Soc.: It would certainly seem so, and this difference you have, no doubt, made clear to your form, for, at present, I must confess myself unable to discover in what it consists. The exercise of Latin prose as of Latin 'con,' for each study is the translation of a language and the correct rendering of the idiom of that language into the language and idiom of another tongue, is no doubt intended to train, inform, and quicken the intelligence. Each would appear to be branches of the same study, and for each the same method of instruction should be employed. You tell me, however, that there is between these two branches an essential difference.
Mr. F.: You are right, Socrates, and, though I cannot explain the difference in so many words, its nature is plain to me.
Soc.: Of that, Mr. Featherbrain, I am certain. I understand that you apprehend this fine distinction as you apprehended the fine distinction between the written and the printed 'crib.' We should consider, though, whether this distinction is equally plain to your form. Such intuitive knowledge may be denied to them, and, if they sin through ignorance, their sin is slighter than if they sinned through knowledge. Tell me, now, whether, if you overheard one member of your form say to another on the way to chapel: 'I'm absolutely tied up with that piece of prose. Shall I put it in O. R. or O. O.?' would you immediately report that boy to the head master?
Mr. F.: I should not.
Soc.: You would no more report him than if you had overheard him asking his friend to make clear to him a passage of Virgil that had puzzled him.
Mr. F.: That is so.
Soc.: Do you not think, therefore, that the boy who knows he is allowed to ask for help in his Latin 'con,' and who does not know for what reason he is not allowed to ask for help in his Latin prose, who has never, that is to say, been able to apprehend the fine difference between the nature of the two studies, is likely to consider that the same technique is permissible for both branches, and would not that third party of whom we spoke and who is in the habit of getting his Latin 'con' done for him by his friend, consider himself morally justified in accepting the same assistance in his Latin prose?
Mr. F.: But I have told him that it is not allowed.
Soc.: Certainly, but good can only come from a reasoned knowledge of what is good, and you have not explained to him in what his fault consists. Moreover, if you have granted him permission to seek advice in small matters, you must tell him at what exact point the thirst for information becomes dishonest; a line must be drawn between what is good and what is bad. Is a boy responsible for a percentage of his prose, and, if so, for what percentage. Have you made these things plain to him?
Mr. F.: I have not, O Socrates.