The progress
which it is capable of making is entirely indefinite. If by ten years of
cultivation we can secure a certain degree of knowledge and power, by
ten more we can double, or more than double it, and every succeeding
year of effort is attended with equal success. There is no point of
attainment where we must stop, or beyond which effort will bring in a
less valuable return.
Look at that teacher, and consider for a moment his condition. He began
to teach when he was twenty years of age, and now he is forty. Between
the ages of fifteen and twenty he made a vigorous effort to acquire
such an education as would fit him for these duties. He succeeded, and
by these efforts he raised himself from being a mere laborer, receiving
for his daily toil a mere daily subsistence, to the respectability and
the comforts of an intellectual pursuit. But this change once produced,
he stops short in his progress. Once seated in his desk, he is
satisfied, and for twenty years he has been going through the same
routine, without any effort to advance or to improve. He does not
reflect that the same efforts, which so essentially altered his
condition and prospects at twenty, would have carried him forward to
higher and higher sources of influence and enjoyment as long as he
should continue them. His efforts ceased when he obtained a situation as
teacher at fifty dollars a month, and, though twenty years have glided
away, he is now exactly what he was then.
Pages:
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365