But we
say to ourselves that his ideas show the influence of a primitive and
obsolete order of things, when the warrior caste and the priestly caste
were alone in honour, and the humble work of the world was done by
slaves. We have now changed all that; the modern majority consists in
work, as Emerson declares; and in work, we may add, principally of such
plain and dusty kind as the work of cultivators of the ground,
handicraftsmen, men of trade and business, men of the working
professions. Above all is this true in a great industrious community
such as that of the United States.
Now education, many people go on to say, is still mainly governed by the
ideas of men like Plato, who lived when the warrior caste and the
priestly or philosophical class were alone in honour, and the really
useful part of the community were slaves. It is an education fitted for
persons of leisure in such a community. This education passed from
Greece and Rome to the feudal communities of Europe, where also the
warrior caste and the priestly caste were alone held in honour, and
where the really useful and working part of the community, though not
nominally slaves as in the pagan world, were practically not much better
off than slaves, and not more seriously regarded.
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