with their parents, and the latter watch over the health, manners, and
morals of the children unceasingly from birth to maturity. The same
parents make great sacrifices for the education of their children,
although the class, as a class, has means to secure what is necessary
without hard sacrifice. The point is that they value education highly
and get it. We also multiply educational institutions. We feel sure that
all this is good work. The churches and all good literature constantly
inculcate good manners and morals according to the standards in the
present mores. Here is a set of objects to be prized and worked for in
families, schools, self-education, literature, and art, which go to the
production of a type of men as the highest product of our civilization.
Then suddenly we are told that the common man is wise beyond all the
philosophers. The man on the curbstone is the arbiter of our destinies,
and the standard man. "Culture" is derided and sneered at. This latter
view has great popularity. It brings up a serious question: whether we
are spoiling our children by educating them. Are we spoiling them for
political power? Are we putting them under disabilities for public
influence? It is related of an English statesman, that when asked by an
American mother whether she should send her son to Oxford, he replied:
"Why send him to Oxford? Send him to Washington, where he will learn
democracy. That is what he will need to know." Certainly it behooves us
to know whether we are spoiling our sons by sending them to the
universities, and whether we ought not rather to send them to Tammany
Hall. Either on one side or the other there is a great mass of empty
phrases and false but inflated rhetoric.

+208. Who does the thinking?+ The notion that "the group thinks"
deserves to be put by the side of the great freaks of philosophy which
have been put forth from age to age. Only the elite of any society, in
any age, think, and the world's thinking is carried on by them by the
transplanting of ideas from mind to mind, under the stress and strain of
clashing argument and tugging debate. If the group thinks, then thought
costs nothing, but in truth thought costs beyond everything else, for
thousands search and talk while only one finds; when he finds something,
a step is won and all begins over again. If this is so, it ought to be
universally known and recognized. All the mores would then conform to
it.

+209. The gentleman.+ In mo