Self Help
by Mark Zimmerman
By Samuel Smiles
CHAPTER XI. - SELF-CULTURE - FACILITIES AND DIFFICULTIES
"Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others,
and one, more important, which he gives to himself."
- Gibbon.
"Is there one whom difficulties dishearten - who bends to the storm?
He will do little. Is there one who will conquer? That kind of man never
fails." - John Hunter.
"The wise and active conquer difficulties, By daring to
attempt them: sloth and folly
Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and danger, And MAKE the impossibility they fear." - Rowe.
Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and danger, And MAKE the impossibility they fear." - Rowe.
"The best part of every man's education," said Sir Walter
Scott, "is that which he gives to himself." The
late Sir Benjamin Brodie delighted to remember this
saying, and he used to congratulate himself on
the fact that professionally he was self-taught.
But this is necessarily the case with all men who have acquired distinction in
letters, science, or art.
The education received at school or college is but a beginning, and is
valuable mainly inasmuch as it trains the mind and
habituates it to continuous application and study. That which is put into us
by others is always far less ours than that which we acquire by our own
diligent and persevering effort. Knowledge conquered
by labour becomes a possession - a property entirely our own. A greater
vividness and permanency of impression is secured; and facts thus acquired
become registered in the mind in a way that mere imparted information can never effect. This
kind of self-culture also
calls forth power and cultivates strength. The solution of one problem helps the
mastery of another; and thus knowledge is
carried into faculty. Our own active effort is the essential thing; and no
facilities, no books, no teachers, no amount of lessons learnt by rote will
enable us to dispense with it.
The best teachers have been the readiest to recognize the importance
of self-culture,
and of stimulating the student to acquire knowledge by
the active exercise of his own faculties.
They have relied more upon TRAINING than upon telling, and sought to
make their pupils themselves active parties to the work in which they
were engaged; thus making teaching something far higher than the mere passive reception
of the scraps and details of knowledge.
This was the spirit in which the great Dr. Arnold worked; he strove to teach his pupils to rely upon themselves, and develop their powers by their own active efforts, himself merely guiding, directing, stimulating, and encouraging them. "I would far rather," he said, "send a boy to Van Diemen's Land, where he must work for his bread, than send him to Oxford to live in luxury, without any desire in his mind to avail himself of his advantages."
"If there be one thing on earth," he observed on another occasion, "which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, when they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated." Speaking of a pupil of this character, he said, "I would stand to that man hat in hand." Once at Laleham, when teaching a rather dull boy,
From the numerous instances already cited of men of humble station who
have risen to distinction in science and literature, it will be obvious that
labour is by no means incompatible with the highest intellectual culture. Work
in moderation is healthy, as well as agreeable to the human constitution. Work
educates the body, as study educates the mind; and
that is the best state of society in which there is some work for every
man's leisure, and some leisure for every man's work. Even the leisure classes
are in a measure
compelled to work, sometimes as a relief from ENNUI, but in most cases to gratify an instinct which they cannot resist. Some go foxhunting in the English counties, others grouse-shooting on the Scotch hills, while many wander away every summer to climb mountains inSwitzerland
compelled to work, sometimes as a relief from ENNUI, but in most cases to gratify an instinct which they cannot resist. Some go foxhunting in the English counties, others grouse-shooting on the Scotch hills, while many wander away every summer to climb mountains in
Daniel Malthus urged his son when at college to be most diligent in the
cultivation of knowledge, but he also enjoined him to pursue manly sports
as the best means of keeping up the full working power of his mind, as well
as of enjoying the pleasures of
intellect.
"Every kind of knowledge," said he, "every acquaintance with nature and art, will amuse and strengthen your mind, and I am perfectly pleased that cricket should do the same by your arms and legs; I love to see you excel in exercises of the body, and I think myself that the better half, and much the most agreeable part, of the pleasures of the mind is best enjoyed while one is upon one's legs." But a still more important use of active employment is that referred to by the great divine, Jeremy Taylor. "Avoid idleness," he says, "and fill up all the spaces of thy time with severe and useful employment; for lust easily creeps in at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed and the body is at ease; for no easy, healthful, idle person was ever chaste if he could be tempted; but of all employments bodily labour is the most useful, and of the greatest benefit for driving away the devil."
Practical success in life depends more upon physical health than is generally
imagined. Hodson, of Hodson's Horse, writing home to a friend in England, said,
"I believe, if I get on well in India
The use of early labour in self-imposed mechanical
employments may be illustrated by the boyhood of Sir Isaac Newton. Though a comparatively
dull scholar, he was very assiduous in the use of his saw, hammer,
and hatchet - "knocking and hammering in his lodging room" - making
models of windmills, carriages, and machines of all sorts; and as he grew older,
he took delight in making little tables and cupboards for his friends. Smeaton,
Watt, and Stephenson, were equally handy with tools when mere boys; and but for such kind of self-culture in their youth, it is doubtful whether
they would have accomplished so much in their manhood. Such was also the early
training of the great inventors and mechanics described in the preceding pages,
whose contrivance and intelligence were practically trained by the constant use
of their hands in early life. Even where men belonging to the manual labour class
have risen above it, and become more purely intellectual labourers, they have
found the advantages of their early training in their later pursuits. Elihu
Burritt says he found hard labour NECESSARY to enable him to study with effect; and
more than once he gave up school-teaching and study, and, taking to his
leather-apron again, went back to his blacksmith's forge and anvil for his
health of body and mind's sake.
The training of young men in the use of tools would, at the same time
that it educated them in "common things," teach them the use of their
hands and arms, familiarize them with healthy work, exercise their faculties
upon things tangible and actual, give them some practical acquaintance with
mechanics, impart to them the ability of being useful,
and implant in them the habit of persevering physical effort. This is an
advantage which the working classes, strictly so called, certainly possess over
the leisure classes, - that they are in early life under the necessity of
applying themselves laboriously
to some mechanical pursuit or other, - thus acquiring manual dexterity and the
use of their physical powers. The chief disadvantage attached to the calling of
the laborious classes is, not that they are employed in physical work, but that
they are too exclusively so employed, often to the neglect of their moral and
intellectual faculties. While the youths of the leisure classes, having been
taught to associate labour with servility, have shunned it, and been allowed
to grow up
practically ignorant, the poorer classes, confining themselves within
the circle of their laborious callings, have been allowed to grow up
in a large proportion of cases absolutely illiterate. It seems possible,
however, to avoid both these evils by combining physical training or physical
work with intellectual culture: and there are various signs abroad which seem
to mark the gradual adoption of this healthier system of education.
The success of even professional men depends in no slight degree on their
physical health; and a public writer has gone so far as to say that "the
greatness of our great men is quite as much a bodily affair as a mental
one." (28) A healthy breathing apparatus is as indispensable to
the successful lawyer or politician as a well- cultured intellect. The thorough
aeration of the blood by free exposure to a large breathing surface in the
lungs, is necessary to maintain that full vital power on which the vigorous
working of the brain in so large a measure depends. The lawyer has to climb the
heights of his profession through close and heated courts, and the political
leader has to bear the fatigue and excitement of long and anxious debates in a
crowded House. Hence the lawyer in full practice and the parliamentary leader
in full work are called upon to display powers of physical endurance and
activity even more extraordinary than those of the intellect, - such powers as
have been exhibited in so remarkable a degree by Brougham, Lyndhurst, and Campbell; by Peel, Graham, and Palmerston - all full-chested men.
