660 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



things from habit often lacks entirely. He has not used his brain nor 

 developed it. His knowledge is based on tradition and unreasoning 

 acceptance of customs or common beliefs. He is the last to accept new 

 notions or admit the possibility of doing things differently. Witness 

 the scorn with which the average farmer of an early day greeted the 

 efforts of the agricultural experiment stations. 



If a man will think and observe and will correlate his observations, 

 especially if he uses every opportunity to seek new fields of endeavor 

 in an effort to broaden out, he is giving his brain an education and 

 storing up mental, not merely muscular, experience. Men without 

 schooling may thus by their mental vigor acquire experience in human 

 nature, reasoning powers, and ability of a high order. This sort of 

 experience is indispensable alike to the man who lacks or who possesses 

 college training. But education, either technical or general, while it 

 does not give a man this direct experience acquired by contact alone, 

 does emphatically prepare his mind for the rapid acquisition of both 

 physical and mental experience. The educated man is always seeking 

 and getting new ideas. He constantly increases his powers of obser- 

 vation, comparison, and generalization until he reaches the state of 

 development where a new environment is assimilated with remarkable 

 ease and intuition supplements the slower process of reason. Trivial 

 incidents supply to his trained powers true indications of conditions 

 which he is seeking to learn. He is seldom swayed by false evidence 

 or misled by circumstances and becomes sound in judgment and quick 

 in execution. This ability to actually profit by experience is the most 

 striking distinction between the trained and the untrained mind. How 

 the training is obtained, whether in college or through one's own efforts 

 and mental industry, aided by travel, is not important. As far as my 

 observations go, the man who first acquires experience in the field be- 

 fore completing his studies makes the strongest man. He not only gets 

 more out of his college work through knowing how he is to use it, but 

 he is saved the setbacks resulting from inexperience. Education de- 

 velops tolerance, and a man whose mind is trained will make allowances 

 for the mistakes of others ; but an uneducated mind tends toward in- 

 tolerance and prejudice and refuses to admit the existence of any 

 ability whatever in a man who has not acquired the same proficiency 

 (without experience) in performing various mechanical stunts that the 

 critic has had a lifetime to acquire. When the green man with an edu- 

 cation is placed under the authority of the other, he is frequently dis- 

 credited utterly. Hence the advantage of getting the rough edges worn 

 smooth before acquiring the perilous reputation of "technical training." 



