My Early Life
Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.
I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know.
When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance.
Free Will and Predestination; namely—let the reader mark it—that they are identical.
Certainly the prolonged education indispensable to the progress of Society is not natural to mankind. It cuts against the grain. A
A boy would like to follow his father in pursuit of food or prey. He would like to be doing serviceable things so far as his utmost strength allowed. He would like to be earning wages however small to help to keep up the home. He would like to have some leisure of his own to use or misuse as he pleased. He would ask little more than the right to work or starve. And then perhaps in the evenings a real love
Learning would come to those who were worthy—and why try to stuff it into those who are not?—and knowledge and thought would open the ‘magic casements’ of the mind. I was on the whole considerably discouraged by my school days. Except
Don’t take No for an answer. Never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt