HELP TO SELF-EDUCATORS: INTERPRETING SUBJECTS OF History, Arts, Politics, and Literature. No. I.] To understand the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.—Proverbs. [ONE PENNY. SELF-EDUCATION. many external (or, as the Germans style it, objective) operations, and has within him a continual spring of impulses and notions that subject his understanding to preconceptions and desires that, in their utterance, are met by the world of things outward to him. To reconcile these in inner and outward powers is the Self-Education which every man, more or less, must bestow on himself. No teacher can force us to think; no precepts can create the state of certainty which arises from that action of the mind whereby we excrete, as it were, conviction. Thereunto the patient must minister to himself. THE formation of character is the avowed aim of education; how far it fulfils its aim the present state of mankind will prove. We find on all sides extreme differences of character, great contrarieties of opinion, and remarkably opposite states of feeling. If education were the effective power, it is universally esteemed we could not have this Babel result; and we should instead have somewhat of the consequence from a civil education that we perceive arises from a military drilling. Our schools and colleges would send out men whose temperaments might be different, but whose opinions and principles, and many of their sentiments, would in the main be alike. What see we now but men passing from the received mental training to combat before the public on the opposite sides of all questions?-to defend or uphold slavery, to attack or deprecate despotism, to advocate or denounce certain religious and moral tenets? Nor can this contrariety be set down, in the majority of cases, to a corrupt desire to advocate from base motives, but from conviction earnestly felt and zealously uttered. It must, then, be traced to some permanently acting cause, or set of causes, and proves that neither schools nor colleges-ing they are gone, and there is no neither preceptors nor books can entirely fashion the man. That compound of instincts, impulses, and opinions is formed from the combination of a vast aggregation of causes. He is the result of Learning that does not result in reflection is a vain glimmer, which, like the Northern lights, may amuse or astonish us; but there is in it neither light nor heat for serviceable purposes. The preceptorial system has been universally practised, and it may be said to have universally failed. Where is the learning of the Porch? Where are the inculcations of the Academy? Where are all the chimeras of the Brahminical doctors, or the scholastic dogmas of the monkish ages? Their precepts begot zealous admirers and pedantic followers; but they have passed away like a fume. "As the mist of the morn trace of them.' Mere preceptorial system is destined so to perish, though upheld by potent hierarchies; though enforced by arbitrary laws; though made a portion of a nation's institutions; though B endowed by the credulous with riches, or enshrined in costly halls, and enforced by all the interests and talents of the time. The Mind, when it is active, takes no heed of formulæ. The understanding, simple as when first emanating from the divine essence, rejects everything but its own conviction. The paraphernalia of learning have no other effect than oftentimes to mislead its judgment by the misrepresentation of facts. The compound man may assent to propositions that he has not tested; the spiritual and passionate portion of his nature may confide in statements the mind has not examined; but the understanding itself can only come to conviction spontaneously. It is on this faculty of the understanding that Self-Education works; and its product is called, in common parlance, Experience. This is knowledge that cannot be conveyed by any amount of preceptorial education. The possession of this it is that makes the difference between the learned simpleton and the wise illiterate man. The organized wisdom of nations we have seen melt away as a foul vapour. Look at Egypt-look at the learned East. Trace the state of preceptorial learning down the long stream of time through the Alexandrian, Byzantian, and Italian periods. Is progress to be found in it? That is a question it behoves all to ponder upon. Is it not a rope of sand? Is it not a pouring of water through sieves? It would seem to be so, for we find it of little avail to the present race. Against the learning of the Pyramids and the Elephantine caves; against the Scholastic elaborations of the middle ages; against all the Kingly and National preceptorial systems so widely diffused, so powerfully up held, let us place the results of two Self-Educated men. Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon. These two self-enunciating, self-educated thinkers, changed the whole system of working mind. And the fundamental principle of both is to allow not of assent till there be absolute conviction. Not a leaping of the fancy to a notion; but the solid conviction of the understanding yielded to prolonged and close examination. Roger Bacon, the analyzer, founded the science of chemistry. Francis Bacon, the philosopher, framed the inductive system; which is nothing more than insisting on restraining the fancy and wringing truth from a vast sufficing amount of examination. Chaining the imagination to observation, and rectifying the apparent consequences of one fact by many. It is, in fact, a system of Self-Education. There is no royal road to real knowledge. We can know nothing by deputy. We may believe through our fancy; but we can only be conscious through our understanding. A happy illustration has been given * between self-acquired knowledge and a preceptorial inculcation, by comparing the knowledge of Ptolemy the astronomer with that of a boarding - school young lady as to astronomy. It might be quite true that the reflective and massively-minded philosopher was ignorant of the facts known to the modern young lady. He imagined the world to be the centre of the solar system; he knew nothing of many planets; the satellites of Saturn were unknown to him; and he was utterly ignorant of the nebular system. The young lady knew of all these deficiencies and much more; she could with her sweetly-in * Some early number of Edinburgh Review. structed voice, have rebuked the ignorance of the old philosopher : were she witty, she could amuse a company of Egyptian ladies by exposing the absurdities of his belief; and, with a few pretty experiments and scenes, have brought down the applause of all the dandies of ancient Alexandria. But, would the pupil of Belvidere House or Minerva Seminary, after all, be comparable to the measurer of the heavens, to the mighty mathematician who attained to a conception of the heavenly machinery; and who, though wrong in his deductions, had acquired for himself, in his study of the heavens, the exalted science of number and measure; and thus, in the language of the Italian, had enlarged his soul and dignified his thoughts? The self-acquirement of one great truth swells and enlarges the mind more than a library of inculcated facts. The meanest mind feels this occasionally, and the effect of watching one eclipse produces a deeper feeling than any lecture on the whole wonders of the heavens around. Self-Education, then, is the only Education bearing full and perfect fruit. Until the Understanding fully recognises a truth, it is unfructifying and of barren import. It were as beneficial to have to recount a list of race horses as a list of Egyptian kings, if there were no recognition of cause and effect; or if there were not some moral truth to be deduced therefrom. Learning, or as it is ofttimes improperly termed knowledge, is vain as a mere accomplishment. An Arabic flourish signifying nothing; and, indeed, scarcely so much: though, like that, it may help to adorn a barren blank that would otherwise be waste, or, perchance, filled with unclean ephemera. For learning to take the place of knowledge is a usurpation revolting. To award it the respect due to true knowledge is dangerous. Children and all persons of natural sense feel the difference between them; and it is a violation of our common sense when they are confounded. A little girl on being visited by her father at her school was found weeping and wailing, and, on his inquiring the cause, said, "Governess is so angry because I did not know on what day Demosthenes died; now, what can it be to you or me, papa, when he died?" As an isolated fact it could be nothing; and of all Mangnall's questions it might be said the same. Bring out the power of making an induction, and then these isolated facts may yield truths. The dry bones may have oil in them, and used as manure afford flowers and fruits. It is certain, however, that formal teachers trouble themselves very little about any of the mental processes of their pupils. They indeed, for the most part, repress them as troublesome. The best but think them as matters to be treated hereafter; perhaps at college; perhaps by a private tutor; perhaps by the student himself. The young are to be crammed, and if it turns to mental muscle and fibre it may. The parents look only to the actual sum of the acquirements; and we are told that so distinguished a man as Lord Chatham could write to his son, Bear up, my boy, you have finished the classics, you have conquered the mathematics, you have now nothing to do but to go through the Encyclopædia." How different was the speech of the reflective and philosophic Hobbes, who was reproached with having read but little. His pregnant reply was, "Had I read as |