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 REVIEW 
 
 LIFE OF HORACE MANN. 
 
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 FOR JANUARY, 18GG. 
 
 FROM THE BIBLICAL REPOSITORY AND PRINCETON REVIEW, 
 
2S^-^^ 
 
 REVIEW. 
 
 The opinions of a public functionary are a legitimate sub- 
 ject of review, so far as they affect the interests of the com- 
 munity. The late Hoeace Mann was, for about twelve 
 years, actively engaged in behalf of the public schools of 
 Massachusetts, and afterwards, for several years, he was 
 President of Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and 
 his fame and influence have extended to the borders of our 
 land. The volume before us was written by his widow, and 
 is a faithful and loving tribute of a warm-hearted woman, to 
 the personal worth and life-long labours of her husband. Our 
 purpose is to delineate the form and pressure of his peculiar 
 views and measures as an educator of the young. 
 
 Mr. Mann was born in Franklin, Massachusetts, May 4, 
 1796. He was thirteen when he lost his father, and ho lived 
 with his mother till he was twenty. "All the family laboured 
 together for the common support, and toil was considered 
 honourable, although it was sometimes, of necessity, exces- 
 sive." It shows the narrowness of their means, that the boy 
 earned the money to buy his school books by braiding straw. 
 By diligent application he was prepared to enter the Sopho- 
 more class of Brown University in 181G — graduated with 
 honourable distinction — served his alma inater for a time, 
 successfully, as tutor of Latin and Greek, — was admitted to 
 the bar at the close of 1823 — elected to the State Legislature 
 in 1827, and Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Edu- 
 cation in 1837 — became a member of Congress in 1847, and 
 President of Antioch College in 1853, which office he held at 
 his death in 1859. This is the briefest outline of an uncom- 
 
 » The Lifo of Horace Mann. By his Wile. Boston: Walker, Fuller & Co. 1805. 
 
monly active, earnest, and, in inany respects, useful life. Our 
 filling up must necessarily be very scant. 
 
 Mr. Mann's childhood is represented as having been un- 
 happy. ''He retained only jminful recollections" of it. "The 
 poverty of my parents," he says, ''subjected me to continued 
 privations." "My teachers were very good people, but they 
 were very poor teachers." "Our eyes were never trained to 
 distinguish forms and colours. Our ears were strangers to 
 music." But "more than by toil or by the privation of any 
 natural taste, was the inward joy of my youth blighted by 
 theological inculcations." 
 
 What first led him to doubt the religious views in which 
 he had been educated does not appear, though he is very ex- 
 plicit in condemning them as utterly unscriptural and injuri- 
 ous in their influence; and in assuming the office of Secretary 
 of the Massachusetts Board of Education, he doubtless pro- 
 mised himself the enviable privilege of rescuing the minds 
 and hearts of a generation of children and youth from the 
 thraldom of bigotry and fanaticism. He conceived that a 
 system of religious doctrines had been palmed upon the com- 
 munity that were at variance with all proper notions of the 
 character and requirements of the Supreme Being. These 
 false and mischievous opinions were too deeply imbedded in 
 the adult mind of the country to be corrected or materiall}'' 
 modified, but the throng of school children were still within 
 reach. Their docile minds might be imbued with more rational 
 and enlightened views, and with happier religious emotions. 
 And as his own childhood and youth had been made inex- 
 pressibly gloomy and wretched by sundry dogmas, with which 
 he tells us he was "familiar at ten years of age," his sympa- 
 thies were naturally kindled in behalf of others who are vic- 
 tims of the same calamity. 
 
 Whether the doctrines which Mr. Mann specifies as having 
 filled him with such horror were ever taught or held by any 
 considerable body of people in- their senses, it is not to our 
 purpose to inquire. It is evident that in some way or other 
 (perhaps from a verse of one of good Dr. Watts's hymns, which 
 
we are told "cannot now be found"), he had been led to em- 
 brace a faith which " spread a pall of blackness over the whole 
 heavens, shutting out every beautiful and glorious thing; 
 while beyond that curtain of darkness, he could see the bot- 
 tomless and. seething lake, filled with torments, and hear the 
 wailings of its victims." "Images of terror haunted his mind 
 day and night." 
 
 A friend to whom he unbosomed himself, describes him as 
 "well-nigh to insanity." His darling brother, at twelve years 
 of age was drowned, and "his agonized heart stimulated his 
 imagination to clothe a ' solitary soul ' in hell with his brother's 
 form and feature." "His whole being rose up against the 
 idea of such a cruel Creator, and declared hatred to him." 
 The eifect of thus putting himself "at odds," with what he 
 still thought infinite power, was fearful. "His imagination 
 was possessed with the idea of a personal devil;" and "nature 
 seemed to him but the specious veil in which demons clothed 
 themselves. * * He expected the foul fiend to appear from 
 behind every hedge and tree to carry him off." So intense 
 was this nervous excitement by night, that "he saw fiends 
 and other horrid shapes distinctly as with his bodily eyes, 
 and was obliged to use the utmost force of his will to keep 
 from screaming;" and not until twelve years of age was he 
 relieved. His friend regards it as a marvel that " so sensitive 
 a boy, absolutely banished from the bosom of a Heavenly 
 Father, grew up so sweet, so truthful, so faithful to the un- 
 known God whom he ignorantly worshipped, and who, un- 
 awares to himself, strengthened him for his protest against 
 the popular theology." It does not seem to have been by 
 any process through which common people can expect to pass, 
 that he obtained relief, but as his friend tells us, "it was the 
 exercise of his great intellectual faculties and of his pure and 
 noble affections in philanthropy," that "gradually brought 
 him into a healthier atmosphere of feeling and thought, and, 
 at last, his happy marriage seemed to justify God's creation." 
 
