began in 1837, when 
 he was already forty years of age. Appointed 
 at that date secretary of the Boston Board of 
 Education, to reorganize the school system of 
 the State of Massachusetts, he entered upon his 
 new functions with extraordinary ardor and in- 
 tense energy. "life," he said, "assumes a value 
 in my eyes which I never before suspected." Up 
 to this time he had been a gifted lawyer and a man 
 of influence in politics, he was now to become 
 an educator. After pleading before the bar of 
 his country in hundreds of private causes, nearly 
 all of which he won, he was about to take in hand 
 the great cause of humanity at large, — of universal 
 education. The public school became his idol; 
 "the greatest discovery," he called it, "ever made 
 by man." During the twelve years that he held 
 this position, he multiplied speeches and pam- 
 phlets; he expended his strength in conventions 
 and newspaper work. In answer to his appeals 
 
 7 
 
8 HORACE MANN 
 
 schools sprang into being where there had been 
 none before, and those already existing set about 
 reforming their methods; school committees re- 
 vived their lukewarm zeal; a generous ardor took 
 possession of his countrymen, kindling their blood 
 and arousing them from their inertia. It was, 
 in short, a renaissance, a resurrection, a revival 
 of the American public school. It was even more 
 than this, — it was an actual creation, a new and 
 almost final reorganization of the system of public 
 education, as the United States has maintained 
 and developed it, for over half a century. 
 
 But before showing what Horace Mann accom- 
 plished, we must relate briefly how he was fitted 
 by education and character for this great work. 
 
The Life of Horace Mann previous to 1837 
 
 Nothing in Mann's family and antecedents, 
 nor in his childhood and youth, gives promise of 
 the high destiny to which he was called, — that of 
 a hero of education; nothing, unless it be a pre- 
 cocious will power and a feverish ardor for knowl- 
 edge. Born on a farm in Norfolk County on the 
 4th of May, 1796, twenty years after the Declara- 
 tion of Independence of the United States, here 
 he lived until his twentieth year, engaged in the 
 labors of the farm. "My childhood was not a happy 
 one," he often said later. The death of his father 
 in 1809, when he was only thirteen years old, im- 
 poverished this humble household still more. He 
 was obliged to work harder than ever to support 
 the family, — a task in which his mother set him 
 the example. "She was," we are told, "one of 
 those sober, sensible, energetic New England women 
 who bring to the dull, ceaseless routine of domestic 
 drudgery the will and courage of actual heroines." 
 
 Horace Mann educated himself by his own per- 
 
 9 
 
10 HORACE MANN 
 
 sonal efforts amid the solitude of the country 
 and by daily intercourse with nature. His taste 
 for reading developed early, and a fortunate cir- 
 cumstance contributed to it. The little town 
 of Franklin, one of those raw, newly built American 
 towns which seem to have sprung from the soil 
 like mushrooms, poor as it was in resources of every 
 kind, possessed the embryo of a library, which it 
 owed to the generosity of the great American for 
 whom it was named. Franklin has somewhere 
 related that he first thought of presenting a bell 
 as an appropriate godfather's gift to the new- 
 born hamlet. He changed his mind, however, on 
 reflecting that the people of that region, as he 
 knew them, preferred sense to sound, and he accord- 
 ingly sent them a collection of books. 
 
 Mann profited by this decision; on such trifles 
 do human affairs depend. If Franklin had been 
 a less judicious benefactor of the town to which 
 he stood sponsor, Mann's lot might have turned 
 out quite differently. He might have vegetated, 
 ignorant and obscure, in his native village and 
 never have been able to say in later life: "If it 
 were in my power, I would scatter books broadcast 
 over the land, as the sower scatters grain in the 
 furrows of the field." The supply of books pre- 
 sented by Franklin, chiefly works of theology and 
 
HORACE MANN 11 
 
 ancient history, were, it is true, soon exhausted, 
 but not before they had kindled the sacred fire 
 in Mann's soul. In order to purchase others, the 
 boy spent the small sums which he could earn 
 with his own hands by weaving straw during the 
 long winter evenings and selling his basket work. 
 It was his solitary reading which turned the little 
 rustic into a well-informed youth. The town- 
 ship of Franklin boasted, indeed, a school, which 
 Mann attended when he could be spared from 
 the w T ork of the farm; that is to say, about eight 
 or ten weeks of the year. But what a school! 
 Mere mechanical teaching of the three R's, a simple 
 exercise of memory, without the slightest appeal 
 to the intelligence; a school, in short, which 
 awaited, like so many others, the reforms which 
 Mann was to introduce at a later day. 
 
 The village church, in the quality of its religious 
 instruction, was worth even less than the school. 
 It was conducted by a fanatical preacher, Dr. 
 Evans, an extra- or hyper-Calvinist, as Mann called 
 him, whose only aim was to terrorize his flock 
 by dismal pictures of future punishment in the 
 next world. The youthful Mann, with the docility 
 of his childish imagination, trembled and shud- 
 dered like the rest under these terrifying threats 
 of eternal perdition. But an event was to occur, 
 
12 HORACE MANN 
 
 which completely revolutionized his ideas. At 
 the age of twelve he lost a brother whom he tenderly 
 loved, and in the anguish of his grief the boy 
 learned to reflect. Guided by his heart, sustained 
 by his growing reason, he was seized by an instinct 
 of rebellion; he said to himself that it was not 
 possible that his beloved brother should have to 
 endure eternal punishment in another world; that 
 the God he worshipped was not a monster of cruelty. 
 He had reached a moment of moral crisis, almost 
 such a night as Jauffray describes. "I remember, 
 as if it were yesterday," he said long after, "the 
 day, the hour, the place, the circumstances, in 
 which I broke the chains which had bound me." 
 From that hour dated for Mann the awakening 
 of mind which was to lead to a sincere but very 
 broad religious faith, moral rather than theological, 
 and free from servitude to dogmas, of which some 
 one has said: "What would be called religion in 
 others, was morality in Mann." 
 
 Mann's early education had been acquired a 
 little at random, like that of Rousseau, but in 
 the absolutely pure and innocent atmosphere of 
 country life. It was from a wandering professor 
 that he learned the rudiments of Latin. An 
 ardent reader, he was at the same time a fervent 
 worshipper of nature ; he loved to watch a glorious 
 
HORACE MANN 13 
 
 sunrise, and at night stretched out on a grassy 
 meadow to " feast his eyes on the starry heavens.' 7 
 
 He had an intense natural love of beauty, and 
 later, when he had become a pedagogue, he did 
 not conceal his distrust of a purely bookish educa- 
 tion. "It is a great mistake/ 7 he said, "to be a 
 slave to books. The secret of education is not 
 love of books, but love of knowledge. 77 
 
 A poet lay dormant in him — he himself has 
 said so — a tender enthusiastic poet who reveals 
 himself in his flights of oratory and in his literary 
 style, whether by dazzling wealth of imagery 
 or by the lyrical expression of noble sentiments. 
 Proud and high-souled, he was at the same time 
 the most sensitive of men, uniting rare energy 
 with deep tenderness of nature. When in his 
 later life he was called upon at times to reprimand 
 an unruly pupil, it was with difficulty that he could 
 restrain his tears. 
 
 In his family relations he showed the most 
 exquisite delicacy of feeling; while his frankness 
 and tenderness of nature gave infinite charm to 
 his friendship. 
 
 For thirty years he lived with his mother, taking 
 care to shield her from all knowledge of his griefs 
 and perplexities lest they should sadden her, and 
 seeking by every means in his power to make 
 
14 HORACE MANN 
 
 her life tranquil and happy. "The most exquisite 
 emotion I have ever felt," he writes, "was in 
 observing my mother's face brighten and her 
 step grow lighter on hearing something good said 
 of me, and to feel that this change in her bearing 
 proceeded from a secret well-spring of pleasure 
 which I had touched in her heart." 
 
 One of the joys of his life was to return to Frank- 
 lin and revisit the scenes of his childhood. He 
 often made pilgrimages thither, and saw with 
 emotions of melancholy the paternal roof, which 
 had passed into strangers' hands. 
 
 "Here lived my father whom I dimly remember 
 and my mother whose memory is so much a part 
 of me, and of whom I can say that if there is any 
 good in me, I owe it to her." 
 
 Two noble filial souls have expressed the same 
 sentiments in kindred language at an interval of 
 fifteen centuries. "From my father," said Mar- 
 cus Aurelius, "I inherit modesty; to my mother 
 I owe my piety." 
 
 Mann carried into his friendships the same ten- 
 derness as into his family ties. The list is long of 
 the distinguished men with whom he held fra- 
 ternal relations. Let us name first Dr. Howe, 
 who has been called the Lafayette of Greek inde- 
 pendence, having served as surgeon-in-chief to 
 
HORACE MANN 15 
 
 the Greek army and navy during the revolution 
 of 1822, and who, on his return to America, de- 
 voted himself to founding and developing institu- 
 tions for the blind, the deaf and dumb, and the 
 feeble-minded. (It was he who educated the famous 
 deaf, dumb, and blind girl, Laura Bridgman.) 
 
 Channing, the celebrated leader of the Unitarian 
 body, to which Mann himself belonged, 1 was also 
 among his friends, as was Theodore Parker, the 
 only preacher whom he enjoyed hearing, and 
 who once wrote to him: " Spare your strength; 
 remember that if you kill yourself, it will take the 
 Lord a long time to give us another Horace Mann." 
 
 To this list belongs also George Combe, the 
 philosopher, of whom Mann was the disciple as 
 well as friend, and many more to whom he was 
 bound by community of sentiments and an equal 
 enthusiasm for the cause of popular education. 
 Edward Everett, who had been appointed governor 
 of Massachusetts, actively seconded his efforts, 
 as did Senator Sumner and the mayor of Boston, 
 Josiah Quincy. 
 
 1 The sect of Unitarians, whose origin we must seek in the 
 England of the seventeenth century, is the most liberal of Amer- 
 ican religious bodies. Its followers admit revelation without 
 accepting all its dogmas. There are no less than 600 Unitarian 
 congregations in America at the present day. 
 
16 HORACE MANN 
 
 For his sister Mann cherished the warmest 
 affection and a devotion of which he gave proof 
 by coming to her aid in a serious crisis and saving 
 her husband, a merchant who had failed in business, 
 from financial ruin. She remained all her life the 
 intimate confidante of his thoughts. 
 
 What shall be said of his worship of her whom 
 he had chosen as the companion of his life, and 
 who was suddenly snatched from him by death 
 after two brief years of perfect happiness? He 
 had married her in 1831 after an engagement of 
 ten years. Her loss left in his heart a wound that 
 was long in healing. In his first grief he wrote: 
 "My whole life was centred in the home which 
 she brightened by her presence. 1 She imparted 
 to me renewed strength for my work and inspired 
 me with fresh motives for courageous activity. 
 I should never end if I attempted to describe the 
 revelation of moral beauty that flowed from her 
 life and the grace of feeling which sprang like a deli- 
 cate flower from the adamant of her virtues." 
 
 The public-spirited citizen was in no respect 
 inferior to the son, brother, and husband. As 
 a lawyer Mann made it a rule to accept only just 
 causes and to plead only for the truth ; as a mem- 
 
 1 Mann's first wife was the daughter of Dr. Messer of Brown 
 University, where he had been a student. 
 
HORACE MANN 17 
 
 ber of the legislature and senator he rose above 
 party politics, speaking only in behalf of public 
 interests and great philanthropic causes. 
 
 In 1816, at the age of twenty, Mann had become 
 a regular student at Brown University, a small 
 college founded in 1764 in the city of Providence. 
 In order to pay his matriculation fees, he gave 
 lessons as a tutor during the vacations, thus follow- 
 ing a custom still prevalent among the poor students 
 of American colleges, some of whom are reduced 
 to the necessity of paying their way by seeking 
 service as hotel waiters and the like during the 
 summer. At Brown, Mann studied law, and dis- 
 tinguished himself at once among his companions. 
 His masters bore witness that he was the best stu- 
 dent in the university and, at the same time, the 
 best whist player. 
 
 One trait already characterizes Mann's turn 
 of mind and natural trend of thought, — he chose 
 for his last scholastic thesis the following subject: 
 "On the Progressive Character of the Human Race." 
 It is this belief in progress, in the indefinite de-\ 
 velopment of the moral and intellectual faculties \ 
 of man, which was to be the watchword of his^ 
 whole life and the motive of all his actions. 1 
 
 1 Another of Mann's youthful writings was entitled " On the 
 Duty of every American toward Posterity." 
 
18 HORACE MANN 
 
 On the conclusion of his studies and after having 
 held for some time a professorship of Latin and 
 Greek literature at Brown University, Mann settled 
 in Dedham, a small Massachusetts town, where 
 he entered upon the practice of the law, pleading 
 cases before the Norfolk and Boston bars. He 
 was already in full possession of his oratorical 
 powers. He was, according to the testimony of his 
 biographers, a redoubtable orator, with a terrible 
 power of sledge-hammer retorts, which he hurled 
 at his adversaries like bombshells thrown into 
 an enemy's camp. On the occasion of the national 
 holiday, the 4th of July, 1824, Mann delivered 
 an address which attracted the notice of John 
 Quincy Adams, 1 future President of the United 
 States, the same whom Mann was to succeed twenty- 
 five years later as member of the House of 
 Representatives. 
 
 His reputation grew from year to year, until 
 he had become the most highly esteemed lawyer 
 in that region. It was in 1827 that the confidence 
 of the electors of Norfolk County called him to 
 a seat in the State legislature of Massachusetts. 
 
 1 John Quincy Adams was President of the United States from 
 1825-1829. A few years after the expiration of his term as Presi- 
 dent, he was elected member of Congress from Massachusetts and 
 continued to be elected until he died. 
 
HORACE MANN 19 
 
 In 1830 he was elected State senator, then presi- 
 dent of the Senate in 1836. 
 
 The part he took in political assemblies was 
 always a brilliant one. He preached as often as 
 possible what he called his " gospel of temperance 
 and education.' ' But his idealism did not divert 
 him from a due concern for the material interests 
 of his country. His two first speeches in Con- 
 gress were respectively upon religious liberty and 
 upon railroads. But the subjects which chiefly 
 occupied his energies at this period, when he was 
 in the habit of working sixteen hours a day, were 
 the establishment of a lunatic asylum and the 
 campaign against intemperance. After five years 
 of constant effort Mann obtained from the House 
 a vote for necessary funds to erect a commodious 
 and suitable building, the Worcester asylum, where 
 two hundred and thirty insane patients were to 
 be received, treated with gentleness and humanity, 
 and employed in agricultural pursuits. "We have 
 overthrown the dungeons of inhumanity," he ex- 
 claimed, on accomplishing this work; "the out- 
 works are stormed at least, and some of the unhappy 
 prisoners can now enjoy the beauty of the physical 
 world, and before long I hope they will share the 
 benefits of the moral world." In this humani- 
 tarian enterprise Mann was not merely a promoter, 
 
20 HORACE MANN 
 
 but, charged with organizing it personally, he 
 gave proof of those administrative talents which 
 he was to display some }^ears later in his scholastic 
 campaign. Let us add that he found excellent 
 associates to aid him; among others a woman, 
 "the adorable" Miss Dix, to whom he paid this 
 signal homage : 
 
 "If Queen Victoria in one of her triumphal 
 progresses through her states were to encounter 
 this more than sovereign American woman on 
 one of her charitable progresses, it is the former, 
 not the latter, who ought to bend the knee and 
 kiss the other's hand. Yes, the empress of so 
 many millions of mankind should bow before 
 this angel from heaven, sent down for the salvation 
 of poor insane men and women." 
 
 Mann was no less fortunate in his struggle against 
 intemperance. Himself one of the most temperate 
 of men, I do not know whether he had sworn to 
 his mother, like Lincoln, never to touch intoxicat- 
 ing liquors, but he did, in fact, abstain from doing 
 so, lamenting that he found so few imitators. 
 To plant a school near every dwelling and to re- 
 move the saloon, such was his plan. "How many 
 thousands of drunkards would never have become 
 so if the saloon had been five miles away from 
 their home!" 
 
HORACE MANN 21 
 
 In 1832 Mann proposed a law forbidding the 
 public sale of intoxicating liquors, at least on 
 Sundays. The project received but two favorable 
 votes, including, no doubt, his own. But he was 
 not the man to let himself be discouraged by a first 
 failure ; and thanks to his tenacity and his eloquence, 
 the law was passed in 1837 by two hundred and 
 forty votes to seventeen in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives and twenty-three to six in the Senate. 
 Thus fortune smiled on Mann's political career; 
 he had become a power in the Massachusetts legis- 
 lature, but beneath this brilliant surface, his private 
 life held much of sadness. Since 1833 his home 
 had been desolate, and he had never become rec- 
 onciled to his loss. In the private journal to 
 which he was accustomed to confide every evening 
 the events of his life and his inmost thoughts, 
 he speaks sadly of "days devoid of consolation 
 and sleepless, tearful nights." Poverty had pur- 
 sued him even amid his successes at the bar and 
 in the House. Who could have imagined that 
 for a period of six months the brilliant statesman, 
 the busy lawyer, had only the means of dining once 
 in two days. At this time he denied himself and 
 incurred heavy debts in order to help his brother- 
 in-law, who had failed. His health, which had 
 been undermined by labor and privations, grew 
 
22 HORACE MANN 
 
 daily worse, so that his friends at one time de- 
 spaired of his life; and this man of forty-one 
 years, who appeared to be broken down and utterly 
 crushed, was about to recover his strength and 
 energies at the call of an inner voice which sum- 
 moned him to act in behalf of humanity, — in behalf 
 of education for the people. He was about to 
 devote himself exclusively to the cause of educa- 
 tion and to enter upon a campaign in favor of 
 schools, — a campaign of twelve years full of sacri- 
 fices and efforts, the noblest, assuredly, which the 
 annals of education have to offer us. 
 
II 
 
 Horace Mann, Secretary of the Boston 
 Bureau of Education 
 
 On the 20th of April, 1837, Mann, in his capacity 
 of president of the Massachusetts Senate, signed 
 an official act relating to public schools which 
 was to decide the future course of his life. By 
 this act a board of education was established, whose 
 primal object was to study and investigate the 
 moral and material condition of the schools in order, 
 subsequently, to discover and apply the best methods 
 of improving them, the board being thus both an 
 examining and a reforming body. A few months 
 later Mann was appointed its secretary, and this 
 modest title was to enable him to become for a 
 long period the capable and indefatigable agent 
 for the reorganization of the school system of his 
 country. 1 
 
 It was a great change in his life ; he now became 
 the advocate for all men. "Let my new clients, 
 
 1 Channing, the leading Unitarian divine, wrote to him: " I hear 
 that you are about to devote yourself to the cause of education in 
 our Republic. I rejoice over it." 
 
