Every Man His Own University
Russell H. Conwell
Adapted for Modern Readers
First published 1917 · Lucid Classics edition 2026 · 44 pages
Original and Lucid edition, side by side
Original text
A distinct university walks about under each man's hat. The only man who achieves success in the other universities of the world, and in the larger university of life, is the man who has first taken his graduate course and his post-graduate course in the university under his hat. There observation furnishes a daily change in the curriculum. Books are not the original sources of power, but observation, which may bring to us all wide experience, deep thinking, fine feeling, and the power to act for oneself, is the very dynamo of power.
Without observation, literature and meditation are shower and sunshine upon unbroken soil. Only those schools and colleges are true schools and colleges which regard it as the chief business of all their teaching to persuade those under their charge to see more perfectly what they are looking at, to find what they should have been unable to observe had it not been for their school instruction. You can't make a good arrow from a pig's tail, and you can seldom get a man worth while out of one who has gone through the early part of his life without having learned to be alert when things are to be seen or heard. John Stuart Blackie says that it is astonishing how much we all go about with our eyes wide open and see nothing, and Doctor Johnson says that some men shall see more while riding ten miles upon the top of an omnibus, than some others shall see in riding over the continent.
Lucid Classics
You carry your own university with you everywhere. The only people who succeed in formal universities — or in life — are the ones who've already earned their degree from the one inside their own head. That university runs on observation. Books aren't the original source of power. Attention is. Observation is what gives you wide experience, deep thinking, fine feeling, and the ability to think for yourself. It is the dynamo of power.
Without observation, books and meditation are rain and sun on soil that's never been broken. A school only earns the name if its real job is teaching students to see — to notice things they would have walked right past without it. You can't make a good arrow from a pig's tail, and you rarely get a person worth much from someone who spent their early years blind to what was happening around them. John Stuart Blackie says it's astonishing how many of us walk around with our eyes wide open and see nothing. Samuel Johnson put it this way: some people will see more in ten miles on top of a bus than others will see crossing an entire continent.
Original text
Carlyle says that a collection of books is a true university in these days. It might be added that often the smaller the collection the larger shall be the university.
Education derived from libraries is unsafe, for book-dissipation, as well as drunkenness, ends in debauchery. Toward the end of his long and wide-awake life Doctor Holmes advised a young correspondent to confine his reading to the Bible, Shakespeare, and a good dictionary. The list of men who have been lifted to higher regions of thought and feeling and action from reading any one of these three would be too long to be compressed within the covers of one book. Books are like two-edged swords--dangerous unless one knows how to use them; they either lead up or drag down, and we sink or rise to the level of the books we read. Every one reads, but how many read to advantage? Goethe, the greatest of all the very greatest Germans, said, "I have been learning how to read for the past fifty years, but have not yet succeeded."
Lucid Classics
Carlyle said that a collection of books is a true university. You could add: often the smaller the collection, the greater the university turns out to be.
Learning from libraries has its dangers. Too many books can do what too much drink does — it ends in dissipation. Near the end of his long and wide-awake life, Dr. Holmes advised a young correspondent to confine his reading to the Bible, Shakespeare, and a good dictionary. The list of people lifted to higher regions of thought, feeling, and action by any one of those three would fill more than one book. Books are two-edged — dangerous if you don't know how to use them. They either pull you up or drag you down. You rise or sink to the level of what you read. Everyone reads, but how many read to any real advantage? Goethe, the greatest of all the very greatest Germans, said: “I have been learning how to read for the past fifty years, but have not yet succeeded.”
Contents
- Every Man's University
- Animals and “The Least Things”
- The Bottom Rung
- Home Reading
- Thoughtfulness
- Instincts and Individuality