 The release from the bondage of his relicrious education was 
 not gradual however. He remembered the dav, the hoirr, 
 
the place, the circumstances, when "in an agony of despair 
 he broke the spell that bound him," but he does not record 
 any of them. From what source the light came which now 
 dawned upon him, is also a mystery, but by it he was enabled 
 at once to "construct a theory of Christian ethics and doc- 
 trine resiDecting virtue and vice, rewards and penalties, time 
 and eternity, God and his providence, out of which his life 
 flowed," to which he steadfastly adhered, and which, as we 
 shall see, constituted the basis of his theories and schemes of 
 popular education. After the death of his wife (an event 
 which nearly "deprived him of life and reason"), we are told 
 that " happier religious associations aided his own efforts to 
 put himself in harmony with the universe, whose adaptations 
 to the soul of man had again been lost sight of by his crush- 
 ing sorrow." "Baptized in the divine flame, which sorrow 
 lights in the soul, he was ready," when he returned to the 
 world, "to do all he could to supply its needs," 
 
 It would be very difficult to make out from the volume 
 before us, what form of doctrinal belief Mr. Mann substituted 
 for that which he renounced, and yet one would think the 
 chief work of his life (in his own esteem) was such as to make 
 this a primary question. Education has certainly no less to 
 do with the conscience and heart, than with the understand- 
 ing. Most of our relations to our fellow-men, for which edu- 
 cation is to prepare us, grow out of our relations to God. 
 What those relations are and what duties they involve, is an 
 inquiry of absorbing interest to every mortal being. Whence 
 shall we obtain this important knowledge? From the Holy 
 Scriptures, would be the answer of most persons in Christian 
 lands, but Mr. Mann would not echo that answer. In his 
 view, "natural religion stands as pre-eminent over revealed 
 religion as the deepest experience over the lightest hearsay." 
 He held "that the power of natural religion has scarcely 
 begun to be understood and appreciated," and he believed 
 "the time is coming when the light 'of natural religion will 
 be to that of revealed as the rising sun is to the day-star that 
 preceded it." With this low estimate of the light by which 
 
the bulk of the i:)eople of Christendom must be content to 
 walk, it is not so much a matter of surprise, perhaps, that he 
 embraced with eagerness a system of "philosophical and moral 
 doctrines," the prevalence of which would, in his view, ''pro- 
 duce a new earth at least, if not a new heaven." This reve- 
 lation he found in Combe's " Constitution of Man,'' a volume 
 which he did not meet with till he was past forty, but just as 
 he entered on his work as an educator he fell in with it, and 
 ever after made it his text-book. 
 
 Before we attempt a sketch of Mr. Mann's labours, we 
 must, in justice to him, present a little more in detail his con- 
 ception of the work assigned him. He had conceived the 
 idea, as we have seen, that the human mind is, to a large 
 extent, in abject bondage to bigotry. He looked upon what is 
 called the " evangelical faith " — that is, the faith in the Gospels 
 as inspired of God, which probably seven-eighths of Protestant 
 Christians embrace — with the greatest aversion. His strong 
 feeling on this point is conspicuous throughout the volume. 
 In a letter to his sister, written at the mature age of forty, 
 in reply to one in which she had referred to some doctrinal 
 opinions, the influence of which (as he thought) would be to 
 render her unhappy, he says: "It is this knowledge of the 
 inevitable effect of such a faith upon a nature like yours, that 
 gives me pain. I claim no superior sensibility to the fate of 
 others, over the mass of my fellow- men; but t know that, to 
 my nature, there can be no compensation in the highest hap- 
 piness and that of the longest duration, for the endless and 
 remediless misery of a single sentient thing. No : though the 
 whole offspring of the Creator, with the exception of one soli- 
 tary being, were gathered into a heaven of unimaginable 
 blessedness, while that one solitary being, wide apart in some 
 region of immensity, however remote, were wedded to im- 
 mortal pain, even then, just so soon as the holy principle of 
 love sprung up in the hearts of that happy assembly, just so 
 soon would they forget their joy, and forget their God, and 
 the whole universe of them, as one spirit, gather round and 
 weep over the sufferer." In the same letter he speaks of 
 
8 
 
 ''months" in which he "daily and hourly yearned for death, 
 as much as ever a famishing infant yearned for the breast of 
 his mother," but "during all that time," he says, "I felt not 
 a moment's remorse because I had not loved God more. I 
 felt, indeed, that it was a great and irreparable misfortune, 
 that I had not been taught the existence of a God worthy of 
 being loved." 
 
 It is difficult to persuade ourselves that a mother with 
 whom he lived till he was twenty, and whom he describes as 
 "the purest, strongest, wisest," — who "invariably kept her 
 eye fixed upon his highest welfare," and whose "wise and 
 judicious counsels were sanctified and hallow^ed" while she 
 was yet alive, should have failed to impress upon his mind 
 just conceptions of the Divine Being; and especially that the 
 eye of her fatherless son should never have been turned, under 
 her influence, towards a merciful and loving Father in heaven. 
 
