d man. But
now the sun of understanding has risen upon him; and every step that he
takes, he advances with an assured and undoubting confidence.

It is an admirable remark, that the book which we read at the very time
that we feel a desire to read it, affords us ten times the improvement,
that we should have derived from it when it was taken up by us as a
task. It is just so with the man who chooses his occupation, and feels
assured that that about which he is occupied is his true and native
field. Compare this person with the boy that studies the classics, or
arithmetic, or any thing else, with a secret disinclination, and, as
Shakespear expresses it, "creeps like snail, unwillingly, to school."
They do not seem as if they belonged to the same species.

The result of these observations certainly strongly tends to support the
proposition laid down early in the present Essay, that, putting idiots
and extraordinary cases out of the question, every human creature is
endowed with talents, which, if rightly directed, would shew him to
be apt, adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk for which his
organisation especially fitted him.

SECTION III.

ENCOURAGING VIEW OF OUR COMMON NATURE.--POWER OF SOUND EXPOSITION
AFFORDED TO ALL.--DOCTRINE OF THIS ESSAY AND THE HYPOTHESIS OF HELVETIUS
COMPARED.--THE WILLING AND UNWILLING PUPIL CONTRASTED.--MISCHIEVOUS
TENDENCY OF THE USUAL MODES OF EDUCATION.

What a beautiful and encouraging view is thus afforded us of our common
nature! It is not true, as certain disdainful and fastidious censurers
of their fellow-men would persuade us to believe, that a thousand seeds
are sown in the wide field of humanity, for no other purpose than that
half-a-dozen may grow up into something magnificent and splendid, and
that the rest, though not absolutely extinguished in the outset, are
merely suffered to live that they may furnish manure and nourishment to
their betters. On the contrary, each man, according to this hypothesis,
has a sphere in which he may shine, and may contemplate the exercise of
his own powers with a well-grounded satisfaction. He produces something
as perfect in its kind, as that which is effected under another form
by the more brilliant and illustrious of his species. He stands forward
with a serene confidence in the ranks of his fellow-creatures, and says,
"I also have my place in society, that I fill in a manner with which I
have a right to be satisfied." He vests a cert