University of Virginia Library

3. ABILITIES, Education and.—

It is
often said there have been shining examples
of men of great abilities, in all businesses of
life, without any other science than what they
had gathered from conversation and intercourse
with the world. But, who can say
what these men would not have been, had
they started in the science on the shoulders of
a Demosthenes or Cicero, of a Locke, or
Bacon, or a Newton?—
To John Brazier. Washington ed. vii, 133.
(1819)