To consider music I am told that a person who is ignorant of music can teach, say, the piano or the violin. This seems to go beyond the region of paradox into that of utter nonsense. Talent often surmounts all kinds of difficulties; but in the case of self-taught, and ill-taught musicians, it is often painful to see what time and talent have been wasted for want of proper instruction. I have thus carefully examined Jacotot’s pretensions to teach what he did not know, because I am anxious that what seems to me the rubbish should be cleared away from his principles, and should no longer conceal those parts of his system which are worthy of general attention. § 10. At the root of Jacotot’s paradox lay a truth of very great importance. The highest and best teaching is not that which makes the pupils passive recipients of other peoples’ ideas (not to speak of the teaching which conveys mere words without any ideas at all), but that which guides and encourages the pupils in working for themselves and thinking for themselves. The master, as Joseph Payne well says, can no more think, or practise, or see for his pupil, than he can digest for him, or walk for him. The pupil must owe everything to his own exertions, which it is the function of the master to encourage and direct. Perhaps this may seem very obvious truth, but obvious or not it has been very generally neglected. The old system of lecturing which found favour with the Jesuits, has indeed now passed away, and boys are left to acquire facts from school-books instead of from the master. But this change is merely accidental. The essence of the teaching still remains. Even where the master does not confine himself to hearing what the scholars have learnt by heart, he seldom does more than offer explanations. He measures the teaching rather by the amount which has been put before the scholars—by what he has done for them and shown them—than by what they have learned. But this is not teaching of the highest type. When the votary of Dulness in the “Dunciad” is rendering an account of his services, he arrives at this climax, “For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, Goddess, and about it.” And in the same spirit Mr. J. M. Wilson stigmatises as synonymous “the most stupid and most _didactic_ teaching.”