The purpose of education isn't to be like great men who have gone before. It is, rather, simply to be great. To find light. To improve the world through greatness bestowed by the original source, rather than just taking as true what great men have said.
Emerson, in his essay The American Scholar, said,
"Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.
Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul."
We each have something to contribute to the world. Why would we want to be somebody else? Why would we want to be a copy of somebody who has already come and gone?
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