Pruning: Learning

'Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering pot and the pruning knife.'

 Margaret S Fuller (1839)  Life of Mackintosh, The American Montly Magazine, Vil 1: Vol 7, p.575

Natural talent will develop without formal training, but will none the less benefit from cultivation and focus. 

 

Francis Bacon (1597, 1625) discussed 'proyning, by study' in his essay  Of Studies :

'They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning, by study; and studies themselves, do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.'

Francis Bacon, (1625) The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans

  

Miller (1995) discusses Bacon's 'pruning by study' as 'self-cultivation':

'Pruning a "natural plant" directs the plant's growth by blocking the wasteful or inefficient use of its resources in order that they may be expended, and the plant expanded, in a narrower yet more fruitful direction.'

John, J. Miller (1995) Pruning by Study: Self-cultivation in Bacon's Essays, Papers on Language & Literature, Aut 95, Vol. 31:4