The pupil may,
indeed, advance to a higher sphere than that occupied by the teacher;
but it is only because he draws from a higher fountain elsewhere. In
such cases the success of the pupil is not the success of the master. He
who labors as a teacher for mere money, or for temporary fame, which is
even less valuable, cannot choose a calling more ignoble, nor can he
ever rise to a higher; for his sordid motives bring all pursuits to the
low level of his own nature.
Yet it is not to be assumed that the teacher, more than the clergyman,
is to labor without pecuniary compensation; for, while money should not
be the sole object of any man's life, it is, under the influence of our
civilization, essential to the happiness of us all. Wealth, properly
acquired and properly used, may become a means of self-education. It
purchases relief from the harassing toil of uninterrupted manual labor.
It is the only introduction we can have to the thoroughfares of travel
by which we are made acquainted personally with the globe that we
inhabit. It brings to our firesides books, paintings, and statuary, by
which we learn something of the world as it is and as it was. It gives
us the telescope and the microscope, by whose agency we are able to
appreciate, even though but imperfectly, the immensity of creation on
the one hand, and its infinity on the other. The teacher is not to
labour without money, nor to despise it more than other men; and the
public might as well expect the free services of the minister, lawyer,
physician, or farmer, as to expect the gratuitous or cheap education of
their children.
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