had shown me the real use of them and made me think, so that I might have
learnt all I could, instead of just slipping through them day by day." No
one can do the thinking for you. Unless you work with me by trying to
think, I cannot really do much for you. I can bring you to the water, but
I cannot make you drink. Yes, after all, I _can_ make you drink, _i.e._ do
your lessons day by day as a matter of obedience. So a better illustration
would be that I can make you eat, but I cannot make you digest your food.
You can prevent its doing you any good. If you simply learn your lessons
by rote and do not use your thinking powers, education is very little
good,--the obedience will have done you good, but, as far as mental growth
is concerned, you will not gain much, for that sort of education drops
off, like water off a duck's back, when you leave school. They say "a fool
and his money are soon parted," but that is nothing to the speed with
which a fool and his education are parted!

Now, I am going to take the chief subjects you learn, and show the higher
things which I want you to gain when you are doing those lessons, and
_you_ must want it too, or my wanting it will not do much good. You do not
learn Mathematics simply that you may know so many books of Euclid, and so
many pages of Algebra; it is to give you power over your minds, to enable
you to follow a chain of reasoning, to teach you to keep up continuous
attention, and not to jump at conclusions. I do not say you cannot learn
these things except by Mathematics; you might do it by Logic, and I know
many people who have done it by mother-wit and the teaching of life; but
when a person is inclined to trust to his mother-wit, and to neglect
educational advantages because he can do without them, I for one feel
inclined to doubt whether his share of mother-wit can be very large, after
all. The people I have known who are clever, without having had the
careful school-training you enjoy, used all the advantages that came in
their way (though, when they were young, advantages were fewer), and