education is to unfold the life within. This life always involves
self-action. The scholar is not merely a passive recipient. He grows
into power by an active reception of truth. Even when he listens to
another's utterances of knowledge, what vigor of attention and memory
are necessary to enable him to make that knowledge his own? But when he
attempts himself to master a subject of importance, when he would rise
into the higher region of mathematics, philosophy, history, poetry,
religion, art; or even when he would prepare himself for grappling with
the great questions of life, what long processes of thought! what
patient gathering together of materials! what judgment, memory,
comparison, and protracted meditation are essential to complete success?
The man who would triumph over obstacles and ascend the heights of
excellence in the realm of mind, must work with the continuous vigor of
a steamship on an ocean voyage. Day by day the fire must burn, and the
revolve in the calm and in the gale--in the sunshine and the storm. The
innate excellency of genius or talents can give no exemption to its
possessor from this law of mental growth. An educated mind is neither an
aggregation of particles accreted around a center, as the stones grow,
nor a substance, which, placed in a turner's lathe, comes forth an
exquisitely wrought instrument. The mere passing through an academy or
college, is not education. The enjoyment of the largest educational
advantages by no means infers the possession of a mind and heart
thoroughly educated; since there is an inner work to be performed by the
subject of those advantages before he can lay claim to the possession of
a well-disciplined and richly-stored intellect and affections. The
phrase, "self-made men" is often so used as to convey the idea that the
persons who have enjoyed the advantages of a liberal education, are
rather made by their instructors. The supposition is in part unjust.

The outward means of education stimulate the mind, and thus assist the