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The needle points to the pole; but if you bring a huge black mass of pig iron and place by its side, it trembles, yet deviates, like a man struggling to be virtuous before overwhelming temptations.
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gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann uses a metaphor of a needle and iron to illustrate the struggle between virtue and temptation.
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More from Horace Mann
Yet, by denying education to the slave, you destroy not merely the right, but the power, of personal examination in regard to all that most nearly concerns the soul’s interests.
Even cold, barren New England, though more than twice as thickly peopled, grew in population at a faster rate than these old slave states.
It is only in the land of slaves that they are blotted out and annihilated.
Not the most fertile soil, not mines of silver and gold, can make a nation rich, without intelligence.
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