recollection of such matters is almost wholly of failures, hardly ever
of success. It is true the failures were often in things in which
success, in so early a stage of my progress, was almost impossible.
I remember at some time in my thirteenth year, on my happening to
use the word idea, he asked me what an idea was; and expressed some
displeasure at my ineffectual efforts to define the word: I recollect
also his indignation at my using the common expression that something
was true in theory but required correction in practice; and how, after
making me vainly strive to define the word theory, he explained its
meaning, and showed the fallacy of the vulgar form of speech which I
had used; leaving me fully persuaded that in being unable to give a
correct definition of Theory, and in speaking of it as something which
might be at variance with practice, I had shown unparalleled ignorance.
In this he seems, and perhaps was, very unreasonable; but I think, only
in being angry at my failure. A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded
which he cannot do, never does all he can.

One of the evils most liable to attend on any sort of early proficiency,
and which often fatally blights its promise, my father most anxiously
guarded against. This was self-conceit. He kept me, with extreme
vigilance, out of the way of hearing myself praised, or of being led
to make self-flattering comparisons between myself and others. From
his own intercourse with me I could derive none but a very humble
opinion of myself; and the standard of comparison he always held up to
me, was not what other people did, but what a man could and ought to
do. He completely succeeded in preserving me from the sort of influences
he so much dreaded. I was not at all aware that my attainments were
anything unusual at my age. If I accidentally had my attention drawn to
the fact that some other boy knew less than myself--which happened less
often than might be imagined--I concluded, not that I knew much, but that