I have already mentioned that I purchased some books:  I did not forget to read them, but in a manner more proper to fatigue than instruct me.  I imagined that to read a book profitably, it was necessary to be acquainted with every branch of knowledge it even mentioned; far from thinking that the author did not do this himself, but drew assistance from other books, as he might see occasion.  Full of this silly idea, I was stopped every moment, obliged to run from one book to another, and sometimes, before I could reach the tenth page of what I was studying, found it necessary to turn over a whole library.  I was so attached to this ridiculous method, that I lost a prodigious deal of time and had bewildered my head to such a degree, that I was hardly capable of doing, seeing or comprehending anything.  I fortunately perceived, at length, that I was in the wrong road, which would entangle me in an inextricable labyrinth, and quitted it before I was irrevocably lost.

When a person has any real taste for the sciences, the first thing he perceives in the pursuit of them is that connection by which they mutually attract, assist, and enlighten each other, and that it is impossible to attain one without the assistance of the rest.  Though the human understanding cannot grasp all, and one must ever be regarded as the principal object, yet if the rest are totally neglected, the favorite study is generally obscure; I was convinced that my resolution to improve was good and useful in itself, but that it was necessary I should change my method; I, therefore, had recourse to the encyclopaedia.  I began by a distribution of the general mass of human knowledge into its various branches, but soon discovered that I must pursue a contrary course, that I must take each separately, and trace it to that point where it united with the rest:  thus I returned to the general synthetical method, but returned thither with a conviction that I was going right.  Meditation supplied the want of knowledge, and a very natural reflection gave strength to my resolutions, which was, that whether I lived or died, I had no time to lose; for having learned but little before the age of five-and-twenty, and then resolving to learn everything, was engaging to employ the future time profitably.  I was ignorant at what point accident or death might put a period to my endeavors, and resolved at all events to acquire with the utmost expedition some idea of every species of knowledge, as well to try my natural disposition, as to judge for myself what most deserved cultivation.

In the execution of my plan, I experienced another advantage which I had never thought of; this was, spending a great deal of time profitably.  Nature certainly never meant me for study, since attentive application fatigues me so much, that I find it impossible to employ myself half an hour together intently on any one subject; particularly while following another person’s ideas, for it has frequently happened