Suppose, then, by these limitations on a student's caprice we have secured his persistence in outward endeavor, still one thing more is needed. We have brought him bodily to a recitation room; but his mind must be there too, his aroused and active mind. Limitations that will secure this slippery part of the person are difficult to devise. Nevertheless, they are worth studying. Their object is plain. They are to lead a student to do something every day; to aid him to overcome those tendencies to procrastination, self-confidence, and passive absorption which are the regular and calculable dangers of youth. They are to teach him how not to cram, to inspire him with respect for steady effort, and to enable him each year to find such effort more habitual to himself. These are hard tasks. The old education tried to meet them by the use of daily recitations, a plan not without advantages. The new education is preserving the valuable features of recitations by adopting and developing the _Seminar_. But recitations pure and simple have serious drawbacks. They presuppose a text-book, which, while it brings definiteness, brings also narrowness of view. The learner masters a book, not a subject. After-life possesses nothing analogous to the text-book. A struggling man wins what he wants from many books, from his own thought, from frequent consultations. Why should not a student be disciplined in the ways he must afterwards employ? Moreover, recitations have the disadvantage that no large number of men can take part on any single day. The times of trial either become amenable to reckoning, or, in order to prevent reckoning, a teacher must resort to schemes which do not commend him to his class. Undoubtedly in recitation the reciter gains, but the gains of the rest of the class are small. The listeners would be more profited by instruction. An hour with an expert should carry students forward; to occupy it in ascertaining where they now stand is wasteful. For all these reasons there has been of late years a strong reaction against recitations. Lectures have been introduced, and the time formerly spent by a professor in hearing boys is now spent by boys in hearing a professor. Plainly in this there is a gain, but a gain which needs careful limitation if the student's persistence in work is to be retained. A pure lecture system is a broad road to ignorance. Students are entertained or bored, but at the end of a month they know little more than at the beginning. Lectures always seem to me an inheritance from the days when books were not. Learning--how often must it be said!--is not acceptance; it is criticism, it is attack, it is doing. An active element is everywhere involved in it. Personal sanction is wanted for every step. One who will grow wise must perform processes himself, not sit at ease and behold another's performance.