Though Sir Walter Scott, when at Edinburgh
College , went by the name of "The
Greek Blockhead," he was, notwithstanding his lameness, a remarkably
healthy youth: he could spear a salmon with the best fisher on the Tweed , and ride a wild horse with any hunter in Yarrow.
When devoting himself in after life to literary pursuits, Sir Walter
never lost his taste for field sports; but while writing 'Waverley
manhood.
manhood.
While it is necessary, then, in the first place to secure this solid
foundation of physical health, it must also be observed that the cultivation of
the habit of mental application is quite indispensable for the education of the
student. The maxim that "Labour conquers all things" holds
especially true in the case of the conquest of knowledge.
The road into learning is alike free to all who will give the labour and the
study requisite to gather it; nor are there any difficulties so great that the student of resolute purpose
may not surmount and overcome them. It was one of the characteristic expressions
of Chatterton, that God had sent his creatures into the world with arms long
enough to reach anything if
they chose to be at the trouble. In study, as in business, energy is the great thing. There must be the "fervet opus": we must not only strike the iron while it is hot, but strike it till it is made hot. It is astonishing how much may be accomplished in self- culture by the energetic and the persevering, who are careful to avail themselves of opportunities, and use up the fragments of spare time which the idle permit to run to waste. ThusFerguson
they chose to be at the trouble. In study, as in business, energy is the great thing. There must be the "fervet opus": we must not only strike the iron while it is hot, but strike it till it is made hot. It is astonishing how much may be accomplished in self- culture by the energetic and the persevering, who are careful to avail themselves of opportunities, and use up the fragments of spare time which the idle permit to run to waste. Thus
Thus Stone learnt mathematics while working as a journeyman gardener;
thus Drew studied the highest philosophy in the intervals of cobbling shoes;
and thus Miller taught himself geology while working as a day labourer in a
quarry.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, as we have already observed, was so earnest a believer
in the force of industry that he held that all men might achieve excellence if
they would but exercise the power of assiduous and patient working.
He held that drudgery lay on the road to genius, and that there was no limit to
the proficiency of an artist except the limit of
his own painstaking. He would not believe in what is called inspiration, but
only in study and labour. "Excellence," he said, "is never granted to man but as
the reward of labour." "If you have great talents,
industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply
their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed labour; nothing is to be
obtained without it." Sir Fowell Buxton was an equal believer
in the power of study; and he entertained the modest idea that he could do as
well as other men if he devoted to the pursuit double the time and labour that
they did. He placed his great confidence in ordinary means and extraordinary application.
"I have known several men in my life," says Dr. Ross,
"who may be recognized in days to come as men of genius, and they were all
plodders, hard-working, INTENT men. Genius is known by
its works; genius without works is a blind faith, a dumb
oracle. But meritorious works are the result of time and labour, and cannot be accomplished
by intention or by a wish. . . . Every great work is the result of vast
preparatory training. Facility comes by labour.
Nothing seems easy, not even walking, that was not difficult at first. The orator whose eye flashes instantaneous fire, and whose lips pour out a flood of noble thoughts, startling by their unexpectedness, and elevating by their wisdom and truth, has learned his secret by patient repetition, and after many bitter disappointments." (29)
Thoroughness and accuracy are two principal points to be aimed at in
study. Francis Horner, in laying down rules for the cultivation of his mind, placed
great stress upon the habit of continuous application
to one subject for the sake of mastering it thoroughly; he confined himself, with this object, to
only a few books, and resisted with the greatest firmness "every approach
to a habit of desultory reading." The value of knowledge to
any man consists not in its quantity, but mainly in the good uses
to which he can apply it. Hence a little knowledge, of an exact and perfect character, is
always found more valuable for practical purposes than any extent of
superficial learning.
One of Ignatius Loyola's maxims was, "He who does well one work at
a time, does more than all." By spreading our efforts over too large
a surface we inevitably weaken our force, hinder our progress, and acquire a
habit of fitfulness and ineffective working. Lord St.
Leonards once communicated to Sir Fowell Buxton the mode in which he had conducted
his studies, and thus explained the secret of his success. "I
resolved," said he, "when beginning to read law, to make everything I
acquired perfectly my own, and never to go to a second thing till I had
entirely accomplished the first. Many of my competitors read as much in a day
as I read in a week; but, at the end of twelve months, my knowledge was
as fresh as the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from recollection." It is not the quantity of study that one gets through, or
the amount of reading, that makes a wise man;
but the appositeness of the study to the purpose for which it is pursued; the
concentration of the mind for the time being on
the subject under consideration; and the habitual discipline by which the whole
system of mental application is regulated. Abernethy was even of opinion that
there was a point of saturation in his own mind, and
that if he took into it something more than it could hold, it only had
the effect of
pushing something else out. Speaking of the study of medicine, he said, "If a man has a clear idea of what he desires to
do, he will seldom fail in selecting the proper means of accomplishing
it."
The most profitable study is that which is conducted with a definite
aim and object.
By thoroughly mastering any given branch of knowledge we
render it more available for use at any moment.
Hence it is not enough merely to have books, or to know where to read for information as we want it. Practical wisdom, for the purposes of life, must be carried about with us, and be ready for use at call. It is not sufficient that we have a fund laid up at home, but not a farthing in the pocket: we must carry about with us a store of the current coin of knowledge ready for exchange on all occasions, else we are comparatively helpless when the opportunity for using it occurs.
Decision and promptitude are as requisite in self-culture as
in business. The growth of these qualities may be encouraged by accustoming
young people to rely upon their own resources, leaving them to enjoy as
much freedom of action in early life as is practicable. Too much guidance and
restraint hinder the formation of habits of self-help. They
are like bladders tied under the arms of
one who has not taught himself to swim. Want of confidence is perhaps a
greater obstacle to improvement than is generally imagined. It has been said
that half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse while he is
leaping. Dr. Johnson was accustomed to attribute his success to confidence in
his own powers. True modesty
is quite compatible with a due estimate of one's own merits, and does not
demand the abnegation of all merit.
Though there are those who deceive themselves by putting a false figure before their ciphers, the want of confidence, the want of faith in one's self, and consequently the want of promptitude in action, is a defect of character which is found to stand very much in the way of individual progress; and the reason why so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.
There is usually no want of desire on
the part of most persons to arrive at the results of self-culture,
but there is a great aversion to pay the inevitable price for it, of hard work.
Dr. Johnson held that "impatience of study was the mental disease of the
present generation;" and the remark is still applicable. We may not
believe that there is a royal road to learning, but we seem to believe very
firmly in a "popular" one. In education, we invent labour-saving
processes, seek short cuts to science, learn French and Latin "in twelve
lessons," or "without a master." We resemble the lady
of fashion, who engaged a master to teach her on condition that
he did not plague her with verbs and participles.
