We must encourage [each other]—once we have
grasped the basic points—to interconnecting ever ything
else on our own, to use memor y to guide our original think-
ing, and to accept what someone else says as a starting
point, a seed to be nourished and grow. For the correct
analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling but
wood that needs igniting—no more—and then it motivates
one towards originality and instills the desire for truth.

Suppose someone were to go and ask his neighbors for fire
and find a substantial blaze there, and just stay there con-
tinually warming himself: that is no different from someone
who goes to someone else to get to some of his rationality,
and fails to realize that he ought to ignite his own flame, his
own intellect, but is happy to sit entranced by the lecture,
and the words trigger only associative thinking and bring,
as it were, only a flush to his cheeks and a glow to his limbs;
but he has not dispelled or dispersed, in the warm light of
philosophy, the internal dank gloom of his mind.

Plutarch