In putting dictation down as not being the ideal form of teaching in the Society, I do not speak of the proper use of dictation. The _Ratio_ itself leaves room for it. It is the abuse of dictation that merits and receives a protracted examination of its value, at the hands of the critics. The discussion is of the highest importance. In analyzing a style of instruction, with which they are not in harmony, they bring out the essential elements of all true teaching. And, if we approve at all of their principles, the implied disapproval for the rejected form becomes only aggravated, on contemplating an exaggerated development of the same; that is to say, when, instead of dictating what has the merit of being one's own laborious production, the teacher is seen to become the servile dependant on a text-book printed by somebody else; and neither does the teacher show any of the qualifications necessary to have composed the book, nor does the scholar expend the industry which would have been necessary to copy it. But it is left to speak as best it may, is read by the teacher, instead of his teaching, is read by the scholar as the talk of some third person, and is found, in the last issue, to have spoken just articulately enough for the pupil to have learnt a memory lesson, and perhaps to have gathered information which may or may not adhere to his mental structure. But, as to anything like mental training, or what is properly education, the final result of a long series of years seems to show that, if there has been any of it, possibly the man who wrote the book had it; and with him it has remained. So must it always be under such conditions. For when the living Master has contributed so little in the way of live education, the scholar must, of necessity, go away with somewhat less. These critics say trenchantly: "Let no dictation be given, unless the explanation of very much all that is dictated has gone before, or accompanies, or follows the dictation; where the custom does not exist, let no dictation be introduced; where it does, an effort should be made to do away with it, as far as possible." Then they support their position by many quotations from the Constitution of Ignatius.[266]