We get our smattering of science in the same way; we learn chemistry by
listening to a short course of lectures enlivened by experiments, and when we
have inhaled laughing gas, seen green water turned to red, and phosphorus burnt
in oxygen, we have got our smattering, of which the most that can be said is,
that though it may be better than nothing, it is yet good for
nothing. Thus we often imagine we are being educated
while we are only being amused. The facility with which young people are
thus induced to acquire
knowledge, without study and labour, is not education. It occupies but does not enrich the mind. It imparts a stimulus for the time, and produces a sort of intellectual keenness and cleverness; but, without an implanted purpose and a higher object than mere pleasure, it will bring with it no solid advantage. In such cases knowledge produces but a passing impression; a sensation, but no more; it is, in fact, the merest epicurism of intelligence - sensuous, but certainly not intellectual. Thus the best qualities of many minds, those which are evoked by vigorous effort and independent action, sleep a deep sleep, and are often never called to life, except by the rough awakening of sudden calamity or suffering, which, in such cases, comes as a blessing, if it serves to rouse up a courageous spirit that, but for it, would have slept on.
knowledge, without study and labour, is not education. It occupies but does not enrich the mind. It imparts a stimulus for the time, and produces a sort of intellectual keenness and cleverness; but, without an implanted purpose and a higher object than mere pleasure, it will bring with it no solid advantage. In such cases knowledge produces but a passing impression; a sensation, but no more; it is, in fact, the merest epicurism of intelligence - sensuous, but certainly not intellectual. Thus the best qualities of many minds, those which are evoked by vigorous effort and independent action, sleep a deep sleep, and are often never called to life, except by the rough awakening of sudden calamity or suffering, which, in such cases, comes as a blessing, if it serves to rouse up a courageous spirit that, but for it, would have slept on.
Accustomed to acquire information under the guise of amusement, young
people will soon reject that which is presented to them under the aspect of
study and labour. Learning their knowledge and
science in sport, they will be too apt to make sport of both; while the habit
of intellectual dissipation, thus engendered, cannot fail, in course of time,
to produce a thoroughly emasculating effect both
upon their mind and character.
"Multifarious reading," said Robertson of Brighton ,
"weakens the mind like smoking, and is an excuse for its lying
dormant. It is the idlest of all idlenesses, and leaves more of impotency than
any other."
The evil is a growing one, and operates in various ways. Its least mischief
is shallowness; its greatest, the aversion to steady labour which it induces,
and the low and feeble tone of mind which
it encourages. If we would be really wise, we
must diligently apply ourselves, and confront the same continuous application
which our forefathers did; for labour is still, and ever will be, the inevitable
price set upon everything which is valuable. We must be satisfied to
work with a purpose, and wait the results with patience. All
progress, of the best kind, is slow; but to him who works faithfully and
zealously the reward will, doubtless, be vouchsafed in good time.
The spirit of
industry, embodied in a
man's daily life, will gradually lead him to exercise his powers on objects outside himself, of greater dignity and more extended usefulness. And still we must labour on; for the work of self- culture is never finished. "To be employed," said the poet Gray, "is to be happy." "It is better to wear out than rust out," said Bishop Cumberland. "Have we not all eternity to rest in?" exclaimed Arnauld. "Repos ailleurs" was the motto of Marnix de St. Aldegonde, the energetic and ever-working friend of William the Silent.
man's daily life, will gradually lead him to exercise his powers on objects outside himself, of greater dignity and more extended usefulness. And still we must labour on; for the work of self- culture is never finished. "To be employed," said the poet Gray, "is to be happy." "It is better to wear out than rust out," said Bishop Cumberland. "Have we not all eternity to rest in?" exclaimed Arnauld. "Repos ailleurs" was the motto of Marnix de St. Aldegonde, the energetic and ever-working friend of William the Silent.
It is the use we make of the powers entrusted to us, which constitutes
our only just claim to respect. He who employs his one talent aright is as much
to be honoured as he to whom ten talents have been given. There is really no
more personal merit attaching to the possession of superior intellectual powers than there is in the
succession to a large estate. How are those powers used – how is that estate
employed? The mind may accumulate large stores of knowledge without
any useful purpose; but the knowledge must
be allied to goodness and wisdom, and
embodied in upright character, else it is naught. Pestalozzi even held
intellectual training by itself to be pernicious; insisting that the roots of
all knowledge
must strike and feed in the soil of the rightly-governed will. The acquisition
of knowledge may,
it is true,
protect a man against the meaner felonies of life; but not in any degree
against its selfish vices, unless fortified by sound principles and
habits. Hence do we find in daily life so many instances of men who are well- informed
in intellect, but utterly deformed in character;
filled with the learning of the schools, yet possessing little practical wisdom, and
offering examples for warning rather than imitation.
An often quoted expression at this day is that "Knowledge is power;" but so also are fanaticism, despotism, and ambition. Knowledge of itself, unless wisely directed, might merely make bad men more dangerous, and the society in which it was regarded as the
highest good, little better than a pandemonium.
It is possible that at this day we may even exaggerate the importance
of literary culture. We are apt to imagine that because we possess many
libraries, institutes, and museums, we are making great progress. But such
facilities may as often be a hindrance as a help to
individual self-culture of
the highest kind. The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more
constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.
Though we undoubtedly possess great facilities it is nevertheless true, as of old, that wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry. The possession of the mere materials of knowledge is something very different from wisdom and understanding, which are reached through a higher kind of discipline than that of reading, - which is often but a mere passive reception of other men's thoughts; there being little or no active effort of mind in the transaction. Then how much of our reading is but the indulgence of a sort of intellectual dram- drinking, imparting a grateful excitement for the moment, without the slightest effect in improving and enriching the mind or building up the character. Thus many indulge themselves in the conceit that they are cultivating their minds, when they are only employed in the humbler occupation of killing time, of which perhaps the best that can be said is that it keeps them from doing
worse things.
It is also to be borne in mind that
the experience gathered
from books, though often valuable, is but of the nature of LEARNING; whereas
the experience gained
from actual life is of the nature of WISDOM; and a small store of the latter is
worth vastly more than any stock of the former. Lord Bolingbroke truly said
that "Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better
men and citizens, is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness, and
the knowledge we
acquire by it, only a creditable kind of ignorance - nothing more."
Useful and instructive though good reading
may be, it is yet only one mode of cultivating the mind; and is
much less influential than
practical experience and good example
in the formation of
character.
There were wise, valiant, and true-hearted men bred in England
Though altogether unskilled in the art of deciphering the literary signs by which principles were denominated upon paper, they yet understood and appreciated, and boldly contended for, the things themselves. Thus the foundations of English liberty were laid by men, who, though illiterate, were nevertheless of the very highest stamp of character. And it must be admitted that the chief object of culture is, not merely to fill the mind with other men's thoughts, and to be the passive recipient of their impressions of things, but to enlarge our individual intelligence, and render us more useful and efficient workers in the sphere of life to which we may be called. Many of our most energetic and useful workers have been but sparing readers. Brindley and Stephenson did not learn to read and write until they reached manhood, and yet they did great works and lived manly lives; John Hunter could barely read or write when he was twenty years old, though he could make tables and chairs with any carpenter in the trade. "I never read," said the great physiologist when lecturing before his class; "this" - pointing to some part of the subject before him - "this is the work that you must study if you wish to become eminent in your profession." When told that one of his contemporaries had charged him with being ignorant of the dead languages, he said, "I would undertake to teach him that on the dead body which he never knew in any language, dead or living."
It is not then how much a man may know, that is
of importance, but the end and purpose for which he knows it.
