The condition of life is change; the cessation of change is death.
History is movement, not stagnation; and Jefferson emphatically believed
in progress.
The fact that a dogma in politics, theology or educational theory had
been accepted by his ancestors did not make it necessarily true in his
eyes. "Let well enough alone" was no maxim of his. Onward and upward was
ever his aim.
His interests were wide and intense, ranging from Anglo-Saxon roots to
architectural designs, from fiddling to philosophy, from potatoes to
politics, from rice to religion. In all these things, and in many more
besides, he took the keenest interest; but in nothing, perhaps, did he
display throughout his life a more unfaltering zeal than in the cause of
education.
"A system of general instruction," said he in 1818, "which shall reach
every description of our citizens, from the richest to the poorest, as
it was the earliest, so it will be the latest of all the public concerns
in which I shall permit myself to take an interest."
From first to last Jefferson's aim was to establish, in organic union
and harmonious co-operation, a system of educational institutions
consisting of (1) primary schools, to be supported by local taxation;
(2) grammar schools, classical academies or local colleges; and (3) a
State University, as roof and spire of the whole edifice.
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