consciousness of his ignorance. While all the faculties of the mind
should be cultivated, it is yet desirable that it should have two or
three rough-hewn features of massive strength. Young men are too apt
to forget the great end of life, which is to be and do, not to read and
brood over what other men have been and done."

"I repeat that my object is not to give him knowledge, but to teach him
how to acquire it at need," said Rousseau.

All learning is self-teaching. It is upon the working of the pupil's
own mind that his progress in knowledge depends. The great business of
the master is to teach the pupil to teach himself.

"Thinking, not growth, makes manhood," says Isaac Taylor. "Accustom
yourself, therefore, to thinking. Set yourself to understand whatever
you see or read. To join thinking with reading is one of the first
maxims, and one of the easiest operations."

"How few think justly of the thinking few:
How many never think who think they do."

CHAPTER XXXI

THE SELF-IMPROVEMENT HABIT

If you want knowledge you must toil for it.--RUSKIN.

We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.--QUINTILLIAN.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human
soul.--ADDISON.

A boy is better unborn than untaught.--GASCOIGNE.

It is ignorance that wastes; it is knowledge that saves, an untaught
faculty is at once quiescent and dead.--N. D. HILLIS.

The plea that this or that man has no time for culture will vanish as
soon as we desire culture so much that we begin to examine seriously
into our present use of time.--MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Education, as commonly understood, is the process of developing the
mind by means of books and teachers. When education has been
neglected, either by reason of lack of opportunity, or because
advantage was not taken of the opportunities afforded, the one
remaining hope is self-improvement. Opportunities for self-improvement
surround us, the helps to self-improvement are abundant, and in this
day of cheap books and free libraries, there can be no good excuse for
neglect to use the faculties for mental growth and development which
are so abundantly supplied.

When we look at the difficulties which hindered the acquisition of
knowledge fifty years to a century ago; the scarcity and the costliness
of books, the value of the dimmest candle-light, the unremitting toil
which left so little time for study, the physical weariness which had
t