In the history of government is written the same tale of evolution, from manifestations of brute energy, seeking gratification in subjugation for its own sake,—­from the government typified by the iron heel,—­to the government which, seeking the education and protection of all the people becomes a school rather than a system of restraint.

Therefore the race, in its march from savagery to civilization, may be considered as one man, showing, first, animation; next, manifesting his objects of attraction; third, displaying his purposes; and finally putting forth his wisdom in obedience to the true, the beautiful, and the good.

These principles of natural evolution have been applied by the writer to the study of oratory.  The orator must illustrate in his art the same steps of progress which govern the growth of other arts.  He may have developed the power of the painter, the sculptor, the musician, yet if he would unfold the art of the rhetorician, he must pass through the progressive gradations that have marked the education of his powers in other departments.  In a single lifetime he may attain the highest art expression, yet he cannot escape the necessity of cultivating his powers by the same process of evolution which the race needed centuries to pass through.  It remains for the teacher, therefore, to so arrange the methods of study as to enable the pupil to pursue the natural order of education.  In all things he must stimulate and not repress normal growth.

There is an old notion sometimes found among theoretical educators that the mind of a child is like a piece of paper upon which anything may be written; a mould of clay upon which any impression may be made; a block of stone in which the teacher, like the famous sculptor of old, sees, in his poetic vision, an angel, and then chips and hacks until that angel stands revealed.  The theory is absurdly and dangerously fallacious.  Paper and clay are not living organisms; the orator is not the statue chiselled from the rough stone of human nature, or, if the teacher succeeds in so far perverting nature as to hack and trim a human organism into the semblance of a statue, the product of his work will stand forth a living illustration of the difference between the genuine and the spurious.  The stone has no life.  Life must be breathed into it, and the sculptor may breathe into it such life as he chooses.  The gardener, on the other hand, must obey the laws of the life of the plant he nurtures.  He must so direct the forces of nature as to help its inherent tendencies.  A certain line of growth is written in the structure of every species of plant.  The plant may be hindered or perverted in its development; it may be killed, but it cannot be made to grow into the form of another plant.