Every Man His Own University

by Russell H. Conwell

VI

INSTINCTS AND INDIVIDUALITY

"God has given us a full kit of watchmaker's tools" and if, after all the centuries of civilization, "we are doing thinker's work with them," something must be wrong with the educational methods. When God sent us here he packed us with all we need for high-class manhood—our instincts and our individuality especially well done up; but often in the unpacking by the schools we have been sadly marred; and these God-given endowments seem to have been frequently thrown upon the rubbish-pile. They seem to have dulled our instincts and to have despised our individuality, in order to make room for our acquirements.

Like all that emanates from God, instincts and individuality have been bestowed for a wise purpose; they are indispensable endowments if we shall become the kind of man God seems to have had in mind when he sent us here. What justification have the teachers of civilization for failing to perfect these powers? What right have the little men of the schools to drive them entirely out of their scheme of education?

John Ruskin complains in Kings' Treasuries that "Modern education for the most part signifies giving people the faculty of thinking wrong on every conceivable subject of importance to them." If this is even partly true, there is no pursuit to-day that demands from the man who is working in it more presence of mind and more self-direction, than the business of getting real education. Those who are to-day conducting what we are foolish enough to permit them to call education are often both blind and deaf to all that efficient education implies. To seek direction from them is like asking the road from a blind man. Many are also connected with the schools apparently as others are connected with hod-carrying and street-sweeping—to procure a livelihood. Often their highest conception of the work is edgeucation, to make sharp blades of the intellects for what they call "getting along in the world." Then many of the instructors in schools and colleges are merely specialists, mainly interested in their specialties, and using the class-room as a stepping-stone to their own purposes. Extreme specializing is narrowing—it does to the specialist what blinkers do to the horse's eyes. Excessive pursuit of single objects of thought atrophies many faculties, but education is the complete development and discipline of all the faculties.

Perhaps these are some of the causes why so many original and thinking men and women are so hostile to present-day schools, and accuse them of mainly being "places that polish pebbles and dim diamonds," and say so many other harsh and cutting things about them. Learning seems to be the chief occupation of those who profess to educate. Learning for its own sake plays a very insignificant part in the spiritual equipment of God's children; to a true education it seems at best only what the carpenter's kit is to the carpenter—a means to an end. Like all other lumber, its importance depends entirely upon what is built out of it. These original and thinking men and women have often said hard things of mere learning and of those who dole it out at so much a unit, because they believe that undue stress is laid upon it. They sometimes say that universities are not educating institutions, but merely seats-of-learning; and often they are very narrow seats, difficult for self-respecting people to stiffen their backs enough to sit upon. But it's the study, not the studies, that educates; studies make learned men, but not often wise men, such as real education always makes; not all learned heads are sense-boxes; the very learned man may be a very learned fool. The learned frequently put out their reasoning powers to make room for their learning; it requires ten pounds of sense to take care of one pound of learning.

Solomon made a book of proverbs, but a book of proverbs never made Solomon. Sense without learning is a thousand times superior to learning without sense; and in the stately edifice of life, school and college are only the basement walls; wisdom and learning are not necessary companions. The great things that have conduced to the betterment of the world have been done by men who have been loyal to their individuality and true to their instincts—never by the merely learned. Too often do we find these little learned men "displaying themselves offensively and ridiculously in the haunts of bearded men," and making the angels weep by their strutting and their swelling.

Knowing is only a small part of life; doing is nearly all of life; and the best done is done through education—the education which is the product of what is inborn as well as of what is acquired; the education which enables men and women to perceive and to cherish the beautiful in art, in literature, in morals and in nature. While true education busies itself with acquirements, it is even more concerned that the instincts and the individuality God appears to regard of supreme importance shall attain all that it is possible for them to have. These original and thinking men and women who say so many things in condemnation of make-believe education and mere learning boldly and lovingly acclaim the helps from true education—they remind us that it is soul-husbandry, spiritual perfection, torch and sword and shield, the be-all and the end-all of life, the fountain of all noble living, and the only real promoter of civilization. They claim that education of this sort simplifies life; facilitates self-conquest; intensifies individuality; unfolds and uplifts manhood; breeds habits of thinking, feeling, and doing; debestializes, emancipates, humbles, and civilizes; that it searches for truth, loves the beautiful, desires the good, and does the best.

We have no quarrel with the education that accomplishes all these, for it fosters the instincts and the individuality for which we are pleading. We have always believed that just this kind of education is the heritage of every American, and that the loss of such an education is the greatest calamity that can befall any one. All our life have we yearned that all might have this boon, and the best of our manhood years have been ceaseless labor and struggle to give "the weak and friendless sons of men" all of its advantages.