 Again he admonishes his sister that "what we learn from 
 books — even what we think we are taught in the Bible — may 
 be mistaken or misapprehended, but the lessons we learn from 
 our own consciousness are the very voice of the Being that 
 created us; and about it can there be any mistake!" 
 
 He describes the transcendental philosopher, Ralph Waldo 
 Eiiierson, as occupying "a central position in the spiritual 
 world, which enables him to discover harmony and order 
 where others can discern only confusion and irregularity." 
 
 These few paragraphs may serve to introduce us into the 
 sphere in which Mr. Mann lived, moved, and had his being. 
 He satisfied himself that a system of faith is widely adopted, 
 that is derogatory to the character of God and dwarfing and 
 enslaving to the mind of man, and he gave himself, with con- 
 suming zeal, to vindicate the former and emancipate the latter. 
 Whether this condition of mind made him a fitting instrument 
 for administering a grand educational system in old Massa- 
 chusetts, we must be permitted to doubt. 
 
 The words "orthodox" and "ultra-orthodox," Calvinist 
 and dogmatist, fanatics and bigots, stood for persons and 
 things that were highly obnoxious to him and to those who 
 
9 
 
 had his warmest sympathies; and his whole career as an edu- 
 cator was, in its spirit (so far as the memoir reveals it), a 
 crusade against the system of faith which had prevailed in 
 New England from its beginning. 
 
 Without attempting to define that system fully or accu- 
 rately, it may suffice to say that its chief points are (1.) The 
 existence of an eternal, unchangeable, and infinitely holy 
 God, the creator and governor of all worlds ; the sovereign 
 disposer of all persons and events, and the only proper object 
 of religious worship. (2.) The divine inspiration of the Scrip- 
 tures of the Old and New Testaments, and their sufiiciency 
 and infallibility as a rule of faith. (3.) The sinfulness of 
 man's nature in consequence of the apostacy of our first 
 parents, and the necessity of supernatural power to restore 
 him to the Divine favour. (4.) The grace of God revealed in 
 the person and ofiSces of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was in- 
 carnate by the Holy Ghost, and, after a life of unparalleled 
 benevolence and humiliation, offered himself a sacrifice for 
 sin, so that God might be just, and yet justify all who repent 
 and believe his holy gospel. (5.) The law being thus honoured, 
 by the perfect obedience and atoning sacrifice of the Son of 
 God, who was also the Son of man, there is now no condemna- 
 tion to such as believe on and obey him, while to those who 
 refuse such faith and obedience, the penalty of the Divine 
 law stands in full force and rigour. (6.) This penalty, by 
 whatever term expressed, involves the irretrievable loss of 
 God's favour, and everlasting banishment from his presence, 
 and, of course, from all sources of peace and happiness. 
 
 We suppose it will be admitted that these views, in sub- 
 stance, have prevailed in the religious communities of New 
 England from 1G20 until now. They were inculcated in chil- 
 dren's hymns, catechisms, and primers; they were taught by 
 parents to their children, by teachers to their pupils, by 
 pastors to their people, and by authors to their readers. It 
 was not until a comparatively late period that such doctrines 
 were condemned as ''impediments to the progress of our race 
 towards perfection, unworthy of God, and debasing to the 
 
10 
 
 minds and hearts of men." So firmly were these and the lik(; 
 doctrines (or dogmas) imbedded in the New England mind, 
 that it required many years and powerful influences to wrench 
 them out, and still more to gain a foothold for opposite or in- 
 consistent views. Any one who reads the religious writings 
 of the wisest, godliest, and most learned men of the first cen- 
 tury and a half of New England history, will be abundantly 
 satisfied that what Mr. Mann strove so rudely to thrust aside 
 under the name of bigotry or fanaticism, was the system of 
 faith uniformly received and adopted, through five, if not six 
 or even seven successive generations of that people. A cata- 
 logue of the men and women who exemplified the power of 
 this evangelical or orthodox faith in their lives, and who, in 
 the strength of it, triumphed over sin, adversity and death, 
 would embrace the noblest and most venerable names of New 
 England, and, indeed, of American genealogy. Nor was it a 
 diflacult matter, under the old school laws of that State, to 
 train up a generation of children in the religious views which 
 prevailed in the community around them. Each municipality 
 had its schools under its own control. The choice of the 
 teacher, the books to be used, the course of instruction, and 
 the general influence of the school, were exclusively in the 
 hands of the people of the several towais. The legal voters in 
 these little sovereignties having the direction of the discipline 
 and instruction of their schools, it came to pass that the reli- 
 gious tone and sentiment of the people generally prevailed in 
 the school, and it was moreover the province and practice 
 of the public teachers of religion to summon the children 
 toccether, at short intervals, and instruct them in doctrine 
 and duty. 
 
 When the State, upon the adjustment of some war claims, 
 received a large sum of money from the. Federal Government, 
 it was funded, and jts income appropriated to the support of 
 public schools. This measure, of itself, might have been 
 harmless, but it led to the organization of a central power in 
 the form of a Board of Education, and thus brought the whole 
 
11 
 
 system and all its machinery into the vortex of conflicting 
 political and religious opinions. 
 
 If the successive steps to this new order of things could be 
 laid bare, it would probably be found that most of its active 
 promoters were persuaded that greater efficiency and thorough- 
 ness would thereby be secured, and a much higher grade of 
 instruction be attained in the public schools; but there were 
 others who saw in it an opportunity to "liberalize" the whole 
 system of instruction, and make it subserve the views of a 
 theological, psychological, or anthropological school, of which 
 Mr. George Combe was a distinguished teacher, and Mr. 
 Mann a most zealous and faithful disciple. 
 
