§ 5. Here are some of them: “The evil comes of the foolish way in which our [instructors] set to work; and on the plan on which we are taught no wonder if neither scholars nor masters become more able, whatever they may do in becoming more learned. In truth the trouble and expense of our fathers are directed only to furnish our heads with knowledge: not a word of judgment or virtue. Cry out to our people about a passer-by, ‘There’s a learned man!’ and about another ‘There’s a good man!’ they will be all agog after the learned man, and will not look at the good man. One might fairly raise a third cry: ‘There’s a set of numskulls!’ We are ready enough to ask ‘Does he know Greek or know Latin? Does he write verse or write prose?’ But whether he has become wiser or better should be the first question, and that is always the last. We ought to find out, not who knows _most_ but who knows _best_.” (I, chap. 24, _Du Pédantisme_, page or two beyond _Odi homines_.) § 6. The true educators, according to Montaigne, were the Spartans, who despised literature, and cared only for character and action. At Athens they thought about words, at Sparta about things. At Athens boys learnt to speak well, at Sparta to do well: at Athens to escape from sophistical arguments, and to face all attempts to deceive them; at Sparta to escape from the allurements of pleasure, and to face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, even death itself. In the one system there was constant exercise of the tongue, in the other of the soul. “So it is not strange that when Antipater demanded of the Spartans fifty children as hostages they replied they would sooner give twice as many grown men, such store did they set by their country’s training.” (_Du Pédantisme_, ad f.) § 7. It is odd to find a man of the fifteen hundreds who quotes from the old authors at every turn, and yet maintains that “we lean so much on the arm of other people that we lose our own strength.” The thing a boy should learn is not what the old authors say, but “what he himself ought to do when he becomes a man.” Wisdom, not knowledge! “We may become learned from the learning of others; wise we can never be except by our own wisdom.” (Bk. j, chap. 24).