I do not mean by this that a young man may not make a useful discovery, but only that he may be led away by the ardor of early life to fancy that essential and important which is really not so.  It is important that each one should determine whether this is not the case with himself, if his mind is revolving some new plan.

3.  Perhaps you are contemplating only a single new institution, which is to depend for its success on yourself and some coadjutors whom you have in mind and whom you well know.  If this is the case, consider whether the establishment you are contemplating can be carried on, after you shall have left it, by such men as can ordinarily be obtained.  If the plan is founded on some peculiar notions of your own, which would enable you to succeed in it when others, who might also be interested in such a scheme, would probably fail, consider whether there may not be danger that your plan may be imitated by others who can not carry it into successful operation, so that it may be the indirect means of doing injury.  A man is, in some degree, responsible for his example and for the consequences which may indirectly flow from his course, as well as for the immediate results which he produces.  The Fellenberg school at Hofwyl was perhaps, by its direct results, as successful for a time as any other institution in the world; but there is a great offset to the good which it has thus done to be found in the history of the thousand wretched imitations of it which have been started only to linger a little while and die, and in which a vast amount of time, and talent, and money have been wasted.

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4.  Consider the influence you may have upon the other institutions of our country, by attaching yourself to some one under the existing organization.  If you take an academy or a private school, constituted and organized like other similar institutions, success in your own will give you influence over others.  A successful teacher of an academy raises the general standard of academic instruction.  A college professor, if he brings extraordinary talents to bear upon the regular duties of that office, throws light, universally, upon the whole science of college discipline and instruction, and thus aids in infusing a continually renewed life and vigor into those venerable seats of learning that might otherwise sink into decrepitude and decay.  By going, however, to some new field, establishing some new and fanciful institution, you take yourself from such a sphere; you exert no influence over others, except upon feeble imitators, who fail in their attempts, and bring discredit upon your plans by the awkwardness with which they attempt to adopt them.  How much more service, then, to the cause of education will a man of genius render, by falling in with the regularly organized institutions of the country and elevating them, than if in early life he were to devote his powers to some magnificent project of an establishment to which his talents would unquestionably have given temporary success, but which would have taken him away from the community of teachers, and confined the results of his labors to the more immediate effects which his daily duties might produce.