The world would not have advanced to such an extent if we could not take advantage of our own experience or that of others. We should have been still at the same stage of civilization where mankind in its early stages stood; for each succeeding generation would have gone on the same path that the preceding had trodden taking the same starting point, going through the same trials and errors, and coming to the same outcome. But it is not so. Each succeeding generation learned by the experience of the previous one; they came to their task better prepared than their predecessors, gaining the experience that their predecessors did not have, and when they departed, they left behind themselves a richer heritage of human knowledge, which those who came after them used as their starting-point. 
Even though it is a fact that all of us learn something from the experience of others, there is still much that all of us have to learn from our own experience. While attaining this experience we must make mistakes as men are not born perfect, but it is practice that can make them so. All arts are to be learnt through our practices. A child will never learn to walk, if he is not permitted to walk. We should not have a superstitious fear of making mistakes; those who do so will never learn anything.
Those who make mistakes may be better than those who do not make any because those who try to learn something make mistakes; those who do not make mistake mostly do not try to learn anything and thus remain as ignorant as before. Nor should mistakes dishearten us from going on with the business we had once commenced.
In the beginning we should not think about how distant we are from our goal; rather we have to consider how much our second attempt is better than the first, and similarly the third than the second. This will encourage us. We should not be disheartened, if we make slow progress; in the beginning it is bound to be so. Time is an important factor in all practice; after some time if we recollect at the point from which we started, we will marvel how far behind we have left it, how far we have progressed since we started. We should keep in mind that the great masters whose works now make us wonder, and seem to have a charm and a perfection that we think we can never achieve, was one day making miserable efforts to copy some other model. If we could look at their first attempts, when they were beginners, and then at the perfection that they ultimately attained, we should wonder what a world of difference there is between them. We should always keep in our memory that the heights attained by great men were not through abrupt flight, it was the result of much laboring, endurance and determination.
 A child's life is a good example of what perseverance and determination can achieve. His life shows us that impossibilities are made possible by ceaseless energy, by unrelenting enthusiasm, by resolute confidence in its own powers, an utter indifference to mistakes and failures. If a grown up were to demanded to learn to utter sounds and to learn to speak for the first time, having not done so in his childhood, he would know how commendable is the perseverance of the child, how indefatigable is his industry, and how wonderful is his confidence. Nor should our errors in the start, our failure to cope our model make us think that we lack the capacity for that task or responsibility. It should remembered that the difference between a great man and a mediocre one is more the result of difference in hard work, patience and determination than of disparity in mental or physical talents; it is persistence and industry that makes the difference between them.
Thus human beings can learn from others and can avoid their mistakes without undergoing their sad experiences. Here those who learn to avoid these evils from observing their sad consequences in others are wise: next to them in the scale of wisdom are those who learn from their own mistakes and reform themselves. 
The mistakes of others being of no concern to us have not so much influence upon us as our own; in the former case we merely observe the evil consequences, we ourselves do not feel them; they are remote from us and lack that directness which our own experiences have.
Thus, our mistakes indicate us our defects, correct our false guesstimates of our own capabilities, and make us capable of knowing what great potentials lie concealed in us. They put us on the road to hard work and call our powers of endurance and determination – potentials of which we ourselves could have remained ignorant but for them; they teach us a lesson that none else can teach, which is enduring and which we shall never disremember, and finally they bring about a reform in us so that we be like gold, and the dross of our impurities and failures have been burnt by passing through the fire of enticements.