andicapped and placed
at a disadvantage for that which you can remedy.
You will find the whole world will change to you when you change your
attitude toward it. You will be surprised to see how quickly you can
very materially improve your mind after you have made a vigorous
resolve to do so. Go about it with the same determination that you
would to make money or to learn a trade. There is a divine hunger in
every normal being for self-expansion, a yearning for growth or
enlargement. Beware of stifling this craving of nature for
self-unfoldment.
Man was made for growth. It is the object, the explanation, of his
being. To have an ambition to grow larger and broader every day, to
push the horizon of ignorance a little further away, to become a little
richer in knowledge, a little wiser, and more of a man--that is an
ambition worth while. It is not absolutely necessary that an education
should be crowded into a few years of school life. The best-educated
people are those who are always learning, always absorbing knowledge
from every possible source and at every opportunity.
I know young people who have acquired a better education, a finer
culture, through a habit of observation, or of carrying a book in the
pocket to read at odd moments, or by taking courses in correspondence
schools, than many who have gone through college. Youths who are quick
to catch at new ideas, and who are in frequent contact with superior
minds, not only often acquire a personal charm, but even, to a
remarkable degree, develop mental power.
The world is a great university. From the cradle to the grave we are
always in God's great kindergarten, where everything is trying to teach
us its lesson; to give us its great secret. Some people are always at
school, always storing up precious bits of knowledge. Everything has a
lesson for them. It all depends upon the eye that can see, the mind
that can appropriate.
Very few people ever learn how to use their eyes. They go through the
world with a superficial glance at things; their eye pictures are so
faint and so dim that details are lost and no strong impression is made
on the mind. Yet the eye was intended for a great educator. The brain
is a prisoner, never getting out to the outside world. It depends upon
its five or six servants, the senses, to bring it material, and the
larger part of it comes through the eye. The man who has learned the
art of seeing things looks with his
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