Franklin, by the simple fact that he
was a printer himself, has done more toward giving dignity and
respectability to the employment of printing, than a hundred orations
on the intrinsic excellence of the art. In fact, all mechanical
employments have, within a few years, risen in rank in this country, not
through the influence of efforts to impress the community directly with
a sense of their importance, but simply because mechanics themselves
have risen in intellectual and moral character. In the same manner, the
employment of the teacher will be raised most effectually in the
estimation of the public, not by the individual who writes the most
eloquent oration on the intrinsic dignity of the art, but by the one who
goes forward most successfully in the exercise of it, and who, by his
general attainments and public character, stands out most fully to the
view of the public as a well-informed, liberal-minded, and useful man.
If this is so--and it can not well be denied--it furnishes to every
teacher a strong motive to exertion for the improvement of his own
personal character. But there is a stronger motive still in the results
which flow directly to himself from such efforts. No man ought to engage
in any business which, as mere business, will engross all his time and
attention. The Creator has bestowed upon every one a mind, upon the
cultivation of which our rank among intelligent beings, our happiness,
our moral and intellectual power, every thing valuable to us, depend;
and after all the cultivation which we can bestow, in this life, upon
this mysterious principle, it will still be in embryo.
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