You will be told that
the particular observations which go to make these general ideas will
come to you later on in the course of experience; but until that time
arrives, you apply your general ideas wrongly, you judge men and
things from a wrong standpoint, you see them in a wrong light, and
treat them in a wrong way. So it is that education perverts the mind.
This explains why it so frequently happens that, after a long course
of learning and reading, we enter upon the world in our youth, partly
with an artless ignorance of things, partly with wrong notions about
them; so that our demeanor savors at one moment of a nervous anxiety,
at another of a mistaken confidence. The reason of this is simply that
our head is full of general ideas which we are now trying to turn to
some use, but which we hardly ever apply rightly. This is the result
of acting in direct opposition to the natural development of the mind
by obtaining general ideas first, and particular observations last:
it is putting the cart before the horse. Instead of developing the
child's own faculties of discernment, and teaching it to judge and
think for itself, the teacher uses all his energies to stuff its head
full of the ready-made thoughts of other people.
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