The object of knowledge should
be to mature wisdom and improve character, to
render us better, happier, and more useful; more benevolent,
more energetic, and more efficient in the pursuit of every high purpose in
life.
"When people once fall into the habit of admiring and encouraging ability as such, without reference to moral character – and religious and political opinions are the concrete form of moral character - they are on the highway to all sorts of degradation."
(30)
We must ourselves BE and DO, and not rest satisfied merely
with reading and meditating over what other men have been and done.
Our best light must be made life, and our best thought action.
At least we ought to be able to say, as Richter did, "I have made as much
out of myself as
could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more;" for it is
every man's duty to discipline and guide himself,
with God's help,
according to his responsibilities and the faculties with which he has
been endowed.
Self-discipline and self-control are
the beginnings of practical wisdom; and these must have their root in self-respect.
Hope springs from it - hope, which is the companion of power, and the mother of
success; for whoso hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles. The
humblest may say, "To respect myself, to
develop myself -
this is my true duty in life. An integral and responsible part
of the great system of society, I owe it to society and to its Author not to
degrade or destroy either my body, mind, or instincts.
On the contrary, I am bound to the best of my power to give to those
parts of my constitution the highest degree of perfection possible. I am not
only to suppress the evil, but to evoke the good elements
in my nature. And as I respect myself, so am
I equally bound to respect others, as they on their part are bound to respect
me." Hence mutual respect, justice, and order, of which law
becomes the written record and guarantee.
Self-respect is
the noblest garment
with which a man may clothe himself - the most elevating feeling with
which the mind can
be inspired. One of ythagoras's wisest maxims,
in his 'Golden Verses,' is that with which he enjoins the pupil to
"reverence himself." Borne
up by this high idea, he will not defile his body by sensuality, nor his mind by
servile thoughts.
This sentiment, carried into daily life, will be found at the root of all the virtues -
cleanliness, sobriety, chastity, morality, and religion.
"The pious and just honouring of ourselves," said
One way in which self-culture may be degraded is by regarding it too
exclusively as a means of "getting on." Viewed in this light,
it is unquestionable that education is one of the best investments of time and
labour. In any line of life, intelligence will enable a man to adapt himself more
readily to circumstances, suggest improved methods of working, and render him
more apt, skilled and effective in all respects. He who works with his head
as well as his hands, will come to look at his business with a clearer eye; and
he will become conscious of increasing power - perhaps the most cheering consciousness the
human mind can
cherish. The power of self-help will gradually grow; and in
proportion to a man's self- respect, will he be armed against the temptation of
low indulgences. Society and its action will be regarded with quite a new
interest, his sympathies will widen and enlarge, and he will thus be attracted
to work for others as well as for himself.
Self-culture may
not, however, end in eminence, as in the numerous instances above cited. The
great majority of men, in all times, however enlightened, must necessarily be
engaged in the ordinary avocations of industry; and no degree of culture which
can be conferred upon the community at large will ever enable them – even were
it desirable,
which it is not - to get rid of the daily work of society, which must be done.
But this, we think, may also be accomplished. We can elevate the condition of
labour by allying it to noble thoughts,
which confer a grace upon the lowliest as well as the highest rank. For no
matter how poor or humble a man may be, the great thinker of
this and other days may come in and sit down with him, and be his companion for
the time, though his dwelling be the meanest hut. It is thus that the habit of
well- directed reading may become a source of the greatest pleasure and
self-improvement, and exercise a gentle coercion, with the most beneficial
results, over the whole tenour of a man's character and conduct. And even though self-culture may not bring wealth, it will at all
events give one the companionship of elevated thoughts.
A nobleman once contemptuously asked of a sage, "What have you got by all your philosophy?" "At least I have got society in myself," was the wise man's reply.
But many are apt to feel despondent,
and become discouraged in the work of self-culture,
because they do not "get on" in the world so fast as they think they
deserve to do. Having planted their acorn, they expect to see it grow into
an oak at once. They have perhaps looked upon knowledge in the light of a marketable commodity, and are
consequently mortified because it does not sell as they expected it would do.
Mr. Tremenheere, in one of his 'Education Reports' (for 1840-1), states that
a schoolmaster in Norfolk, finding his school rapidly falling off, made inquiry
into the cause, and ascertained that the reason given by the majority of the parents
for withdrawing their children was, that they had expected "education was
to make them better off than they were before," but that having found it
had "done them no good," they had taken their children from school, and
would give themselves no
further trouble about education!
The same low idea of self-culture is
but too prevalent in other classes, and is encouraged by the false views of
life which are always more or less current in society. But to regard self-culture either
as a means of getting past others in the world, or of intellectual dissipation
and amusement, rather than as a power to elevate the character and
expand the spiritual nature,
is to place it on a very low level. To use the words of Bacon, "Knowledge is
not a shop for profit or sale, but a rich storehouse for the glory of the
Creator and the relief of man's estate." It is doubtless most
honourable for a man to labour to elevate himself, and
to better his condition in society, but this is not to be done at
the sacrifice of himself. To make the mind the
mere drudge of the body, is putting it to a very servile use; and to go about
whining and bemoaning our pitiful lot because we fail in achieving that success
in life which, after all, depends rather upon habits of industry and attention
to business details than upon knowledge, is
the mark of a small, and often of a sour mind. Such a
temper cannot better be reproved than in the words of Robert Southey, who thus
wrote to a friend who sought his counsel: "I would give you advice if it
could be of use; but there is no curing those who choose to be diseased.
A good man
and a wise man
may at times be angry with
the world, at times grieved for it; but be sure no man was ever discontented
with the world if he did his duty in it. If a man of education, who has health,
eyes, hands, and leisure, wants an object, it is
only because God Almighty has bestowed all those blessings upon a man who does
not deserve them."
Another way in which education may be prostituted is by employing it as
a mere means of intellectual dissipation and amusement. Many are the ministers
to this taste in
our time. There is almost a mania for frivolity and excitement, which exhibits
itself in many forms in
our popular literature. To meet the public taste, our books
and periodicals must now be highly spiced, amusing, and comic, not disdaining
slang, and illustrative of breaches of all laws, human and divine. Douglas
Jerrold once observed of this tendency, "I am convinced
the world will get tired (at least I hope so) of this eternal guffaw about all
things. After all, life has something serious in it. It cannot be all a comic
history of humanity. Some men would, I believe, write a Comic Sermon on the Mount. Think of
a Comic History of England
Surely the world will be sick of this blasphemy." John Sterling, in a like spirit, said:- "Periodicals and novels are to all in this generation, but more especially to those whose minds are still unformed and in the process of formation, a new and more effectual substitute for the plagues of Egypt, vermin that corrupt the wholesome waters and infest our chambers."
As a rest from toil and a relaxation from graver pursuits,
the perusal of a well-written story, by a writer of genius, is a high intellectual pleasure; and
it is a description of literature to which all classes of readers, old and
young, are attracted as by a powerful instinct; nor would we have any of them
debarred from its enjoyment in a reasonable degree. But to make it the
exclusive literary diet, as some do, - to devour the garbage with which the shelves
of circulating libraries are filled, - and to occupy the greater portion of the
leisure hours in studying the preposterous pictures of human life which so many
of them present, is worse than waste of time: it is positively pernicious. The
habitual novel- reader indulges in fictitious feelings so
much, that there is great risk of sound and healthy feeling becoming
perverted or benumbed.