 23 
 
24 HORACE MANN 
 
 the rising generation, come to me/' he said. From 
 the outset he had traced for himself a line of moral 
 conduct, — "May God grant me to subdue my ego- 
 tism and give me wisdom of mind and kindness 
 of heart," — and at the same time he set before 
 himself a course of action which he was to carry 
 out as faithfully as the former. He sketched 
 it in these terms in a letter to his sister: "If I can 
 be the instrument of a reform which will settle 
 how schools can be better taught, what are the 
 best books, the best plans of study, the best methods 
 of education; if I can discover by what means 
 a child who does not speak, who does not think, 
 who does not reflect, can surely become by means 
 of education a noble citizen, ready to fight for 
 the right and die for it, may I not flatter myself 
 with the hope that I have not labored in vain?" 
 
 And with that power of imagination which 
 made the most distant events present to him, 
 which showed him the future as if it already ex- 
 isted, he dreamed of the harvest while he was 
 sowing the seed. He beheld his beloved Massa- 
 chusetts covered with flourishing schools, the other 
 States of the Union following her example, and 
 the whole human race regenerated by education! 
 
 The faith which animated him was early im- 
 planted in his soul; it was drawn from a double 
 
HORACE MANN 25 
 
 source, — his devotion to men and his love of children. 
 No one has spoken of childhood more tenderly 
 than he: 
 
 "How engaging children are in their happy 
 unconsciousness ! Ignorant, when they must have 
 knowledge in order to live ; absorbed in the present, 
 when they are embarked for eternity; blind in 
 the midst of perils; as unconscious of the noble 
 enthusiasms and ardent passions which slumber 
 in their breasts as the cloud is of the storm and 
 thunder it hides in its bosom, — such are these 
 cherished beings whose future is in our hands. . . ." 
 
 Let us quote one more charming passage : 
 
 "How did this fair child come to us so full of music 
 and poetry ? Who put a whole dancing-school into 
 his steps? At the least sound which arouses his 
 gayety, he seems to throw off the law of gravita- 
 tion ; he floats, he glides as if his body were a light 
 feather and his soul a breeze playing with it. The 
 child is the greatest of miracles ! . . ." 
 
 How many times before becoming secretary 
 of the Board of Education had Mann addressed 
 to his countrymen moving appeals in behalf of 
 instruction, such as he was about to renew un- 
 ceasingly until he had brought them to feel as he 
 did, until he had made them realize the importance 
 of education, until he had carried them with him, 
 
26 HORACE MANN 
 
 so that all should resolve to shed light and truth 
 upon mankind "as God sheds sunshine and rain 
 upon the earth ! " 
 
 "How is this?" he cried. "If some one should 
 bring you word to-morrow that he had found 
 a coal mine which would bring in ten per cent, 
 would you not hasten to invest in it? And yet 
 here are men who might bring you in forty or 
 fifty per cent, and you leave them grovelling in 
 ignorance. You know how to make use of plants 
 and animals, you can produce wheat from herd's- 
 grass and turn the jackal into a dog; . . . and 
 you have children of whom you can make nothing ! 
 
 "You build hospitals, you establish law-courts. 
 Why? To punish people for the ignorance which 
 has made them criminals ; to harbor poor wretches 
 who have failed here below for lack of instruction. 
 But are you not yourselves -the unconscious authors 
 and accomplices of these evils which you vainly seek 
 to prevent or to cure? Build schools then; you 
 will thus abolish ignorance, crime, and misery. 
 You will quench hatred and make the happiness 
 and greatness of the nation through the prosperity 
 and morality of each of its citizens." 
 
 The aim which Mann was pursuing by his personal 
 efforts he had long since proposed to his countrymen. 
 He had dreamed of it during his thoughtful child- 
 
HORACE MANN 27 
 
 hood on the shores of the ocean, during his youth 
 at Brown University when he delivered essays 
 on human progress, in his manhood when he sat 
 in the legislature. But at the moment when he 
 was himself intrusted with the accomplishment 
 of his dream, anxiety mingled with his enthusiasm. 
 Men of ability are apt to distrust their own talents 
 and powers. Should he prove capable of carry- 
 ing on so great a mission and succeeding in an 
 enterprise which was partly technical ? "I tremble, " 
 he writes in his diary, "at the idea of this task 
 which has fallen to me." His adversaries re- 
 proached him, in fact, with a lack of scholastic 
 experience. He had been, it is true, a tutor in 
 Providence and a member of the school committee 
 in Dedham. But these were slender qualifications 
 beside the professional claims of his competitor 
 for the office, Professor Carter, a teacher of long 
 experience. The governing powers of Massachu- 
 setts must have been fully persuaded of the pre- 
 eminence of Mann's moral qualities when they 
 chose him in preference to such a candidate. They 
 had divined what miracles were to be expected 
 from his untiring devotion and from such rare 
 nobility of soul united with such admirable energy. 
 Mann amply justified their confidence, and af- 
 forded one more proof that it is not always one 
 
28 HORACE MANN 
 
 of the trade, a professional, but on the contrary, 
 an outsider who most frequently accomplishes the 
 great reforms in education. 
 
 That which added to the difficulties of Mann's 
 work was the nature of the duties intrusted to 
 him. Neither he nor the Board was invested 
 with any executive power. He did not have 
 that actual authority over schools and instructors 
 which the State of New York, for instance, con- 
 ferred on its superintendent of schools, an office 
 created in 1835. 
 
 The Boston Board deliberated, gave advice, 
 expressed its wishes, but did not direct in school 
 affairs. But the worth of institutions depends 
 upon the men who form part of them. With 
 a leader like Mann, who was its soul, the Board of 
 Education exercised a decisive action, an ex- 
 traordinary influence, over the school districts of 
 Massachusetts and later of the whole Union, such 
 as ministers of public instruction in other countries 
 might have reason to envy. The following detail 
 clearly shows how conscientiously Mann proceeded 
 to fulfil the duties of his position. Before setting 
 to work he entered upon a sort of pedagogical 
 retreat, devoting a certain time to retirement 
 and meditation. For several weeks he shut himself 
 up in company with books on education; he read 
 
HORACE MANN 29 
 
 and pondered over Miss Edgeworth's Practical Edu- 
 cation and The Necessity for Popular Education 
 by Dr. James Simpson. He took great pleasure 
 in this reading, which he pronounced "delight- 
 ful," and which furnished him with a store of new 
 ideas. He convinced himself more and more fully 
 that the educational mission on which he had 
 entered was the one that best suited his tastes, 
 feelings, and principles. This period of retirement 
 and reflection was not of long duration, however. 
 Mann received his appointment as secretary on 
 the 30th of June, 1837. By the 28th of August 
 of the same year he had opened the campaign 
 with his first lecture tours. It was a brilliant 
 beginning. In each of the fourteen counties of 
 Massachusetts, Mann assembled conventions of all 
 the friends of education, teachers, members of 
 school committees from the three hundred districts 
 in the State, leading members of the community; 
 in short, all who were eager to listen to the burn- 
 ing words of the great educator. Mann well knew 
 that his first mission was to win souls, to arouse 
 good-will, to create a current of opinion, to com- 
 municate to others the enthusiasm with which 
 he was himself possessed. It was at this price 
 only that he could hope for success. He must 
 obtain the moral support of all those interested 
 
30 HORACE MANN 
 
 in the reform of schools, rouse from their torpor 
 the old school committees, whose origin dated 
 back to the seventeenth century. He must also 
 secure the material support of wealthy citizens, 
 from whom he solicited donations while awaiting 
 the moment when these private liberalities should 
 arouse the emulation of the State, from which he 
 hoped later to obtain funds to endow the various 
 scholastic establishments which he proposed to found. 
 On the one hand, he must influence public opinion 
 to desire and demand the necessary reforms; on 
 the other hand, he must induce the legislatures 
 of the country to vote for them and carry them 
 into execution. A minister of education would 
 have been able to draw up orders and sign decrees; 
 Mann could only call conventions and draw up 
 reports. His position -can be defined by saying 
 that he was before all, not a philosopher, not a 
 practical instructor, but a soldier, a tribune of 
 education, a missionary who journeyed from town 
 to town, from village to village, spreading his ideas 
 and his faith, a Peter the Hermit preaching a cru- 
 sade against ignorance. On his lecture tours Mann 
 lavished his eloquence like an American Jean 
 Mace, — a Jean Mace of greater powers as an 
 orator and loftier flights. He often addressed 
 different audiences for twenty-five successive days. 
 
HORACE MANN 31 
 
 In that free American democracy which contains 
 so many kings, — railroad kings, petroleum kings, 
 and the rest, — Mann was the lecture king. We 
 have since seen presidential candidates in the 
 United States multiply themselves to a still greater 
 extent, and under the spur of ambition pour forth 
 an even greater number of speeches, but in the 
 matter of scholastic addresses, disinterested speeches 
 in the cause of education, Mann undoubtedly 
 holds the record, not for his own country alone, 
 but for the whole world. 
 
 We must not imagine, however, that he met 
 with constant success in these oratorical cam- 
 paigns, which he carried on with so fine an ardor. 
 His annual lecture trip was not invariably a tri- 
 umphal progress. On one occasion he had an 
 audience consisting of three ladies; another day, 
 a humiliating day, he found himself alone ! He 
 owns sadly that political speeches would have 
 been better attended. "Politics," he added, "are 
 the only god of this people." And he adds jestingly, 
 "If a mob collects anywhere, instead of reading 
 the riot act to disperse it, one has only to announce 
 a lecture on education; that will be sufficient — 
 not a soul will remain." 
 
 Let us add that Mann, although a born orator, 
 never addressed an audience without fear and 
 
32 HORACE MANN 
 
 trembling. He had, moreover, to contend against 
 physical weakness. On the eve of delivering three 
 or four lectures in succession, he writes in his diary, 
 "Alas for my poor body!" 
 
 He carried on this propaganda with his pen as 
 well as by speeches; he began publishing in 1838 
 a scholastic newspaper called the Common School 
 Journal, which he continued to conduct for ten 
 years. He there set forth in detail his views on 
 special questions relating to teaching and educa- 
 tional methods. He thus led the way for all the 
 pedagogical journals which have since flourished 
 in the United States; notably, the Journal of Edu- 
 cation which Barnard, the Horace Mann of Con- 
 necticut, edited for thirty-one years. But it was, 
 above all, by the publication of his reports that 
 Mann exercised a marked influence on public 
 opinion. The twelve statements which he drew 
 up year after year are a genuine pedagogical monu- 
 ment. They occupied about a thousand pages 
 in the edition of his works. Issued in a large 
 edition, about twenty thousand copies, they were 
 circulated in all directions, read in remote hamlets 
 as well as in great cities; people learned from 
 them what schools were and what they ought to 
 be. Officially addressed to the Board of Educa- 
 tion, they were in reality destined for the people, 
 
HORACE MANN 33 
 
 whom it was urgent to instruct as to the importance 
 of education. In short, they were veritable scho- 
 lastic manifestoes summoning public opinion to 
 provide instruction for the people. 
 
 Thus Mann's annual reports resume twelve years 
 of intense labor and fruitful results; they have, 
 in the first place, historic interest, exhibiting as 
 they do the scholastic situation of the period 
 before proceeding to relate what Mann did or 
 attempted to do to improve it. If in the final 
 pages of these reports he can justly celebrate the 
 progress brought about by twelve years of labor, 
 he frankly admits at the outset the condition 
 of weakness and poverty into which the three 
 hundred schools of Massachusetts had fallen. 1 The 
 fault lay especially with the school committees, 
 which fulfilled but negligently the wide functions 
 which existing legislation had intrusted to them. 
 They were to choose text-books, to decide upon 
 the children too poor to purchase them, — to 
 
 1 The history of American education proves how powerless the 
 laws are when they are in advance of the manners and habits of a 
 people. When Mann set about his work it was more than two 
 hundred years since the first colonists of America had resolved to 
 establish a sytem of gratuitous instruction (1630) and of obliga- 
 tory instruction (1642). In 1647 it had already been decided that 
 there should be a primary school for every fifty families, and a 
 higher school for every hundred families, but nothing of the kind 
 existed. 
 
34 HORACE MANN 
 
 whom they should be furnished gratuitously, — 
 to visit each school once a month. It was also 
 their mission to preside over the choice of teachers, 
 and to make sure that those selected were the 
 best it was possible to secure "as guardians of that 
 inestimable treasure, — the children of the district." 
 But ineffectual as are our own school committees 
 (appointed to insure the execution of the law of 
 obligatory attendance) the American committees 
 seem to have discharged their duties very little 
 better. School inspections were not carried out 
 seriously. The committee man too often con- 
 tented himself with a brief call in the course of 
 a country drive or a business trip, during which 
 he fastened his horse at the gate, entered the school- 
 house to rest and warm himself, and this done, 
 his inspection was over. 
 
 Like a physician who thoroughly studies all 
 the symptoms of a disease before attempting its 
 cure, Mann took careful note of all the defects 
 and vices of the system he was attempting to 
 reform, and in the highly unflattering picture he 
 draws of the situation, he addresses many re- 
 proaches to the committees. They do not pay 
 sufficient attention, he says, to the choice of school- 
 books, and they authorize too great a number; 
 they do not take sufficient precautions in nominat- 
 
HORACE MANN 35 
 
 ing teachers, of whom two-thirds are incapable, 
 not having passed the examinations required by 
 law. The school attendance is most irregular, 
 a third of the pupils being absent during the winter 
 months, and two-fifths during the summer; the 
 schoolhouses are poor and out of repair; the me- 
 chanical system of instruction is the only one in 
 favor; and, finally, the salaries of both men and 
 women teachers are insufficient, being about twenty- 
 five dollars for men and eleven for women. But 
 what vexed Mann's enthusiastic soul more than 
 all was the apathy of the people, who seemed 
 generally indifferent to school matters and un- 
 concerned for the education of their children; 
 and recalling the doctrine of Cousin, "As are 
 teachers, so are schools/ ' the American educator 
 proposed to alter it to, "As are parents, so are 
 schools and teachers." 
 
 These twelve reports of Mann's are a world in 
 themselves. All the essential questions of educa- 
 tion are considered and settled in turn in this vast 
 compendium of theoretical pedagogy, over which 
 we shall cast a rapid glance. The reader will 
 be especially struck by the breadth and largeness 
 of Mann's views, but he will soon be made aware 
 that the secretary of the Boston Board did not 
 lose himself amid vague speculations. Mann was 
 
36 HORACE MANN 
 
 not a mere preacher of the ideal, he was an Ameri- 
 can, and consequently positive and practical; the 
 most minute questions of material organization 
 interest him equally with the loftiest problems of 
 moral training; he discusses the schoolroom desks 
 and benches with as much care and competence 
 as the philosophic principles of discipline. In 
 his first report, Mann deals with ventilation, 
 lighting, and heating; he wants no more school- 
 rooms where the wind and rain can enter and the 
 ink freeze in the ink-stands. He is anxious to place 
 these, whom he calls his eighty thousand Massachu- 
 setts children, in healthful and hygienic surroundings. 
 In his second report, he examines the methods 
 of instruction in reading, and condemns the alpha- 
 betical process, which consists in spelling by letters, 
 for which he would substitute the "word method," 
 which consists in teaching combinations of syllables 
 and words which recall to the child familiar objects 
 and attractive ideas. 
 
 In the third report, after referring to child labor 
 in factories, Mann points out the importance of 
 libraries and the influence which reading exerts over 
 the character. In the fourth, he treats of school 
 attendance, and insists upon the necessity of divid- 
 ing the pupils of each school into graded classes. 
 
 The fifth introduces us to more general questions. 
 
HORACE MANN 37 
 
 Mann therein sets forth the benefits of education 
 and shows how it enriches men materially, being 
 not only a source of moral wealth, but "an impor- 
 tant factor in economics." " Wealth always follows 
 intelligence; the hand is another and a better 
 hand when knowledge guides it." The sixth re- 
 port is devoted almost exclusively to a special 
 subject, to which Mann attached the highest im- 
 portance, one of his favorite theses, — the necessity 
 of giving physiology a place among school studies. 
 On this point Herbert Spencer has merely followed 
 in Mann's steps. "Whence comes it," says Mann, 
 "that one-quarter of the children who come into 
 the world die before reaching the age of one year, 
 unless it results from general ignorance of the 
 laws of life?" And still associating economic 
 reasons with sentiments of humanity, he adds: 
 "Infractions of physiological laws kill millions 
 of men and destroy millions of dollars." 
 
 The seventh report, which attracted great atten- 
 tion, is an account of the tour which Mann made in 
 1843 through various European countries; he also 
 considers here the question of corporal punishment 
 and the difficulties arising from the excessive 
 cultivation of the verbal memory. 
 
 In the report of 1844 Mann devotes himself 
 to the development of an idea which was dear to 
 
38 HORACE MANN 
 
 him, — the employment of women as teachers ; he 
 also attacks the question of normal schools and 
 that of the study of vocal music. 
 
 The ninth report, that of 1845, is one of the 
 most important. Mann here points out to what 
 motives, — school motives, — to what principles of 
 action, discipline and moral training should in 
 his opinion appeal. He desires that the obedience 
 of pupils should in future be founded on affection 
 and respect, not upon fear. He lays bare the 
 dangers of jealousy and envy arising from emu- 
 lation; and, passing from modes of discipline to 
 methods of instruction, he follows Pestalozzi in 
 asking that induction be substituted for deduction, 
 the personal research of an awakened intelligence 
 for the mechanical tasks of slavish memorizing. 
 
 In 1846, satisfied with the results so far attained, 
 Mann allows himself to review the past and pro- 
 ceeds to write a history of the Massachusetts schools 
 from their origin in those early days when the 
 Pilgrim Fathers brought with them from Europe 
 to the virgin soil of America their Puritan faith 
 and their ideal of civic independence. 
 
 Returning the following year to the influence 
 and effects of education, he shows how it can cure 
 social evils, vices, and crimes; and, finally, in a 
 twelfth report, the summing up and, as it were, 
 
HORACE MANN 39 
 
 the climax of all the rest, he raises a paean of victory 
 and celebrates once more the virtues of the public 
 schools. 
 
 Assuredly the twelve reports of Mann are 
 rather the work of a man of action, of an educa- 
 tional leader, than of a philosopher or a pedagogue 
 who originates methods. But they were admirably 
 adapted to his aim, which was to arouse the popular 
 mind and make educational questions the order of 
 the day in his country. "How many dead minds 
 there are to resuscitate!" he exclaimed. Doubt- 
 less he experienced many disappointments; his 
 flaming words often fell upon stony hearts; 
 he was confronted with inertia and indifference. 
 "When I am about to present my gospel of educa- 
 tion in some new place, I feel as if I were standing 
 in bad weather before the door of a house and 
 vainly pulling the bell, with no one at home or all 
 too busy to see me." But little by little, thanks 
 to his persistence, the people awoke; the door was 
 opened. 
 
