Note 62 — Chapter XIX · AUTOMATIC CONTRASTED WITH SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION—Continued.
Reading edition
The reason why statutes fail more frequently than steam-engines and bridges is not wholly because the legislator has to deal with human nature and the mechanic with inanimate matter. Steam and electricity are subtle forces, but man has quickly mastered them and successfully applied them to a variety of uses.
It is not to the interest of any one that the machinist should make a defective locomotive, for example; but it is often to the interest of some one that the legislator should enact vicious laws. Vicious statutes are enacted with a design to injure the public in order that certain individuals may be benefited thereby.
If the mind should act as honestly in legislation as the hand does in construction, statutes would not have to be repealed yearly.
We have fallen into the habit of regarding education as a polite accomplishment having very little to do with the real business of life; but this is not the fact. Education begins in the cradle and continues through life; and it makes the man what he is. If he goes to the penitentiary it is his education that sends him there. If he is sent to the General Assembly of the State or to the Congress of the Nation, and there helps to enact vicious laws, it is his education that is responsible for such laws. If the man as a citizen sells his franchise at the polls, or his vote in the legislative hall, for money, it is the education he has received that is responsible for his baseness.
It will be said that the explanation of the greater apparent accuracy of the work of the hand is to be found in the fact that it operates upon matter while the mind deals with metaphysical subtilties. The contention will not be that mind is less plastic than matter, but that it is more difficult of comprehension. But how do we know this to be the fact? Where has the experiment been tried of honest contact mind with mind? It was not tried by the ancients. It is not on trial in any part of the world to-day. There is, hence, no place in which to seek evidence as to how mind would act upon mind if treated honestly, as matter is treated by the hand. But if the quality of selfishness is eliminated, there will be no difficulty in bringing all minds to an agreement, as the parts of a watch are brought into harmonious and useful action. And it is through the hand that this beneficent union is destined to be effected; for the hand is the source of wisdom, which is simply the power of discriminating between the true and the false.