HOW JOHN BROWN EDUCATED HIMSELF

There are other matters treated in this long and charming letter, written by an outlaw 57 years old, to a boy of twelve. One detail that is important is the analysis of his own character. John Brown says his father early made him a sort of foreman in his tanning establishment, and that though he got on in the most friendly way with everyone, “the habit so early formed of being obeyed rendered him in after life too much disposed to speak in an imperious or dictating way.” John Brown was ever humble, and severely chastised his own faults, but this habit of being a leader served him in good stead, and made him the born captain of forlorn hopes he later became.

Another detail that interests us is his account of his early reading. Working-class Americans, and they are the majority of the nation, do not go to the high schools and universities. Neither did John Brown. But they can read history, as he did at ten years, and they can study and make themselves proficient in some field, as he made a surveyor of himself by home study. He also read passionately, he says, the lives of great, good and wise men; their sayings and writings; the school of biography that seems to have nurtured so many great men. John Brown never went to school after his childhood; but he became an expert surveyor, he learned the fine points of cattle breeding and tanning, he was a student of astronomy, he knew the Bible almost by heart, he studied military tactics later in life, he was familiar with the lives and times of most of the great leaders of mankind, and best of all, he knew how to stir men to great deeds, and lead them in the battle.

Great men do not need to own a college diploma; they teach themselves, they are taught by Life.

How meaningless college degrees would sound if attached after the names of Brutus, Pericles, Socrates, Caius Gracchus, Buddha, Jesus, Wat Tyler, Jefferson, Danton, William Lloyd Garrison!

As for instance: Jesus Christ, D.D.; Robert Burns, M.A.; Victor Hugo, B.S.; John Brown, Ph.D.! How superfluous the titles of man’s universities, when Life has crowned the student with real and greener laurels! Yes, there are many things not taught in the colleges!