So with grammar. Instance the writer’s experience with German. Few native Germans could recite offhand what prepositions govern the genitive, dative and accusative, even if they knew what was meant by these terms. But they would (most of them) use these cases correctly, and without the least thought. The educated Englishman or American flatters himself that his correct speech is due to his study of grammar. This is far from true. His speech is due to unconscious imitation of the language of the people with whom he comes into contact, and of the books he reads. And needless to say, the cultivated man comes into contact with other cultivated men and with good literature; the ignoramus does not. Most of our thinking is influenced in this way. The great thinkers of the past improved their innate powers not by the study of rules for thinking, but by reading the works of other great thinkers, and unconsciously imitating their habitual method and caution. The fact to remember is that a rule is something that has been formulated after the thing which it rules. It is merely an abstract of current practice or of good practice. Rules are needful because they teach in little time what would otherwise require much experience to learn, or which we might never discover for ourselves at all. They help us to learn things right in the beginning; they prevent us from falling into wrong habits. The trouble with unsupplemented imitation, conscious or unconscious, is that we tend to imitate another’s faults along with his virtues. Rules enable us to distinguish, especially if we have learned the reason for the rules. But practice and rules should not be compared as if they were opposed. The true road is plenty of practice with conscientious regard to rule. It may be insisted that this has its limits; that there is a point beyond which a man cannot improve himself. I admit that practice has its limits. It may be true that there is a point beyond which a man cannot advance. But nobody knows those limits and no one can say when that point has come. No two individuals profit in the same degree by the same practice. With a given amount one man will always improve faster than another. But the slower man may keep up with his more speedy brother by more practice. I shall not repeat here the fable of the hare and the tortoise. But any one who has discovered a flaw in his mental make-up, any one who believes that he cannot concentrate, or that his memory is poor, and that therefore he can never become a thinker, should find consolation in the words of William James: