ABSTRACT
There are any number of difficulties that beset us when we try to treat this topic. We find it hard to keep ourselves dispassionate; this theme, the teacher as model, is peculiarly likely to engage our capacities for self-deception. When we think of ourselves as we once were, as students, we tend to re-construct ourselves at the feet of a great teacher—some great man, or perhaps only a kindly and devoted one—someone who infused in us whatever modest claim to merit we possess. Now this may indeed have happened to us but I have come to feel that whether or not it has, we will rearrange the past to imagine that it has. There is something in us, something almost archetypal, that makes us feel that we achieved our maturity only by taking over the strength and wisdom of our teachers.
