The very old and very foolish saying, "A little knowledge is a
dangerous thing," is disproved every day. Whenever you hear a
man talk about "a little knowledge" ask him what he thinks about
the danger of a great deal of IGNORANCE. Tell him this:
"THE SCHOOLING OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ALL TOLD DID NOT AMOUNT TO AS
MUCH AS ONE YEAR."
The teaching was elementary, including reading, writing,
ciphering, and very little of each one. It was picked up at odd
times, when he could be spared from daily labor. Remember that
when he was a lad his father used to hire him out to work on
other men's farms for very little money.
With that little learning he built himself up into one of the
greatest men in history, saved the nation, ended once and for all
civilized recognition of slavery.
A little learning might possibly have been dangerous had he been
one of the idiotic kind of men. It might have made him feel
dissatisfied with the hard labor for which he was fit, without
stimulating him to better things.
But Lincoln's little learning gave him no rest--it kept him
constantly adding more learning to his little supply. ----
The self-pitying young man who thinks he has no chance may be
interested in Lincoln's methods of getting ahead. He walked
about twenty miles through the wilderness to borrow an English
grammar. He could get no other books, so he read and re-read the
statutes of Indiana. He wanted to teach himself to write well
and think closely. He had never heard Bacon's saying: "Writing
maketh an exact man," but he felt the truth of the fact for
himself, and he was bound to write. He had no paper and could
not afford to buy any.
At night, when his work was done, he would bend his huge
six-foot-four frame close down by the firelight to write and
cipher ON THE BACK OF A WOODEN SHOVEL.
When the back of the shovel was covered with writing he would
shave a thin layer from it and begin writing once more. ----
It is a very useful thing for men occasionally to feel ashamed of
themselves. If you want to feel ashamed of yourself, if you are
complaining and whining, just picture to yourself Abraham Lincoln
in his father's little hut, with no windows and no flooring,
crouching by the fire and developing his mind by laborious
writing on the back of a wooden shovel.
Children of twelve in schools, precocious little girls even of
seven or eight, know much more than Abraham Lincoln knew when he
was twenty-one years old.
With his "little knowledge" he grew and did the work that was to
improve the condition of millions of men.