I have but one lamp wait which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. Neither beliver nor reject anything, because any other person has rejected of believed it. Heaven has given you a mind for judging truth and error, Use it. Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience. Educaton does not mean teaching people to kow what they do not know ; it means teachng them to behave as they do not behave. Education has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive ; easy to govern but imposible to slave. How much more profitable for the independent mind, after the mere rudiments of education , to range through a library at random, taking down books as the mother wit suggests! Let early education be a sort of a musement; you will then be bette able to find out the natural bent. A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning un-necessary. Go where he will, the wise man is at home His harth the earth, his hall the azure dome. |
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