 "There is not one city," he said, some years 
 later, "in which I have not found warm friends 
 of education — everywhere there are a few, in 
 some places their name is legion." In drawing 
 up his reports Mann first made use of his own 
 observations, of all the facts and ideas he had 
 
40 HORACE MANN 
 
 collected in the course of his official tours and his 
 personal investigations. But indefatigable worker 
 as he was, he excelled also in the art of making 
 others work. He caused to be sent to him each 
 year by the school committees more than three 
 hundred local reports, — as many as there were dis- 
 tricts in the State; and thanks to these regular 
 communications, he was thoroughly well posted. 
 
 But in order to inform himself still more fully, 
 he appealed to volunteer co-workers, and applied 
 successfully the method which has since become 
 extremely popular in America, and which in our 
 own day an attempt has been made to introduce 
 into France: that of sending circulars or sets of 
 questions upon various subjects addressed to com- 
 petent persons. Thus, in 1841, he made an inquiry 
 by correspondence into the subject of which he 
 had treated in his fifth report. He inquired of 
 business men, merchants, manufacturers, their opin- 
 ions as to education from an economic point of 
 view. 
 
 Similarly, in 1847, he proposed the following 
 questions: "What influence may the school have 
 on the morality of the pupils? Under the in- 
 fluence of the best systems of education which 
 we are able to establish to-day, in what proportion 
 can we hope that the children attending the schools 
 
HORACE MANN 41 
 
 will become honorable men, honest merchants, 
 conscientious jurymen, incorruptible legislators, 
 electors, and magistrates, good parents, good neigh- 
 bors, and useful citizens? What number, on the 
 other hand, will remain refractory to all efforts 
 made to preserve them from vice? What pro- 
 portion out of a hundred of these children are 
 liable to become drunkards, gamblers, tramps, 
 rioters, thieves, slanderers, murderers?" Mann dis- 
 tributed this circular among such of his country- 
 men as were best qualified to pronounce an opin- 
 ion, notably to David Page, Solomon Adams, 
 Roger Howard, Catherine Beecher. All replied 
 that the influence of the school might be supreme, 
 and this unanimous testimony filled Mann with 
 delight. 
 
 Of all Mann's reports the one which attracted 
 the most notice was the seventh, in which he gave 
 an account of his journey to Europe in 1843. Mann 
 had married, on the 1st of May of that year, Mary 
 Peabody, who, like her sister Elizabeth, had devoted 
 herself to the work of education. This European 
 trip was their wedding journey. It was to be also 
 a rest tour for Mann, who was so much exhausted 
 by his labors and struggles that he had begun to 
 ask himself whether he should have strength to 
 carry on his work. His brain was so excited by 
 
42 HORACE MANN 
 
 a perpetual, feverish activity that "it worked of 
 itself," according to an expression of Dr. Howe. 
 
 Finally, it was a tour for study, the traditional 
 European tour, which Barnard, who constantly 
 emulated Mann, was to accomplish in his turn 
 two years later, in 1845. How many have since 
 followed in their steps! During his six months 
 of travel, Mann interested himself with a lively 
 curiosity in all the sights which the Old World 
 offered to his astonished eyes. His journal is 
 full of brilliant descriptions, whether of the monu- 
 ments, museums, churches, which he visited, or of 
 the historic sights and scenery which he gazed 
 at in passing. But it is especially the philan- 
 thropic establishments — the hospitals, prisons, 
 houses of reform for young culprits, asylums for 
 the blind and deaf and dumb, and, above all, the 
 schools — which attracted his attention. On this 
 last point he does full justice to the Old World, 
 praising the schools of Scotland and especially 
 those of Germany to such an extent that he seriously 
 offended the national pride of his countrymen. 
 At Halle he admires Francke's Institute, with its 
 three thousand pupils, at that time under the direc- 
 tion of Niemeyer; and he respectfully salutes the 
 statue of its founder, the pedestal of which bears 
 the simple inscription: "He had faith in God." 
 
HORACE MANN 43 
 
 At Darmstadt he is surprised to learn from the 
 director of schools that fortunate Germany had 
 no difficulties to encounter in regard to school 
 attendance and regularity on the part of the pupils, 
 because " German children are born with the innate 
 idea that they are to go to school." "With us," 
 Mann adds sadly, "the school records of present 
 and absent prove that this instinct is unknown 
 to the American child." In Berlin, at Groningen 1 
 in Prussia, in Saxony especially, Mann found 
 occasion for praising and extolling, not perhaps 
 without a strain of exaggeration, the qualities of 
 German instructors. 
 
 "All the defects of the German schools," he 
 wrote, "find their corrective in the qualities of 
 the masters. If one could bring together all those 
 whom I have visited in their schools, they would 
 form one of the finest assemblages of men I have 
 ever met. Full of intelligence, of dignity, and 
 gentleness, they give by their manners and bear- 
 ing the impression of conscientious devotion to 
 duty. In our American schools, where we often 
 
 1 In these two cities, Mann, who had always been deeply inter- 
 ested in the deaf and dumb language, ascertained that articulate 
 speech had already been substituted for the old system of a sign 
 language. On his return to America, he attempted to popularize the 
 use of the new method, but without success. Articulate speech 
 was not to be introduced in America until twenty-six years later, 
 when it was taught in Boston. 
 
44 HORACE MANN 
 
 have recourse to women as teachers, one of the 
 chief arguments in favor of this practice is that 
 women are gentler, more affectionate and encourag- 
 ing than men. In Germany this argument would 
 not be understood, or rather the facts which justify 
 it with us do not exist there. Indeed, I have 
 never seen in the German schools a single instance 
 of harshness or severity; all is encouragement, 
 animation, sympathy. I have seen hundreds of 
 schools and thousands of pupils, but I have never 
 met one pupil who underwent punishment in my 
 presence." 
 
 There is certainly some exaggeration here; 
 gentleness has never been claimed as the chief 
 quality of German schoolmasters. In the pres- 
 ence of the visiting inspector or of a stranger 
 taking notes, teachers and pupils are alike on 
 their guard and do not always show themselves 
 in their true light. With some naivete Mann 
 judged by appearances. He was also delighted 
 to observe what joy the German masters mani- 
 fested when their pupils replied correctly to the 
 questions put to them. "I have seen a master 
 in his gratification at a correct answer clasp his 
 pupil in his arms and caress him with paternal 
 tenderness, as if unable to repress his joyful 
 emotion. ..." 
 
HORACE MANN 45 
 
 Mann fortunately discovered other more inter- 
 esting and genuine features of German education: 
 the methods by which reading was taught, writing 
 treated as a branch of drawing, geography as- 
 sociated with history and the natural sciences, 
 the importance accorded to singing in schools. 
 
 Enthusiastic over Germany to such an extent 
 that some of his countrymen, on reading his account 
 of his journey, nicknamed him "the Prussian/ ' 
 Mann was, on the other hand, decidedly severe 
 toward the French schools. We need not wonder 
 at this; for in spite of the progress achieved since 
 the Guizot law was passed in 1833, we were still 
 at that time far behind Germany. The French 
 character seems, moreover, to have inspired in him 
 more distrust than sympathy. Ten years later, 
 in 1853, after the Napoleonic coup d'etat, he wrote 
 to his friend Combe: "What do you think of 
 France ? Frivolity, sensualism, Catholicism — from 
 these three causes united, what may not be the 
 issue debasing to humanity?" 
 
 In 1843 Mann could see in our people only their 
 defects: the military spirit of a nation eager for 
 glory and conquest, heir to the ambitions of 
 a Napoleon — and yet he visited France during the 
 peaceful reign of Louis Philippe. Read, for ex- 
 ample, what he writes after a visit to the park and 
 
46 HORACE MANN 
 
 palace of Versailles, of which he remarks, how- 
 ever, that they surpass in extent and splendor 
 all that he has yet seen in Europe. "The palace 
 of Versailles contains a gallery where the history 
 of France is told in painting. One sees there 
 pictures representing all Napoleon's great battles, 
 portraits of marshals of France, admirals, and 
 kings. Everything breathes of war; a warlike 
 flame blows over it; all is red with the blood of 
 battles. You would call it rather a temple dedicated 
 to Mars than the work of a civilized nation in the 
 nineteenth century of the so-called Christian era. 
 We should have said beforehand that it was im- 
 possible for such a work to have been conceived, 
 but when we know the French character thoroughly, 
 we say, on the contrary, that it was impossible 
 for such a work not to have been done. It is 
 only at rare intervals that we come across some 
 scattered memorials which recall the philosophers, 
 the sages, the philanthropists. All this is done 
 merely to cultivate and develop a passion for the 
 criminal glory of war. . . ." 
 
 If Mann were living now, he would perhaps 
 be obliged to modify somewhat his judgment of 
 France and it is for American imperialism that 
 he would doubtless reserve some of his bitterest 
 censures. On the whole, he returned from his 
 
HORACE MANN 47 
 
 travels with mingled impressions. The moral sit- 
 uation of Europe, its political and social institu- 
 tions, were not of a nature to suit either his republi- 
 canism or his virtue. He saw in them the result 
 of long centuries of ignorance, superstition, and 
 tyranny; he was aghast at the immorality dis- 
 played in the great cities. 
 
 "The children in certain quarters of Manchester 
 and London are surrounded by such baleful in- 
 fluences and such abominable examples that they 
 may be said to have been born to be imprisoned, 
 transported, or hung as surely as wheat grows to 
 be eaten." 
 
 And so from the heart of Europe, seeing all its 
 vices at close range and recalling America only 
 by its virtues, he reverted with pride to the memo- 
 ries of his beloved country; he evoked the shades 
 of the forefathers landing on Plymouth Rock; he 
 venerated them as if they had carried away from 
 Europe all the goodness there when they set forth 
 to build schoolhouses and churches amid the newly 
 cleared forests, that they might thus keep the sacred 
 flames of learning and piety still burning. 
 
 On his return to Boston, however, Mann was 
 destined to discover once again that all was not 
 for the best in the best of Americas, that the noblest 
 intentions could be misunderstood and travestied 
 
48 HORACE MANN 
 
 there, and that the spirit of piety inherited from 
 the Puritan forefathers might also have its defects 
 and inconveniences. In the genuine ardor of his 
 convictions, he had perhaps dreamed of a progress 
 without opposition, a mild and peaceable admin- 
 istration inspired by his kindly spirit and eagerly 
 accepted by all. He was soon undeceived ; violent 
 opposition and bitter quarrels awaited him, partly 
 religious and political, and partly professional. 
 It was especially after his European trip that the 
 storm burst; but from the start Mann's work had 
 been confronted by bitter opponents, among whom 
 was the Rev. Mr. Smith, a rabid Calvinist, who re- 
 minded him by his fanaticism of Parson Evans 
 of the Franklin church, and whom he dubbed "an 
 indomitable hyena." 
 
 History, it is said, repeats itself from age to age. 
 What is not less true is, that it repeats itself from 
 country to country. Separated by oceans though 
 they may be, the same plants spring up, the same 
 passions rage on either shore. Mann encountered 
 in his country the same violent opposition which 
 in our own day and our own land have prevailed 
 against the organizers of common school or primary 
 instruction. In the Massachusetts of fifty years 
 ago, as in France for the last twenty years, sec- 
 tarians have declaimed against what the}' call 
 
HORACE MANN 49 
 
 "godless schools." The organization of the public 
 school, of the American " civic school," as Mann 
 conceived it, strongly resembles in its origin the 
 establishment of lay schools in France. Up to 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century, the schools 
 of New England, the old Puritan schools, had 
 remained subject to the Church; the ministers 
 of religion visited them frequently and gave in- 
 struction in the catechism. Calvinism, at that 
 time the dominant, in fact, the only faith, reigned 
 supreme. The New England Primer, the reading- 
 book placed in the hands of the children, was 
 steeped in Calvinist doctrines. 
 
 For this sectarian school ruled by the Church, or 
 rather the churches, since orthodoxy had become 
 dismembered into several distinct sects, — Mann 
 had sought to substitute an undenominational 
 school, religious still, no doubt, since he recom- 
 mended the reading of the Bible and esteemed 
 it a work of inestimable value in forming the char- 
 acters of the young, — but independent of all de- 
 nominational teaching and severed from those 
 sects which divided between them the dominion 
 over souls. 
 
 In France, it is the philosophical and lay mind 
 which has succeeded tardily in separating the 
 school and the Church; in the United States, 
 
50 HORACE MANN 
 
 it is from the diversity of religious beliefs, from 
 the multiplicity of Christian churches, that the 
 same movement has emanated. As long as Cal- 
 vinism was dominant, there had been no difficulty 
 in accepting the teaching of one exclusive doctrine 
 in the schools; but when Baptists, Methodists, 
 Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Unitarians 
 began to divide the allegiance of the Christian 
 congregations, each of these sects, being no longer 
 able to rule alone in the schools, naturally sought 
 to eliminate all rival beliefs and to secularize in- 
 struction in the public schools, open as they were 
 to children of all seqts and conditions. 
 
 But this logical conclusion, to which the di- 
 versity of religious opinions would seem to lead, 
 was not yet admitted in Mann's time. The ortho- 
 dox sects, moreover, had not yet resigned them- 
 selves to the loss of their supremacy. Mann was 
 an object of suspicion in their eyes, — he was a Uni- 
 tarian; that is to say, what the most advanced 
 liberal Protestants are with us. He eliminated 
 creeds and was at bottom a rationalist, remaining 
 a Christian in spirit only, not according to the 
 letter. 
 
 Did he not give the worst possible example to 
 the young by abstaining from attendance at public 
 worship? It was remarked that on a certain 
 
HORACE MANN 51 
 
 Sunday he had failed to be present at any religious 
 service in the city where he had gone to lecture: 
 this was regarded as intolerable. Mann excused 
 himself, and perhaps aggravated his offence, by 
 remarking that as there were three churches of 
 different faiths in the town in question and he 
 had not attended any of them, he had committed 
 the offence with which he was charged three times 
 over. 
 
 As to the essential basis of the discussion, he 
 reminded his opponents that the legislative act 
 of 1827 had interdicted in the American schools 
 the use of books imbued with the spirit of any sect 
 whatever, and that accordingly he was, on the 
 whole, conforming to the law. Already in 1840 
 the sectarians in Massachusetts had opened the 
 conflict against Mann in the legislature. His friend 
 Everett was no longer there to defend him. The 
 moment appeared a favorable one for attacking 
 the liberals, as a wind of reaction was abroad in 
 the country. The United States in the ascending 
 march of their free democracy have known more 
 than one 16th of May. They had not been spared 
 the swing of the pendulum and the return to 
 power of the conservative party. The State of 
 New York had at this time actually abolished 
 the office of superintendent of schools which it 
 
52 HORACE MANN 
 
 had created several years previous. In Connecticut 
 a political reaction had deprived Barnard of his 
 position as superintendent. Why should not Mas- 
 sachusetts follow their example by suppressing 
 its Board of Education? Religious animosities 
 sought disguise under political pretexts. The Board, 
 that product of freedom, was represented as a dan- 
 gerous instrument of centralization, an organ of 
 despotic authority opposed to the spirit of Ameri- 
 can institutions. In spite of all this agitation 
 "the bigots," as Mann called them, were defeated 
 by 245 to 182 votes. Does not this recall the 
 doubtful victories which Jules Ferry won in 1880, 
 when he barely obtained from the Senate by 
 small majorities the vote for the school laws? 
 
 Mann had not only to struggle against religious 
 fanaticism and to repel the assaults of the odium 
 theologicum. To the orthodox sectarians were 
 joined the defenders of routine and tradition in 
 education. It was in 1843 and 1844 that the storm 
 burst forth with peculiar violence, excited by the 
 publication of Mann's report on his return from 
 abroad, in which he set forth the pedagogical 
 superiority of the Old World. The school-teachers 
 of Boston, to the number of thirty-one, banded 
 themselves against him. They had never for- 
 given him his appointment as secretary of the 
 
HORACE MANN 53 
 
 Board of Education in place of a professional 
 teacher. And now was it to be calmly endured 
 that an American should remark, among many 
 similar observations, that when he beheld the 
 activity of masters and pupils in European schools, 
 the schools of his own country seemed to him, in 
 comparison, like dormitories, and the pupils like 
 11 hibernating animals — actual marmots"? 
 
 Accordingly, the Boston professors on the plea 
 of patriotic sentiment proceeded to draw up a 
 species of arraignment against the Board and its 
 secretary. Their appeal was undoubtedly ad- 
 dressed to the national pride, wounded by the pref- 
 erence which Mann avowed for European schools, 
 but at bottom it was tradition with all its array 
 of prejudices which had risen against this innovator. 
 
 And it must be added that the professors in 
 their campaign against Mann were joined by the 
 authors and editors of classical school-books, who 
 felt their interests threatened, and who resented 
 statements like the following: " There are at this 
 moment three hundred text-books in use where 
 twenty or thirty would be sufficient." Teachers 
 are, as a rule, conservative in spirit and opposed 
 to innovations; those of Boston were peculiarly 
 so, by reason of the exceptional position which 
 their early fame had given them throughout the 
 
54 HORACE MANN 
 
 country. They were justly proud of their schools, 
 of which it had been said that they were the " glory 
 and pride of Massachusetts." Faithful to their 
 traditions, and feeling that they had carried the 
 time-honored system to perfection, they could 
 not conceive of any change as desirable or any 
 progress as possible. They had done very well 
 without a board of education for two hundred 
 years; they could do without it still. Mann had 
 come with his bold undertakings, upsetting estab- 
 lished institutions and disturbing time-honored 
 customs. His free and ardent speech, his mind 
 eager in quest of novelties, unsettled the general 
 tranquillity, and what authority had he for so 
 doing ? He was a mere amateur philosopher, med- 
 dling in matters of education of which he knew 
 nothing, without practical experience or scholastic 
 antecedents, — a lawyer astray amid pedagogues! 
 And while formulating their grievances, the one 
 and thirty Boston pedagogues at the same time 
 multiplied their accusations. Not one of the in- 
 novations attempted by Mann found favor in their 
 eyes. Normal schools were useless, since there 
 had always been a supply of good teachers without 
 them. Have we not encountered similar opposi- 
 tion in France in 1880 and 1881 when the govern- 
 ment of the Third Republic inaugurated the higher 
 
HORACE MANN 55 
 
 normal schools of Fontenay and Saint-Cloud? 
 Mann replied that one of the essential duties of the 
 State was to take efficacious measures to guarantee 
 the professional education of schoolmasters. "The 
 school committees/' he said, "are like sentinels 
 stationed at the door of every schoolhouse to make 
 sure that only the best teachers whom it is possible 
 to procure shall enter." 
 