"I never go to hear a tragedy," said a gay man once to the Archbishop of
it gradually more insensible."
Amusement in moderation is wholesome, and to be commended; but amusement
in excess vitiates the whole nature, and is a thing to be carefully guarded
against. The maxim is often quoted of "All work and no play makes Jack a
dull boy;" but all play and no work makes him something greatly worse.
Nothing can be more hurtful to a youth than to have his soul sodden
with pleasure.
The best qualities of his mind are impaired; common enjoyments become
tasteless;
his appetite for the higher kind of pleasures is
vitiated; and when he comes to face the work and the duties of life, the result
is usually aversion and disgust. "Fast" men waste and exhaust the
powers of life, and dry up the sources of true happiness.
Having forestalled their spring, they can produce no healthy growth of
either character or
intellect. A child without simplicity, a maiden without innocence, a boy
without truthfulness,
are not more piteous sights than the man who has wasted and thrown away his
youth in self-indulgence.
Mirabeau said of himself, "My early years have already in a great
measure disinherited the succeeding ones, and dissipated a great part of my
vital powers."
As the wrong done to another to-day returns upon ourselves to-
morrow, so the sins of our youth rise up in our age to scourge us.
When Lord Bacon says that "strength of nature in youth passeth over many excesses which are owing a man until he is old," he exposes a physical as well as a moral fact which cannot be too well weighed in the conduct of life. "I assure you," wrote Giusti the Italian to a friend, "I pay a heavy price for existence. It is true that our lives are not at our own disposal. Nature pretends to give them gratis at the beginning, and then sends in her account." The worst of youthful indiscretions is, not that they destroy health, so much as that they sully manhood. The dissipated youth becomes a tainted man; and often he cannot be pure, even if he would. If cure there be, it is only to be found in inoculating the mind with a fervent spirit of duty, and in energetic application to useful
work.
One of the most gifted of Frenchmen, in point of great intellectual endowments,
was Benjamin Constant; but, BLASE at twenty, his life was only a prolonged
wail, instead of a harvest of the great deeds which he was capable of
accomplishing with ordinary diligence and self-control.
He resolved upon doing so many things, which he never did, that people came to
speak of him as Constant the Inconstant. He was a fluent and brilliant writer,
and cherished the ambition of writing works, "which the world would not
willingly let die." But whilst Constant affected the
highest thinking,
unhappily he
practised the lowest living; nor did the transcendentalism of
his books atone for the meanness of his life.
He frequented the gaming-tables while engaged in preparing his work upon
religion, and carried on a disreputable intrigue while writing his 'Adolphe.' With
all his powers of intellect, he was powerless, because he had no faith in virtue.
"Bah!" said he, "what are honour and dignity? The longer I live, the more clearly I see here is
nothing in them." It was the howl of a miserable man. He described himself as
but "ashes and dust." "I pass," said he, "like
a shadow over the earth, accompanied by misery and ENNUI."
He wished for Voltaire's energy, which he would rather have possessed than his genius. But he had no strength of purpose - nothing but wishes: his life, prematurely exhausted, had become but a heap of broken links. He spoke of himself as a person with one foot in the air. He admitted that he had no principles, and no moral consistency. Hence, with his splendid talents, he contrivedto do nothing; and, after living many years miserable, he died worn out and wretched.
The career of Augustin Thierry, the author of the 'History of the Norman
Conquest,' affords an admirable contrast to that of Constant. His entire life
presented a striking example of perseverance, diligence, self culture,
and untiring devotion to knowledge. In the pursuit he lost his eyesight, lost his
health, but never lost his love of truth. When
so feeble that he was carried from room to room, like a helpless infant, in the
arms of a nurse, his brave spirit never failed him; and blind and helpless though
he was, he concluded his literary career in the following noble words:-
"If, as I think, the interest of science is counted in the number of
great national interests, I have given my country
all that the soldier, mutilated on the field of battle, gives her.
all that the soldier, mutilated on the field of battle, gives her.
Whatever may be the fate of my labours, this example, I hope, will not be lost. I would wish it to serve to combat the species of moral weakness which is THE DISEASE of our present generation; to bring back into the straight road of life some of those enervated souls that complain of wanting faith, that know not what to do, and seek everywhere, without finding it, an object of worship and admiration. Why say, with so much bitterness, that in the world, constituted as it is, there is no air for all lungs - no employment for all minds? Is not calm and serious study there? and is not that a refuge, a hope, a field within the reach of all of us? With it, evil days are passed over without their weight being felt.
Every one can make his own destiny - every one employ his life nobly. This
is what I have done, and would do again if I had to recommence my career; I
would choose that which has brought me where I am. Blind, and
suffering without hope, and almost without intermission, I may give this
testimony, which from me will not appear suspicious. There is something in the
world better than sensual enjoyments, better than fortune, better than health itself -
it is devotion to knowledge."
Coleridge, in many respects, resembled Constant. He possessed equally
brilliant powers, but was similarly infirm of purpose.
With all his great intellectual gifts, he wanted the gift of industry, and was averse to continuous labour. He wanted also the sense of independence, and thought it no degradation to leave his wife and children to be maintained by the brain-work of the noble Southey, while he himself retired to Highgate Grove to discourse transcendentalism to his disciples, looking down contemptuously upon the honest work going forward beneath him amidst the din and smoke of London. With remunerative employment at his command he stooped to accept the charity of friends; and, notwithstanding his lofty ideas of philosophy, he condescended to humiliations from which many a day-labourer would have shrunk. How different in spirit was Southey! labouring not merely at work of his own choice, and at taskwork often tedious and distasteful, but also unremittingly and with the utmost eagerness seeking and storing knowledge purely for the love of it. Every day, every hour had its allotted employment: engagements to publishers requiring punctual fulfilment; the current expenses of a large household duty to provide: for Southey had no crop growing while his pen was idle.
"My ways," he used to say, "are as broad as the king's high-road, and my means lie in an inkstand."
Robert Nicoll wrote to a friend, after reading the 'Recollections of
Coleridge,' "What a mighty intellect was lost in that man for want of a
little energy - a little determination!" Nicoll himself was a true and
brave spirit,
who died young, but not before he had encountered and overcome great
difficulties in life. At his outset, while carrying on a small business as a
bookseller, he found himself weighed down with a debt of only twenty
pounds, which he said he felt "weighing like a millstone round his
neck," and that, "if he had it paid he never would borrow again from
mortal man." Writing to his mother at the time he said, "Fear not
for me, dear mother, for I feel myself daily growing firmer
and more hopeful in spirit. The more I think and
reflect - and thinking, not reading, is now my occupation - I feel that,
whether I be growing richer
or not, I am growing a wiser man,
which is far better. Pain, poverty, and all the other wild beasts of life which so
affrighten others, I am so bold as to think I
could look in the face without shrinking, without losing respect for myself, faith in
man's high destinies, or trust in God. There is a point which it costs much mental
toil and struggling to gain, but which, when once gained, a man can look down
from, as a traveller from a lofty mountain, on storms raging below, while he is
walking in sunshine.
