What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul
Source: The Spectator, no. 215 (1711)
Topic
Kafka opens with a sharp diagnosis: parents use either tyranny or slavery on children, and all gradations thereof. Aristotle on education as the best provision for the journey to old age. Rousseau: give children a taste for the sciences, not the sciences themselves. Channing on quality of knowledge over quantity. James notes that compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake — which is either an argument for better education or an observation about its permanent limits. Lichtenberg finds most educated people more superstitious than they either admit or think. The collection is skeptical of formal education while remaining committed to the idea that becoming more fully alive — curious, attentive, honest — is the only aim that matters.
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul
The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction
I count life just a stuff to try the soul's strength on
The best teachers are those who have the freest command of thought and language.