select party, tends to weaken our faith in humanity; and a
want of faith in our race is an omen of ill-success in life. Teachers
should have faith in humanity, and should labor constantly to inspire
others with the belief that the true law of our nature is the law of
progress.

Those who come early in life to the conclusion that the many cannot be
moved by the higher sentiments and ideas which control a few favored
mortals, cease to labor for the advancement of the race. They
consequently lose their hold upon society, and society neglects them.
For such men there can be no success.

Others, like Jefferson and Channing, never lose confidence in their
species, and their species never lose confidence in them. When the
teacher comes to believe that the world is worse than it was, and never
can be better, he need wait for no other evidence that his days of
usefulness are over.

The school-room will teach the child, even as the prison will instruct
maturity and age, that few persons are vicious in the extreme, and that
no one lives without some ennobling traits of character and life. The
teacher's faith is the measure of the teacher's usefulness. It is to him
what conception is to the artist; and, if the sculptor can see the image
of grace and beauty in the fresh-quarried marble, so must the teacher
see the full form of the coming man in the trembling child or awkward
youth.

The teacher ought not to grow old. To be sure, time will lay its hand on
him, as it does on others; but he should always cultivate in himself the
feelings, sentiments, and even ambitions of youth. Far enough removed
from his pupils in age and position to stimulate them by his example,
and encourage them by his precepts, he should yet be so near them that
he can appreciate the steps and struggles which mark their progress in
the path of learning. There must be some points of contact, something
common to teacher and pupils. Indeed, for us all it is true that age
loses nothing of its dignity or respect when it accepts the sentiments
and sports of youth and childhood. But above all should the teacher
remember the common remark of La Place, in his Celestial Mechanics, and
the observation of Dr. Bowditch upon it. "Whenever I meet in La Place
with the words, 'Thus it plainly appears,' I am sure that hours, and
perhaps days, of hard study, will alone enable me to discover _how_ it
plainly appears." The good teacher will seek first to estimate each
scholar'