It is not ease, but effort - not facility, but difficulty, that makes
men. There is, perhaps, no station in life, in which difficulties have not to
be encountered and overcome before any decided measure of success can be achieved. Those difficulties are, however,
our best instructors, as our mistakes often form our
best experience.
Charles James Fox was accustomed to say that he hoped more from a man who
failed, and yet went on in spite of his failure, than from the buoyant career of the successful. "It is all very
well," said he, "to tell me that a young man has distinguished himself by
a brilliant first speech. He may go on, or he may be satisfied with
his first triumph; but show me a young man who has NOT succeeded at first, and
nevertheless has gone on, and I will back that young man to do better than most
of those who have succeeded at the first trial."
We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We
often discover what WILL do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he
who never made a mistake never made a discovery. It was the failure in the
attempt to make a sucking-pump act, when the working bucket was more than
thirty-three feet above the surface of the water to be raised, that led
observant men to study the law of atmospheric pressure, and opened a new field
of research to the genius of Galileo, Torrecelli, and Boyle. John Hunter used
to remark that the art of surgery would not advance until professional men had the
courage to publish their failures as well as their successes. Watt the engineer
said, of all things most wanted in mechanical engineering was a history of
failures: "We want," he said, "a book of
blots." When Sir Humphry Davy was once shown a dexterously
manipulated experiment, he said - "I thank God I was not made a dexterous
manipulator, for the most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me
by failures." Another distinguished investigator in physical
science has left it on record that, whenever in the course of his researches he
encountered an apparently insuperable obstacle, he generally found himself on
the brink of some discovery. The very greatest things - great thoughts,
discoveries, inventions - have usually been nurtured in hardship, often
pondered over in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty.
Beethoven said of Rossini, that he had in him the stuff to have made
a good musician
if he had only, when a boy, been well flogged; but that he had been spoilt by
the facility with which he produced.
Men who feel their strength within them need not fear to
encounter adverse opinions; they have far greater reason to fear undue
praise and too friendly criticism. When Mendelssohn was about to enter the
orchestra at Birmingham
It has been said, and truly, that
it is the defeat that tries the general more than the victory. Washington
Moreau used to be compared by his companions to a drum, which
nobody hears
of except it be beaten. Wellington's military genius was perfected by encounter
with difficulties of apparently the most overwhelming character,
but which only served to nerve his resolution, and bring out more prominently
his great qualities as a man and a general.
So the skilful mariner obtains his best experience amidst storms and tempests, which train him to self-reliance, courage, and the highest discipline; and we probably own to rough seas and wintry nights the best training of our race of British seamen, who are,
certainly, not surpassed by any in the world.
Necessity may be a hard schoolmistress, but she is generally found the
best. Though the ordeal of adversity is one from which we naturally shrink,
yet, when it comes, we must bravely and manfully encounter it. Burns says truly,
"Though losses and crosses
Be lessons right severe,
There's wit there, you'll get there,
You'll find no other where."
"Sweet indeed are the uses of adversity." They
reveal to us our powers, and call forth our energies. If there be real worth
in the character,
like sweet herbs, it will give forth its finest fragrance when pressed.
"Crosses," says the old proverb, "are the ladders that lead to
heaven." "What is even poverty itself," asks Richter,
"that a man should murmur under it? It is but as the pain of
piercing a maiden's ear, and you hang precious jewels in the wound." In
the experience of
life it is found that the wholesome discipline of adversity in strong natures
usually carries with it a self-preserving influence.
Many are found capable of bravely bearing up under privations, and cheerfully
encountering obstructions, who are afterwards found unable to withstand the more dangerous influences of
prosperity. It is only a weak man whom the wind deprives of his cloak: a man of
average strength is more in danger of losing it when assailed by the beams of a
too genial sun.
Thus it often needs a higher discipline and a stronger character to bear up under good fortune than under adverse. Some generous natures kindle and warm with prosperity, but there are many on whom wealth has no such influence. Base hearts it only hardens, making those who were mean and servile, mean and proud. But while prosperity is apt to harden the heart to pride, adversity in a man of resolution will serve to ripen it into fortitude. To use the words of Burke, "Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and instructor, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as He loves us better too.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill: our antagonist is thus our helper." Without the necessity of encountering difficulty, life might be easier, but men would be worth less. For trials, wisely improved, train the character, and teach self-help; thus hardship itself may often prove the wholesomest discipline for us, though we recognise it not. When the gallant young Hodson, unjustly removed from his Indian command, felt himself sore pressed down by unmerited calumny and reproach, he yet preserved the courage to say to a friend, "I strive to look the worst boldly in the face, as I would an enemy in the field, and to do my appointed work resolutely and to the best of my ability, satisfied that there is a reason for all; and that even irksome duties well done bring their own reward, and that, if not, still they ARE duties."
The battle of life is, in most cases, fought up-hill; and to win it without
a struggle were perhaps to win it without honour. If there were no difficulties
there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would
be nothing to be achieved.
Difficulties may intimidate the weak, but they act only as a wholesome stimulus to men of resolution and valour. All experience of life indeed serves to prove that the impediments thrown in the way of human advancement may for the most part be overcome by steady good conduct, honest zeal, activity, perseverance, and above all by a determined resolution to surmount difficulties, and stand up manfully against misfortune.
The school
of Difficulty
Wherever there is difficulty, the individual man must come out for better
for worse. Encounter with it will train his strength, and discipline his skill;
heartening him for future effort, as the racer, by being trained
to run against the hill, at length courses with facility. The road to success may be steep to climb, and it puts to the
proof the energies of him who would reach the summit.
But by experience a man soon learns that obstacles are to be overcome by grappling with them, - that the nettle feels as soft as silk when it is boldly grasped, - and that the most effective help towards realizing the object proposed is the moral conviction that we can and will accomplish it. Thus difficulties often fall away of themselves before the determination to overcome them.
Much will be done if we do but try. Nobody knows what
he can do till he has tried; and few try their best till they have been forced
to do it. "IF I could do such and such a thing," sighs the desponding
youth. But nothing will be done if he only wishes. The desire must
ripen into purpose and effort; and one energetic attempt is worth a thousand
aspirations. It is these thorny "ifs" - the mutterings of impotence
and despair -
which so often hedge round the field of possibility, and prevent anything being done
or even attempted. "A difficulty," said Lord Lyndhurst, "is a
thing to be overcome;" grapple with it at once; facility will come with practice,
and strength and fortitude with repeated effort. Thus the mind and character may
be trained to an almost perfect discipline, and enabled to act with a
grace, spirit,
and liberty, almost incomprehensible to those who have not passed through a similar experience.
Everything that we learn is the mastery of a difficulty; and the mastery
of one helps to
the mastery of others. Things which may at first sight appear
comparatively valueless in education - such as the study of the dead languages,
and the relations of
lines and surfaces which we call mathematics - are really of
the greatest practical value, not so
much because of the information which they yield, as because of the development
which they compel. The mastery of these studies evokes effort, and cultivates
powers of application, which otherwise might have lain dormant, Thus one thing leads to
another, and so the work goes on through life - encounter with difficulty
ending only when life and culture end.
But indulging in the feeling of discouragement never helped any one over a difficulty, and never will. D'Alembert's advice to the student who complained to him about his want of success in mastering the first elements of mathematics was the right one - "Go on, sir, and faith and strength will come to you."
