All these powers of education should run up into service. A highly complicated and costly mechanism, such as a watch or a locomotive, should pay for itself in work done. The more expensive it is the more work it should do. An educated personality is a very expensive product; society has taxed itself heavily to pro-duce it, and therefore it should justify itself in service rendered. It is deep selfishness and base ingratitude for one to acquire an education that equips him with large powers and then turn them to purely personal ends, such as money-making or pleasure-seeking, or to mere aesthetic culture, or to gilded ease and idleness.
Education that simply lets one slip through the world so as to escape productive work and avoid one’s share of responsibility for the world’s welfare is a blight to the community and to the soul itself. This turns the soul into a sponge that sucks up everything around it, in-stead of making it a fountain that sends forth refreshing streams. The educated man is that much more of a man and should be of that much more use to the world. His eye should be clearer to see human needs and his heart kinder and his hand abler to meet them. His shoulder should be the stronger and the readier to go under the burdens of his fellow men and to help carry the load of the world’s need. His presence should be so much wisdom and inspiration and cheer in his own circle and in the community. The wider his education, the stronger and richer his personality, the wider and deeper should be his sympathy and service and sacrifice. Much has been given to the educated man and woman, and of them is much justly required.
The educated man and woman enter the world as so much leaven to impart the contagion of higher life to others. They go out as light-givers and light-reflectors to radiate and diffuse light through the whole community. It is highly important that we should have professionally educated people among us, but it is more important that we have general intelligence and ethical character diffused though the whole mass of society.
The mountain ranges and peaks must send their waters down to irrigate the plains, or their value vanishes. So the social value of professional scholars consists of their power to stimulate and enrich the common people.It is not the direct light of the sun that fills our homes and illuminates the world, but the sunlight as it is reflected and diffused everywhere by the countless particles in the air. Educated people have freely received light, and now they should freely give it. For them to receive the light of education and then refuse or fail to impart it to others would be as selfish as if they, having found their place in the sun, – were then to try, to crowd others out of its light, or were to try to absorb all its light and shut it off from the rest of the world. We get this light that we may give it; and, in fact, giving it is the best way of getting it, and in this field it is literally and abundantly more blessed to give than to receive.
From: “The Meaning of Education” by James Henry Snowden