Godwin, William, 1756-1836 / 2008-09-12 00:00:00

It is just so with the man who chooses
his occupation, and feels assured that that about which he is
occupied is his true and native field. Compare this person with
the boy that studies the classics, or arithmetic, or any thing
else, with a secret disinclination, and, as Shakespear expresses
it, "creeps like snail, unwillingly, to school." They do not seem
as if they belonged to the same species.
The result of these observations certainly strongly tends to
support the proposition laid down early in the present Essay,
that, putting idiots and extraordinary cases out of the question,
every human creature is endowed with talents, which, if rightly
directed, would shew him to be apt, adroit, intelligent and
acute, in the walk for which his organisation especially fitted
him.

SECTION III.
ENCOURAGING VIEW OF OUR COMMON NATURE.--POWER OF SOUND EXPOSITION
AFFORDED TO ALL.--DOCTRINE OF THIS ESSAY AND THE HYPOTHESIS OF
HELVETIUS COMPARED.--THE WILLING AND UNWILLING PUPIL
CONTRASTED.--MISCHIEVOUS TENDENCY OF THE USUAL MODES OF
EDUCATION.
What a beautiful and encouraging view is thus afforded us of our
common nature! It is not true, as certain disdainful and
fastidious censurers of their fellow-men would persuade us to
believe, that a thousand seeds are sown in the wide field of
humanity, for no other purpose than that half-a-dozen may grow up
into something magnificent and splendid, and that the rest,
though not absolutely extinguished in the outset, are merely
suffered to live that they may furnish manure and nourishment to
their betters.
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