And even though self-culture may not bring wealth, it
will at all events give one the companionship of elevated thoughts.
A nobleman once contemptuously asked of a sage, "What have you got
by all your philosophy?" "At least I have got society in myself,"
was the wise man's reply.
But many are apt to feel despondent, and become discouraged in the
work of self-culture, because they do not "get on" in the world so
fast as they think they deserve to do. Having planted their acorn,
they expect to see it grow into an oak at once. They have perhaps
looked upon knowledge in the light of a marketable commodity, and
are consequently mortified because it does not sell as they
expected it would do. Mr. Tremenheere, in one of his 'Education
Reports' (for 1840-1), states that a schoolmaster in Norfolk,
finding his school rapidly falling off, made inquiry into the
cause, and ascertained that the reason given by the majority of the
parents for withdrawing their children was, that they had expected
"education was to make them better off than they were before," but
that having found it had "done them no good," they had taken their
children from school, and would give themselves no further trouble
about education!
The same low idea of self-culture is but too prevalent in other
classes, and is encouraged by the false views of life which are
always more or less current in society.
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