easy to a dislike for his department. Others again,
without any personal feeling in the case, think that they have a natural
fitness for one class of studies, and an equally natural _un_-fitness
for another class. So they content themselves with proficiency in that
in which they already excel, and neglect that in which they are
deficient, and which therefore they find difficult. Is this wise? The
branches which you find difficult, are precisely those in which you need
an instructor. Besides, the object of education is to develop equally
and harmoniously all your faculties. If the memory, the reasoning
faculty, the imagination, or any one power of the mind, is active far
beyond the other powers, that surely is no reason for giving additional
stimulus and growth in that direction. On the contrary, bend your main
energies towards bringing forward your other faculties to an equal
development. If you have a natural or acquired preference for
mathematics, and a dislike for languages, the former study will take
care of itself: bend all your energies to the latter. So, if languages
are your choice, and mathematical study your aversion, take hold of the
odious task with steady and sturdy endeavor, and you will soon convert
it into a pleasure. The same is true of grammar, of geography, of
history, of composition, of rhetoric, of mental and moral science, of
elocution,--of every branch. If you are wise, you will give your chief
attention in school to those branches for which you feel the least
inclination, and in which you find it most difficult to excel. You
should do so, because, in the first place, this failure and
disinclination, in nine cases out of ten, grow out of defective
training heretofore, and not from any defect in your mental
constitution; and, secondly, if your natural constitution should be, as
in some cases it is, one-sided and exceptional, your aim should be to
correct and cure, not to aggravate, the defects of nature. This advice,
you will observe, relates to your course in school, not to your choice
of a profession in life. When your career in school is finished, and you
are about to select a profession, follow by all means the bent of your
genius. Do that for which you have the greatest natural or acquired
aptitude. But here, the case is different. Your aim in school is to
develop your powers,--to grow into an accomplished and capable man,--to
acquire complete command of all the mental resources God has given y