Year: 1872

WE hear good deal in our day about
'self-educated men," just as if there
were educated men of any other sort.
Now the truth is that every man and
every woman who is educated at all, is
self-educated of very necessity. Teach
ers and schools and colleges and universe
ties are all very excellent things in their
way, but not one nor all of them can by
any possibility educate man. They can
aid him greatly, no doubt, and facilitate
the work of self-education, but that work
is one which the man himself must do,
from beginning to end, if it is to be done
at all.


The real difference between people who
are commonly said to be self-educated,
and those whose educations have been
gotten in the regular way, is that the for
mer have done without assistance, or with
| limited assistance, that which the latter
have been aided in doing.


That the schools greatly facilitate the
work is unquestionably true, but where
these are beyond reach there is no reason
whatever why the work may not be done
quite as we'll and quite as thoroughly
without them. 1t will be somewhat more
difficult, that is all.


There are two opposite errors common
ly made on this subject. The first is
that the people whose education has been
secured outside of the scools are neces-
sarily less perfectly cultured than those
whose advantages have been better. That
this is an error is sufficiently seen in the
career of one of our leading magazine
editors, who quilted school at ten years of
age, and yet has made of himself, while
yet young man, polished writer, both
of prose and poetry, an accomplished
scholar in all that is highest and best in
scholarship, keen and judicious critic,
and an editor certainly without superior
in this country. He has not only made
himself successful mamie has placed
himself in the foremost rank in the very
fields of labor where ripe scholarship and
thorough culture are most essentially
necessary. In other words, he has edu-
Gated himself out of school almost as
perfectly as he could have done it in the
regular way.


There are many other men who have
done the same thing, and while they
have doubtless found the task more diff
cult at times than it would have been in
school, they have accomplished it never
theless. The foot-farer finds his journev
slower and more wearisome than that of
the traveller by rail, but there is no reason
why he may not reach the journeys end
for all that.


The second error is that at which Josh
Billings hints when he says that Self
made men are apt to be little too proud of
the Job" Certainly, their admirers near
ly always fall into this error, and the mis-
| take is serious one. 1nasmuch as ali
educated men are self-educated, the per-
| formance of the one who has cultured
| himself out of school is not so marvellous
after ALL He has done nothing that any
body else of good ordinary capacity
might not have done, and his work has
not been very much more difficult than it
would have been in school, while in most
cases it has not been quite SO perfectly
performed.


The proper view of the matter appears
to be this: If we are to be educated at all,
we must educate ourselves, and We can
do this more easily, and in most cases
more perfectly, in school than out. Where
fore we should, by all means, embrace
every opportunity to secure regular in
struction. But we may educate ourselves
out of school, and if we are denied the ad-
vantages of systematic training, we have
no reason to despair. To abandon the
work of self-cultivation because OF this
want, is simply cowardly giving up OF a
good, because it is one which can be Sc
cured only by hard work.


Our advice to every young man and
woman is, get an education in the regular
way if you can, but get an education at
any rate; and if you get it without the
advantages of the schools, never allow
yourself to be so weak as to imagine that
YOU, have thereby shown yourself a prodi-
gy of genius or industry.-Hedrh and
|