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JOURNAL 01' CHEMICAL EDUCATION
NOVEMBER, 1931
approach. I was over forty before accident first put me on the stand as an expert. But i t is a great life if you don't weaken, a joyous process of learning something every day. There are probably few men from whom the wisest cannot learn something. One should avoid becoming too old or too self-satisfied to learn. When one ceases t o he able to learn with pleasure, that measures the real span of life. After that he begins t o die. You have, perhaps, been expecting to hear what particular branch of science to study for this type of work. I do not know that it makes much difference. You cannot get along without chemistry and physics because they underlie all other sciences and either without the other is a very lame steed. I t is not so much a question of what you study, as how you study. When I was going off to boarding school, father asked me why. I said, "to learn." He shook his head. After leaving me in doubt long enough t o impress the answer on my mind, he said: "No, son, you are not going to school to learn in any sense in which you understand it-not to learn what is in the books or what your professors may be able to tell you, but t o educate yourself. The learning is purely an incidental means to that end. What you learn will be in the books and you will he able to look it up when you want it. If you get an education you will be able t o pay somebody to look it up for you. If you ever get really educated, you will be able t o pay somebody t o stand around a t your elbow and know i t for you. Half of i t is wrong anyway. What you are going to school for-and I hope to college, if you are worth w h i l t i s to get acquainted with your mental tools, t o form the habit of keeping them clean and sharp and well arranged so that you can put your finger on them when you want them, and to acquire by grueling experience facility in using those tools with force and precision and despatch on any material that you want to, in any direction that you want to, as long as you want to, and then to stop."
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