helpless, so whilst we are laboring to replace the lost
parts of our knowledge the occasion slips by when we most need it. The
only knowledge which is available when it is wanted is that which we
habitually use. Studies which from their nature cannot be commonly used
are always retained with great difficulty. The study of anatomy is
perhaps the best instance of this; every one who has attempted it knows
with what difficulty it is kept by the memory. Anatomists say that it
has to be learned and forgotten six times before it can be counted as a
possession. This is because anatomy lies so much outside of what is
needed for ordinary life that very few people are ever called upon to
use it except during the hours when they are actually studying it. The
few who need it every day remember is as easily as a man remembers the
language of the country which he inhabits. The workmen in the
establishment at Saint Aubin d'Ecroville, where Dr. Auzoux manufactures
his wonderful anatomical models, are as familiar with anatomy as a
painter is with the colors on his palette. _They_ never forget it.
_Their_ knowledge is never made practically valueless by some yawning
hiatus, causing temporary incompetence and delay.

To have one favorite study and live in it with happy familiarity, and
cultivate every portion of it diligently and lovingly, as a small yeoman
proprietor cultivates his own land, this, as to study, at least, is the
most enviable intellectual life. But there is another side to the
question which has to be considered.

The first difficulty for us is in our education. Modern education is a
beginning of many things, and it is little more than a beginning. "My
notion of educating my boy," said a rich Englishman, "is not to make him
particularly clever at anything during his minority, but to make him
overcome the rudimentary difficulties of many things, so that when he
selects for himself his own line of culture in the future, it cannot be
altogether strange to him, whatever line he may happen to select." A
modern father usually allows his son to learn many things from a feeling
of timidity about making a choice, if only one thing had to be chosen.
He might so easily make a wrong choice! When the inheritance of the
human race was less rich, there was no embarrassment of that kind. Look
at the education of an ancient Greek, at the education of one of the
most celebrated Athenians, a man living in the most refined and
intellectual s