 We will not attempt even a sketch of the peculiarities of 
 this school. A few paragraphs from the chief text-book will 
 sufficiently indicate its leanings. 
 
 ''Before phrenology was knowp, the moral and intellectual 
 condition of man was unascertained." Page 205.* 
 
 ''Before the discovery of phrenology, the mental consti- 
 tution of man was a matter of vain conjecture and endless 
 debate, and the connection between his mental powers and 
 his organized system was involved in the deepest obscurity." 
 P. 293. 
 
 "The character of the Divine Being, under the natural 
 system, Vv'ill go on rising in exact proportion as his works 
 shall be understood." P. 205. 
 
 "Differences of religious opinions may be traced to igno- 
 rance of the primitive faculties and their relations." P. 281. 
 
 "The low and miserable conceptions of God, formed by the 
 vuli^ar Greeks and Eomans, were the reflections of their own 
 ignorance of natural, moral, and political science." P. 205. 
 
 The cardinal doctrine of Mr. Combe's creed has been fully 
 expressed by saying, that the highest happiness of which man 
 is capable, is to be obtained by conforming to the laws of his 
 being as they are revealed in his physical and moral nature. 
 In other words, that ho is a machine containing within itself 
 
 » "Cunstitiitiiin of Man. ■ Boston (Mlitwn 1824. 
 
12 
 
 all the powers requisite to the perfect accomplishment of its 
 design. 
 
 To the like effect is the flippant saying of one of the same 
 school: '''Nature, as we have seen her, is no saint. Her dar- 
 lings — the great, the strong, the beautiful — do not come out 
 of the Sunday-school, nor weigh their food, nor punctually 
 keep the commandments." 
 
 To show Mr. Mann's devotion to the propagation of these 
 views, we might turn to the memoir almost at random, and 
 especially to his letters to Mr. Combe during a period of 
 nearly twenty years; but we have no space for extracts. Suf- 
 fice it to say, that he mentions, with unbounded pleasure, a 
 fact, "most cheering to those who wait for the coming of the 
 intellectual Messiah" — that Mr. Combe's work on the "Con- 
 stitution of Man," had so unprecedented a sale. "If once the 
 doctrine of the natural laws can get possession of the minds 
 of men," he continues, " then causality will become a mighty 
 ally in the contest for their deliverance from sin as well as 
 from error. As yet, in the history of man, causality has been 
 almost a supernumerary faculty; the idea of special provi- 
 dences or interventions, the idea that all the events of life, 
 whether of individuals or of nations, have been directly pro- 
 duced by an arbitrary, capricious, whimsical Deity, alternat- 
 ing between arrogant displays of superiority on the one hand, 
 and a doting, foolish fondness on the other, has left no scope 
 for the exercise of that noble faculty."* 
 
 Mr. Mann felt that it was his mission to overcome the in- 
 fluence of the foul spirit of orthodoxy, which had so long pos- 
 sessed the New England mind, so far at least as it had worked 
 its way into the public schools ; and to introduce, in its place, 
 a system of Christian ethics, that he constructed in his youth, 
 when his own mind was just disenthralled from a belief which 
 
 ••■" " The great problem of the present age is to preserve the religious spirit whilst 
 getting rid of the superstition and absurdities that deform it, and which are alike 
 opposed to science and common sense." — English translation of "Kenan's Life of 
 Jesus." 
 
13 
 
 "never prompted him to a good action, nor deterred him from 
 a bad one." 
 
 The two forms of religious belief before his mind were, the 
 Bible interpreted by Calvin, and nature interpreted by phre- 
 nology. The former he regarded as the grand enemy and 
 obstacle to human happiness and progress — the latter as the 
 precursor and promoter of both. He believed ''the common 
 school to be the greatest discovery ever made by man. Other 
 social organizations are curative and remedial; this is a pre- 
 ventive and an antidote. They come to heal diseases and 
 wounds; this to make the physical and moral frame invul- 
 nerable to them. Let the common school be expanded to its 
 capabilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of which it 
 is susceptible, and nine-tenths of the crimes in the penal code 
 would become obsolete — the long catalogue of human ills 
 would be abridged — men would walk more safely by day — 
 every pillow would be more invitable by night — property, 
 life, and character, held by a stronger tenure ; all rational 
 hopes respecting the future brightened." 
 
 It is obvious that these glowing anticipations were born of 
 something more, if not better, than reading, writing, and 
 arithmetic. There must have been elements in his scheme 
 of reformation much more subtle and active than a knowledge 
 of geography and grammar, else we are at a loss to explain 
 his emotions when a Legislative grant was made for the sup- 
 port of Normal schools. ''Language cannot express the joy 
 that pervades my soul at this vast accession of power to that 
 machinery which is to carry the cause of education forward, 
 not only more rapidly than it has ever moved, but to places 
 which it has never reached. This will cause an ever-widen- 
 ing circle to spread amongst contemporaries, and will project 
 influences into the future to distances which no calculations 
 can follow. . . The great work is done. AVe must now 
 use the power wisely with wdiicli we have been entrusted." 
 
