ast. For this purpose he goes
to the University, and takes to reading books--new books, as being of
his own age and standing. Everything he reads must be briefly put,
must be new! he is new himself. Then he falls to and criticises. And
here I am not taking the slightest account of studies pursued for the
sole object of making a living.

Students, and learned persons of all sorts and every age, aim as
a rule at acquiring _information_ rather than insight. They pique
themselves upon knowing about everything--stones, plants, battles,
experiments, and all the books in existence. It never occurs to them
that information is only a means of insight, and in itself of little
or no value; that it is his way of _thinking_ that makes a man a
philosopher. When I hear of these portents of learning and their
imposing erudition, I sometimes say to myself: Ah, how little they
must have had to think about, to have been able to read so much!
And when I actually find it reported of the elder Pliny that he was
continually reading or being read to, at table, on a journey, or in
his bath, the question forces itself upon my mind, whether the man
was so very lacking in thought of his own that he had to have
alien thought incessantly instilled into him; as though he were a
consumptive patient taking jellies to keep himself alive. And neither
his undiscerning credulity nor his inexpressibly repulsive and barely
intelligible style--which seems like of a man taking notes, and very
economical of paper--is of a kind to give me a high opinion of his
power of independent thought.

We have seen that much reading and learning is prejudicial to thinking
for oneself; and, in the same way, through much writing and teaching,
a man loses the habit of being quite clear, and therefore thorough, in
regard to the things he knows and understands; simply because he has
left himself no time to acquire clearness or thoroughness. And so,
when clear knowledge fails him in his utterances, he is forced to fill
out the gaps with words and phrases. It is this, and not the dryness
of the subject-matter, that makes most books such tedious reading.
There is a saying that a good cook can make a palatable dish even
out of an old shoe; and a good writer can make the dryest things
interesting.

With by far the largest number of learned men, knowledge is a means,
not an end. That is why they will never achieve any great work;
because, to do that, he who pursues knowledge must