I have since pondered much upon this matter and have found that Aristotle, in his second book "Of the Soul," did put it well, whereas he compared the soul of a man to a blank unwritten tablet, whereon one could write what he would, and concluded that all such was decreed by the Creator of the world, in order that such blank tablets might by industrious impression and exercise be marked, and so be brought to completeness and perfection. And so saith also his commentator Averroes (upon that passage where the Philosopher saith that the Intellect is but a possibility which can be brought into activity by naught else than by Scientia or Knowledge: which is to say that man's understanding is capable of all things, yet can be brought to such knowledge only by constant exercise), and giveth this plain decision: namely, that this knowledge or exercise is the perfecting of souls which have no power at all in them selves. And this doth Cicero confirm in his second book of the "Tusculan Disputations," when he compares the soul of a man without instruction, knowledge, and exercise, to a field which, albeit fruitful by nature, yet if no man till it or sow it will bring forth no fruit. And all this did I prove by my own single example: for that I so soon understood all that the pious hermit shewed to me arose from this cause: that he found the smooth tablet of my soul quite empty and without any imaginings before entered thereupon, which might well have hindered the impress of others thereafter. Yet in spite of all, that pure simplicity (in comparison with other men's ways) hath ever clung to me: and therefore did the hermit (for neither he nor I knew my right name) ever call me Simplicissimus. Withal I learned to pray, and when the good hermit had resolved himself to satisfy my earnest desire to abide with him, we built for me a hut like to his own, of wood, twigs and earth, shaped well nigh as the musqueteer shapes his tent in camp or, to speak more exactly, as the peasant in some places shapes his turnip-hod, so low, in truth, that I could hardly sit upright therein; my bed was of dried leaves and grass, and just so large as the hut itself, so that I know not whether to call such a dwelling-place or hole, a covered bedstead or a hut. _Chap. x._: IN WHAT MANNER HE LEARNED TO READ AND WRITE IN THE WILD WOODS