[Pg i]
BY
HORACE MANN,
THE FIRST SECRETARY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OFEDUCATION.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY B. B. MUSSEY & CO.
1851.
[Pg ii]
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by
Horace Mann,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
STEREOTYPED AT THE
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.
[Pg iii]
TO
THE YOUNG MEN
OF
MASSACHUSETTS
THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY
Dedicated
BY
THE AUTHOR.
This work comes from one in whose mind present Memories aretaking the place of early Hopes. It is specially addressed to thosein whose minds future Memories will soon take the place of presentHopes. Hence a fitting occasion presents itself for the statementof a few principles, by whose unerring guidance the exultingHopes of Youth may always be transformed into the happy Memoriesof Age.
The Youth of all climes and times have a common attribute.The desire of happiness is a universal desire. God fixes this elementin the core of life. Far back in our moral organization, beforehuman conduct can come in to control or modify, this longing forhappiness, this hope of future welfare, is radicated in the soul; sothat it seems to have been the first attribute which was taken for theconstitution of our nature, and around which the other attributeswere gathered, rather to have been added to the rest as a secondaryor incident. The desire of some form of happiness being secured,as a motive power, it seems to have been left very much to theoption of each individual to select his own objects of enjoyment,[Pg iv]whether noble or ignoble, and to devise his own means for obtainingthem, whether righteous or unrighteous.
The emulous and aspiring youth of a Free People will alwaysfind much of their private, and most of their public welfare, indissolublyconnected with the institutions and laws of their country.In these, therefore, their interest is both public and personal;—itpertains to the citizen as well as to the man. All great moralquestions, though touching them but lightly at first, will come closerand closer home, as long as they live;—growing into greaterimportance for their posthumous memory than for their livingfame, and affecting the fortunes of their posterity even more thantheir own.
Though all Young Men are substantially alike in their desire ofwell being, yet, in regard to the guiding principles by which theobjects of hope are pursued, in order to obtain happiness, threemarked distinctions, or classes, exist among them.
1. There are those who adopt with implicit and unquestioning faiththe views of their parents, or of the circle, or caste, into which theywere thrown by the accident of birth. They never venture to exploreor wander outside of the ideas and opinions among whichthey were born and bred. For them, an hereditary boundary enclosesthought, belief, hope. Whether the opinions amid whichthey live are insular in their narrowness, or continental in theirbreadth; whether