WEST NEWTON, Monday, June 16, 1851.
I am very glad to be
made acquainted with the existence of your society, and feel highly honored by
your request for a word of encouragement and counsel.
I have an
inexpressible interest in young men, and wish I could live my life over again,
that I might cause less of evil and more of good than I have done. But life is
a book of which we can have but one edition: as it is first prepared, it must
stand forever. Let each day's action, as it adds another page to the
indestructible volume, be such that we shall be willing to have an assembled
world read it!
You say you
constitute a debating society. Will you allow me, as a friend, to make one
remark on the subject of the choice of subjects, and another upon your habit of
treating them?
I would recommend
that you choose topics for discussion which are, as far as possible, both
theoretic and practical. The theoretic will exercise your speculative
faculties, which are essential to comprehensiveness, forethought, and
invention; and the practical will cause you to keep continually in view the
uses which may be made of your combination of ideas. Both powers will make the
man, so far as the intellect is concerned.
My other remark is, —
and I am sure you will think more and more of it the longer you live, — never
investigate nor debate for triumph, but always for truth. Never take the
affirmative or negative side of a question till after you have mastered it
according to the best of your ability, and then adopt the side which judgment
and conscience assure you to be right.
The mind is not only
the object to be improved, but it is the instrument to work with. How can you
improve a moral instrument by forcing it to hide or obscure the truth, and
espouse the side of falsehood? If you succeed, you do but injure others by
inducing them to adopt errors; but you injure yourself more than any one else.
The optician who beclouds the glass through which he looks is a wise man
compared with the reasoner who beclouds his faculties. Keep one thing forever
in view, — the truth; and if you do this, though it may seem to lead you away
from the opinions of men, it will assuredly conduct you to the throne of God.
With sincere hopes
for your welfare, I am, dear sir, very truly yours, &c.,
* In reply to a communication
asking his advice in relation to the best manner of debating.
SOURCE: Mary Tyler
Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 349-50
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