Of Education.

Everything we learn affects the whole character of the mind. and so it is with different ingredients of knowledge which are  so eagerly and indiscriminately recommended. Now how incalculably important becomes the question of proportion in our knowledge, and how that which we are is dependent as much upon our ignorance as our science. example An English author who by great care and labour had succeeded in forming a style which harmonized quiet perfectly with the character of his thinking, and served as an unfailing means of communication with his readers. Every one recognized its simple ease and charm, and he might have gone on writing with that enviable facility had he not studied Locke's philosophical compositions. shortly after this his style changed and lost all its grace, he began to write with difficulty and what he wrote was no more appreciated. another example is of a painter landscapist at that who'es pictorial excellence diminished by too much interest in geology.
Mature life brings so many professional or social duties that it leaves scant time for culture; and those who care for culture most earnestly and sincerely, are the very persons who will economize time to the utmost. Now to read a language that has been very imperfectly mastered is felt to be a bad economy of time. Suppose the case of a man occupied in business who has studied Greek rather assiduously in youth and yet not enough to read it with facility. suppose that this man wants to get at the mind of Plato. He can read the original, but he reads it so slowly that it  would cost him more hours than he can spare, and this is why he has recourse to a transcription. In this case there is no indifference to Greek culture; on the contrary, the reader desires to assimilate what he can of it , but the very earnestness of his wish to have free access to ancient thought makes him prefer it in modern language. The estimate of ancient thinking is not often expressed quiet so clearly or rather openly and yet it is very generally prevalent even among st the most thoughtful people, especially if modern science has had any conspicuous influence in the formation of their minds.