say, right here, that the difference between a man or boy whose
education has been good and one who has had very little instruction,
is a good deal greater than many persons think. It is a mistake to
suppose that the difference lies only in what one has learned and the
other has not. What you learn in school is the smallest part of the
good you get there. Half of it is usually worthless as information,
and much of it is sure to be forgotten; but the work of learning it is
not thrown away on that account. In learning it you train and
discipline and cultivate your mind, making it grow both in strength
and in capacity, and so the educated man has really a stronger and
better intellect than he ever would have had without education. Many
persons suppose,--and I have known even college professors who made
the mistake,--that a boy's mind is like a meal-bag, which will hold
just so much and needs filling. They fill it as they would fill the
meal-bag, for the sake of the meal and without a thought of the bag.
In fact a boy's mind is more like the boy himself. It will not do to
try to make a man out of him by stuffing meat and bread down his
throat. The meat and bread fill him very quickly, but he isn't
fully-grown when he is full. To make a man of him we must give him
food in proper quantities, and let it help him to grow, and the things
you learn in school are chiefly valuable as food for the mind.
Education makes the intellect grow as truly as food makes the body do
so; and so I say that Sam Hardwicke's superiority in intellect to the
boys and even to most of the men about him, consisted of something
more than merely a larger stock of information. He was intellectually
larger than they, and if any boy who reads this book supposes that a
well-trained intellect is of no account in the practical affairs of
life, it is time for him to begin correcting some very dangerous
notions.