lest your boat slip its cable or drag its anchor before you know
it.



In the social order where each has his own place a man must be
educated for it. If such a one leave his own station he is fit for
nothing else. His education is only useful when fate agrees with
his parents' choice; if not, education harms the scholar, if only
by the prejudices it has created. In Egypt, where the son was
compelled to adopt his father's calling, education had at least
a settled aim; where social grades remain fixed, but the men who
form them are constantly changing, no one knows whether he is not
harming his son by educating him for his own class.

In the natural order men are all equal and their common calling
is that of manhood, so that a well-educated man cannot fail to do
well in that calling and those related to it. It matters little to
me whether my pupil is intended for the army, the church, or the
law. Before his parents chose a calling for him nature called him
to be a man. Life is the trade I would teach him. When he leaves
me, I grant you, he will be neither a magistrate, a soldier, nor a
priest; he will be a man. All that becomes a man he will learn as
quickly as another. In vain will fate change his station, he will
always be in his right place. "Occupavi te, fortuna, atque cepi;
omnes-que aditus tuos interclusi, ut ad me aspirare non posses."
The real object of our study is man and his environment. To my mind
those of us who can best endure the good and evil of life are the
best educated; hence it follows that true education consists less
in precept than in practice. We begin to learn when we begin to