'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their
pupil's ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the business
of the pupil is only to repeat what the others have said: now, I
would have a tutor to correct this error, and that, at the very first,
he should, according to the capacity he has to deal with, put it to
the test, permitting his pupil himself to taste things, and of himself
to discern and choose them, sometimes opening the way to him, and
sometimes leaving him to open it for himself; that is, I would not
have him alone to invent and speak, but that he should also hear his
pupil speak in turn.... Let him make him put what he has learned into
a hundred several forms, and accommodate it to so many several
subjects, to see if he yet rightly comprehends it, and has made it his
own.... 'Tis a sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat
in the same condition it was swallowed: the stomach has not performed
its office, unless it have altered the form and condition of what was
committed to it to concoct....
Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift every thing he reads and
lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon trust,
Aristotle's principles will then be no more principles to him than
those of Epicurus and the stoics: let this diversity of opinions be
propounded to, and laid before, him; he will himself choose, if he be
able; if not, he will remain in doubt.
"Che, non men che saper, dubbiar m'aggrata."
DANTE, _Inferno_, xl, 93.
["That doubting pleases me, not less than knowing."
LONGFELLOW'S _Translation_.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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