§ 8. So entirely was Montaigne detached from the thought of the Renascence that he scoffs at his own learning, and declares that true learning has for its subject, not the past or the future, but the present. “We are truly learned from knowing the present, not from knowing the past any more than the future.” And yet “we toil only to stuff the memory and leave the conscience and the understanding void. And like birds who fly abroad to forage for grain bring it home in their beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young, so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there out of several authors, and hold it at their tongue’s end, only to spit it out and distribute it amongst their pupils.” (_Du Pédantisme._) “We are all richer than we think, but they drill us in borrowing and begging, and lead us to make more use of other people’s goods than of our own.”[41] (Bk. iij, chap. 12, _De la Physionomie_, beg. of 3rd paragraph). § 9. So far Montaigne. What do we schoolmasters say to all this? If we would be quite candid I think we must allow that, after reading Montaigne’s essay, we put it down with the conviction that in the main he was right, and that he had proved the error and absurdity of a vast deal that goes on in the schoolroom. But from this first view we have had on reflection to make several drawbacks. § 10. Montaigne, like Locke and Rousseau, who followed in his steps, arranges for every boy to have a tutor entirely devoted to him. We may question whether this method of bringing up children is desirable, and we may assert, without question, that in most cases it is impossible. It seems ordained that at every stage of life we should require the companionship of those of our own age. If we take two beings as little alike as a man and a child and force them to be each other’s companions, so great is the difference in their thoughts and interests that they will fall into inevitable boredom and restraint. So we see that this plan, even in the few cases in which it would be possible, would not be desirable; and for the great majority of boys it would be out of the question. We must then arrange for the young to be taught, not as individuals, but in classes, and this greatly changes the conditions of the problem. One of the first conditions is this, that we have to employ each class regularly and uniformly for some hours every day. Schoolmasters know what their non-scholastic mentors forget: we can make a class learn, but, broadly speaking, we cannot make a class think, still less can we make it judge. As a great deal of occupation has to be provided, we are therefore forced to make our pupils learn. Whatever may be the value of the learning in itself it is absolutely necessary _as employment_.