CHAPTER XI--SELF-CULTURE--FACILITIES AND DIFFICULTIES
"Every person has two educations, one which he receives from
others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself."--
Gibbon.
"Is there one whom difficulties dishearten--who bends to the storm?
He will do little. Is there one who will conquer? That kind of
man never fails."--John Hunter.
"The wise and active conquer difficulties,
By daring to attempt them: sloth and folly
Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and danger,
And MAKE the impossibility they fear."--Rowe.
"The best part of every man's education," said Sir Walter Scott,
"is that which he gives to himself." The late Sir Benjamin Brodie
delighted to remember this saying, and he used to congratulate
himself on the fact that professionally he was self-taught. But
this is necessarily the case with all men who have acquired
distinction in letters, science, or art. The education received at
school or college is but a beginning, and is valuable mainly
inasmuch as it trains the mind and habituates it to continuous
application and study. That which is put into us by others is
always far less ours than that which we acquire by our own diligent
and persevering effort. Knowledge conquered by labour becomes a
possession--a property entirely our own.
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