institutions of public justice, the privileges of civil and religious liberty, and our very existence as a free republic, depend on a high state of moral and intellectual culture.
The formation of the Institute, it is hoped, will do something towards elevating the standard and increasing the efficiency of popular instruction.
It will furnish the means, by the co-operation of its members, of obtaining an exact knowledge of the present condition of the schools, in all parts of the country. It will tend to render universal, so that it shall pervade every district and village, a strong conviction of the paramount national importance of preserving and extending the means of popular instruction; thus securing the aid of multitudes of fellow laborers in every portion of the country. It will tend to raise the standard of the qualifications of instructers, so that the business of teaching shall not be the last resort of dulness and indolence, but shall be considered, as it was in the days of republican Greece, an occupation worthy of the highest talents and ambition. It will hardly fail to show that education is a science, to be advanced, like every other science, by experiment; whose principles are to be fixed, and its capacities determined, by experiment; which is to be entered upon by men of a philosophical mind, and pursued with a philosophical spirit. It will be likely to bring forward the modes and objects of instruction in foreign nations and ancient times, and their applicability to the state of things among ourselves. It can