 The duties with which Mr. Mann was charged, as Secre- 
 tary to the Board of Education, were "to collect information 
 
14 
 
 of the actual condition and efficiency of the common schools, 
 and other means of po23iilar education, and to diffuse, as widely 
 as possible, information of the most approved and successful 
 modes of instruction." How much higher and wider he re- 
 garded the nature and scope of the office, his faithful biog- 
 rapher informs us when she says : " He thought human nature 
 needed educating, and had been much maligned, and that it 
 was only where circumstances had cultivated the earthly side 
 of it unduly, that the divine element was temporarily ob- 
 scured. Education was in his view a word of much higher 
 import than that popularly given to it. Its function is to 
 call out from within all that was divinely placed there, in the 
 proportions requisite to make a noble being." 
 
 It was one of his maxims, however, that ''every human 
 being should determine his religious belief for himself." "It 
 seems to me," he says, "that a generation so trained would 
 have an infinitely better chance of getting at the truth than 
 the present generation has had." "He was so sure that 
 terror must be the first emotion excited by the knowledge of 
 God, that it was long before he would consent that his eldest 
 child should know of the existence of a higher power." 
 
 It surprises us not a little that an intelligent observer of 
 the ways of children should have failed to see how often they 
 accept and rejoice in their relations to the Heavenly Father. 
 Indeed, it would seem that the benevolence, not less than the 
 wisdom, of the Infinite One, prompted the employment of the 
 term which denotes so tender and intimate an earthly rela- 
 tion, for the very purpose of impressing upon the infant mind 
 the loving, paternal character of the Creator. Who doubts 
 that innumerable infant voices are heard in the streets of the 
 Celestial City, singing the praises of God and the Lamb, who 
 lisped, with a loving faith, while on earth, the divinely au- 
 thorized address to the infinite and incomprehensible Jehovah, 
 
 Our Fathee, whkh art in heaven? 
 
 Not less true than beautiful is the description of the power 
 of the Unseen over infant minds, which the poet gives us — 
 
15 
 
 "So 'tis with children — speak to them of God, 
 Of power omnipotent, of another life, 
 And mark how they will listen — opening wide 
 Their little eyes in wonder, as some doubt — 
 A passing shade is painted on their looks — 
 And then, at last, with touching faith, accept 
 For truth the things they maj- not comprehend."* 
 
 But Mr. Mann had "no respect for bigotry," and who has? 
 "The bigot/' says his biographer, "may truly be said to be 
 the enemy that always baffled him. The influences of bigotry 
 clouded his childhood, took the blue out of his sky in his early 
 manhood, and haunted his imagination all his life. He en- 
 countered it in all his endeavours to promote the cause of 
 education at the East as well as at the West, He hoped to 
 drive it before him over the prairies, though he could not 
 always hunt it out of its hiding places in more conservative 
 communities. He would exorcise it from the young, but it 
 had become a part of the vitality of the risen generation." 
 
 In this last paragraph, we apprehend, lies the secret spring 
 of his exultation at the "vast accession of power" which the 
 establishment of the Normal school brought to the "educa- 
 tional machinery" under his control. The barrier which 
 "orthodoxy" presented to the introduction of his schemes of 
 education, he compared to the Chinese wall. The establish- 
 ment of a college at the West, free from the influence of "old 
 school theology," he regarded as "breaking a hole in the wall 
 and letting in the light of religious civilization where it never 
 shone before." "Think of this great State," he exclaims, 
 writing from Ohio, "with more than two millions of inhabit- 
 ants, and only one Unitarian Society." Two years later, he 
 says, "The great West has been conquered, religiously speak- 
 ing, from Black Hawk to John Calvin. So far as the reli- 
 gious dogmas are concerned, I would rather it would be Black 
 
 Hawk's again In this great State of Ohio, with nearly 
 
 three millions of people, there are but three Unitarian socie- 
 ties, and these are small. All the colleges, of a first-class 
 character, have a strong impression of Calvinism mingled 
 
 s- King Rene's Dauglitcr. 
 
16 
 
 with their daily food." His predominant pnrpose and eflbrt 
 were to break down this l)arrier, and not only to emancipate 
 the minds of the rising generation from the bondage to 
 "orthodoxy," but to bring them into the light and life of 
 religions liberty — a sphere known to him and a few favoured 
 ones, but hidden from the rest of the world. "He fed his 
 imao-i nation with the conception of a practical religious life, 
 to be inspired into or evolved out of the young, to which he 
 thought the generous heart of youth would respond warmly, 
 if it could be disconnected from a religionism whose features 
 make the young turn away." 
 
 Mr. Mann had evidently the same sort and degree of rever- 
 ence for the author of the "Constitution of Man," that some 
 people have for the author of Calvin's Institutes, though they 
 would by no means dare to ascribe to John Calvin what Mr. 
 Mann ascribes to George Combe, who "seemed to him to 
 understand far better than any other man he ever saw the 
 principles on which the human race has been formed, and by 
 following' which their most sure and rapid advancement would 
 be secured." In the next century, Mr. Mann had "no doubt 
 
 he would be looked upon as the greatest man of the age 
 
 He had an extent of thought by which the next age is noio 
 present to him, and he sees that his persecuted and condemned 
 views will then be triumphant." 
 
