APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 21 



the " Poll," who pick up just enough to get through 

 without much discredit. Those who won't learn at 

 all are plucked ; and then you can't come up again. 

 Nature's pluck means extermination. 



Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobe- 

 dience incapacity meets with the same punishment 

 as crime. Nature's discipline is not even a word and 

 a blow, and the blow first ; but the blow without the 

 word. It is left to you to find out why your ears 

 are boxed. 



All artificial education ought to be an anticipation 

 of natural education. 



That man, I think, has had a liberal education 

 who has been so trained in youth that his body is 

 the ready servant of his will, and does with ease 

 and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it 

 is capable of ; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic 

 engine, with all its parts of equal strength and in 

 smooth working order ; ready, like a steam engine, 

 to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the 

 gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind ; 

 whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great 

 and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of 

 her operations ; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full 

 of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to 

 come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a 

 tender conscience ; who has learned to love all 

 beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all 

 vileness, and to respect others as himself. 