 The new methods of discipline, as Mann under- 
 stood it, were incriminated. The schoolmasters 
 were of the same opinion as the theologian Smith : 
 they regretted to see banished from the schools 
 religion — and the lash! 
 
 Yet on this point Mann did not show himself 
 intractable. He undoubtedly considered it the 
 duty of masters to rule by reason and the heart, 
 by arousing the highest sentiments and motives 
 of action, but in extreme cases, where moral sua- 
 sion proved insufficient, where the charms of knowl- 
 edge and the interest of study were not enough 
 to secure order and industry, he admitted, as did 
 Locke, that recourse should be had to corporal 
 punishment. These violent attacks of his adver- 
 saries acted injuriously upon Mann and irritated 
 him to the point of affecting his health. It is at 
 this period that he wrote to a physician, a friend 
 of his: "Can you do anything for a patient who 
 
56 HORACE MANN 
 
 has not slept for three weeks? I feel an inex- 
 tinguishable fire inside my brain, continually blaz- 
 ing, like the flame of dry wood blown by the wind." 
 
 Mann was undoubtedly kind and gentle by 
 nature, and in the language of phrenology, which 
 was so dear to him, he had the "bump" of be- 
 nevolence highly developed. But on this occasion, 
 stung to the quick by the unjust strictures of 
 his opponents, he lost patience. Not content, 
 in his replies, with defending himself, he attacks 
 in his turn, and assumes the offensive with con- 
 siderable temper and acrimony. He lashes the 
 partisans of routine and does not spare insulting 
 epithets. " There are owls," he cries, "who, to 
 suit the universe to their blind eyes, would prevent 
 the sun from rising." 
 
 Mann suffered therefore in this campaign which 
 was being waged against him; but some good 
 resulted to the cause which he was defending. 
 Public opinion received a fresh impulse ; attention 
 was brought to bear upon the Boston public 
 schools; the pupils were subjected to a public 
 examination, and the defects in their instruction 
 were pointed out. Henceforth, the masters stood 
 alone in regarding them as perfect. It was shown, 
 for example, that the practice of flogging as a 
 punishment exceeded all bounds. To remedy this 
 
HORACE MANN 57 
 
 evil, the school committee ordered that in future 
 a register of punishments should be kept under 
 supervision. A short time after, Mann learned 
 with satisfaction that corporal punishment had 
 diminished twenty-five per cent. 
 
 But Mann's ardor was not directed merely 
 toward reforming existing schools; it showed it- 
 self also in important new creations, notably in 
 the establishment of normal schools. Mann is the 
 actual founder of the United States normal schools, 
 which to-day number one hundred and seventy-eight, 
 public and private. He established three in Mas- 
 sachusetts. Henry Barnard followed his example 
 in Connecticut in 1839. The State of New York 
 in its turn founded that of Albany, whose first 
 principal was the celebrated David Page. In 
 Mann's eyes no other question equalled this in 
 importance. 
 
 "I regard normal schools as a new instrument 
 of progress for the improvement of the human 
 race. I consider that without them the public 
 schools would lose their strength and power for 
 good and become mere charity schools. Neither 
 the art of printing, nor freedom of the press, nor 
 free suffrage could long subsist for useful and 
 salutary ends if schools for the education of teachers 
 ceased to exist. In fact, if we allow the character 
 
58 HORACE MANN 
 
 and talents of school-teachers to be lowered, the 
 schools will become poor, and poor schools will 
 form poor minds, and the free press will become 
 a lying and licentious press, and the ignorant 
 elector will become a venal elector until, under 
 the outward form of a republic, a set of depraved 
 and criminal men will govern the country." 
 
 In 1839 and 1840 three normal schools were 
 founded at Mann's suggestion: one at Lexington 
 for women teachers only, the two others at Barre 
 and Bridge water for both sexes. 
 
 Undertaken provisionally and as an experiment, 
 they were only definitely established on the 2d of 
 March, 1842, when the legislature voted an annual 
 sum for their maintenance. It was a welcome 
 day to Mann and was not without a morrow, since 
 on the 3d of March the House voted a further 
 grant for school libraries. 
 
 " Never," he wrote, "have brighter days dawned 
 upon our cause. The delight which I feel at the 
 success of our plans does not grow less and will 
 have a salutary effect upon my health and spirits. 
 The painful toil, which I have undergone for years, 
 has been like a vampire sucking the blood from 
 my heart and the marrow from my bones. I feel 
 now that my strength will revive, and I shall be 
 able to do more and better work." 
 
HORACE MANN 59 
 
 Normal schools, however, had a very modest 
 beginning in Massachusetts. In Lexington, on 
 the opening day, only three young girls inscribed 
 their names. The term of study was to be of one 
 year only, as it was with us at the opening of 
 Fontenay-aux-Roses. These new institutions did 
 not lack critics; they were accused, in the first 
 place, of drawing pupils away from the acad- 
 emies, — those colleges for intermediate instruction 
 which up to this time had supplied with more or 
 less success the men and women teachers for the 
 primary schools. These critics refused to admit 
 that popular education required for the professional 
 training of its teachers special schools distinct 
 from those where general culture was combined 
 with a solid technical education, ^hat wonder 
 that the views of these opponents of the movement 
 found credit among Mann's contemporaries, when 
 in our own day we have witnessed advanced 
 minds demanding the suppression of our one hundred 
 and sixty normal schools, which are, nevertheless, 
 among the finest orks of the Third Republic, and 
 proposing to transfer the training of instructors to 
 the Lycees and universities? 
 
 On the other hand, Mann found himself sur- 
 rounded by enthusiastic adherents. Already in 
 1837 the Rev. Charles Brooks had accompanied 
 
60 HORACE MANN 
 
 him on his lecture tours and supported him in his 
 campaign in behalf of the normal school with 
 such ardent zeal that the opposition newspapers 
 published caricatures in which Mr. Brooks was 
 depicted as a coachman, whip in hand, driving 
 a team of school-teachers toward a normal school 
 in the clouds. . . . 
 
 The American normal school, however, de- 
 scended from the clouds to the solid earth, thanks 
 to the efforts of Mann and his friends, and also to 
 the generosity of a good citizen, Mr. Edmund 
 Dwight, who offered a donation of $10,000 toward 
 the professional training of school masters and 
 mistresses, on condition that the State should 
 contribute a like sum. This method has since 
 become a popular one among wealthy patrons of 
 education in the United States. These benefactors 
 are in the habit of offering one or two millions, or 
 even more, for the founding of a university or library, 
 provided that the government or other donors 
 shall provide an equal sum; and this measure 
 invariably succeeds, thereby justifying the familiar 
 saying that it is only the first step that costs. Ed- 
 mund Dwight was neither a Carnegie, a Rocke- 
 feller, nor a Leland Stanford. The America of 
 1838 had not yet witnessed those princely dona- 
 tions which in our day have sometimes exceeded 
 
HORACE MANN 61 
 
 a million dollars. Nevertheless, Mr. Dwight's gift 
 of $10,000 caused deep joy, " indescribable joy," 
 to Horace Mann. 
 
 Another and different form of good luck attended 
 him in the foundation of his normal schools. He 
 had the rare fortune to be able to lay his hand upon 
 a number of distinguished men to start and direct 
 them ; among whom we may name Samuel Newman, 
 Nicholas Tillinghast, and that incomparable edu- 
 cator, Cyrus Pierce. Mann discovered the latter 
 during one of his tours of inspection in 1837 on 
 the little island of Nantucket, where Pierce had 
 for many years been conducting schools which 
 Mann pronounced the best in Massachusetts, schools 
 in which order and discipline were maintained 
 solely by an appeal to the conscience of the scholars. 
 
 At the Lexington Normal School Pierce accom- 
 plished wonders. On September 14, 1845, Mann 
 wrote in his private journal: "I have passed the 
 whole day in Mr. Pierce's school, and a most agree- 
 able day it was. I had already formed a high 
 opinion of his talents, but he surpassed my ex- 
 pectations both in the art of teaching and in that 
 gift which is the real condition of success in all 
 instruction, — that of gaining the confidence of his 
 pupils. I have seen nothing like it in any other 
 school." 
 
62 HORACE MANN 
 
 Pierce was a second Mann, with the same up- 
 rightness, the same lofty ideals, the same devotion 
 to his work, in which he wore himself out. " With- 
 out him," wrote Barnard, "the cause of normal 
 schools would have been lost for many years." 
 At the close of each of his classes he repeated to 
 his scholars: "Children, live for truth!" An old 
 normal student of Lexington wrote: "The walls 
 of our school have so often echoed these words 
 that were they to crumble to pieces, we should 
 still hear, sounding above the crash of their fall, 
 "Live for truth!" 
 
 Mann used the same language: "There is no 
 treasure comparable to truth; there is no such 
 source of happiness as truth; there is no cure for 
 misfortune like truth. ..." 
 
 Another of Mann's important works was the 
 formation of school libraries. He took the utmost 
 pains to develop a taste for reading and to place 
 good books within reach of all, even in the remotest 
 villages. "There is at this day," he wrote, "only 
 a seventh part of the population provided with 
 opportunities for reading, while for the majority, 
 who do not know how to read and have no means of 
 obtaining books, it is actually as if printing had 
 never been invented." His joy was therefore 
 great when he obtained from the legislature in 
 
HORACE MANN 63 
 
 1842, a grant for the purpose of purchasing books 
 for each school district. He hailed this decision 
 as an event of the utmost importance, second only 
 to that act of 1647, by which public schools were 
 founded by the State. The small sum of fifteen 
 dollars was allotted to each community, which 
 should subscribe an equal sum for the foundation 
 or maintenance of a local library. In case the 
 children of the district numbered twice or thrice 
 the minimum of sixty, the sum was to be doubled 
 or trebled. The school library, as Mann under- 
 stood it, was to be open to parents as well as to 
 children. "When the schoolhouse is well provided 
 with books/' he said, "grown men will again turn 
 their steps thither." He wished them to be es- 
 tablished everywhere, even in the smallest villages ; 
 "so that in future there shall not be a child with- 
 out a collection of books at his disposal at all times, 
 without cost, and within a half-hour's walk of 
 his dwelling." He considered reading as power- 
 ful an agent in the world of mind as steam in the 
 world of matter. 
 
 "Let a child read and understand the stories 
 in which great virtues are set forth, such, for ex- 
 ample, as the friendship of Damon and Pythias, 
 the integrity of Aristides, the fidelity of Regulus, 
 the stainless purity of Washington, the invincible 
 
64 HORACE MANN 
 
 perseverance of Franklin, and he will think and 
 act differently for the rest of his life. Let a young 
 man read a popular treatise on astronomy or geology, 
 and henceforth new skies will arch above his head, 
 a new earth will be spread beneath his feet." 
 
 Mann devoted himself with his habitual energy 
 to the creation of libraries. To an already enor- 
 mous correspondence he added thousands of letters, 
 stimulating their formation in each of the three 
 or four thousand schools in Massachusetts. He 
 knew well, moreover, that it was not enough to have 
 books, but that they must also be well chosen. 
 Mann would have liked the Board of Education 
 to draw up an official list of books which it ap- 
 proved. But as this proceeding of preliminary 
 censure appeared illiberal and alarmed the book 
 trade, Governor Morton refused to sanction it. 
 Mann was therefore obliged to confine himself 
 to persuasion and to indicating the books he 
 preferred. He distrusted works of fiction and, 
 what is more surprising, historical works. Doubt- 
 less, a nation as young as America, a nation almost 
 without a history, has less need than others to 
 study the past; but what indisposed Mann es- 
 pecially toward history was the complacency with 
 which it recounts wars of conquest and sanguinary 
 battles, and the robberies and rapacities of kings 
 
HORACE MANN 65 
 
 and emperors, with all the moral atrocities and 
 abominations of an earlier time, which in his opinion 
 were to be attributed rather to the ignorance than 
 to the perversity of mankind. In order that history 
 might be studied with profit by children, he would 
 have it rewritten and in another spirit — "What 
 a series of thefts and rapines is the history of the 
 past!" 
 
 What, then, were the books recommended by 
 him? They were all books useful to morals, such 
 as biographies of great men, stories which tend 
 to develop " courage and noble sentiments," as 
 well as practical treatises on hygiene and popular 
 science, "such as are suitable for active men in 
 a poor country whose sterile soil needs science to 
 render it fertile." Mann thought, with reason, 
 that the people needed a new literature, and in order 
 to embody his ideas, he negotiated with the book- 
 sellers of Boston to publish two series of books in 
 cheap editions, one in 18mo for children, the other 
 in 12mo for adults; and in preparing them, he 
 called to his assistance the most competent writers 
 of his time, such as Washington Irving, the novelist, 
 Edward Everett, the moralist, George B. Emerson, 
 and others. What he desired was a form of litera- 
 ture as simple as it was elevated, and especially 
 adapted to the capacity of children. 
 
66 HORACE MANN 
 
 "In most of the reading-books in use, one finds," 
 he says, " moral aphorisms in which great thinkers 
 have embodied their life-long experience and re- 
 flection; maxims in which philosophers have 
 condensed the loftiest scientific truths; and these 
 are offered as early lessons to children, as if, because 
 they are born after Bacon and Franklin, they are 
 at once capable of understanding them." 
 
 Mann's pedagogic work was immense, and we 
 will not attempt to give an account here of all 
 his reforms, of all the various measures which he 
 carried out or participated in: including weekly 
 lectures for teachers of both sexes; the creation 
 in Boston of a model school which was to serve 
 in the matter of architecture, furniture, books, 
 methods, and masters as a pattern to all the others ; 
 the reunion in one central school of several small 
 schools located in sparsely populated districts, 
 for the benefit of the older scholars only, to whom 
 the distance would be no obstacle; methods of 
 obligatory instruction in vocal music and drawing ; 
 annual lectures to teachers to be given in each 
 county during the vacations, a species of travelling 
 normal school such as has always had a great 
 vogue in the United States. 
 
 For the accomplishment of his purposes Mann 
 did not neglect the most trifling means. In 1840 
 
HORACE MANN 67 
 
 he conceived the idea of rekindling the zeal of 
 the country districts by drawing up a set of tables, 
 in which the Massachusetts towns were classified 
 according to the importance of the sacrifices they 
 had made for the support of public education. 
 This graduated table, as he called it, was, he said 
 himself, his stroke of genius. The publicity he 
 gave to it aroused to an extraordinary degree 
 the emulation of the various towns. In a similar 
 manner, he sought to stimulate the zeal of the school 
 committees, whose functions had hitherto been 
 entirely gratuitous, by having a small indem- 
 nity assigned them, sufficient at least to defray 
 their travelling expenses. Mann not only devoted 
 his time and strength to the cause of education, 
 he also expended for it a part of his emoluments 
 as secretary, which consisted of about $1500, 
 "a miserable salary/' as it is called by Ameri- 
 cans to-day. His disinterestedness and generosity 
 equalled his zeal; nothing was awarded for the 
 purchase of books, for his correspondence, or the 
 expense of his lecture tours during four months of 
 the year; he furnished at his own cost geograph- 
 ical maps to the schools; he likewise undertook 
 his European trip at his own expense. No sacri- 
 fice was too great for the furtherance of his aim; 
 pecuniary considerations appealed to him very 
 
68 HORACE MANN 
 
 slightly; he was astonished to find all his friends, 
 with the exception of Channing, expressing curi- 
 osity as to the amount of the salary he received. 
 In 1849 he announced that he made no claim to 
 being indemnified for the expenses he incurred 
 in the discharge of his duties. "From the day 
 when I accepted the office of secretary," he said, 
 "I considered myself responsible for the success 
 of the undertaking, and were I to expend for it 
 all my means, my health, my life, — nay, a hundred 
 lives if I had them, — I should hold that the 
 triumph of the cause far outweighed all these 
 sacrifices." 
 
 But in spite of his protestations, a vote was 
 passed allotting him an indemnity of $2000; 
 George B. Emerson saying, "It has always 
 seemed to me, that having made a great personal 
 sacrifice in accepting the functions of secretary, 
 Mann was less bound than any other citizen to 
 contribute from his private purse to the success 
 of the undertaking." 
 
 But this was what he was in the habit of doing, 
 and what would he not have done to bring about 
 the fulfilment of his dream, — he who had said 
 from the beginning that he approached his task "in 
 the spirit of martyrdom." The actual reward 
 for him was in the results he had brought about, 
 
HORACE MANN 69 
 
 and which an American writer sums up in these 
 words : 
 
 " During these twelve years of labor, the State 
 aid granted to public schools was doubled; more 
 than $2,000,000 were expended in improving 
 the condition of school-houses; the salaries of 
 teachers were raised 62 per cent for men and 51 
 per cent for women, while at the same time the 
 number of women teachers was increased 54 per 
 cent (3591 in 1837, 5510 in 1848); a month was 
 added to the average duration of the school year; 
 the proportion of private to public schools dwindled 
 from 75 to 36 per cent; the supervision of the 
 school committees became more general and more 
 continuous ; three normal schools were established, 
 which sent out several hundreds of teachers, whose 
 influence was to make itself felt in every part of 
 the State." 
 
 Politics alternated with pedagogy in the varied 
 career of Horace Mann. In 1848 a seat became 
 vacant in the national Congress at Washington 
 through the death of John Quincy Adams, former 
 President of the United States, who was repre- 
 sentative from Massachusetts. His succession was 
 offered to Mann, who was elected by a large major- 
 ity, his fellow-citizens thus showing their gratitude 
 for the services he had rendered the State. 
 
70 HORACE MANN 
 
 He accepted, abandoning his previous functions 
 not without regret, but with the consciousness 
 that as secretary of the Board of Education he 
 had fulfilled his whole duty; that the impulse had 
 been given; that education was advancing with 
 rapid strides; and that, in short, the work being 
 almost accomplished, he could henceforth be spared. 
 
 In 1861 he was reelected — a great triumph, in 
 view of the violent campaign directed against 
 him by the champions of slavery and sustained 
 by the great authority of Daniel Webster, then 
 Secretary of State. Mann had distinguished him- 
 self in the debates in Congress by his eloquence 
 and zeal in behalf of all measures tending toward 
 the abolition of slavery. 1 He had fought against 
 its further extension, expressing himself in these 
 words: " Rather than suffer it to invade other 
 States, I should prefer the rupture of the Union, 
 civil war, even servile war." 
 
