So far as Americans are true to that
purpose, all the different aspects of their national experience will
assume meaning and momentum; while in so far as they are false thereto,
no amount of "education" will ever be really edifying. The fundamental
process of American education consists and must continue to consist
precisely in the risks and experiments which the American nation will
make in the service of its national ideal. If the American people balk
at the sacrifices demanded by their experiments, or if they attach
finality to any particular experiment in the distribution of political,
economic, and social power, they will remain morally and intellectually
at the bottom of a well, out of which they will never be "uplifted" by
the most extravagant subsidizing of good intentions and noble words.
The sort of institutional and economic reorganization suggested in the
preceding chapters is not, consequently, to be conceived merely as a
more or less dubious proposal to improve human nature by laws.
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