In the same sense, these critics, whom we are following, consider it undesirable that a Master should resign his post in less than three years. Frequent and manifold changes provoke complaints on the part of the outside world. Besides, the Master's own efforts at acquiring perfection in the magisterial art will be cut short. When there is no prospective permanency in a position, the mind is not so seriously applied to the work in hand.[188] In all this, a most important question regarding boys is being faced by these critics; and a definite practical solution is adopted. The question is, which of the two alternatives to adopt, whether to submit boys to one person's dominant influence, or to pass them on through the hands of divers experienced and permanent Professors, stationed respectively in the different grades. This latter alternative, if it is understood to mean that one Professor remains perpetually in one grade, and another in another, scarcely seems to merit consideration with them, except as regards the two highest literary classes,--of Poetry and Rhetoric,--where the requirements of erudition are so considerable as to need a lengthened term of years for filling the chairs worthily. But, if the alternative regarding permanent Professors means that the same teachers remain constantly within the limits of the same curriculum, then the question seems to be the one which the critics of the preliminary _Ratio_ argue about in both senses, for and against; and they finally arrive at a solution, or rather a compromise.[189] The severest thing they say against the plan is in this wise, when speaking directly of the two highest grades: "Perpetuity of that kind may give occasion to mere idleness and indifference; for after acquiring, in the first years, some esteem and name for their learning (in Poetry or Rhetoric), Masters prefer to enjoy the fruit and name of the labor already undergone, however moderate that was, rather than wear themselves out with new labors. Hence they make no new acquisitions in the learning and accomplishments proper to their branch; they get rooted in very much the same spot, and teach what they have taught before over and over again, though with some variations. What is worse, as if they were quite worn out with their prolonged exertions, they say that they cannot any longer stand all the labor of exercising their students; whence everything freezes, and they ask for an assistant, who, if he is unlearned, does more harm than good; if learned, then why are two doing the work of one?"