 The four years during which Mann sat in Congress, 
 always active and always eloquent, may be counted 
 among the most brilliant pages in his career; but 
 they are beside our subject, and we must now 
 
 1 In a debate which lasted twenty-one days, he defended 
 three abolitionists who had carried away fifty slaves in order 
 to liberate them. He ended by obtaining the acquittal of his 
 clients. See Speeches on Slavery, 1852. 
 
HORACE MANN 71 
 
 return to the pedagogue who, four years later, 
 reverted to his chosen mission and voluntarily 
 assumed the presidency of Antioch College, there 
 to display the qualities of an admirable, practical 
 educator. 
 
Ill 
 
 Horace Mann's Philosophy 
 
 Let us pause in the narrative of Mann's life 
 and educational work — as he himself paused during 
 the four years of his political life — and attempt 
 to define briefly those principles and general ideas 
 which constantly guided his efforts. 
 
 A man of action .before all, a nature swayed by 
 
 inspiration rather than reflection, Mann had not 
 
 the leisure and lacked, moreover, the power of 
 
 abstraction necessary for constructing a philosophy 
 
 of his own. In his agitated and feverish life he 
 
 found no time to condense his thoughts or to write 
 
 learned treatises. Undoubtedly he wrote a great 
 
 deal, as he spoke a great deal, but all his writings, 
 
 whether reports, lectures, or speeches, — we were 
 
 about to say sermons, — were primarily action, 
 
 and bore the stamp of the orator. He had no 
 
 /personal philosophy beyond an ardent faith in 
 
 / progress and the indefinite perfectibility of the 
 
 V human race. The critical spirit is not that which 
 
 generally distinguishes American thinkers. The 
 
 72 
 
HORACE MANN 73 
 
 spirit of analysis, moreover, is rarely allied with 
 enthusiasm, and enthusiasm was the dominant note 
 in Mann's intelligence. Let us not ask from him, 
 therefore, a coordinate whole, a system of clear 
 and precise views upon human nature. His psy- 
 chology remained always confused and inexact. 
 It sets out with a confession of impotence: "The 
 nature of mind is impenetrable." Mann accepts 
 the most daring theories; as, for example, that 
 liberty consists of one thing only, — the choice be- 
 tween good and evil. The choice made once for 
 all between obedience or disobedience to the divine 
 law, "the law seizes us and flings us high or low, 
 raises us or lowers us with irresistible power." 
 In other words, one moment — one only — of 
 freedom is granted us, then we bow beneath the 
 yoke of a kind of fatality. This is to simplify too 
 much, and to solve somewhat lightly, the problem 
 of the complex play of human will and action. 
 
 Where Mann was not mistaken was in affirm- 
 ing that there are laws, — without, however, know- 
 ing precisely what they are, — laws presiding over 
 the formation of minds as imperious as those which 
 preside over the production of flowers and fruits. 
 And Mann understood thoroughly that it was 
 necessary to know these laws in order to establish 
 solidly the foundations of education. He knew 
 
74 HORACE MANN 
 
 that pedagogy must rest on a philosophical doctrine. 
 "How can we conduct education/' he said, " with- 
 out having conceived a theory of the mind?" 
 Not being able to frame for himself this theory 
 which he sought, he borrowed it. He found in 
 his path, so to speak, the philosophy of an English 
 writer, George Combe, and adopted it; he made 
 it his own, somewhat as the spiritualistic philosopher 
 Boyer-Collard, according to Laine, having found 
 and purchased one day at a book-stall on the quays 
 of the Seine, the works of the Scotchman Thomas 
 Reid, founded thereon the official French philos- 
 ophy of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Who was George Combe? A man of heart 
 assuredly, who merited the sympathy of his great 
 friend in America. They had made each other's 
 acquaintance in Boston, whither Combe had gone in 
 1838 to deliver a course of lectures. Mann heard 
 him and was won over at once to his views. They 
 formed a close friendship which was severed only 
 by death and was kept alive by an active corre- 
 spondence. Combe said of Mann: "He was a de- 
 lightful companion and friend; of all the men 
 I met in Boston, he was the best." While Mann, 
 on his side, wrote to Combe: "There is no man of 
 whom I think oftener than of you, or who has 
 done me so much good as you." 
 
HORACE MANN 75 
 
 Combe had published in 1828 a volume entitled 
 The Constitution of Man. Mann speaks of it 
 with extraordinary enthusiasm and some naivete. 
 He regards it as a " masterpiece of thought." 
 Combe's philosophy seems to him destined to work 
 in the moral sciences a revolution analogous to 
 that of Bacon in the domain of physical science; 
 and carrying hyperbole to its utmost limits, he 
 exclaims: "Just as there could be but one dis- 
 covery of the circulation of the blood, or of the 
 solar system, so there could be but one author 
 of The Constitution of Man." 1 
 
 George Combe hardly merited such emphatic 
 eulogiums. His doctrine was, after all, but a poor 
 and mediocre philosophy, in which the author 
 developed in a cold and prosaic style the narrow, 
 meagre psychological system of Gall and the phre- 
 nologists. It is easy, however, to account for Mann's 
 genuine devotion to the ideas of the English psy- 
 chologist. There was a certain intellectual affinity 
 between them. Combe was not one of those con- 
 
 1 George Combe published in 1840 another work which also 
 aroused Mann's admiration: "Your Moral Philosophy is worthy 
 of your Constitution of Man, without being equal to it, which 
 would be impossible." Mann's sincerity is proved by the fact 
 that he could speak disagreeable truths to his friend, as, for 
 example, on his publishing a Journal of Education which Mann 
 thought unworthy of him. 
 
76 HORACE MANN 
 
 templative philosophers who confine themselves 
 to the region of pure speculation; he presented his 
 psychology rather as an introduction to the science 
 and art of education; hence his essays in the region 
 of a higher and more analytical philosophy adapt 
 themselves admirably to the instructive views 
 of Mann. He was also a friend to popular edu- 
 cation; and his writings on pedagogy were not 
 devoid of merit, since twenty years after his death 
 they were still held in honor among his country- 
 men. That which chiefly attracted Mann in his 
 system must have been, first, his attempts to frame 
 national moral laws for the government of man- 
 kind, — laws to which it was only necessary to con- 
 form to attain wisdom; and, secondly, his recom- 
 mendation of care of the body no less than of the 
 mind. In his system physical health was a con- 
 dition of the soul's health, a principle of morality; 
 proper food and clothing being, according to his 
 view, as essential elements in the happiness of 
 mankind as books and lessons. The question 
 of alimentation had always been of the highest 
 importance in Mann's estimation. "It is a great 
 misfortune," he said, "that the quantity and quality 
 of food which a people consume cannot be deter- 
 mined by some fixed rule;" and elsewhere: "As 
 I grow older and, I hope, wiser, I am conscious 
 
HORACE MANN 77 
 
 that the contempt I formerly professed for the 
 stomach and the lungs has gradually changed 
 into a sort of respect for these bodily organs. 
 They are not Dii majores, but Dii minores, 
 without whose aid the higher faculties of the 
 brain are as disabled as a sea-captain would be 
 who attempted to navigate his ship without 
 sailors." 
 
 There was nothing in Combe's system, even 
 to its fundamental idea of the cerebral localiza- 
 tion of the various faculties of the mind, but was 
 of a nature to attract Mann. 1 Freed from what 
 savors of charlatanism, such as the claim that the 
 bumps on the cranium are the outward mani- 
 festation of mental qualities phrenology contains 
 a kernel of truth which partly justifies the success 
 it obtained with Mann and his friend. 2 It teaches 
 that the human faculties are so many distinct 
 forces which can be developed by exercise, by an 
 appropriate activity. This is what Mann never 
 ceased to repeat, being convinced in advance of 
 
 1 Mann is not the only distinguished man over whom G. Combe 
 exerted an influence. Mr. John Morley has shown in one of 
 his books, The Life of Richard Cobden, that the illustrious econ- 
 omist had also been influenced by him (1881). 
 
 2 Phrenology was the fashion in America at this time. Nearly 
 all Mann's friends, Pierce, George B. Emerson, Dr. Howe, were 
 fervent adherents of it. 
 
78 HORACE MANN 
 
 a doctrine which places man's destiny in his own 
 hands, so to speak, and proclaims the omnipotence 
 of education, since it is able to insure and regulate 
 the development of all the faculties by means of 
 the activity it imparts to them. 
 
 When Mann essayed himself, following Combe, 
 to define what he calls "the laws of the mind," "the 
 laws of God," he indicated but two such laws, which, 
 according to him, should be the guides of the human 
 mind. 
 
 The first is the law of symmetry, which demands 
 that all our faculties should be developed in har- 
 mony and with perfect balance, each of them 
 growing stronger through the support of the others. 
 Hitherto, nations, like individuals, have exaggerated 
 certain qualities at the expense of others; thus 
 the perfectly well-balanced man is nowhere to be 
 found. 
 
 The second law is that our faculties are strength- 
 ened by exercise and perish from inaction. "How 
 many forces are suffered to lie dormant which 
 gradually become extinct; on the other hand, 
 how many benefits and miracles might be wrought 
 for mankind by prolonged exercise and continuous 
 effort ! Witness Franklin, the good and great 
 Franklin." Mann had early severed his connection 
 with all religious bodies to become an adherent 
 
HORACE MANN 79 
 
 of natural religion only. 1 He was a Puritan in 
 some respects, but a Puritan without theology. 
 
 He complained that natural religion was not 
 understood in his day, nor its power appreciated. 
 "It is," he affirmed, "as superior to revealed reli- 
 gion as a personal experience is to a vague hearsay." 
 He doubtless recognized the elevating influence 
 which established religions have exercised in the 
 past, " in guiding generations of mankind through 
 the darkness of the world;" but he hoped for and 
 desired the speedy coming of a religion founded 
 upon reason, freed from outworn dogmas and 
 impenetrable mysteries. "The hour has come when 
 the light of natural religion shall be to that of re- 
 vealed religion what the blaze of the rising sun is 
 to the pale gleam of the stars." 
 
 He was religious, then, profoundly religious; 
 a vague mysticism floats over expressions like 
 these: "Soul speaks to soul, words and even 
 thoughts are merely accessory." Or again: "The 
 spiritual essence of man contemplates directly 
 the spiritual essence of the uni verse." But from 
 this religious spirit all dogma, all formal Credo, is 
 
 1 Let us add, however, that he often spoke as a Christian, in 
 a spirit of worship or at least of reverence for Christ. He said 
 before his death to his wife and children: "If ever you are per- 
 plexed as to what you ought to do, ask yourselves what Jesus 
 Christ would have done in your place." 
 
80 HORACE MANN 
 
 banished. Belief in an all-powerful creator, in 
 a God of goodness, and in an immortality of happi- 
 ness alone survive in his religion. 
 
 The immortality of the soul was for Mann an 
 undisputed article of faith, but he looked upon 
 it from the point of view of the infinite joy re- 
 served for the elect. In his writings, in his dis- 
 courses, he unceasingly evokes the idea of the 
 future life, not only with hope, but with certainty ; 
 and although he scarcely believed in school rewards, 
 — any more than in punishments, — he believed 
 firmly in the rewards of another life and desired 
 a heaven for all. * 
 
 "Why have not all men entered this life virtuous, 
 to be transported as by a lightning flash to the 
 felicity of the next?" "We must know how to 
 bear suffering, to submit without comprehending 
 it in expectation of the compensations of eternity. 
 The divine law is eternal; it follows us in this 
 world and the next, making of the two but one 
 world, and reducing death simply to an incident 
 of life. Our virtuous and criminal actions will 
 live always in their good and evil consequences: 
 how much more, then, shall the agent himself 
 live!' 7 
 
 And with the emphasis habitual to his eloquence 
 he adds : 
 
HORACE MANN 81 
 
 "A grain of wheat buried with the mummy 
 of Sesostris may germinate anew to-day and unite 
 the nineteenth century with the remotest antiquity. 
 Can, then, the soul of the great king be dissolved 
 into nothingness?" 
 
 We have said that Mann's psychology is uncer- 
 tain and vague. He has, nevertheless, attempted 
 to sketch in broad outlines this psychology, which 
 is rather a system of morality. 
 
 It is, in fact, the moral consciousness and the 
 sense of responsibility which Mann places in the 
 first rank among the higher faculties of man. Im- 
 mediately after these, he places — even before 
 the family affections — the social and sympathetic 
 faculties, benevolence toward others, philanthropy. 
 In other words, man is above all a creature of duty, 
 subject to moral law ; in the next place, he is a being 
 devoted to others. Mann neither sought nor found 
 the opportunity for becoming a martyr, but in 
 another age he would have been capable of it in 
 the service of humanity or to attest his social 
 faith. 
 
 "The history of the heroes of antiquity and of 
 the martyrs of Christianity, although their dust 
 has been scattered for centuries, arouses in us 
 such transports of admiration that we long to be 
 in their place; and this passion raises us to such 
 
82 HORACE MANN 
 
 heights that the most terrible death for a sacred 
 cause appears to us as lovely and desirable as 
 the young bride to her bridegroom." 
 
 And after exalting these high and noble aspira- 
 tions of human nature, Mann brands with pitiless 
 sternness the egotistic sentiments, the lower propen- 
 sities, which make of man, when they rule him, "a 
 ferocious beast, a bird of prey." " Neither in the 
 den of the lion nor in the vulture's eyry do there 
 exist brigands comparable to those men who are 
 dominated by the insatiable appetites of selfishness." 
 
 Intelligence, strictly so called, the intelligence 
 which reasons, which analyzes, which decides dryly 
 and coldly, is not Mann's affair. He deliberately 
 subordinates the reasoning being to the being of 
 sentiment; and it is precisely here that we must 
 seek the secret of his strength, of the sovereign 
 power which his inspired eloquence exerted over 
 his contemporaries. J He was, above all, a man of 
 heart, — one who surrendered himself to the in- 
 stincts of a noble nature, who felt before thinking, 
 and whose sentiments, brimful of the sap of spring, 
 overflowed and bloomed with life, youth, and fresh- 
 ness. How wide is the gulf between this sensitive 
 soul, sentimental, even quick, to enthusiastic beliefs, 
 faithful without reserve to the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of human nature, and the " Intellectuals" 
 
HORACE MANN 83 
 
 of our day, whose destructive criticism would 
 shatter, if we listened to them, our faith in hu- 
 manity and its eternal aspirations ! How he would 
 have suffered, how startled as well as wounded his 
 conscience would have been, could he have known 
 to what a frenzy of negation an abuse of the analytic 
 spirit was to lead some of the men who followed him ! 
 
 We analyze to-day the idea of patriotism, and it 
 melts away to give place to the chimera of inter- 
 nationalism; we analyze the idea of property, and 
 it is reduced to collectivism; we analyze the 
 idea of God and are led to atheism; we analyze 
 the idea of the family, and behold indifferent and 
 ungrateful sons; we analyze the idea of duty, and 
 the moral law becomes a mere word devoid of 
 meaning. 
 
 Amid these divagations of an overstimulated 
 intellectualism, Mann would have appealed more 
 forcibly than ever to the primal instincts of nature 
 in defence of things sacred in his eyes. He would 
 have reiterated that the ideal of the thinker is 
 to combine with the light of pure thought that 
 ardor and warmth of sentiment which are also, 
 in themselves, a light. 
 
 "If the best wines are those for which the grapes 
 have ripened on the slopes of a volcano, so the 
 best thoughts are those that spring from a clear 
 
84 HORACE MANN 
 
 brain warmed by a large heart." Mann always 
 subordinated intellectual to moral culture. In 
 one of his reports he wrote: — 
 
 "How many lessons, recitations, and examinations 
 we require for the development of the mind ! What 
 a multitude of books must be read and reread! 
 But for the formation of character and right feeling, 
 what poverty of instruction! What do we teach 
 children in regard to their reciprocal duties, the 
 affection which brothers and sisters owe each other ? 
 What. as to filial piety, as to the obligations of men 
 of wealth toward those less fortunate than them- 
 selves? How do we teach them to avoid the 
 passions of pride and greed, of envy and revenge? 
 What as to the countless calamities resulting from 
 drink and gambling? Does arithmetic teach them 
 the folly of investing in lotteries? Does history 
 insist strongly enough upon the criminal character 
 of nine-tenths of the wars it records, and upon 
 the horrible sufferings they have brought upon 
 the human race? When teaching of such im- 
 portance as this is neglected, children may indeed 
 become good grammarians and ready reckoners, 
 but will they be just, good, and benevolent men?" 
 
 Thus Mann's pedagogy, like his psychology, con- 
 sisted chiefly of morality. "He who does the 
 most good to his fellow-men," he said, "is the 
 
HORACE MANN 85 
 
 master of masters and has learned the art of 
 arts." 
 
 Mann's countrymen have often called him a 
 radical, even a revolutionary; to us he appears, 
 on the contrary, to have been a wise and prudent 
 spirit, a moderate opportunist in every respect, 
 except in his speech, which was overemphatic 
 and at times slightly declamatory. He knew 
 how to make necessary concessions and to accept 
 compromises. He understood that by violently 
 attacking tradition and established customs one 
 runs the risk of losing everything. If, in the 
 last years of his life, he joined an organized church, 
 it was because he regarded this step as useful to 
 his designs and necessary to the success of the 
 cause of which he had constituted himself the 
 champion; the Christian Union, of which he be- 
 came a member, being the only door open to liberal 
 ideas in the West. 
 
 Mann had had no regular teachers before the 
 age of twenty; he had been, above all, the pupil 
 of nature. We might assume that an education 
 of this sort, a chance education, as it were, would 
 have left something disorderly in his mind; but 
 it was not so. Aside from certain flights of the 
 imagination, Mann's is a classic mind. His taste 
 for lofty language, the large and ample construe- 
 
86 HORACE MANN 
 
 tion of his speeches, reveal what we might call 
 a spontaneous classic culture. He had a special 
 taste for the Latin authors and quotes them as 
 constantly as a humanist might do. He tells us 
 that in his youth, if he chanced to meet a young 
 girl who was a Latin scholar, he regarded her as 
 a sort of divinity. 
 
 Nevertheless, the utilitarian and practical ten- 
 dencies, suitable to a good American, reveal them- 
 selves in the spirit of this humanist. "What 
 satisfactory argument can we invoke," he asks, 
 "to show why algebra, a science which not one 
 man in a thousand has occasion to use in the affairs 
 of life, should be studied by more than 2300 scholars 
 in the Massachusetts schools, whereas bookkeeping, 
 which all, even workmen, require, is only taught 
 to about half that number ? * For farmers and 
 road-makers, why give geometry the preference 
 over land-surveying ? And why, among those who 
 devote themselves to the pursuit of intellectual 
 truth, are the students of rhetoric twice as numerous 
 as those of logic?" 
 