 Horace Mann was as true a convert to Mr. Combe's theory 
 of human capability and progress, as the staunchest orthodox 
 man in New England can be to that of Calvin's theory of 
 human salvation. But it is not easy to see how he could 
 consistently claim the right to foist Combe and his philo- 
 sophy on the public schools of Massachusetts, or on the rising 
 veneration of the West, and at the same time denounce as 
 fanatics and bigots those who were equally honest in adopt- 
 ing the philosophy of Christ's gospel, and in wishing it might 
 be propagated through all grades of education. AVhy is he 
 any more a bigot who can tolerate "heterodoxy," than he 
 wdio cannot tolerate "orthodoxy?" The one strives to main- 
 tain what he believes to be true, and the other, with ecpial 
 
17 
 
 zeal, opposes it as false. If one is a bigot, are not both 
 bigots? It is difficult to reconcile the depth and virulence 
 of Mr. Mann's hostility to "orthodoxy," as he calls it, with 
 his professed devotion to liberty of conscience. A few brief 
 passages from his own journal or letters will serve as speci- 
 mens of this hostility. 
 
 To his friend Combe, he says: ''The orthodox have hunted 
 me this winter as though they were bloodhounds and I a 
 poor rabbit. They feel they are losing strength, and the 
 period even for regaining it is fast passing out of their hands. 
 Hence they are making a desperate struggle. They feel in 
 respect to a free education, that opens the mind, developes 
 the conscience, and cultivates reverence for whatever is good, 
 without the infusion of Calvinistic influence, as the old monks 
 felt about printing — 'If we do not put that down, it w411 put 
 us down.' My office duties and labours stand in their way. 
 
 Hence my immediate destruction is for the glory of God 
 
 There are two classes, the one who are orthodox only by 
 association, education, or personal condition. These may be 
 good people, though they always suffer under that limitation 
 of the faculties which orthodoxy imposes. The second class 
 are those who are born orthodox, who are naturally or in- 
 digenously so — who, if they had had wit enough, would have 
 invented orthodoxy if Calvin had not. I never saw one of 
 this class of men whom I could trust so long as a man can hold 
 his breath. These are the men who are assaulting me." 
 
 These are singular words from a man who was chief ad- 
 ministrator of a system of public instruction, and who was 
 then holding his office and receiving Kis pay, in part at least, 
 from the very men whom he thus holds up to distrust and 
 contempt. 
 
 "Just as I was looking for a little relief from the pressure 
 of my labours, a child of sin and Satan came out with a furi- 
 ous orthodox attack upon ttie Board of Education and myself, 
 which I felt moved to answer." 
 
 "I sent you copies of a controversy, which, in the way of 
 by-play, I had with one of the wild beasts of Ephesus, and a 
 
18 
 
 more untameable hyena I do not believe St. Paul ever had to 
 encounter. Once a preacher of the annihilation of the wicked; 
 then a Universalist, and now a Calvinist of the Old Testa- 
 ment stamp. In believing of total depravity ho only general- 
 izes his own consciousness." 
 
 He spoke of his official career as "a twelve years' struggle 
 to imbue the public mind with an understanding, not merely 
 of the law, but of the spirit of religious liberty." So intent 
 was he on this, that "even the importance of education itself 
 seemed for a moment to be eclipsed." 
 
 "We have no orthodox lecturers of any celebrity among 
 us. Emerson, "Whipple, Parker ('Theodore'), T. S. King, 
 Sumner, Pierpont,* &c., are all heretics of a very malignant 
 type, when tried by the orthodox standard. The truth is, 
 the iron bars of orthodoxy do not allow man to expand into 
 the qualities indispensable for teaching the common heart of 
 man." 
 
 " I feel more and more deeply what an unspeakable calamity 
 a Calvinistic education is — what a dreadful thing it was to 
 me. If it did not succeed in making me that horrible thing — 
 a Calvinist — it succeeded in depriving me of that filial love 
 for God, that tenderness, that sweetness, that intimacy, that 
 desiring, nestling love which, I say, it is natural a child 
 should feel toward a Father who combines all excellence. I 
 see him to be so logically, intellectually, demonstratively, 
 but when I would embrace him, when I would rush into his 
 arms and breathe out unspeakable love and adoration, then 
 the grim old Calvinistic spectre thrusts itself before me. I 
 am as a frightened child whose eye, knowledge, experience, 
 and belief even, are not sufficient to obliterate the image 
 which an early fright burnt in upon his soul." 
 
 We do not cite these few out of scores of like paragraphs, 
 to criticise or controvert them, but simply to show the animus 
 with which the executive officer of the Massachusetts Board 
 of Education entered upon and prosecuted his important 
 duties, and the strength of his aversion to what was unques- 
 
 * Late President uf a CVrnvcntiou of S})iritualists lu I'liiladeljiliia. 
 
19 
 
 tionably the religious sentiment of five-eiglitlis of the religious 
 people from whom he derived his official support, and whose 
 children were to be schooled, and their teachers trained, 
 under his superintendence. 
 
 How far the revolution which Mr. Mann hoped and en- 
 deavoured 'so earnestly to bring about in the intellectual 
 habits and training of the children and youth of Massachu- 
 setts, was accomplished by his twelve years' service, it is im- 
 possible to say. Who knows by what influence, or at what 
 stage of its life, the flavour or colour of fruit is settled? His 
 power was felt, of course, in every grade of schools for teachers 
 and children, through public addresses, and by the press, and 
 can scarcely fail to be perpetuated perhaps for many gener- 
 ations. It may be revealed in the facility with which the 
 cavils and quiddities of some vain philosophy are accepted, 
 or in the boldness with which the truths of divine revelation 
 are rejected. The vagueness of religious opinions, so deeply 
 deplored by thoughtful men, and the old Athenian passion 
 for spending "their time in nothing else but either to tell or 
 to hear some new thing," are the natural fruits of a system 
 which recognizes no higher revelation of the Divine will than 
 that of nature, or of human (Consciousness. 
 
