than that
which we acquire by our own diligent and persevering effort.
Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession--a property
entirely our own. A greater vividness and permanency of impression is
secured; and facts thus acquired become registered in the mind in a
way that mere imparted information can never effect. This kind of
self-culture also calls forth power and cultivates strength. The
solution of one problem helps the mastery of another; and thus
knowledge is carried into faculty. Our own active effort is the
essential thing; and no facilities, no books, no teachers, no amount
of lessons learnt by rote, will enable us to dispense with it.

The best teachers have been the readiest to recognize the importance
of self-culture, and of stimulating the student to acquire knowledge
by the active exercise of his own faculties. They have relied more
upon _training_ than upon _telling_, and sought to make their pupils
themselves active parties to the work in which they were engaged;
thus making teaching something far higher than the mere passive
reception of the scraps and details of knowledge. This was the spirit
in which the great Dr. Arnold worked; he strove to teach his pupils
to rely upon themselves, and develop their powers by their own active
efforts, himself merely guiding, directing, stimulating, and
encouraging them. "I would far rather," he said, "send a boy to Van
Diemen's Laud, where he must work for his bread, than send him to
Oxford to live in luxury, without any desire in his mind to avail
himself of his advantages." "If there be one thing on earth," he
observed on another occasion, "which is truly admirable, it is to see
God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, when they
have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated." Speaking of a
pupil of this character, he said, "I would stand to that man hat in
hand." Once at Laleham, when teaching a rather dull boy, Arnold spoke
somewhat sharply to him, on which the pupil looked up in his face and
said, "Why do you speak angrily, sir? _indeed_, I am doing the best I
can." Years afterward, Arnold used to tell the story to his children,
and added, "I never felt so much ashamed in my life--that look and
that speech I have never forgotten."

From the numerous instances already cited of men of humble station
who have risen to distinction in science and literature, it will be
obvious that labor is by no means incompatible with the highest
inte