Unlike many “theoretical notions” this precept of Ratke’s comes more and more into favour as the schoolmaster increases in age and experience. But we must be careful to take our pupils with us; and this repeating the same thing over and over may seem to them what marking time would seem to soldiers who wanted to march. Even more than the last rule this is open to the objections that monotony is deadening, and perfect attainment of anything but words impossible. In keeping to a subject then we must not rely on simple repetition. The rule now accepted is thus stated by Diesterweg:—“Every subject of instruction should be viewed from as many sides as possible, and as varied exercises as possible should be set on one and the same thing.” The art of the master is shown in disguising repetition and bringing known things into new connection, so that they may partially at least retain their freshness. § 14. IV. _First let the mother-tongue be studied, and teach everything through the mother-tongue, so that the learners attention may not be diverted to the language._ We saw that Sturm, the leading schoolmaster of Renascence, tried to suppress the mother-tongue and substitute Latin for it. Against this a vigorous protest was made in this country by Mulcaster. And our language was never conquered by a foreign language, as German was conquered first by Latin and then by French. But “the tongues” have always had the lion’s share of attention in the schoolroom, and though many have seen and Milton has said that “our understanding cannot in this body found itself but on sensible things,” this truth is only now making its way into the schoolroom. Hitherto the foundation has hardly been laid before “the schoolmaster has stept in and staid the building by confounding the language.”[57] Ratke’s protest against this will always be put to his credit in the history of education. § 15. V. _Everything without constraint._ “The young should not be beaten to make them learn or for not having learnt. It is compulsion and stripes that set young people against studying. Boys are often beaten for not having learnt, but they would have learnt had they been well taught. The human understanding is so formed that it has pleasure in receiving what it should retain: and this pleasure you destroy by your harshness. Where the master is skilful and judicious, the boys will take to him and to their lessons. Folly lurks indeed in the heart of the child and must be driven out with the rod; but not by the _teacher_.”