Cities are the minds of nations; but their hearts, from where the mass of blood is sent in all directions, are in the countryside. Men are still mechanical eaters and the shrines of worry. We must make every man a torch.
For we are proposing, therefore, nothing less than a new religion with its new priests! We are describing nothing less than the missions by which the new era will soon begin to spread its religion! The world is changing; the regal priestly vestments, so necessary in the mystical ages of man, are lying upon their deathbed. Religion has not disappeared, it has been transformed. Above the affliction into which a study of the details and slow evolution of human history plunges observers, one can see that men are growing, and that they have already climbed halfway up Jacob’s ladder; what beautiful poems are in the Bible! If huddled upon a mountain peak one suddenly glances at human progress, one will see that people have never loved each other as they do now, that in spite of the painful disorder and abominable selfishness to which a momentary absence of ultimate beliefs and faith in Eternal Truth is leading the inhabitants of this transitory age, the benevolence and impetus to expand, now burning in everyone, has never been of greater concern to human beings than they are today. They have stood up like friends eager to meet and move forward to a mutually happy encounter.
We walk upon the waves and are tossed about and caught in their swirling motion; perturbed by their action, we fail to see — and do not stop to examine — the forces that move them. But when the sea is calm, we can rest assured that the stars will be nearer to the earth. Man will finally sheathe his sword of battle in the sun!
All this is what we could call the spirit of wandering teachers. How happy the peasants would be if some good man arrived now and then to teach them things they did not know, and with the warmth of a communicative manner leave in their spirits the quietude and dignity that always remain after seeing an honest and loving man! Instead of talking about cattle breeding and crops, there would be an occasional discussion — until the subject could be covered thoroughly — of what the teacher taught, of the curious implements he brought them, of a simple way to cultivate the particular plant they have been working so hard to develop, of what a fine teacher he is. Because he makes them impatient, they would talk about when he would come again so they might ask him what has been occurring to them ever since they began to acquire knowledge; for their minds have been expanding incessantly, and they have started to think. How happy all of them would be to leave their hoes and shovels, and filled with curiosity, take refuge in the teacher’s campaign tent!
Extensive courses could not be given, but if their propagators made a thorough study, they could certainly sow and cultivate the seeds of their ideas. They could awaken the appetite for knowledge.
And this would be a sweet intrusion, carried out in agreement with what is a common concern of the human soul; since the teacher would instruct the peasants in practical and beneficial things in a gentle manner, those peasants would gradually and effortlessly absorb a body of knowledge which begins by flattering and satisfying their interests. For whoever attempts to make men better must not disregard their evil passions; he must consider these as an extremely important factor and see to it that he does not work against them, but rather for them.
Instead of sending pedagogues through the rural areas, we would send conversationalists; instead of pompous schoolmasters, educated people responsive to the doubts presented to them by the ignorant, able to respond to the questions prepared for their arrival. They would observe when the farmers made mistakes in agricultural procedure, or when they overlooked some sort of wealth that could be developed, so they could be informed of these things and at the same time told how to remedy them.
In short, it is necessary to engage in a campaign of gentleness and knowledge, and give the farmers a corps — not yet in existence — of missionary teachers.
The itinerant school is the only kind that can eliminate peasant ignorance.
And in the rural areas, as well as in the cities, it is urgent to replace sterile and indirect book learning with the direct and fruitful knowledge of Nature.
It is urgent to open normal schools for practical teachers, to then scatter them over the valleys, mountains and outlying regions, much as the Amazonian Indians tell us that to create men and women Father Almalivaca scattered the seeds of moriche palm over all the earth!
Time is wasted upon elementary literary education, for it creates people aspiring to pernicious and fruitless values. The establishment of a fundamental scientific education is as necessary as the sun.
Indians in the United States
This article, describing the annual meeting of the Mohonk Convention on the Indian question, was published in La Nación, Buenos Aires, December 4, 1885.
Lake Mohonk is a lovely place in New York State. The forests of the adjacent Adirondacks beckon to grandeur, unsystematically cutting down crude speculators; with forests as with politics, it is unlawful to cut down unless one plants new trees. The lake invites serenity, and the nearby river quietly enriches the land and flows onward to the sea. Rivers go to the sea, men to the future. When the leaves turned yellow and red this autumn, the friends of the Indians foregathered in that picturesque retreat to calmly discuss some way of attracting them to a peaceful and intelligent life in which they could rise above their present condition of rights mocked, faith betrayed, character corrupted, and frequent, justified revolts. In that conference of benevolent men and women there was a notable absence of the spirit of theory which deforms and makes sterile, or at least retards, the well-meaning efforts of so many reformers — efforts which generally alienate them, because of the repulsion which a lack of empathy and harmony inspires in a healthy mind, from the solicitous support of those modest souls who otherwise would be efficient aids in the reformation process. Genius, which explodes and dazzles, need not be divested of the good sense that makes its life on earth so productive. Senators, attorneys and supervisors shared their generous task there with enthusiastic journalists and Protestant ministers. In the United States a woman opened men’s hearts to compassion for the Negroes, and nobody did more to set them free than she. Harriet Beecher Stowe was her name, a woman passionately devoted to justice and therefore not afraid to sully her reputation, with tremendous revelations befitting a Byron, by the prolific success of her Uncle Tom’s Cabin — a tear that has something to say!
It was also a woman who, with much good sense and sympathy, has worked year after year to alleviate the plight of the Indians. The recently deceased Helen Hunt Jackson, strong-minded and with a loving heart, wrote a letter of thanks to President Cleveland for his determination to recognize the Indian’s right to manhood and justice. And at the Lake Mohonk Convention there were people with an apostolic sense of oratory, subsidized by the state. But the inflexible statistics, the exact accounts, the inexorable ciphers did not belong to the supervisors or attorneys or senators, but to a woman named Alice Fletcher, a lively speaker, sure in her reasoning and skilled in debate.
So the Lake Mohonk Convention was not composed of discouraged philanthropists who look at Indians only because they are Indians — seraphic creatures, so to speak — and it was not composed of those butter fly politicians who alight only upon the surface of things, and pass judgment on the basis of mere appearances and results, blind to the fact that the one way to right wrongs is to eradicate their causes.
This was a meeting of men and women of action. One of them, and surely among the most impassioned, “shuddered on recalling the sad scenes on the Indian reservations where they would divide the year’s food rations, clothing, and money like wild animals fighting over raw meat.” Anyone who has seen these signs of degradation, since he is human, must have experienced some shame and a desire to lift those unfortunate creatures out of their misery. For it is he who is responsible for all the wrongs he knows about but does nothing to correct. It is a criminal laziness, a passive guilt that is merely a matter of degree in the scale of crime; apostleship is a constant, daily duty.
