A new version of the Bahá’í Reference Library is now available. This ‘old version’ of the Bahá’í Reference Library will be replaced at a later date.
The new version of the Bahá’i Reference Library can be accessed here »
A new version of the Bahá’í Reference Library is now available. This ‘old version’ of the Bahá’í Reference Library will be replaced at a later date.
The new version of the Bahá’i Reference Library can be accessed here »
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From the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá 23: “The primary, the most urgent requirement is the promotion of education….” |
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The primary, the most urgent requirement is the promotion of education.
It is inconceivable that any nation should achieve prosperity and success
unless this paramount, this fundamental concern is carried forward. The
principal reason for the decline and fall of peoples is ignorance. Today the
mass of the people are uninformed even as to ordinary affairs, how much less
do they grasp the core of the important problems and complex needs of the time.
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It is therefore urgent that beneficial articles and books be written,
clearly and definitely establishing what the present-day requirements of the
people are, and what will conduce to the happiness and advancement of society.
These should be published and spread throughout the nation, so that at least
the leaders among the people should become, to some degree, awakened, and arise
to exert themselves along those lines which will lead to their abiding honour.
The publication of high thoughts is the dynamic power in the arteries of life;
it is the very soul of the world. Thoughts are boundless sea, and the effects
and varying conditions of existence are as the separate forms and individual
limits of the waves; not until the sea boils up will the waves rise and scatter
their pearls of knowledge on the shore of life….
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Public opinion must be directed toward whatever is worthy of this day,
and this is impossible except through the use of adequate arguments and the
adducing of clear, comprehensive and conclusive proofs. For the helpless
masses know nothing of the world, and while there is no doubt that they seek
and long for their own happiness, yet ignorance like a heavy veil shuts them
away from it….
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It is, furthermore, a vital necessity to establish schools…. If
necessary, education should even be made compulsory. Until the nerves and
arteries of the nation stir into life, every measure that is attempted will
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prove vain; for the people are as the human body, and determination and the
will to struggle are as the soul, and a soulless body does not move.
(“The Secret of Divine Civilization”, pp. 109–110; pp. 111–112) [23] |
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