what to do for a child in a fit, for an alderman in an apoplexy, for
a girl that has fainted, for a woman in hysterics, for a leg that is
broken, for an arm that is out of joint, for fevers of every color, for
the sailor's rheumatism, and the tailor's cachexy. In fact you do really
know so much at this very hour, that nothing but the searching test of
time can fully teach you the limitations of your knowledge.

Of some of these you will permit me to remind you. You will never have
outgrown the possibility of new acquisitions, for Nature is endless in
her variety. But even the knowledge which you may be said to possess
will be a different thing after long habit has made it a part of your
existence. The tactus eruditus extends to the mind as well as to the
finger-ends. Experience means the knowledge gained by habitual trial,
and an expert is one who has been in the habit of trying. This is the
kind of knowledge that made Ulysses wise in the ways of men. Many
cities had he seen, and known the minds of those who dwelt in them. This
knowledge it was that Chaucer's Shipman brought home with him from the
sea--

"In many a tempest had his berd be shake."

This is the knowledge we place most confidence in, in the practical
affairs of life.

Our training has two stages. The first stage deals with our
intelligence, which takes the idea of what is to be done with the
most charming ease and readiness. Let it be a game of billiards, for
instance, which the marker is going to teach us. We have nothing to do
but to make this ball glance from that ball and hit that other ball,
and to knock that ball with this ball into a certain caecal sacculus or
diverticulum which our professional friend calls a pocket. Nothing can
be clearer; it is as easy as "playing upon this pipe," for which Hamlet
gives Guildenstern such lucid directions. But this intelligent Me, who
steps forward as the senior partner in our dual personality, turns
out to be a terrible bungler. He misses those glancing hits which the
hard-featured young professional person calls "carroms," and insists on
pocketing his own ball instead of the other one.

It is the unintelligent Me, stupid as an idiot, that has to try a thing
a thousand times before he can do it, and then never knows how he does
it, that at last does it well. We have to educate ourselves through the
pretentious claims of intellect, into the humble accuracy of instinct,
and we end at last by acquiring the