here is exercise for his
argumentative powers in the elements of mathematics, and for his taste
in the poets and orators, still, while at school, or at least, till
quite the last years of his time, he acquires, and little more; and when
he is leaving for the university, he is mainly the creature of foreign
influences and circumstances, and made up of accidents, homogeneous or
not, as the case may be. Moreover, the moral habits, which are a boy's
praise, encourage and assist this result; that is, diligence, assiduity,
regularity, despatch, persevering application; for these are the direct
conditions of acquisition, and naturally lead to it. Acquirements,
again, are emphatically producible, and at a moment; they are a
something to show, both for master and scholar; an audience, even though
ignorant themselves of the subjects of an examination, can comprehend
when questions are answered and when they are not. Here again is a
reason why mental culture is in the minds of men identified with the
acquisition of knowledge.

The same notion possesses the public mind, when it passes on from the
thought of a school to that of a university: and with the best of
reasons so far as this, that there is no true culture without
acquirements, and that philosophy presupposes knowledge. It requires a
great deal of reading, or a wide range of information, to warrant us in
putting forth our opinions on any serious subject; and without such
learning the most original mind may be able indeed to dazzle, to amuse,
to refute, to perplex, but not to come to any useful result or any
trustworthy conclusion. There are indeed persons who profess a different
view of the matter, and even act upon it. Every now and then you will
find a person of vigorous or fertile mind, who relies upon his own
resources, despises all former authors, and gives the world, with the
utmost fearlessness, his views upon religion, or history, or any other
popular subject. And his works may sell for a while; he may get a name
in his day; but this will be all. His readers are sure to find on the
long run that his doctrines are mere theories, and not the expression of
facts, that they are chaff instead of bread, and then his popularity
drops as suddenly as it rose.

Knowledge then is the indispensable condition of expansion of mind, and
the instrument of attaining to it; this cannot be denied, it is ever to
be insisted on; I begin with it as a first principle; however, the very