A father once proudly said to me, "My son has finished his education". He did not mean to be funny; but he was. Of course he meant that his son has taken his degree and left college; as though it is only in schools and colleges that education is to be had. "Finished his education!" Why, he had only just begun it.

"Education" means the drawing-out, or development of the faculties. This begins in school and college; but it does not end there. At school and college one learns the rudiments, and gains a smattering of knowledge on various subjects. More important, one learns there how to learn the best methods of acquiring knowledge. School and college education trains the mind (or should do), and makes it accustomed to continuous application and study. But this is not the whole of education; in a sense, it is but a preparation for education. Our education should never be "finished" at any rate so far as this life is concerned, until we die.

"Every person", said Gibbon, the historian, "has two educations: one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives himself". And Sir Walter Scott confirmed this when he wrote: "The best part of every man's education is that which he gives himself". "That which is put into us by others", says Samuel Smiles, "is always far less ours than that which we acquire by our own efforts. Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession a property entirely our own."