 No one has expressed more forcibly the law 
 of solidarity, which unites successive generations 
 one to the other, and makes universal education 
 
 1 At Antioch Mann struggled for months to obtain the ap- 
 pointment of a professor of bookkeeping. 
 
HORACE MANN 87 
 
 a debt which the nation must discharge by assum- 
 ing the whole expense of maintaining schools. 
 This idea he formulates in three propositions: — 
 
 "1. Successive generations of mankind taken col- 
 lectively constitute one great community. 
 
 "2. All the wealth which this community pos- 
 sesses it owes to all its children with a view to 
 providing them with an education adequate to pro- 
 tect them from poverty and vice, and prepare them 
 worthily to perform their civic and social duties. 
 
 "3. The successive holders of this wealth are 
 merely its trustees, bound by the most sacred 
 obligations to execute their mandate faithf ully ; and 
 to divert this wealth from its true object, the 
 education of the young, is as great a crime, indeed 
 a greater one, than similar breach of faith with 
 contemporaries." 
 
 Convinced, as he was, of the necessity of education, 
 Mann seems to have hesitated for a time in regard 
 to the question of compulsory school attendance. 
 He was not by nature inclined toward restraint 
 or the rigor of any law whatever, but, on the con- 
 trary, expected everything from the charms which 
 enlightenment must have for souls plunged in 
 the darkness of ignorance. 
 
 "Let the intelligent man/ 7 he said, "visit the 
 ignorant daily, as the oculist visits the blind and 
 
88 HORACE MANN 
 
 removes the scales from their eyes until the living 
 sense opens once more to the living light. Let the 
 zealous man enter into communion with those torpid 
 from indifference, and melt the ice in which they are 
 entombed. Let the love of childhood, the love 
 of country, the dictates of reason, the sentiment 
 of religious responsibility, unite in a wise blending 
 of tenderness and severity, until the grim, hard 
 mass of ignorance, avarice, and prejudice gives 
 way before the combined action of their heat 
 and light." 
 
 Let us wait, in other words, until the people 
 desire education before offering it to them. But 
 is it not a mistake to let oneself be misled by the 
 illusions of a chimerical optimism? Does not 
 history prove that in order that a people shall 
 seek instruction, they must be forced to it ? Mann, 
 in fact, speedily renounced his error ; by the year 
 1847 he had completely changed his opinion, and 
 warned by experience of the indifference and 
 carelessness of parents, he recognized the need for 
 enforcing school attendance. 
 
 Mann was not merely a powerful orator whose 
 heart animated his voice and kindled his accents, 
 and whose broad mind overflowed with ideas: 
 he was also a skilled and persuasive writer. It 
 has been said of his style that it was as brilliant 
 
HORACE MANN 89 
 
 and flowery as spring in a New England meadow. 
 It was even too much so, perhaps. His ardent 
 imagination not only inspired him with prophetic 
 visions, great conceptions of the future: it also 
 enriched his thought and style with an excessive 
 wealth of imagery. 
 
 He himself acknowledged — and it was a defect 
 in his own eyes — "the profusion and redundance 
 of his metaphors." And he added gracefully: 
 "This fault would perhaps be forgiven me if one 
 knew what trouble I daily take to refuse to my 
 tongue and pen the flood of metaphors which 
 invade my imagination." We can the more easily 
 forgive him this poetic exuberance in consideration 
 of its having greatly contributed to the success 
 of his undertakings. He neither wrote nor spoke 
 for the learned and literary; he addressed popular 
 audiences ; and he was forced, in order to be under- 
 stood, to multiply his arguments and develop 
 his ideas somewhat diffusely. He was obliged, 
 in order that he might dominate the minds of his 
 readers and hearers, to be prodigal of metaphors 
 and figures of speech. How many brilliant pages 
 we could quote, were it not that their force would 
 be weakened, their brilliancy dimmed, by the 
 attempt to condense them! None of the great 
 ideas which constitute the modern spirits were 
 
90 HORACE MANN 
 
 unknown to Mann, and he expressed them with 
 equal vigor and poetic feeling. Of science, he says 
 that it invests us with a sort of creative power, 
 and that " man's dominion over the earth spreads 
 in proportion to his knowledge." Of the beauty 
 of nature, he says that she opened up to us a world of 
 marvels: " Dazzling flowers on the great lap of 
 earth, colored star rays in the infinite azure of 
 the skies, brilliant tints of the young foliage, still 
 more brilliant hues of the dying foliage in autumn." 
 And above the true and the beautiful, above the world 
 of true thoughts and beautiful things, he shows us 
 what he calls the sublimity of the moral world. 
 
 "The laws of physical nature are sublime, 
 but there exists a moral sublimity, before which 
 the highest intelligence bows down and adores. 
 The laws which cause the winds to blow, the 
 tides to rise and fall, planets to roll, and suns to 
 shine, the laws which preside over the subtle 
 combinations of atoms and the terrible speed of 
 electricity, the laws of germination and reproduc- 
 tion in the vegetable and animal kingdom, what- 
 ever be their radiant beauty, pale and fade before 
 the moral glories which envelop the universe in 
 celestial light. The heart is aware of charms 
 which no beauty of things known, no dream of 
 things unknown, can equal. Virtue shines with 
 
HORACE MANN 91 
 
 a purer ray than the diamond, the gardens of 
 Arabia do not breathe so sweet a perfume as that 
 of charity. ..." 
 
 What a beautiful picture he draws of the honest 
 man and good citizen! The purity of morals, 
 the punctuality, probity, devotion to others, the 
 spirit of self-sacrifice, of solidarity, — all these virtues 
 he draws with a glowing pen. "The honest man, 
 the good citizen, is doubtless not insensible to the 
 charm of the arts, but he knows that the most 
 beautiful of arts is to paint smiles and joy upon 
 the pale cheeks of poor and suffering childhood.' ' 
 Reason and conscience have taught him "that 
 it is not permissible to adorn rich galleries with 
 the marvels of art while the orphan is neglected 
 in the streets, while the sons of the intemperate 
 and profligate have no school but that of obscenity 
 and blasphemy, while the world is afflicted with 
 infinite evils which superfluous wealth and wasted 
 time would amply suffice to remedy." 
 
 Mann was a republican by conviction ; he hailed 
 with joy the rise of democracy without disguising 
 from himself its dangers. 
 
 "I rejoice that power has passed irrevocably 
 into the hands of the people. For ages upon 
 ages humanity has groaned beneath oppression; 
 whole races have been enslaved for the benefit 
 
92 HORACE MANN 
 
 of a chosen few. To gratify the ambition of 
 tyrants, nations have perished on the battle- 
 field. The noblest faculties of man have been ob- 
 scured and crushed by ignorance and superstition. 
 There has been an end to liberty of conscience, 
 of thought, and of speech. Heaven itself has been 
 offered for sale, like a piece of property, by men 
 who had no right to it. . . . Power has now passed 
 from the few to the many, from the oppressors 
 to their victims. The rich, the noble, the privi- 
 leged classes, had been granted authority for the 
 benefit of the people and had misused it. Their 
 fate is to-day in the hands of the people : its poverty 
 commands their opulence; its ignorance decides 
 their rights; its appetites threaten their homes. 
 It is no longer a question of philanthropy with 
 them; they have nothing to consider now but 
 how to protect and save themselves. They will 
 understand at last that the favored classes are 
 safe only through the devotion or self-interest 
 of the rest. . . ." 
 
 An optimist, like all good men who naturally 
 incline to believe in the goodness of others and 
 who, being sure of the nobility of their intentions, 
 never dream of being misunderstood; and unable, 
 like all active men, to imagine that their efforts 
 will be in vain, Mann conceived high hopes for 
 
HORACE MANN 93 
 
 the future of humanity; but he was at the same 
 time clear-sighted enough to perceive to what 
 dangers the sovereign power of universal suffrage 
 exposes a free democracy, if it is not enlightened by 
 instruction and education; and of these fatal 
 consequences of liberty in ignorance, he traced 
 the darkest picture : — 
 
 " Already sounds on our ears the tread of that 
 innumerable army of the coming generations. 
 They are men who will take counsel only of their 
 desires, which they will transform into laws; so- 
 ciety will no longer be anything but the incarnation 
 of their will, and if we take no more care than we 
 have hitherto done to enlighten and regulate that 
 will, it will engrave its laws upon the whole circuit 
 of the globe in gigantic and awful characters. " 
 
 Certainly he did not doubt the future of the 
 republic nor its perpetuity. 
 
 "It would be easier to turn back the sun in his 
 course than to monopolize again in the hands 
 of a few the power which has passed into the hands 
 of the people. Sooner will the oak reenter the 
 acorn than we shall return to the monarchical 
 and aristocratic forms of the past." 
 
 And elsewhere: 
 
 "Ideas of liberty, duty, and fraternity now 
 move the nations, and neither the Pope with his 
 
94 HORACE MANN 
 
 Cardinals nor the Czar with his Cossacks will suc- 
 ceed in suppressing them." 
 
 But to this triumphant democracy he gave 
 the wisest counsels, and at all times and in all 
 countries it is useful to hear and ponder his eloquent 
 warnings; such, for example, as these: "It is 
 perhaps easy to found a republic; it certainly 
 is not easy to make republicans. Woe to the 
 republic which is founded only upon the suffrage 
 of ignorance, egotism, and passion ! National rep- 
 resentation is the faithful mirror of the mind 
 and ideals of the people, and if these ideals are 
 not on a level with its institutions, what perils 
 and disasters are possible!" 
 
 Thus he reasoned more and more strongly for 
 the necessity of universal education. "He is not 
 an American statesman/' he said, "who does not 
 devote all his efforts to the education of the people." 
 And this is equally true of every country on earth. 
 
 "Education is our only political safeguard; 
 outside of this ark there is no salvation." If 
 education did not succeed in preserving the public 
 mind from corruption, all would be lost; all at- 
 tempts to protect by law the property, the liberty, 
 even the life of the citizen would be as vain as 
 "the attempt to drive hornets from our orchards 
 by means of sign-posts and warnings." 
 
IV 
 
 Horace Mann, President op Antioch College 
 (1853-1859) 
 
 The interest never languishes in the life of Hor- 
 ace Mann; scarcely has he accomplished one 
 task before he undertakes another. Men of action, 
 such as he, never cease their activity in widely 
 different directions ; they labor till the last breath 
 and die at their task. 
 
 The 15th of September, 1852, Horace Mann, 
 member of Congress, was elected governor of Mas- 
 sachusetts by the free suffrage of his fellow-citizens. 
 On the same day a society of friends of education 
 offered him the presidency of a new college about 
 to be established at Yellow Springs, Ohio. Called 
 upon to choose between these two positions, Mann did 
 not hesitate ; he decided in favor of the more modest 
 office, but the greater in his eyes, the academic one. 
 This time he sacrificed politics to education. 
 
 He held the presidency of Antioch College for 
 six years, until his death. It was a laborious 
 and painful period of his life and in some respects 
 
 95 
 
96 HORACE MANN 
 
 a dramatic one. While this position offered a 
 great field for his executive powers and revealed 
 his rare gifts as a practical educator, it obliged 
 him to contend with difficulties of every descrip- 
 tion ;f he suffered much as Pestalozzi had suffered 
 at Yverdon, so that these last years of his life 
 present at times a painful and pathetic spectacle. 
 
 The work to be undertaken was an interesting 
 one and of a nature to tempt Mann's ambition. 
 To his ardent imagination it appeared as an op- 
 portunity to regenerate the Western States, which 
 were still partly wilderness and at least backward 
 in order and civilization. It seemed to him that 
 he had but to open in this new region a college 
 for advanced study and lofty ethics, in order to 
 import thither all the civilization which had long 
 flourished in the more favored soil of the Easj/ 
 "Shall the West," he asked, "that empire as 
 vast almost as that of the Caesars, belong to science, 
 virtue, and human brotherhood, or shall it become 
 the prey of corruption and license ? . . . It can only 
 be civilized if a son of Massachusetts transplants 
 there the spirit of the original States of the Union, 
 — those States which have long reverenced reli- 
 gion and learning." 
 
 The spirit which was to preside, according to 
 the plan of its founders, over this new institution 
 
HORACE MANN 97 
 
 was in perfect harmony with Mann's general views. 
 At a preparatory gathering, the first Faculty 
 Meeting held at his house in West Newton, in 
 October, 1852, where the programme of studies was 
 drawn up, he discovered, with delight, that they 
 were in complete agreement. "We are all teeto- 
 talers," he wrote, "all anti-tobacco men, all anti- 
 slavery men, and the majority are adepts in phre- 
 nology; all hostile to emulation, that is, opposed 
 to any system of discipline founded on rewards 
 and prizes, and which, by exciting children to com- 
 pare themselves with their companions, leads them 
 away from the true motive of action, which is to 
 compare oneself with an ideal of excellence." 
 
 The agreement was equally close in religious 
 matters; the promoters of the enterprise, though 
 professing themselves free from all sectarian spirit, 
 yet belonged, most of them, to a new association 
 calling itself the Christian Union; they claimed 
 to have no other creed than the Bible and to have 
 cast aside all denominational bonds. They wished 
 to be simply Christians after the manner of the 
 first Christians in the city of Antioch, and it was 
 for this reason that the college was named Antioch 
 College. In 1853 Mann was already fifty-seven 
 years of age; he had never, up to this time, been 
 a practical instructor, or even done any regular 
 
98 HORACE MANN 
 
 teaching. It was thus a fortunate new departure 
 for him to be able to devote the -evening of his 
 -beautiful life to the application of his favorite 
 ideas. Certainly it was not without regret that 
 he left New England, the scene of his long scholastic 
 propaganda and of his political career;:, and when 
 he bade a last farewell to the friends who came to 
 see him off, the strong man wept like a child. 
 Moreover, he was not unaware, though he did not 
 foresee them all, of the difficulties awaiting him 
 in a comparatively rude region, so far behind 
 that which he was leaving in traditions, morals, 
 and social culture. These difficulties other edu- 
 cators had encountered before him, and he had 
 been fully warnecLj 
 
 Twenty years earlier Catherine Beecher and 
 her sister Harriet, the same who later, as Mrs. 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe, became famous as the 
 writer of Uncle Tom's Cabin, had met with hostility 
 and opposition in undertaking to found a girls' 
 college at Cincinnati. Three years before the 
 foundation of Antioch, in 1850, Calvin Stowe, the 
 husband of Harriet, a professor in Cincinnati, had 
 been persecuted and driven out of the city by the 
 partisans of slavery and forced to seek refuge in 
 the East with his wife and family. Mann mentions 
 in one of his letters that Catherine Beecher, as 
 
HORACE MANN 99 
 
 the result of her own experience, endeavored to 
 dissuade him from his project by representing to 
 him the obstacles he must encounter in the in- 
 hospitable region of the West. But it was all in 
 vain, his mind was made up; his enthusiasm 
 overflowed; and he exclaimed not without a touch 
 of declamation : — 
 
 " Where the capital of the United States ought 
 to be situated is here in the Mississippi Valley, 
 winch is to be the seat of its empire. No other 
 valley, not the Danube, the Ganges, the Nile, nor 
 the Amazon, is destined to exert so potent an in- 
 fluence over the future of humanity; and this 
 is the reason why, if its people study the laws of 
 God on social questions and strive to conform 
 to them, they should rise to the contemplation of 
 the future and enduring reign of beneficence and 
 peace." 
 
 \. Antioch College opened its doors on the 5th 
 of October, 1853, with nearly two hundred 
 students. Over three thousand people assembled 
 for the inaugural exercises. Mann pronounced 
 a glowing oration, in which he gave utterance to 
 his hope of conquering the West by education. 
 "There is life enough in your Inaugural," wrote 
 his friend, Theodore Parker, "to make a college 
 flourish in the desert of Sahara." "To form young 
 
100 HORACE MANN 
 
 minds and hearts," he himself said, — " was not this 
 the most beautiful task ever confided to a man 
 or an angel?"; 
 
 The reality failed to correspond with these 
 bright visions. First came the annoyances at- 
 tendant on moving into unfinished buildings. An- 
 tioch College, when Mann arrived there with his 
 family, presented a forlorn spectacle: nothing 
 was completed, all was still chaos or at most " ar- 
 rested creation, on the third day." It required 
 many months before the toil of building and moving 
 was concluded. Unquestionably, the site was well 
 chosen, — in the midst of a smiling landscape sur- 
 rounded by verdure and tranquillity. The small 
 town of Yellow Springs was famed, as its name 
 indicates, for its springs of medicinal water; Mann 
 was about to create fresh springs of moral life 
 there. 
 
 To make room for the college buildings, they 
 had been obliged to clear a forest. Huge stumps 
 of trees were lying about in all directions upon 
 the miry soil, which resembled a swamp. 
 
 Doubtless, private enterprises are admirable in 
 their way, and we know that their tradition is 
 happily preserved in the United States. But 
 it must be acknowledged that such enterprises 
 are not always carried out with the same precision 
 
HORACE MANN 101 
 
 and thoroughness as the State institutions of more 
 centralized countries. Antioch had been supposed 
 to have an endowment of $600,000,000, but the 
 actual amount was not forthcoming, and the estab- 
 lishment opened with a deficit. 
 
 For several months extreme disorder reigned 
 there; the hastily erected buildings were not 
 enclosed by any wall or even fence, and the animals 
 of the neighborhood entered the college precincts 
 with the utmost freedom, — the famous Ohio pigs 
 circulating through the corridors and often ob- 
 structing the way for masters and pupils. As 
 there was no drinking water on the place, the 
 young girls belonging to the college were obliged 
 to fill their pitchers at a well a quarter of a mile 
 distant, and this in the depth of winter and often 
 in the snow. There were no fires to warm the 
 buildings, and several cold months passed before 
 the arrival of the furnaces which had been ordered. 
 The interior furnishing was deficient not only in 
 the comforts, but in the necessities of life : the 
 library was devoid of books, there was a total 
 absence of writing tables, so that the students 
 were obliged to eat and study by turns at the same 
 tables. 
 
 Some one has said: "Give us men, and it will 
 matter little if we set up a university or a college 
 
102 HORACE MANN 
 
 in barracks, or the students live in tents !" Horace 
 Mann was assuredly a man, but even his strong 
 will could not supply the material deficiencies 
 from which his colleagues and pupils were suffer- 
 ing. The students, ill-clothed and ill-fed, began 
 to be insubordinate, and during the first year Mann 
 feared that a mutiny might break out in the dining 
 room, and by way of precaution he took his meals 
 at the common table. The masters were not 
 regularly paid, and it was found necessary to re- 
 duce the salaries and employ less expensive teachers. 
 For a year and a half Mann did not touch his salary, 
 but with a devotion to his task worthy of a Pesta- 
 lozzi, he exclaimed: "I am ready to suffer any- 
 thing for these young people!" 
 
