VIII

But it is necessary to trace somewhat carefully the method of such
self-development. How do we proceed? Before the architect built the
State House, he drew up a plan of the finished building, and there was
no moving of stone, mortar, or tool, till everything was complete on
paper. Each workman who did anything subsequently did it in deference
to that perfected design. Each stone brought for the great structure
was numbered for its place and had its jointing cut in adaptation to
the remaining stones. If, then, each one of us is to become an
architect of himself, it might seem necessary to lay out a plan of our
complete existence before setting out in life, or at whatever moment
we become aware that henceforth our construction is to be in our own
charge. Only with such a plan in hand would orderly building seem
possible. This is a common belief, but in my judgment an erroneous
one. Indeed the whole analogy of the architect and his mechanisms is
misleading. We rarely have in mind the total plan of our unrealized
being and rarely ought we to have. Our work begins at a different
point. We do not, like the architect, usually begin with a thought of
completion. Bather we are first stirred by a sense of weakness.

In my own education I find this to be true. After some years as a boy
in a Boston public school, I went to Phillips Academy in Andover, then
to Harvard College, and subsequently to a German university, and why
did I do all this? Did I have in mind the picture of myself as a
learned man? I will not deny that such a fancy drifted through my
brain. But it was indistinct and occasional. I did not even know what
it was to be a learned man. I do not know now. The driving force that
was on me was something quite different. I found myself disagreeably
ignorant. Reading books and newspapers, I continually found matters