The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 48, July 1944 - April, 1945 Page: 79
617 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Spirit of Santa Rita
quence of a continuing expression of the fundamental truths
that have become manifest through the ageless experience of
mankind in its upward surge throughout the centuries for
its most cherished aspiration-freedom.
It is a happy concomitance, then, that education, history,
and the free enterprise of the individual citizen find mutual
satisfaction, justification, and renewed strength in the con-
tinuance of achievements alike unto that celebrated upon
this day.
Santa Rita and all of its beneficent consequences are no
more the result of accident than the consequences of the estab-
lishment of this great seat of general education at Austin, or
the accumulated influence of this great learned society in
the field of historical and patriotic endeavor. Each of these
crowning accomplishments have come from the natural, yet
expected, fruition of a wise, far-seeing, and humanistic policy,
rooted deep in the consciousness of the founders of the Republic
of Texas, and eloquently expressed in the sapient and pro-
found message of President Mirabeau B. Lamar to the Congress
of the Republic of Texas in December, 1838,' which is, in part,
as follows:
If we desire to establish a republican government upon a broad and
permanent basis, it will be our duty to adopt a comprehensive and well-
regulated system of mental and moral culture. Education is a subject
in which every citizen and especially every parent, feels a deep and
lively concern. It is one in which no jarring interests are involved, and
no acrimonious political feelings excited; for its benefits are so universal
that all parties can unite in advancing it. It is admitted by all that the
cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy and, while guided
and controlled by virtue, is the noblest attribute of man. It is the only
dictator that freemen acknowledge and the only security that freemen
desire. The influence of education in the moral world, as in the physical,
renders luminous what was before obscure. It opens a wide field for
the exercise and improvement of all the faculties of man, and imparts
vigor and clearness to those important truths in the science of govern-
ment, as well as of morals, which would otherwise be lost in the darkness
of ignorance. Without its aid how perilous and insufficient would be
the deliberations of a government like ours! How ignoble and useless
its legislation for all the purposes of happiness! How fragile and in-
secure its liberties! War would be conducted without the science neces-
sary to secure success, and its bitterness and calamities would be un-
iThe House Journal, Third Congress, 168-170, gives the date as December
20, 1838; the Lamar Papers, Charles Gulick, Jr. (ed.), II, 348-349, give the
date as December 21, 1838.79
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 48, July 1944 - April, 1945, periodical, 1945; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146055/m1/83/?rotate=270: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.