 These difficulties were not confined to the first 
 days; the situation grew worse and worse, and 
 Mann experienced hours of profound discourage- 
 ment. Not only did he behold the institution 
 on the verge of financial ruin, but he was conscious 
 of an ill-concealed opposition among those about 
 him. The patrons of the enterprise, members 
 of the Christian Union, claimed to belong to no 
 sect, but at heart they inclined toward orthodoxy, 
 and Mann's liberalism caused them some anxiety. 
 When he decided to enter the pulpit and constitute 
 himself a minister, there arose a fresh series of 
 
HORACE MANN 103 
 
 attacks against this improvised " clergyman." On 
 the one hand, he was charged with having renounced 
 his liberal convictions; on the other, with not 
 having conformed to the laws of evangelical ordi- 
 nation. 
 
 Mann, as president of the college, was concerned 
 merely with the moral direction of the house; 
 he had no administrative duties and had not even 
 the right to select his own professors. A super- 
 intendent had been appointed as his colleague, 
 charged with the administration, who soon gave 
 evidence, in his relations with Mann, of an unaccom- 
 modating temper, and who, instead of supporting 
 his authority, constantly sought to undermine it 
 f-a second Schmid for this new Pestalozzi.- 
 Antioch also sustained attacks from those who 
 had been on its staff, a pamphlet of over three 
 hundred pages, criticising Mann and the college, 
 having been circulated by a former professor who 
 had been dismissed. 
 
 Finally, Mann was growing old; his strength 
 was failing day by day. In 1855 he was attacked 
 by a partial paralysis of the tongue and was con- 
 fined for weeks to a bed of suffering. But his 
 iron will was stronger than disease, stronger than 
 the hostility of his enemies. "Here I am, and 
 here I stay," he wrote; "I try to think the sun- 
 
104 HORACE MANN 
 
 rises and sunsets as beautiful as those I gazed 
 upon in Boston in the society of my friends." 
 Nothing could turn him aside from his great mission 
 as an educator, which comprised two things, in- 
 separable in his eyes, — to honor God and serve hu- 
 manity. "We must succeed or die," he wrote. 
 He succeeded, indeed, in a great measure, and he 
 died at his task ! i 
 
 Mann's first concern had been to organize the 
 course of study, and this could not be regularly 
 accomplished for some time. The students who 
 poured into Antioch College at its opening were 
 not ordinary students nor easily classified; they 
 were of all ages and all conditions, — adolescents, 
 adults, and even married men. Attracted by Mann's 
 great reputation, a number of ministers had 
 abandoned their parishes in order to follow a college 
 course. But all, or nearly all, were of such ex- 
 ceptional ignorance that the professors were driven 
 to their wits' ends. Out of the total number of 
 pupils admitted in 1853 — about two hundred — 
 seven only were found capable of constituting 
 a small freshman class; that is to say, of entering 
 on a first year of secondary studies. 
 
 All this, it is true, changed rapidly; and to the 
 disorderly rabble of the first days there succeeded 
 in the following years a carefully culled elite. The 
 
HORACE MANN 105 
 
 college was no longer open to the first comer; 
 applications had grown so numerous that Mann 
 was able to discriminate; he accordingly estab- 
 lished entrance examinations with rigid conditions 
 of admission. And herein is clearly shown the 
 character of an educator who valued moral qualities 
 above intellectual gifts: out of all the young men 
 who presented themselves, Mann made a selection 
 based on moral rather than intellectual quali- 
 fications; the highest knowledge in his opinion 
 being reserved as the privilege of virtuous youth. 
 He reversed the terms of the Socratic adage, 
 "He who is wise is good," and said, "Only he 
 who is good shall be called to become wise." This 
 was to overlook the necessity for educating all; 
 it was also to simplify the problem of moral edu- 
 cation by well-nigh suppressing it altogether. In 
 order to secure beforehand the moral integrity 
 of his college, Mann sought to admit to it only 
 worthy young men. He closed its doors to all 
 whose characters did not seem to him to offer 
 a sufficient guarantee for the future. He put 
 them on their trial, so to speak, during the pre- 
 paratory course of three years, to which he ad- 
 mitted all applicants on condition of eliminating, 
 as soon as it became necessary, the incorrigibly 
 vicious. And he admitted to the benefits of the 
 
106 HORACE MANN 
 
 higher education what he called "the privileges and 
 delights of science and letters' ' — only those youths 
 whose morals and character he had proved. 
 
 Under these conditions, with a carefully selected 
 body of students under such a leader as Mann, 
 Antioch could not fail to become a model college. 
 The system of instruction was founded, on the 
 whole, upon the pattern of the older New England 
 colleges; Latin and Greek were taught, and the 
 degree of B.A. was conferred upon graduates. 
 Mann, however, introduced some interesting in- 
 novations into his course of studies. He gave 
 a larger place to the sciences and history, in spite 
 of his prejudice against the latter study, and in- 
 scribed physiology and hygiene on a college course 
 for the first time. Always concerned with the 
 problem of training efficient teachers, he founded 
 courses on the theory and practice of teaching, 
 thus making of Antioch a sort of normal school. 
 
 But it was in his methods, above all, that Mann 
 introduced innovations: first, by establishing the 
 system of optional courses, those "electives" which 
 still enjoy such favor in the United States and 
 which the reforms of 1902 have partially intro- 
 duced into French secondary education. He made 
 it obligatory to follow all the courses in the senior 
 class only, where particular attention was paid 
 
HORACE MANN 107 
 
 to historical and philosophical studies. Another 
 novelty was the preference given to oral instruction 
 over teaching by books. "The fewest text-books 
 possible " was Mann's motto. The cultivation of 
 speech was one of his hobbies, and he wished that 
 even children should have daily practice in de- 
 scribing the objects about them and in relating 
 a story orally. 
 
 It is evident that Mann had reflected seriously 
 upon questions of practical pedagogy. In his 
 inaugural address on assuming the presidency 
 of Antioch, he discussed several of these essential 
 problems ; as, for instance : Is it from the humani- 
 ties and the dead languages or from mathematics 
 and the natural sciences that we should seek the 
 true discipline of the mind? How can science 
 be reconciled with literature in a plan of studies 
 and how is specialization to be combined with 
 general culture? How can the professor who 
 is himself a seeker for truth develop the love of 
 research in his pupils? 
 
 Mann was not content merely to direct and inspire 
 the teaching of his colleagues : he himself taught the 
 branches of moral philosophy and political economy, 
 thus reserving as his part the training of the honest 
 man and good citizen. He occupied, moreover, 
 the chair of natural theology; and in these various 
 
108 HORACE MANN 
 
 directions he was, according to the testimony of 
 his pupils, an accomplished teacher. His teaching 
 was " stimulating and suggestive," we are told, 
 and there was something in it of feminine delicacy 
 and gentleness. 
 
 But it was especially in the house discipline, 
 of which all the responsibility rested on him, that 
 Mann showed his originality. It was a discipline 
 of freedom, by which the students were taught 
 to guide themselves; supervision was dispensed 
 with, even in the dormitories. The college was 
 transformed into a home, and became, as it were, 
 one great family, of which Mann was the kind 
 and attentive father living in the midst of his 
 children. The pupils were associated in the dis- 
 cipline of the house by a sort of mutual self-govern- 
 ment. The oldest pupils took the younger ones 
 under their special protection, just as in a family 
 the big brothers look after the little ones, under 
 the eye of the parents. At the convention of 
 Ohio colleges in 1856 Mann offered the following 
 resolution: "That the pupils in an institution 
 of learning shall cooperate in its government and 
 contribute toward maintaining order." This was 
 very much what was being attempted at the same 
 period at Rugby by the great English head-master, 
 Thomas Arnold. At Antioch the students, on 
 
HORACE MANN 109 
 
 entering, pledged themselves on their honor to 
 obey the rules of the college, and they kept their 
 word. By appealing to their conscience, to their 
 free will, Mann sought not only to fit them to be 
 men, but to put an end to that state of warfare, 
 that antagonism between teachers and pupils, which 
 is so often the curse of education. 
 
 To avoid punishment as far as possible was the 
 general aim of Mann's discipline ; and he had ex- 
 plained himself fully upon this subject in his lecture 
 of the year 1840. Punishment was an evil in his 
 eyes : first, because under the pretext of preventing 
 a greater evil it inflicts suffering ; secondly, because 
 it develops the sentiment of fear and thus debases 
 mind and heart. Mann did not wish to make 
 himself feared, but loved; and to obtain good 
 work and order, he counted upon the affection 
 which a kind and competent master inspires in 
 his pupils, as well as upon the charms of learning 
 and the interest aroused by well-taught lessons. 
 
 Without knowing Herbart he agreed with him 
 when he says: "One hour a day spent by the 
 professor in preparing an attractive lesson will 
 dispense with many severities on his part." And 
 elsewhere : "For a teacher to succeed he must have 
 won the affection of his pupils. The child will 
 learn nothing, not even mathematics, from a teacher 
 
110 HORACE MANN 
 
 he does not like." To express the depressing 
 effects which a system of terror has on the mind, 
 he says: "You cannot fail to have seen the trunk 
 of an old tree bearing the scars of a wound it has 
 received in its youth: all the wounded side has 
 remained twisted and gnarled, whereas on the 
 other side the tree, nourished by a superabundant 
 sap, has attained a disproportionate size. This 
 is the exact image of a man whose youth has been 
 distorted by an excess of severity."! 
 
 In cases where it is absolut'ery necessary to 
 have recourse to punishment, — and Mann was 
 fully aware that one must at times resign oneself 
 to this course, — one should never forget that 
 penal discipline should be merely repressive, 
 that its aim is, above all, to amend the culprit and 
 lead him back to the path of duty. Moreover, 
 great care should be taken to proportion the penalty 
 to the evil intention, the "will for evil" which the 
 fault betrays; and, finally, one should resort to 
 punishment only with regret and sorrow: "No 
 punishment is beneficent except on condition of 
 its being more painful to him who inflicts than 
 to him who undergoes it." 
 
 For repressive discipline Mann therefore sub- 
 stituted a regime of trust and mildness. But 
 such a regime supposes, on the part of him who 
 
HORACE MANN 111 
 
 applies it, strong moral authority joined to active 
 vigilance. Every morning before prayers Mann 
 delivered an address to the assembled pupils, — 
 a sort of lay sermon, — which, however, did not 
 dispense him from frequent private conversations 
 with individual pupils and intimate, confidential 
 talks. 
 
 His authority was reenforced by the sympathy 
 he inspired, by his great powers of persuasion, and 
 by the influence of his own conscientiousness. 
 The noble ideal he set before his pupils was ex- 
 emplified in his own laborious and stainless life. 
 A pious American writer said of him: "He offered 
 the radiant and rare example of a man in whom 
 a religion of mere morality produces, or at least 
 is united to, an ardor of feeling, an intensity of 
 virtue, which are usually associated with faith 
 and positive attachment to revealed religion." 
 
 "Where he was incomparable, " writes one of 
 his old pupils, "was in the art of arousing ardor 
 and enthusiasm. It would be as impossible to 
 be near the sun without feeling its warmth as to 
 be a witness of Mann's passion for truth without 
 sharing it. The vivacity of his impressions was 
 merely one form of his faith in God and man, a 
 faith so contagious that [indifference, misanthropy, 
 and scepticism vanished at his approach; and 
 
112 HORACE MANN 
 
 when he had communicated to us this ardor and 
 this faith, he was so careful to respect our individ- 
 uality that he put us on our guard against the 
 ascendency which his own opinions might have 
 gained over us. Thus we had in him as delicate 
 a guide as he was a powerful inspirer. . . . 
 
 "We sometimes see free-thinkers who show them- 
 selves as intolerant toward any difference of opinion 
 in their followers as are the bigots from whom 
 they have parted company. But not so Mann; 
 he was too conscious of this tendency in human 
 nature to wish to indoctrinate others. He praised 
 every effort in the direction of free thought; he 
 distrusted no one who was seeking after truth in 
 purity of heart and honesty of mind." 
 
 Does it not seem as if we were listening to an 
 old pupil of Fontenay paying homage to Felix 
 Pecaut and extolling at the same time the force 
 of his moral ascendency and the delicate reserve 
 and discretion of his liberal teaching? Does this 
 imply that there is nothing to criticise in Mann's 
 disciplinary methods? How can we approve of 
 the role he assigned to his pupils when he urged 
 them to report each other's misdoings? Just 
 as in the social world a good citizen sets himself 
 in opposition to the misdeeds he sees committed, 
 so, according to Mann, in the smaller world of 
 
HORACE MANN 113 
 
 college a good student should prevent the evil he 
 is aware of by reporting it. Was not this en- 
 couraging, to a certain extent, a habit of spying? 
 
 It is permissible, also, to hold that Mann obeyed 
 the dictates of an extreme asceticism in the cam- 
 paign which he conducted at Antioch, as elsewhere, 
 against all infractions, even the most innocent 
 ones, against the law of total abstinence. He 
 had inherited a strain of Puritanism from his fore- 
 fathers, and one can hardly refrain from smiling 
 at the anathemas he launches with the utmost 
 solemnity against tobacco and smokers; as, for 
 example, when he says to the Antioch students: 
 "It is not mere smoke, young men, which you see 
 floating off in cloudy spirals, it is a part of your 
 souls; when your nerves become impregnated with 
 tobacco, they can no longer execute your will." 
 
 In his somewhat prejudiced campaign against 
 tobacco, he found no less than ten reasons for 
 proscribing its use; to wit, that tobacco is in- 
 jurious to the health; that it poisons the air and 
 annoys non-smokers; that it is a dirty and also 
 a costly habit ; that for the amount a smoker spends 
 for his tobacco he could buy a farm, build a house, 
 or, at the very least, collect a library, etc. The 
 drinking habit has never had in the United States 
 a more implacable adversary than Mann. During 
 
114 HORACE MANN 
 
 the convention of the Ohio Teachers' Association, 
 he caused the following resolution to be adopted 
 on December 27, 1836: 
 
 " School examiners shall never grant a certificate 
 of fitness as an instructor to any one indulging 
 in the habitual use of spirituous liquors; and 
 where the qualifications are equal between candi- 
 dates, the preference shall be systematically given 
 to the candidate who is a total abstainer.' ' 
 
 But on how many points Mann gave evidence 
 of the broadest spirit, notably in regard to the edu- 
 cation of woman. "The coeducation of the sexes," 
 he said, "is our great experiment at Antioch." 
 He had already attempted it — and with success 
 — in two of his primary normal schools in Massa- 
 chusetts. He now sought to introduce in a college 
 or institution of secondary education a reform 
 which he regarded as an excellent one, and which 
 his countrymen have since widely adopted. In 
 fact, at the present day coeducation is the rule 
 rather than the exception in schools of every order 
 in the United States. And in the higher, or uni- 
 versity, education also, Mann advocated the min- 
 gling of both sexes, as he set forth in a statement 
 addressed to the University of Michigan, the first 
 university to adopt the principle of coeducation. 
 Already in Ohio, at Oberhn College, women were 
 
HORACE MANN 115 
 
 admitted as students, but not without restrictions: 
 they were not allowed to participate in the com- 
 plete scholastic course, but merely permitted to 
 follow a two years' term of study. At Antioch, 
 Mann went farther, — he opened wide the college 
 gates to girls. He held an exalted view of woman 
 and resented the old-time prejudices which denied 
 her the higher education on the pretext that she had 
 no need for it, or was incapable of profiting by it, 
 and that she was devoid of natural aptitude for 
 the sciences. How frequently he spoke in praise 
 of the feminine qualities in terms which prove 
 the delicacy of his own sentiments, while honor- 
 ing the noble-hearted women whom he had known, 
 and who served him as models when he drew this 
 portrait : 
 
 " Woman walks henceforth by the side of man, 
 associated with him in his work of regeneration; 
 she is always gentle, gracious, and filled with lofty 
 ideas of duty. Unequalled in all deeds of kind- 
 ness and charity, she binds up man's wounds 
 with a hand unhardened by wielding deadly weapons, 
 while her heart glows with the divine desire to 
 make peace and purity reign upon earth." 
 
 When Mann wrote these beautiful words, he 
 was doubtless inspired by the example of her 
 who was the companion of his later years, and 
 
116 HORACE MANN 
 
 who, after his death, showed a pious and touching 
 devotion to his memory. 
 
 Thus Mann invited women to seat themselves 
 on the same collegiate benches and to live beneath 
 the same roof with young men at Antioch, and 
 he found no cause to regret the step. At the 
 convention of Ohio colleges in 1855, he recorded 
 the results of his experiment in the following words : 
 "Each sex has exercised a salutary influence over 
 the other; they have stimulated each other intel- 
 lectually and sustained each other morally." 
 
 These are the reasons still given by the partisans 
 of coeducation, not only in America, but in England, 
 where a movement in favor of mixed colleges has 
 prevailed for several years. In presence of girls, 
 the youths, who have become their comrades in 
 study, are roused to emulation ; they wish by their 
 success to maintain the honor of their sex, in which 
 laudable design they are not always successful; 
 for, according to American opinion, it is the girls 
 who are most frequently at the head of the classes. 
 But at least the young men are spurred on to 
 greater efforts, while their manners are softened 
 and their language and bearing are freed from 
 coarseness. The girls, on the other hand, lay aside 
 their natural timidity and all that is essentially 
 effeminate in their character ; they gain in strength 
 
HORACE MANN 117 
 
 as much as do their comrades of the sterner sex 
 in gentleness and courtesy. 
 
 Mann was aware, however, that coeducation, 
 while presenting many advantages, entails also 
 certain dangers. To prevent these, he took all 
 manner of precautions, knowing that the success 
 of such a regime depends greatly upon the vigilance 
 of the presiding head. He gave, accordingly, to 
 the young men and women of Antioch opportunities 
 for meeting frequently in evening gatherings and 
 friendly reunions in presence of their teachers, 
 seeking in this way to encourage general social 
 intercourse among them and counteract the ten- 
 dency to seek tete-a-tetes and private interviews. 
 That the attainment of final diplomas was not 
 always the soul object of the students, both youths 
 and maidens, of Antioch, and that more than one 
 matrimonial engagement enlivened the monotony 
 of these studies in common, it would be vain to 
 deny. But Mann would have retorted, like the 
 Americans of our own day, What harm in that? 
 From this comradeship in studies may result the 
 best assorted unions between young people, who 
 have learned to know each other, to study each 
 other's characters, and to draw from their mutual 
 sympathy as schoolmates the elements of future 
 conjugal affection. 
 
118 HORACE MANN 
 
 Let us add that Mann, while offering to young 
 men and young girls the privileges of equal edu- 
 cation, did not desire that it should be identical. 
 He did not admit the idea that education in common 
 should case the two sexes in the same mould; he 
 considered that woman should be brought up as 
 woman, that she should not "wear a mustache 
 nor sing bass." 
 