 That Mr. Mann was disappointed in the measure of his 
 success, and disheartened by the opposition and distrust 
 which were manifested from time to time by those who could 
 not adopt or countenance his theories, there is no doubt. 
 But the cause assigned for resigning his office and accepting 
 a seat in Congress, was his inability to sustain so great a 
 burden upon his strength. 
 
 Passing over the interval of his two exciting terms in Con- 
 gress,* we find him embarking with characteristic energy in 
 
 ® It is to be regretted, we tliink, that evidence'of Mr. ilann's bitter hostility to 
 Mr. Webster, during his Congressional career, was not withheld. That eminent states- 
 man, whatever his deficiencies, did good service for his country and for mankind ; and 
 we hardly know what apology can be framed for uttering over his grave such male- 
 dictions as this memoir records " lie consented to treachery, and to make his reward 
 sure, proposed to do more villainies than were asked of him." " Webster is as corrupt 
 a politician as ever lived." " He can do nothing but under the inspiration of brandy," 
 "treacherous and perfidious, like Mr. Webster," &c. 
 
20 
 
 that new and somewhat formidable enterprise — the establish- 
 ment of a college at the West to be open to both sexes, and 
 to be founded and conducted on the principles of his own 
 philosophy. We do not use this expression derogately, but 
 there is abundant evidence in the volume before us, and in 
 the history of Antioch College to this day, to justify us in 
 saying that the peculiar views of the school to which Mr. 
 Mann belonged were to predominate in the spirit, instruc- 
 tion, and discipline of the new institution. 
 
 It was his onerous task to take the enterprise ah initio, 
 and to struggle, not only with the manifold difficulties that 
 are expected in any such undertaking, but with those that 
 grew out of its peculiar relations and circumstances. "The 
 people of the West" he found to be "open, receptive, and 
 mouldable," but "the ministers had a cast-iron epidermis so 
 opaque and impervious that no sunlight can get into them — 
 so absorbent that none is reflected from them, or all that 
 strikes upon them is swallowed up and lost. The stronger 
 minds which break away from orthodoxy, as the common 
 rule, find no resting-place this side of general scepticism." 
 
 Mr. Mann went to the West in September, 1853, and for 
 nearly five years gave himself with unremitting and exhaust- 
 ing fidelity to the interests \q had espoused. During that 
 time, he tells us, more than a thousand students were con- 
 nected Avith some department of the college, and he adds that 
 "among them all scarcely one who has been with us long 
 enough to imbibe the spirit of the place, has left us a dog- 
 matizer or a bigot." In other words, ho had been, in a good 
 degree, successful in sowing in the "open, receptive, and 
 mouldable" minds of more than a thousand young men and 
 maidens of the West, " a religionism from whose features the 
 young would not turn away." 
 
 In the spring of 1858, the financial embarrassments which 
 had before threatened to bring about the utter fiiilure of the 
 enterprise, ended in the advertisement of all the college pro- 
 perty for sale at public auction. Mr. Mann felt that precious 
 interests of "liberal religion" as well as of education, were in 
 
21 
 
 imminent peril. " It would seem that some root of bitterness 
 had already sprung up among those who had the government, 
 or at least the purse-strings, in their hands. ''Men who had 
 pretended enthusiasm for him and for learning at first, fell 
 away and became hostile when the failing fortunes of the col- 
 lege disappointed their desire to coin gold out of their unsold 
 lands." Indeed, the picture which is given us of the state of 
 affairs at that juncture, would lead us to doubt whether the 
 fruit of the new philosophy, though raised on that free virgin 
 soil, was much to be preferred to that which is found in evan- 
 o-elical or ''orthodox" enclosures. But its zealous cultivator 
 was not to be deterred by difhculties, and with a fearless 
 spirit he addressed himself to new efforts for averting the 
 impending catastrophe. It was in vain, however. Difficul- 
 ties arose in the college family, fomented, as we are told, by 
 "outside women's-rights women." Heart-burnings were re- 
 vealed in the Board of Directors. It was clear that the insti- 
 tution had been bankrupt from the outset, though the accounts 
 were so kept as to conceal the fact. A new organization was 
 attempted on a new basis and capital, "but under the same 
 moral and religious auspices." It succeeded so far that tem- 
 porary provision was made for current expenses, and a class 
 graduated, receiving from Mr. Mann a baccalaureate address 
 full of fervour and sympathy, but alas! for human nature, 
 exceedingly "bigoted."* In this address to a company of 
 young persons, just entering upon the stern realities of life, 
 and needing the plainest and simplest rules of conduct, the 
 distinguished educator, now past sixty years of age, presents 
 the following picture : 
 
 "We are created with numerous appetences, all like so 
 many eyes to desire, and like so many hands to seize their 
 related objects in the external world. The external world 
 superabounds with objects fitted to gratify and influence those 
 internal appetences. And now these beings, fervid and aflame 
 
 « Bigot, a man devoted unreasonably to a certain party, or prejiidiecd in favour of 
 certain opinions. — Johnson. 
 
