“It is much better to do the lessons set you by one who knows how to teach, than to pick lessons for yourself out of your books. Davie, I have not that confidence in myself to think I should be a good teacher of myself.”
“But you are a good teacher of me, sir!”
“I try—but then I’m set to teach you, and I am not set to teach myself: I am only set to make myself do what I am taught. When you are my teacher, Davie, I try—don’t I—to do everything you tell me?”
“Yes, indeed, sir!”
“But I am not set to obey myself!”
“No, nor anyone else, sir! You do not need to obey anyone, or have anyone teach you, sir!”
“Oh, don’t I, Davie! On the contrary, I could not get on for one solitary moment without somebody to teach me. Look you here, Davie: I have so many lessons given me, that I have no time or need to add to them any of my own. If you were to ask the cook to let you have a cold dinner, you would perhaps eat it with pride, and take credit for what your hunger yet made quite agreeable to you. But the boy who does not grumble when he is told not to go out because it is raining and he has a cold, will not perhaps grumble either should he happen to find his dinner not at all nice.”
Davie hung his head. It had been a very small grumble, but there are no sins for which there is less reason or less excuse than small ones: in no sense are they worth committing. And we grown people commit many more such than little children, and have our reward in childishness instead of childlikeness.
“It is so easy,” continued Donal, “to do the thing we ordain ourselves, for in holding to it we make ourselves out fine fellows!—and that is such a mean kind of thing! Then when another who has the right, lays a thing upon us, we grumble—though it be the truest and kindest thing, and the most reasonable and needful for us—even for our dignity—for our being worth anything! Depend upon it, Davie, to do what we are told is a far grander thing than to lay the severest rules upon ourselves—ay, and to stick to them, too!”
“But might there not be something good for us to do that we were not told of?”