science of his own could do quite well without a teacher of this kind. In fact, the private student does use the text-book just in this way. He treats it as a book containing the leading principles of his subject, and sets himself to acquire those principles from the book by his own efforts.
With regard to text-books, students fall naturally into two classes. Some prefer to have all their instruction at the hands of teachers; they like to be told things, to have matters presented to them by the human voice. Others like to have facts set down before them in the cold black and white of print, and to have time to deal with them at their own pace and in their own way. The chances are that you who read this book belong to the second class. The very fact that you are taking the trouble to read these pages shows that you want to take the matter of education into your own hands and set about it in your own way. But you are not to suppose that the presence of a teacher is a disadvantage. It is quite the opposite. The wise student will take every opportunity to come under the influence of good teachers, but he will at the same time make all his arrangements to get the greatest benefit from both teacher and text-book. He will make each supplement the other. In the last resort, if a teacher is unavailable, the really earnest student will be able to make shift with the text-book alone.
So we come now to a consideration of the nature of the text-book itself. This varies according to the
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