Читать книгу Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 6 - Charles S. Peirce - Страница 20

6

[Letter to New Students]

January 1887

Houghton Library

36 W 15th St, New York City

My dear Pupil:

The first thing that you and I have to do is to form one another’s acquaintance. You have hitherto probably been taught in a class, but my instruction is to be fitted to your individual mind. It is a custom-made and not a ready-made education. Very likely you are of opinion that ready-made things pay the best for the purchaser. But you will agree, I think, that if every day-laborer knew how to work with wood, the carpenter trade would be worse than it is; if every man could conduct a law suit as well as a lawyer, the lawyers would not get large fees; if all the world had foreseen the success of the Atlantic cable as clearly as Cyrus Field did, he would not be today many times a millionaire. Thus, every man’s success in life depends upon his being a little smarter than his neighbor. Very well; now that you have become my pupil, I will declare to you what I do not proclaim to the general public, because I do not wish to make boasts that I may not have the opportunity to make good; but I declare to you privately that I intend to make you smarter than your neighbors. No, no; what am I saying? It is beyond human power for one man to add to the mental vigor of another. That I cannot do; but I will guide you in the way of making yourself smarter than your neighbors. Plainly, a wholesale education which is extended to all the children in the country can raise nobody above the general level.

Few men can excel in all their powers of mind. My experience has shown me that men’s minds are as various as their faces. Having minutely studied multitudes, I find that each is naturally strong in one kind of thinking and naturally feeble in another. I have then a two-fold task. I must train the pupil up to respectable strength where he is weak and up to remarkable strength where he is strong. I have to arrange his exercises so that the work done is more serviceable than the same amount otherwise distributed could be. I am a sort of physician for the mind; and to know what to prescribe I must study my patient’s symptoms. Then I may be able to make him a better man than I myself am. That is why the first thing I have to do is to make your acquaintance.

I want you to begin by writing me a letter. This will not count as one of your 30 exercises, and yet it will be more important than most of them, and will give more work both to you and to me. I wish you to select some subject upon which you have thought a good deal, and write me an account of what you think. No matter what subject you select. Perhaps it had better not be so purely personal, local, or technical, that I could not possibly know anything about it, although even such matters are not positively ruled out. The main point is not to think out something for the occasion, for that would, I know, not do you justice, but to take a subject upon which you have already thought. I ask you to set forth your reflections in an orderly manner, plainly, fully, and yet as briefly as may be. I will give you no further directions. Do the thing in your own way; and let the letter be a favorable exhibit of what your mental factory can turn out now. It will thus serve two purposes. It will show me to what my first efforts must be directed. I shall not, if I can avoid it, recur to the subject of this letter during the whole period of our correspondence; but at the end of each quarter, I wish you to write me a new letter on the same subject, and these successive letters will be evidence, both to you and to me, of the increment of your mental strength.

Yours truly,

C. S. Peirce