the rain may fall on the tree and the gardener may water it, the moisture must all be taken up through the roots, and then dispersed through the trunk, branches, boughs, leaves, and fruit. On this account the gardener, though he takes his graft from some other source, must let it into the stock in such a way that it may become incorporated with it, absorb moisture from its roots, and, nourished in this way, be capable of development. It is from the roots that a tree derives everything, and there is no necessity to supply leaves and branches from any other source. It is just the same when a bird is to be clothed with feathers. They are not taken from another bird, but grow from the innermost part of the body.
20. Imitation in the arts.—The prudent builder, too, erects a house in such a way that it can stand securely on its own foundations and can be supported by its own beams, without the need of any external props. For, if a building need external support, this is a proof of incompleteness and of a tendency to fall down.
21. When a man lays out a fishpond or a lake he finds a spring, and, by means of canals and pipes, conducts its water to his reservoir; but he does not allow water to flow in from any other source, nor does he use rain-water.
22. From this precept it follows that the proper education of the young does not consist in stuffing their heads with a mass of words, sentences, and ideas dragged together out of various authors, but in opening their understanding to the outer world, so that a living stream may flow from their own minds, just as leaves, flowers, and fruit spring from the buds on a tree, while in the following year a fresh bud is again formed and a fresh shoot, with its leaves, flowers, and fruit, grows from it.
23. Terrible deviation in schools.—Hitherto the schools have not taught their pupils to develope their minds like young trees from their own roots, but rather to deck themselves with branches plucked from other trees, and, like Æsop’s crow, to adorn themselves with the feathers of other birds; they have taken no trouble to open the