 "In ]ihilosophy and religion the bigots of all parties are generally the most pobi- 
 five " — Wattfi. 
 
22 
 
 with these desires, are turned loose among these objects with- 
 out any knowledge of what kind, in what quantity, at what 
 time, they are to be taken and enjoyed, but with free agency 
 to take what, when, and as much as they please. Bring these 
 few elements into juxtaposition — the thousand objects around, 
 the inward desire for them, the free will to take them, and 
 complete ignorance of consequences, and how is it possible to 
 avoid mistakes, injuries, errors, crimes?" 
 
 The apostacy of man, of which John Milton says, 
 
 '■ Earth felt the wound; and Nature, from lier seal 
 Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe, 
 That all was lost — " 
 
 he describes to these young people as ''what my very much 
 respected but unfortunate great-grandparents, Adam and Eve 
 did, in the garden of Eden at the time of the interview with 
 a distinguished stranger in disguise." 
 
 He tells them that ''the descendants of the Puritans " (that 
 is a considerable proportion of the Christian people of New 
 England) "are disposed to believe in the doctrine of vicari- 
 ous atonement, because this getting everything and giving 
 nothing is such a sharp bargain — very much the same plan 
 on which the Puritan treated the Indians." And he sums 
 up his instructions and exhortations by saying, "You have 
 only to set your head right by knowledge, and your heart 
 right by obedience, and forces, stronger than streams, or 
 winds, or gravitation, will bear you up to celestial blessed- 
 ness, Elijah-like, by means as visible and palpable as though 
 they were horses of fire, and chariots of fire." 
 
 But our space is overrun. Mr. Mann's memory has many 
 and warm eulogists. By those who adopt his theories he is 
 regarded as the pioneer of a mighty moral revolution. "He 
 was," in their view, "one of a body of far-seeing men who 
 for nearly fifteen years have determined that there should 
 be in the very heart of this country an institution which 
 should not be second in ability to Harvard or to Yale, — and 
 should, in the liberality of its system, and its freedom from 
 sectional or sectarian restrictions, be able indeed to educate 
 
23 
 
 ail comers. Biding their time in difficulties, working hard 
 at the oar when the tide was in their favour, they have at last 
 succeeded in obtaining a charter absolutely free from blemish, 
 college buildings now ready for several hundred students, 
 and a prestige of the first value through the whole western 
 country, — and an endowment in real estate of §150,000, and 
 in invested stocks a quarter of a million more." 
 
 The full direction of the college thus chartered and endowed 
 was recently offered to the late Governor Andrew of Massachu- 
 setts, whose distinguished public career, not less than his 
 strong sympathy with Mr. Mann's views and projects, natu- 
 rally suggested the selection. To induce him to accept the 
 post, his friends say, "They do not expect him to teach arith- 
 metic to school-boys, or to oversee the police of a boarding- 
 school. They do expect him to appoint the fifteen or twenty 
 professors whom the income of the college will at once sus- 
 tain ; to hold toward it the position which the vice-chancellor 
 of an English university holds; to contrive the plans for its 
 widest usefulness; to direct the efforts of the professors; to 
 encourage and stimulate the pupils ; and in general to advise 
 the friends of the enterprise everywhere. They expect yet 
 more, — that the energy of his character and the distinctness 
 of his plans will make him one of the leaders of the education 
 of the West ; that not in that college only, but at every point 
 where public opinion can be touched, his influence shall be 
 found; and that this institution in its training of professional 
 men, of men of active afi'airs, and of the teachers of the people, 
 will introduce him to the large western world."* 
 
 This was the glowing picture which rivetted Mr. Mann's 
 eyes, and to realize it he counted not even his life dear to 
 him. Would that a spirit, alike brave, enduring and enthu- 
 siastic, animated the friends of a better and safer theory of 
 educating the teeming millions of the West ! 
 
 No one can read without deep emotion the few pages that 
 record the giving way of his physical nature. However 
 thorough our dissent from his opinions and plans, we cannot 
 
 * Boston Daily Advertiser, September 28, 1865. 
 
24 
 
 but admire liis self-denial and public spirit, nor can we doubt 
 the strength of his conviction that the system he so strenu- 
 ously advocated had all the virtue he claimed for it. The 
 failure of his imposing structure must be ascribed to the in- 
 herent weakness of the foundation. In dealing with the in- 
 tellectual and moral nature of man it will not do to reject 
 inspiration,* nor to regard the great Teacher sent from God 
 as only an ''unspoiled human being." 
 
 "We lay aside the volume with a mingled feeling of sorrow 
 and surprise : with sorrow, that one capable of exerting so 
 powerful an influence upon the interests of popular education 
 should have been led so far astray respecting its essential 
 principles and ends; and with surprise, that the advocate 
 and propagator of such radical errors of philosophy and reli- 
 gion should have received such unusual j^osthumous honours 
 in the Old Bay State. 
 
 What more fitting inscription than the following could 
 have been placed on the monument, erected, as it has been 
 said, by the contributions of school children, and occupying 
 a place in the State House enclosure, opposite a statue of 
 Daniel Webster — 
 
 "He did what he could to obliterate from the youthful mind the 
 notion of the providential government of the "world, and to bring 
 into exercise the noble but neglected faculty of causality !" 
 
 * "If inspiration be claimed for any one, was not Dr. Cbanning inspired?" — Mr. 
 Mann's letter to Mr. Coiabe, April, 18-i9. 
 
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