Yet how much more there must be of God's wisdom
in the humblest of the beings created in his image! There are
distinctions among men; and out of these distinctions come the truth and
the necessity that each may be both a teacher and a pupil of every
other. No man, however learned he may be, does know or can know all that
is known by his neighbor, though that neighbor be the humblest of
shepherds or of fishermen. We are not independent of each other in
anything. The earnest and faithful disciple of wisdom goes through life
everywhere diffusing knowledge, and everywhere gathering it up. Over the
great gateway of life is the inscription, "None but learners enter
here;" and along its paths and in its groves are tablets, on which is
written, "None but learners sojourn here." He is a poor teacher who is
not a learner, and he is but little of a learner who is not something of
a teacher also. The best teachers are they who are pupils, and the best
pupils are already teachers. Such was the real and avowed character of
the great teachers of antiquity; such is the best practice of modern
continental Europe, and such is the requirement of nature in all ages.
He who does not learn cannot teach. Socrates professed to know only
this, that he knew nothing. Plato was a disciple of Socrates and
Euclid; a pupil in the school of Pythagoras; and, as a traveller, under
the disguise of a merchant and a seller of oil, he visited Egypt, and
thus gained a knowledge of astronomy, and added something to his
learning in other departments.
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