The danseuse who turns a pirouette, the violinist who plays a sonata,
have acquired their dexterity by patient repetition
and after many failures. Carissimi, when praised for the ease and grace of his
melodies, exclaimed, "Ah! you little know with
what difficulty this ease has been acquired." Sir Joshua Reynolds,
when once asked how long it had taken him to paint a certain picture, replied,
"All my life." Henry Clay, the American orator, when giving
advice to young men, thus described to them the secret of his success in the
cultivation of his art: "I owe my success in life," said he,
"chiefly to one circumstance - that at the age of twenty-seven I
commenced, and continued for years, the process of daily reading and speaking
upon the contents of some historical or scientific book. These off-hand efforts
were made, sometimes in a cornfield, at others in the forest, and not
unfrequently in some distant barn, with the horse and the ox for my auditors.
It is to this early practice of the art of all arts that I am indebted
for the primary and leading impulses that stimulated me onward and have shaped
and moulded my whole subsequent destiny."
Curran, the Irish orator, when a youth, had a strong defect in his articulation,
and at school he was known as "stuttering Jack Curran." While
he was engaged in the study of the law, and still struggling to overcome his
defect, he was stung into eloquence by the sarcasms of a member of a debating
club, who characterised him as "Orator Mum;" for, like Cowper, when
he stood up to speak on a previous occasion, Curran had not been able to utter
a word. The taunt stung him and he replied in a triumphant speech. This accidental discovery in himself of the gift of eloquence encouraged him to
proceed in his studies with renewed energy. He corrected his enunciation by
reading aloud, emphatically and distinctly, the best passages in literature,
for several hours every day, studying his features before a mirror, and
adopting a method of gesticulation suited to his rather awkward and ungraceful
figure.
He also proposed cases to himself, which he argued with as much care as if he had been addressing a jury. Curran began business with the qualification which Lord Eldon stated to be the first requisite for distinction, that is, "to be not worth a shilling."
While working his way laboriously at the bar, still oppressed by the diffidence which had overcome him in his debating club, he was on one occasion provoked by the Judge (Robinson) into making a very severe retort. In the case under discussion, Curran observed "that he had never met the law as laid down by his lordship in any book in his library." "That may be, sir," said the judge, in a contemptuous tone, "but I suspect that YOUR library is very small."
His lordship was notoriously a furious political partisan, the author of several anonymous pamphlets characterised by unusual violence and dogmatism. Curran, roused by the allusion to his straitened circumstances, replied thus; "It is very true, my lord, that I am poor, and the circumstance has certainly curtailed mylibrary; my books are not numerous, but they are select, and I hope they have been perused with proper dispositions. I have prepared myself for this high profession by the study of a few good works, rather than by the composition of a great many bad ones. I am not ashamed of my poverty; but I should be ashamed of my wealth, could I have stooped to acquire it by servility and corruption. If I rise not to rank, I shall at least be honest; and should I ever cease to be so, many an example shows me that an ill-gained elevation, by making me the more conspicuous, would only make me the more universally and the more notoriously contemptible."
The extremest poverty has been no obstacle in the way of men devoted to
the duty of self-culture. Professor Alexander Murray, the linguist,
learnt to write by scribbling his letters on an old wool-card with the end of a
burnt heather stem. The only book which his father, who was a poor shepherd,
possessed, was a penny Shorter Catechism; but that, being thought too
valuable for common use, was carefully preserved in a cupboard for the Sunday catechisings.
Professor Moor, when a young man, being too
poor to purchase Newton Edinburgh
From seven or eight in the morning till nine or ten at night was I at
my business as a bookseller's apprentice, and it was only during hours after
these, stolen from sleep, that I could devote myself to
study. I did not read novels: my attention was devoted to physical science, and
other useful matters. I also taught myself French.
I look back to those times with great pleasure, and
am almost sorry I
have not to go through the same experience again;
for I reaped more pleasure when I had not a sixpence in my pocket, studying
in a garret in Edinburgh, then I now find when sitting amidst all the
elegancies and comforts of a parlour."
William Cobbett's account of how he learnt English Grammar is full of
interest and instruction for all students labouring under difficulties. "I
learned grammar," said he, "when I was a private soldier on the pay
of sixpence a day. The edge of my berth, or that of my guard-bed, was my seat
to study in; my knapsack was my book-case; a bit of board lying on my lap was
my writing-table; and the task did not demand anything like a year of my life.
I had no money to purchase candle or oil; in winter time it was rarely that I
could get any evening light but that of the fire, and only my turn even of
that. And if I, under such circumstances, and without parent or friend to
advise or encourage me, accomplished this undertaking, what excuse can there be
for any youth, however poor, however pressed with business, or however circumstanced as to room or other
conveniences? To buy a pen or a sheet of paper I was compelled to forego some
portion of food, though in a state of
half-starvation: I had no moment of time that I could call my own; and I had to
read and to write amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whistling, and
brawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless of
men, and that, too, in the hours of their freedom from all control. Think not
lightly of the farthing that I had to give, now and then, for ink, pen, or
paper! That farthing was, alas! a great sum to me! I was as tall as I am now; I
had great health and great exercise. The whole of the money, not expended for
us at market, was two-pence a week for each man. I remember, and
well I may! that on one occasion I, after all necessary expenses, had, on a
Friday, made shifts to have a halfpenny in reserve, which I had destined for
the purchase of a redherring in the morning; but, when I pulled off my clothes
at night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life, I found that I
had lost my halfpenny! I buried my head under the miserable sheet and rug, and
cried like a child! And again I say, if, I, under circumstances like these, could encounter and
overcome this task, is there, can there be, in the whole world, a youth to find
an excuse for the non-performance?"
We have been informed of an equally striking instance of perseverance
and application in learning on the part of a French political exile in London London London
Meanwhile, he secured the
respect and friendship of all who knew him
- fellow-professors as well as pupils; and when the story of his struggles, his
difficulties, and
his past history, became known to them, they admired him more than ever.
his past history, became known to them, they admired him more than ever.
Sir Samuel Romilly was not less indefatigable as a self-cultivator. The
son of a jeweller, descended from a French refugee, he received little
education in his early years, but overcame all his disadvantages by unwearied
application, and by efforts constantly directed towards the same end. "I determined," he says, in his autobiography,
"when I was between fifteen and sixteen years of age, to apply myself seriously
to learning Latin, of which I, at that time, knew little
more than some of the most familiar rules of grammar.
In the course of three or four years, during which I thus applied myself, I had
read almost every prose writer of the age of pure Latinity, except those who
have treated merely of technical subjects, such as Varro, Columella, and
Celsus. I had gone three times through the whole of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus.
I had studied the most celebrated orations of Cicero
Sir Walter Scott was accustomed to cite the case of his young friend
John Leyden as one of the most remarkable illustrations of the power of
perseverance which he had ever known. The
son of a shepherd in one of the wildest valleys of Roxburghshire, he was almost entirely self educated. Like many Scotch shepherds' sons - like
Hogg, who taught himself to write by copying the letters of a printed
book as he lay watching his flock on the hill-side – like Cairns, who from
tending sheep on the Lammermoors, raised himself by
dint of application and industry to the professor's chair which he now so worthily holds - like Murray, Ferguson, and many more, Leyden was
early inspired by a thirst for knowledge.
