RESULTS OF A DESULTORY EDUCATION 65 



instead of being compelled to flounder with its methods or avoid 

 them altogether. The lack of adequate knowledge of calculus 

 has ever been to me a great hindrance in my work./ 



The lack of adequate training in the classics, which I suffered 

 from the imperfection of my youthful training, has been a source 

 of regret rather than inconvenience in my later life. I gained 

 more than a fair scholarly sense of the value of Greek and Latin 

 thought and phrase, so that I have been able to possess myself 

 of its meaning and quality. As regards my own speech, in 

 which I never had a lesson except from the proof-readers, the 

 society in which I dwelt and some native capacity for appre- 

 ciating men, served me fairly well; better, indeed, than the 

 formal teaching which has been the share of those of my station. 

 Of the other modern languages with which I have been thrown 

 in close contact, German, French, Spanish, and Italian, my 

 acquaintance has been limited to a capacity to speak and read 

 them in an effective smattering way, which, though unscholarly, 

 has sufficed to open books and the hearts of men at my need. 

 Out of the jumble of experiences which served me as an educa- 

 tion, came, above all, a capacity to find from time to time my 

 bent and to follow it with a fair measure of determination ; to 

 be in effect my own master for my own purposes; to rest little 

 on authority and to have a real love of the discoverable fact. 

 Unlike the overtrained youth of the modern school, who is 

 crowded for all his years of preparation so that his spontaneous 

 impulses never have chance to take shape, I was allowed to 

 evolve myself in a more normal way. Something of the very fair 

 success of this experiment in my case was due to the fact that 

 the life I shared, though rude, was that of very actual men, and 

 to the combination of the effective environment which bore in 

 upon me in a way fitted to the needs of my nature. 



