45 - Education

Summary

Finally, the surest but hardest way to prevent crime is to improve education. This topic is too broad and goes beyond the limits which I have set myself. It is a topic, I dare to add, which is too intertwined with the nature of government for it to be left an untilled field, and only cultivated here and there by a few wise men until the distant future when public happiness reigns. A great man, who enlightens mankind even as it persecutes him, has shown in detail the principal precepts of an education which is truly useful to men. It consists less in a sterile mass of subjects than in the precise and informed choice of topics; it replaces copies with originals in the study of both the physical and moral phenomena which either chance or effort presents to fresh young minds. It encourages virtue by the easy path of the feelings, and diverts men away from evil by the infallible method of alerting them to the necessary ill consequences it brings, rather than by the uncertain method of ordering them what to do, which gains only a feigned and fleeting obedience.