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A PLACE ON YOUR BOOKSHELF

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Lay Morals, and Other Papers

by Robert Louis Stevenson

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~8 hr 43 min · full book42 reading sectionsFree to read
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Inside this work

  1. 01Front matter~12 min
  2. 02CHAPTER I~13 min
  3. 03CHAPTER II — part 1~25 min
  4. 04CHAPTER II — part 2~2 min
  5. 05CHAPTER III — part 1~25 min
  6. 06CHAPTER III — part 2~11 min
  7. 07CHAPTER IV — part 1~24 min
  8. 08CHAPTER IV — part 2~24 min
  9. 09CHAPTER IV — part 3~24 min
  10. 10CHAPTER I—THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLT~6 min
  11. 11CHAPTER II—THE BEGINNING~6 min
  12. 12CHAPTER III—THE MARCH OF THE REBELS~9 min
  13. 13CHAPTER IV—RULLION GREEN~7 min
  14. 14CHAPTER V—A RECORD OF BLOOD — part 1~25 min
  15. 15CHAPTER V—A RECORD OF BLOOD — part 2~11 min
  16. 16CHAPTER I—EDINBURGH STUDENTS IN 1824~9 min
  17. 17CHAPTER II—THE MODERN STUDENT CONSIDERED GENERALLY~16 min
  18. 18CHAPTER III—DEBATING SOCIETIES~12 min
  19. 19CHAPTER IV—THE PHILOSOPHY OF UMBRELLAS {151}~11 min
  20. 20CHAPTER V—THE PHILOSOPHY OF NOMENCLATURE~9 min
  21. 21CHAPTER I—LORD LYTTON’S ‘FABLES IN SONG’~21 min
  22. 22CHAPTER II—SALVINI’S MACBETH~13 min
  23. 23CHAPTER III—BAGSTER’S ‘PILGRIM’S PROGRESS’~25 min
  24. 24I. THE SATIRIST~6 min
  25. 25II. NUITS BLANCHES~5 min
  26. 26III. THE WREATH OF IMMORTELLES~10 min
  27. 27IV. NURSES~6 min
  28. 28V. A CHARACTER~3 min
  29. 29CHAPTER I—NANCE AT THE ‘GREEN DRAGON’~13 min
  30. 30CHAPTER II—IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED~16 min

A few words to begin

The problem of education is twofold: first to know, and then to utter. Every one who lives any semblance of an inner life thinks more nobly and profoundly than he speaks; and the best of teachers can impart only broken images of the truth which they perceive. Speech which goes from one to another between two natures, and, what is worse, between two experiences, is doubly relative. The speaker buries his meaning; it is for the hearer to dig it up again; and all speech, written or spoken, is in a dead language until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. Such, moreover, is the complexity of life, that when we condescend upon details in our advice, we may be sure we condescend on error; and the best of education is to throw out some magnanimous hints. No man was ever so poor that he could express all he has in him by words, looks, or actions; his true knowledge is eternally incommunicable, for it is a knowledge of himself; and his best wisdom comes to him by no process of the mind, but in a supreme self-dictation, which keeps varying from hour to hour in its dictates with the variation of events and circumstances. A few men of picked nature, full of faith, courage, and contempt for others, try earnestly to set forth as much as they can grasp of this inner law; but the vast majority, when they come to advise the young, must be content to retail certain doctrines which have be…

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