94 EDUCATION OF A MAN OF SCIENCE 



sentence, and thus I have been led to see errors in 

 reasoning and in my own observations or those of 

 others." I repeat that self-education is an endless 

 task. To some men this is a comforting, to others 

 a depressing, fact. Samuel Johnson was, I think, 

 saddened by the making of fresh plans of conduct 

 for each new year. A very different man, though 

 also a Samuel, — Butler, the author of Erewhon, was 

 cheered by the thought that it was always possible 

 to improve. When I knew him he was working 

 as a painter in an untidy room in Clifford's Inn, 

 without much furniture except a piano. He was 

 poor, and therefore, to save models, painted 

 himself over and over again, the result being a 

 cupboard full of grim heads, which he called 

 the chamber of horrors. He always believed he 

 should succeed at last, and the point I am slowly 

 reaching is that he comforted himself with the 

 belief that John Bellini entirely altered his style 

 when he was between 60 and 70 years of age. One 

 of the French aphorism writers, Vauvenargues, has 

 said (as translated by Lord Morley), "To do great 

 things a man must live as though he had never to 

 die.^ I too would recommend the wholesome 

 theory that it is never too late to learn; it helps to 

 keep one from falling too soon into incurable 

 fogeydom. 



In the lives of big men it is sometimes possible 

 to see how work done for its own sake may turn out 

 to have had its real value as a piece of training for 

 something of far greater worth. Thus my father 



^ studies in Literature, 1891, p. 100, 



