Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/265

DELAWARE COUNTY. 241 dependent for its continued existence upon their discriminat- ing favor and ef&cient sanction. The district school must become the central interest of the citizen^ and the parent, the clergyman, the lawyer, the physician, the merchant, the manu- facturer, and the agriculturist, each must realize that there, under more or less favoring auspices, as they themselves shall determine, developments are in progress which are destined at no distant day, to exert a controlling influence over the insti- tutions, habits, modes of thought and action of society in all its complicated phases ; and that the primary responsibility for the results which may be thus worked out, for good or for evil, rests with them. By the removal of every obstacle to the progressive and harmonious action of the system of popular education, so carefully organized and amply endowed by the State, by a constant and methodical and intelligent co-opera- tion with its authorized agents, in the elevation and advance- ment of that system in all its parts, and especially by an infu- sion into its entire course of discipline and instruction, of that high moral culture which can alone adequately realize the idea of sound education, results of inconceivable magnitude and im- portance to individual, social, and moral well-being, may con- fidently be anticipated. 21