The one great object—the finality—of rational Education is
Self-instruction. In mind as well as body we are children at first, only
that we may afterwards become men; dependent upon others, in order that
we may learn from them such lessons as may tend eventually to our
edification on an independent basis of our own. The knowledge of facts,
or what is generally called learning, however much we may possess of it,
is useful so far only as we erect its materials into a mental framework;
but useless, utterly, as long as we suffer it to lie in a heap, inert
and without form. The instruction of others, compared with
self-instruction, is like the law compared with faith; a discipline of
preparation, beggarly elements, a schoolmaster to lead us on to a state
of greater worthiness, and there give up the charge of us.
“Every man,” says Gibbon, “who rises above the common level, receives
two educations—the first from his instructors; the second, the most
personal and important, from himself.” Almost all Lord Eldon’s legal
education was from himself, without even the ordinary helps, which he
disdainfully flung from him; and of no one could it be more truly
predicated, that he was not “rocked and dandled” into a lawyer.
The Rev. Sydney Smith has thus sketched a scheme, in which he deems it
of the highest importance that the education of a British youth were
directed to the true principles of legislation: what effect laws can
produce upon opinions, and opinions upon laws; what subjects are fit for
legislative interference, and when men may be left to the management of
their own interests. The mischief occasioned by bad laws, and the
perplexity which arises from a multiplicity of laws; the causes of
national wealth; the relations of foreign trade; the encouragement of
agricultures and manufactures; the fictitious wealth occasioned by
paper-credit; the use and abuse of monopoly; the theory of taxation; the
consequences of the public debt: these are some of the subjects and some
of the branches of civil education, to which we would turn the minds of
future judges, future senators, and future noblemen. After the first
period of life had been given up to the cultivation of the classics, and
the remaining powers were beginning to evolve themselves, these are some
of the propensities in study which we would endeavour to inspire.