Note 192 — Chapter V

"Sir Humphrey Davy, when a boy, was placed under a schoolmaster who neglected his duties, and adverting to this subject in a letter addressed to his mother after he was settled in London, he says, 'I consider it as fortunate that I was left much to myself as a child, and put on no particular plan of study, and that I enjoyed much idleness at Mr. Coryton's school. I, perhaps, owe to these circumstances the little talents I have, and their peculiar application. What I am I made myself. I say this without vanity, and in pure simplicity of heart.'" Brodie's Psychological Inquiries, I. 29.

"The regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional education, have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin School. What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so. We form no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. And education often wastes its efforts in attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it." Emerson. Spiritual Laws.