was cursed with an instinctive slothfulness and sluggishness which were
not to be denied.

People would tell me: "Now is the time for you to study; later on, you
will have leisure to enjoy yourself; and after that will come the time
to make money."

But I needed all three times in which to do nothing--and I could have
used another three hundred.




PROFESSORS


I have not been fortunate in my professors. It might be urged that I
have not been in a position, being idle and sluggish, to take advantage
of their instruction. I believe, however, that if they had been good
teachers, now that so many years have passed, I should be able to
acknowledge their merits.

I cannot remember a single teacher who knew how to teach, or who
succeeded in arousing any interest in what he taught, or who had any
comprehension of the student mentality. No one learned how to reason in
the schools of my youth, nor mastered any theory, nor acquired a
practical knowledge of anything. In other words, we learned nothing.

In medicine, the professors adhered to a system that was the most
foolish imaginable. In the two universities in which I studied, subjects