When a poor barefooted boy, he walked six or eight miles across the moors daily
to learn reading at the little village schoolhouse of Kirkton; and this was all
the education he received; the rest he
acquired for himself. He
found his way to Edinburgh
Thus he toiled and battled at the gates of science until his unconquerable perseverance carried everything before it. Before he had attained his nineteenth year he had astonished all the professors in
Scott and a few friends helped to
fit him out; and he sailed for India, after publishing his beautiful poem 'The
Scenes of Infancy.' In India
The life of the late Dr. Lee, Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge
Taking pleasure in learning, he soon mastered the language. Then he sold his Greek books, and bought Hebrew ones, and learnt that language, unassisted by any instructor, without any hope of fame or reward, but simply following the bent of his genius. He next proceeded to learn the Chaldee, Syriac, and Samaritan dialects. But his studies began to tell upon his health, and brought on disease in his eyes through his long night watchings with his books. Having laid them aside for a time and recovered his health, he went on with his daily work. His character as a tradesman being excellent, his business improved, and his means enabled him to marry, which he did when twenty-eight years old. He determined now to devote himself to the maintenance of his family, and to renounce the luxury of literature; accordingly he sold all his books. He might have continued a working carpenter all his life, had not the chest of tools upon which he depended for subsistence been destroyed by fire, and destitution stared him in the face. He was too poor to buy new tools, so he bethought him of teaching children their letters, - a profession requiring the least possible capital.
But though he had mastered many languages, he was so defective in the
common branches of knowledge, that at first he could not teach them. Resolute
of purpose, however, he assiduously set to work, and taught himself arithmetic
and writing to such a degree as to be able to impart the knowledge of
these branches to little children.
His unaffected, simple, and beautiful character gradually attracted friends, and the acquirements of the "learned carpenter" became bruited abroad. Dr. Scott, a neighbouring clergyman, obtained for him the appointment of master of a charity school in
There are many other illustrious names which might be cited to prove
the truth of
the common saying that "it is never too late to learn." Even
at advanced years men can do much, if they will determine on making a
beginning. Sir Henry Spelman did not begin the study of science until he was
between fifty and sixty years of age. Franklin
And here we would repeat what we have said before, that it is not men
of genius who move the world and take the lead in it, so much as men of
steadfastness, purpose, and indefatigable industry.
Notwithstanding the many undeniable instances of the precocity of men
of genius, it is nevertheless true that
early cleverness gives no indication of the height to which the grown man
will reach. Precocity is sometimes a symptom of disease rather than of intellectual vigour. What becomes of all the "remarkably clever children?" Where
are the duxes and prize boys? Trace them through life, and it will frequently
be found that the dull boys, who were beaten at school, have shot ahead of
them. The clever boys are rewarded, but the prizes which they gain by their
greater quickness and facility do not always prove of use to them. What ought
rather to be rewarded is t he endeavour, the struggle, and the obedience; for
it is the youth who does his best, though endowed with an inferiority of
natural powers, that ought above all others to be encouraged.
An interesting chapter might be written on the subject of illustrious
dunces - dull boys, but brilliant men. We have room, however, for only a few
instances. Pietro di Cortona, the painter, was thought so
stupid that he was nicknamed "Ass's Head" when a boy; and Tomaso
Guidi was generally known as "Heavy Tom" (Massaccio Tomasaccio),
though by diligence he afterwards raised himself to
the highest eminence. Newton, when at school, stood at the bottom of the
lowest form but
one. The boy above Newton Dublin University ,
and only obtained his recommendation to Oxford school of St. Andrew
The brilliant Sheridan
Walter Scott was all but a dunce when a boy, always much readier for a
"bicker," than apt at his lessons. At the Edinburgh University Europe . Robert Clive
was a dunce, if not a reprobate, when a youth; but always full of energy, even
in badness. His family, glad to get rid of him, shipped him off to Madras ; and he lived to lay the foundations of the British
power in India Wellington
Of the former the Duchess d'Abrantes says, "he had good health, but was in other respects like other boys." Ulysses Grant, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States, was called "Useless Grant" by his mother - he was so dull and unhandy when a boy; and Stonewall Jackson, Lee's greatest lieutenant, was, in his youth, chiefly noted for his slowness. While a pupil at
"Again and again," wrote one who knew him,
"when called upon to answer questions in the recitation of the day, he
would reply, 'I have not yet looked at it; I have been engaged in mastering the
recitation of yesterday or the day before.' The result was that he graduated
seventeenth in a class of seventy. There was probably in the whole class not a
boy to whom Jackson Jackson
John Howard, the philanthropist, was another illustrious dunce, learning
next to nothing during the seven years that he was at school. Stephenson, as a
youth, was distinguished chiefly for his skill at putting and wrestling, and
attention to his work. The brilliant Sir Humphry Davy was no cleverer than
other boys: his teacher, Dr. Cardew, once said of him, "While he was with
me I could not discern the faculties by which he was so much distinguished." Indeed, Davy himself in
after life considered it fortunate that he had been left to "enjoy so
much idleness" at school. Watt was a dull scholar, notwithstanding the
stories told about his precocity; but he was, what was better, patient and
perseverant, and it was by such qualities, and by his carefully cultivated
inventiveness, that he was enabled to perfect his steam- engine.
What Dr. Arnold said of boys is equally true of
men - that the difference between one boy and another consists not so much in talent
as in energy. Given perseverance and energy soon becomes habitual. Provided the
dunce has persistency and application he will inevitably head the cleverer
fellow without those qualities.
Slow but sure wins the race. It is perseverance that explains how the position of boys at school is so often reversed in real life; and it is curious to note how some who were then so clever have since become so commonplace; whilst others, dull boys, of whom nothing was expected, slow in their faculties but sure in their pace, have assumed the position of leaders of men. The author of this book, when a boy, stood in the same class with one of the greatest of dunces. One teacher after another had tried his skill upon him and failed. Corporal punishment, the fool's cap, coaxing, and earnest entreaty, proved alike fruitless.
Sometimes the experiment was tried of putting him at the top of his
class, and it was curious to note the rapidity with which he gravitated to the inevitable
bottom. The youth was given up by his teachers as an incorrigible dunce - one
of them pronouncing him to be a "stupendous booby." Yet,
slow though he was, this dunce had a sort of dull energy of purpose in him,
which grew with
his muscles and his manhood; and, strange to say, when he at length came to
take part in the practical business of life, he was found heading most of his
school companions, and eventually left the greater number of them far behind.
The last time the author heard of him, he was chief magistrate of his native
town. The tortoise in the right road
will beat a racer in the wrong. It matters not though a youth be slow, if he be
but diligent.
Quickness of parts may even prove a defect, inasmuch as the boy who learns readily will often forget as readily; and also because he finds no need of cultivating that quality of application and perseverance which the slower youth is compelled to exercise, and which proves so valuable an element in the formation of every character. Davy said "What I am I have made myself;" and the same holds true universally.
To conclude: the best culture is not obtained from teachers when at
school or college, so much as by our own diligent self-education when we have
become men. Hence parents need not be in too great haste to see their
children's talents forced into bloom. Let them watch and wait patiently, letting good example
and quiet training
do their work, and leave the rest to Providence
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