be generous, affectionate, simple-minded, just, temperate in the
moral region. In the intellectual region, one desires them to be
alert, eager, independent, perceptive, interested. I like them to
ask a hundred questions about what they see and hear. I want them
to be tender and compassionate to animals and insects. As for
books, I want them to follow their own taste, but I surround them
only with the best; but even so I wish them to have minds of their
own, to have preferences, and reasons for their preferences. I do
not want them to follow my taste, but to trust their own. I do not
in the least care about their amassing correct information. It is
much better that they should learn how to use books. It is very
strange how theories of education remain impervious to development.
In the days when books were scarce and expensive, when knowledge
was not formulated and summarised, men had to depend largely on
their own stores. But now, what is the use of books, if one is
still to load one's memory with details? The training of memory is
a very unimportant part of education nowadays; people with accurate
memories are far too apt to trust them, and to despise
verification. Indeed, a well-filled memory is a great snare,
because it leads the possessor of it to believe, as I have said,
that knowledge is culture. A good digestion is more important to a
man than the possession of many sacks of corn; and what one ought
rather to cultivate nowadays is mental digestion.



June 14, 1889.


It is comforting to reflect how easy it is to abandon habits, and