 The experiments tried by Mann at Antioch in 
 coeducation, as in all else, appear to have been 
 attended with complete success. Antioch was re- 
 garded as the first of Western colleges, with which 
 no other would bear comparison. Mann, had he 
 lived long enough, would have joyfully continued 
 his experiments in liberal education, and thus 
 have contributed to the general progress of 
 humanity. 
 
 rWith the advance of age his devotion to men 
 only waxed greater in a heart which always re- 
 mained young. In 1856 he wrote to George 
 Combe : 
 
 "I am sixty years old; I am too deeply inter- 
 ested in the great affair of human progress to wish 
 to die. Those great vital questions of pauperism, 
 peace, and slavery, of temperance and education, 
 I cannot leave behind without a painful rending 
 of the very fibres of my heart. You will doubt- 
 
HORACE MANN 119 
 
 less tell me that these things will go on of them- 
 selves. But I should like to see them go on with 
 my own eyes, while I am alive. I am impatient 
 to watch their advance. I feel for these noble 
 causes what a father feels for the children he loves, 
 when he dreads leaving them before they are secure 
 from all moral dangers." 
 
 It was not to be granted to Mann to cooperate 
 longer in the progress of the great movements 
 to which he had devoted his life. His end was 
 approaching ; and to the very last day, he labored 
 and struggled with the difficulties of a financial 
 situation which was going from bad to worse. 
 
 In 1858 failure was imminent; the ruin of the 
 college appeared certain. Mann succeeded, how- 
 ever, in averting it by mortgaging the house he 
 owned in West Newton, and by appealing for aid 
 to various generous friends. A new corporation 
 was formed, and the college was saved. But it 
 was too late. Mann's days were numbered; he 
 died on the 2d of August, 1859. 1 
 
 His physical strength, which he had greatly 
 overtaxed, had long been failing. On the 28th 
 
 1 Mann's successor as president of Antioch was Dr. Thomas 
 Hill. The college was suspended during the Civil War, from 
 1861-1865, but was opened immediately on its conclusion, and 
 has remained to this day a flourishing institution under the 
 direction of Unitarians. 
 
120 HORACE MANN 
 
 of April, 1859, being invited to the first convention 
 of the normal schools of America, he replied: 
 
 " Public schools were my first love; they will 
 be my last. But I must seek to recover my health ; 
 I am worn out, abolished, by hard labor. I am 
 a white slave who cannot look, alas ! for any aboli- 
 tion of his slavery." He realized that his days 
 were numbered. In his last address, delivered 
 after the examinations of 1859 — what the Ameri- 
 cans call the Baccalaureate sermon — and which 
 was his swan-song, he said : 
 
 " Girls and young men, after so many years 
 passed together on our journey of life, the moment 
 of separation has come. In a day, in an hour, 
 we shall part. Would that I might continue to 
 walk beside you, to sustain you with look and 
 voice in the struggle against ignorance and selfish- 
 ness on which you are about to enter ! Up, then, 
 and onward, my young friends! When, after 
 my experience of life, I am asked what I would 
 do if I were allowed to issue it again in a revised 
 edition, I answer that I should wish to do more 
 and better in works of humanity, temperance, peace, 
 education, — especially the education of women. 
 I should like to live again, to enroll myself anew in 
 a fifty years' campaign, and fight once more for the 
 glory of God and the happiness of humanity !" 
 
HORACE MANN 121 
 
 Mann's death was a touching one: the death 
 of a Socrates, with the added presence of a be- 
 loved wife and cherished sons. The physicians 
 warned him that he had but three hours more 
 to live, as the jailer of Athens announced that 
 the hour for drinking the hemlock had come. The 
 dying man raised himself upon his bed of pain and 
 for two hours conversed feverishly with the faith- 
 ful friends, the weeping pupils, who surrounded 
 him. His last words testified to the serenity of 
 a strong soul who controls the final agonies in his 
 thoughts for those he is about to leave, and who 
 affirms for the last time the faith and sentiments 
 which have always inspired him. Of one of his 
 favorite pupils who was absent he said: "Dear 
 Carey, always good, always upright, always firm, 
 tell him how I love him! Those good young men 
 who always do their duty, how I love them ! Tell 
 them how I love them!" Then addressing another 
 pupil whom he held in especial esteem: " Preach 
 the laws of God; preach them till their light pene- 
 trates the darkness of the world." At last the 
 agony began, during which Mann pronounced 
 only broken words: "Man — God — Duty." 
 Then death arrived, not calm and peaceful but 
 tormented, agitated, as the life had been. "It 
 was hard for that powerful brain to die!" At 
 
122 HORACE MANN 
 
 least until his last hour Mann had preserved 
 his lucidity of mind and proclaimed his faith, 
 remaining to the end an apostle, a prophet, — 
 the prophet of the happiness of men through 
 virtue. 
 
Horace Mann's Influence and the Spread 
 of his Work 
 
 If it were granted to Horace Mann to live again 
 and revisit this world, he would doubtless find 
 some subjects for disappointment and bitterness. 
 Were he to make once more, fifty years later, his 
 European trip, he would discover with grief the 
 distressing increase, in some countries at least, of 
 the curse of alcoholism. He would read with pain, 
 in the newspapers of his own country, that 
 "the horrors of intemperance are the greatest 
 evil of American life." And, above all, he, the 
 friend of peace among men, the "pacificator," as 
 we say to-day, with what sorrowful eyes would 
 he behold the military spirit and its formidable 
 armaments increasing even in the United States. 
 
 On the other hand, what joy the abolition of 
 slavery would cause him. He died three years 
 before the outbreak of the civil war of 1861-1865. 
 He would have been saddened by the bloody vio- 
 lence of that fratricidal strife, but would have 
 
 123 
 
124 HORACE MANN 
 
 rejoiced over its results, since it put an end to 
 the institution of slavery, which he held in such 
 abhorrence. But, above all, if he could contem- 
 plate to-day the magnificent growth of popular 
 education in all countries, particularly his own, 
 the apostle of education would certainly feel happi- 
 ness and pride in the spread and progress of his 
 ideas, while admitting, doubtless, that the efforts 
 of his successors have been powerless up to this 
 time in abolishing the evil in the world, and that 
 humanity, in spite of having grown more learned 
 and enlightened, is still a long way from attaining 
 that ideal of happiness and virtue of which he 
 had dreamed. 
 
 For half a century the United States have faith- 
 fully conformed in the matter of public education 
 to the programme which Mann had traced for them. 
 He had wished to see the schoolhouses habitable, 
 comfortable, even architecturally fine, and America 
 has clothed herself with scholastic palaces, which 
 none of her children dream of criticising. He 
 desired free schools, with the schooling obligatory ; 
 and one no longer sees in America those paying 
 public schools, which he called the "blot on our 
 civilization.' ' The poor school has disappeared, and, 
 moreover, vigorous efforts have been made that 
 obligatory education should not be a mere name, 
 
HORACE MANN 125 
 
 certain States going so far as to refuse the rights of 
 suffrage to the illiterate. He desired the common 
 school to be universal, frequented by the children 
 of the rich as well as of the destitute, in order that 
 aristocratic prejudices should fade away, which 
 separate in institutions of learning the children 
 of one country, and which too long forbade the 
 sons of well-to-do citizens from sitting on the 
 same school benches with the sons of farmers and 
 workingmen. For any citizen not to send his 
 children to the public schools on the pretext that 
 he is rich and that these schools are open gratui- 
 tously to all, appeared to Mann to be treason against 
 democracy. In this direction, also, progress is 
 apparent, though still incomplete. He was averse 
 to introducing any positive religious instruction 
 into the school, regarding the teaching of dogmas as 
 despotism on the master's part and servitude on that 
 of the scholars. He almost grasped the necessity 
 of an absolutely and purely lay school; for while 
 he admitted the reading of the Bible, he forbade 
 accompanying it with any commentary. At the 
 present day, although America, amid its diversity 
 of sects, has remained more faithful to its ancient 
 religious faith than certain European countries, 
 there are, nevertheless, numbers of American edu- 
 cators who would go farther than Mann, and who 
 
126 HORACE MANN 
 
 are disposed to exclude from the schools even the 
 reading of the Bible. "If there are children who do 
 not wish to read the Bible/ ' they say, "the Bible 
 should not be inscribed on the school programme." 
 
 Mann was the first secretary of a regularly estab- 
 lished board of education in the United States, and 
 to-day there does not exist within the great Ameri- 
 can Union a single State which does not possess, 
 under one form or another, a central authority 
 established for the supervision and direction of 
 the public schools. Sometimes it is a board of 
 education similar to the Boston one; sometimes 
 it consists merely of a single head, a superintendent ; 
 in the Western States a county superintendent, 
 in the East a city superintendent and, moreover, 
 with widely different powers. One such super- 
 intendent corresponds to our provincial minister 
 of public* instruction, another is merely the director 
 of a bureau of information and statistics. But 
 everywhere, taught by Mann's example, the Ameri- 
 cans have established an official authority who 
 presides over the destiny of schools, and it would 
 appear that at this very moment a movement 
 is started to extend its action and reenforce its 
 powers. 
 
 Progress in school organization, progress in 
 administration — all this, however, has not been 
 
HORACE MANN 127 
 
 accomplished in a day. The United States have 
 not, like France, a centralized government, where 
 an order from above, a national law, can, from one 
 day to the next, transform the entire system of 
 education and impose uniform and universal rules 
 over its whole territory. Each State in the Union 
 has its individual spirit and character, and by the 
 very reason of their diversity of manners and 
 social condition, they have not all advanced at 
 an equal pace along the path of progress. Just 
 as on a summer night the stars shine forth in the 
 sky one after another, according to their magnitude 
 and position in space, so the States of the American 
 Union have set in motion their scholastic enter- 
 prises successively and gradually, according to 
 their resources and their degree of advancement 
 in the march of civilization. It is the Eastern 
 States that have led the way, but the Western 
 States have followed with such rapid strides that 
 they no longer have anything for which to envy 
 their precursors. 1 
 
 To the appeal of Mann, of Barnard, and all their 
 followers, the United States have made a superb 
 response. At the dawn of the twentieth century, 
 they offer to the admiration of the world an en- 
 
 1 Ohio had appointed a superintendent in 1837, three months 
 before the establishment of the Boston Board. 
 
128 HORACE MANN 
 
 semble of scholastic institutions which no other 
 country can surpass. 1 They assemble in their 
 public schools of the first grade more than 
 15,000,000 children, as many as the total population 
 of Spain. The teachers in these institutions, men 
 and women, number 426,000, and the annual 
 expenditure is $212,000,000, i.e. over a billion 
 francs, as much as France expends in maintaining 
 her army and navy. 
 
 Mann, whatever may have been the ardor of 
 his hopes, would have stood amazed before this 
 marvellous effort. To speak of Massachusetts alone, 
 the State to which he communicated the most 
 vigorous impulse, what a change and what progress 
 in fifty years ! In 1848 the budget of that State for 
 common school education did not exceed $700,000 ; 
 it now reaches more than $11,000,000. In 
 1848 Massachusetts possessed but three normal 
 schools, those with which Mann had endowed 
 the State; they number ten to-day. The school 
 population has risen from 185,000 children in 
 1848 to 424,000 in 1896. And, finally, the number of 
 men and women teachers has increased from 7924 to 
 12,275 (of whom 11,197 are women to 1078 men). 
 
 1 Among the causes to which the United States owe the admirable 
 progress in primary education, we must note the abolition of slavery, 
 which opened the way for public schools in sixteen new States. 
 
HORACE MANN 129 
 
 Two ideas equally dear to Mann's heart, co- 
 education and instruction by women, have become 
 more and more acclimated in the United States. 
 In Massachusetts, as we have shown in the figures 
 quoted above, the proportion is eleven women 
 teachers to one man, and it is nearly the same all 
 over America. 1 As to coeducation, it does not 
 cease to make progress, and is in general favor, 
 not only in the public schools, but even in colleges 
 and universities. It has become — and how 
 Mann would rejoice thereat ! — a characteristic 
 feature of the American school system. Mann 
 was concerned not only with the elementary public 
 schools, he was equally interested in schools of 
 the second degree, such as are called in America 
 high schools. The first high school was founded 
 in Boston in 1821 ; Mann occupied himself with 
 starting others, and to-day, on the showing of Mr. 
 Harris, the eminent director of the Washington 
 Board of Education, the increase in the number 
 of high schools is perhaps the most important 
 event in the history of education in the United 
 States during the last years of the nineteenth century. 
 This progress was for a long time slow and im- 
 perceptible. In 1860 the whole United States 
 
 1 In certain cities the proportion in favor of women is even higher. 
 In Philadelphia, in 1899, 3174 women were teaching to 190 men. 
 
130 HORACE MANN 
 
 counted but 40 schools of this type, to more than 
 800 in 1880. But in the last twenty years of the 
 nineteenth century, American intermediate educa- 
 tion received an immense impetus; in fact, the 
 number of high schools in 1900 was about 6000, 
 with more than 500,000 pupils, boys and girls — 
 244 of these schools being in Massachusetts alone. 1 
 If Mann's influence, after the lapse of fifty years, 
 still pervades the scholastic institutions of the 
 United States, it was especially during his life- 
 time that it was powerful and effective. Nor 
 was it in the State of Massachusetts alone that he 
 exercised this influence. Before he had carried 
 his scholastic gospel in person to the Mississippi 
 Valley, his writings, and especially his school re- 
 ports, had circulated far and wide. " Mann's 
 reports," wrote George B. Emerson, in 1844, "have 
 waked an echo in the woods of Maine, on the banks 
 of the St. Lawrence, on the shores of the Great 
 Lakes. They have been read and listened to in 
 New York, in the West and Southwest. The im- 
 portance they have acquired is shown by the fact 
 
 1 It is to be noticed, moreover, that the number of girls in 
 the high schools considerably surpasses that of boys, — 200,000 
 boys only to 300,000 girls, — which is to be regretted, since, ac- 
 cording to the testimony of its warmest defenders, coeducation 
 has full efficacy only in schools where the proportion between 
 the sexes is about equal. 
 
HORACE MANN 131 
 
 that a man from Massachusetts has been selected 
 to organize the schools of New Orleans. At this 
 very moment his reports are regenerating the 
 Rhode Island schools, while in the remotest corners 
 of Ohio forty people have been known to meet 
 to read together the only copy of the Boston secre- 
 tary's reports which they had been able to obtain." 
 The worth of a great man is recognized in this, 
 — that he founds a school and raises up imitators 
 and disciples. Mann inspired one such disciple, 
 who became almost his equal, and shares with 
 him the honor of having led the pedagogic move- 
 ment in the United States in the nineteenth century. 
 This was Henry Barnard, of whom Mann said 
 in 1850, "If one wishes to find a more capable 
 man than he, one must wait for the next genera- 
 tion." Barnard was in turn school superintendent 
 of Connecticut from 1832 to 1842, State superin- 
 tendent for Rhode Island from 1843 to 1849, presi- 
 dent of St. John's College from 1858 to 1867, and, 
 finally, commissioner of the Board of Education in 
 Washington from 1867 to 1870. His career offers many 
 analogies with that of Mann : if the latter was promi- 
 nent in the reform of asylums for the insane, Bar- 
 nard labored equally for prison reform and for the 
 reorganization of institutions for the blind and deaf 
 and dumb. The great American educators have 
 
132 HORACE MANN 
 
 always extended their solicitude to the infirm, the 
 abnormal, — to those disinherited by nature. 
 
 Barnard published for forty years the American 
 Journal of Education, a real encyclopaedia of pedagogy 
 from the historical, as well as the doctrinal, point 
 of view. He had but one claim to superiority 
 over Mann, — that of a longer life, since born in 
 1811, he died, full of years, in 1901. 
 
 Mann's countrymen have not forgotten what they 
 owe him. They have raised statues to him, and in 
 1897 they celebrated the anniversary of his birth ; but 
 what is better still is that they remain faithful to his 
 inspiration, and he may be said to be still present in 
 their midst. It may be said also that his spirit has 
 penetrated into Europe and particularly into France. 
 It will not be detracting from the honor due to the 
 organizers of elementary instruction in France under 
 the Third Republic to say that they were in great 
 measure inspired by the thought and example 
 of the great American educator. To mention but 
 one, our Pecaut, above all, appears to us as a French 
 Horace Mann, more impressive, of a deeper and 
 more intense inner life, more reserved and discreet ; a 
 Horace Mann without the gift of oratory, but with 
 greater moderation and delicacy of mental quality, 
 worthy in any case to figure, like him, in the front 
 rank in the golden book of great modern educators. 
 
BIBLIOGEAPHY 
 
 There can be no question here of giving a complete bibli- 
 ography of Mann's works, nor especially of the five or six hun- 
 dred books and pamphlets published about him. Let us 
 cite merely the principal editions of his writings and the most 
 important of the studies which have appeared regarding his 
 work. 
 
 Horace Mann, Reports as Secretary of the Board of Educa- 
 tion of Massachusetts, 12 vols. Boston, 1838-1849. 
 
 The same, abridged and edited by George Combe Mann, 
 4 vols. Boston, 1891. 
 
 Horace Mann, Lectures on Education, 1 vol. Boston, 
 1845. 
 
 Mary Mann, Life of Horace Mann, by his Wife, 1st edition. 
 Boston, 1865. 
 
 Mary Mann, Life and Works of Horace Mann, 5 vols. Cam- 
 bridge, 1867. 
 
 In the Reports of the Commissioner of Education, published 
 in Washington, will be found a series of studies upon Horace 
 Mann. We will point out two particularly important ones. 
 
 Horace Mann, by Mr. W. T. Harris; notice followed by 
 a bibliography made out by one of Mann's sons, Mr. B. 
 Pickman Mann, and which, although incomplete, comprises 
 no less than 600 different publications (Reports, etc., 1895- 
 1896, pp. 886-927). 
 
 Horace Mann and the Great Revival of the American Common 
 School, by A. D. Mayo. (Reports, etc., 1896-1897, pp. 715-767). 
 
 Barnard, Horace Mann. Hartford, 1858. 
 
 133 
 
134 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Hinsdale, Horace Maim and Public Education in the United 
 States, hi the collection The Great Educators. New York, 1898. 
 
 French works : — 
 
 Laboulaye, Lecture on the Importance of Education in 
 a Republic. Paris, 1873. 
 
 Gaufres, Horace Mann, his Work, his Writings, 1 vol. Paris, 
 Hachette, 2d edition, 1897. 
 
 Felix Pecaut, article in the Revue pedagogiquc, 1888, vol. 1. 
 
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