.
Have you ever thought what education was to do for you, or, are you
learning your lessons, day by day, just because they are set? I know what
I want to do with you, but I cannot do it unless you work hand-in-hand
with me, and you cannot do that unless you think about the matter and
realize that, for instance, Euclid is not only Euclid, it ought to teach
certain mental and moral qualities which you must have if you are ever to
be worth your salt. There is a story of Dr. Johnson, which seems to me to
apply to so many things. When his friend, Mr. Thrale, the great brewer,
died, there was a sale of the brewery, which Dr. Johnson attended. An
acquaintance expressed surprise at the great man's honouring with his
presence such an ordinary affair as the sale of a brewery. "Sir," said Dr.
Johnson, turning with crushing deliberation on the unhappy speaker, "this
is not the sale of a mere brewery, but of the potentiality of growing rich
beyond the dreams of avarice." This story seems to me well worth
remembering, both because it is so characteristic of the Doctor, and
because it is applicable to so many things. It is so easy to go through
the world not seeing the importance of things, like the common people in
"Phantasies," who never saw what a fairyland they lived in. Lessons, for
instance, are not mere lessons, they are "the potentiality of growing rich
in wisdom and in goodness beyond our highest dreams."

I should be sorry if, in after life, you should wake up and say to
yourself, "How much more good my lessons would have done me if some one
had shown me the real use of them and made me think, so that I might have
learnt all I could, instead of just slipping through them day by day." No
one can do the thinking for you. Unless you work with me by trying to
think, I cannot really do much for you. I can bring you to the water, but
I cannot make you drink. Yes, after all, I _can_ make you drink, _i.e._ do
your lessons day by day as a matter of obedience. So a better illustration
would be that I can make you eat, but I cannot make you digest your food.
You can prevent its doing you any good. If you simply learn your lessons
by rote and do not use your thinking powers, education is very little
good,--the obedience will have done you good, but, as far as mental growth
is concerned, you will not gain much, for that sort of education drops
off, like water off a duck's back, when you leave school. They say "a fool
and his money are soo