If a child is left to its own natural proclivities, without education, it will embody all human defects. Education makes of man a man. Religion is Divine Education. There are two pathways which have been pointed out by the Heavenly Educators. The first is Divine Guidance and reliance upon the Manifestations of God. The other is the road of Materialism and reliance upon the senses. These roads lead in opposite directions. The first leads to the world of the Kingdom; the other ends in the world of human vices, and is contrary to the cause of Divine Guidance. For example, consider a babe at the mother's breast, observe its natural aggressiveness, its instinctive antagonism. It claws and bites the mother, even attacks the fountain of life itself.
A barbarous and savage country is a country which has been deprived of education, where men are utter materialists like animals. Such a nation embodies all human defects and vices. They even kill and eat each other.
Divine Education is the sum total of all development. It is the safeguard of humanity. The world of nature is a world of defects and incompleteness. The world of the Kingdom is reached by the highway of Religion and is the Heaven of all Divine Virtues.
(Words of Abdul-Baha delivered during his sojourn in America; Star of the West, vol. 4, no. 6, June 1913)
