To this the critics promptly make answer: Those who are to lecture in future are either such as are now beginning their career of Professorship, or such as are long accustomed to dictation. For those who are now beginning, previous exercise is to be recommended in the most approved form of lecture, or prælectio. And they sketch the form. As to the others who are long habituated to dictating, the critics ask such Professors to give this form of lecturing the benefit of a trial. If they despair of being able to adopt it, let them go their own way, until another generation of Professors is ready to take their places. Dictation can also be permitted, where our Professors have often tried to give it up, but with the consequence that the students took fright, and abandoned the classes. "Yet," continue the Fathers, "they would not be apt to abandon the courses, nor complain so much, if all the Professors would devote themselves to brilliant lecturing,[268] and would put away dictation. For, if one dictates and nurses the lazy folks, and another does not, who doubts but that sloth will still be dearer to the slothful than the labors and thorns of study? Yea, by dictation they are made daily more and more lazy, so as to be always asking for more and more time; whereas, without dictation, they become daily more prompt, and need less time for everything."[269]
The final Ratio of 1599 embodies these suggestions, without being absolute in excluding all dictation, for which it suggests the form most useful and in accord with the spirit of true lecturing. It deprecates the dictation of what may be found in authors within reach of the students. "Let the Professor refer his hearers to those authors who have been copious and accurate in their treatment of any matter." As to what the critics of 1586 recommend, that, if dictation be given, the lecture should extend to five quarters of an hour, the Ratio says nothing about it.[270]
Possevino, in his Bibliotheca Selecta, has a chapter on this question, "Whether mental culture suffers by the dictation of lectures?" He answers in the affirmative, and he speaks on the subject with his usual erudition. He refers to the Pythagorean "acoustic" disciples, who were never copyists, and not even talkers, until, by a prolonged silence for years, they had thought enough to be able to talk well, to put questions, and make comments. He quotes the cynicism of Diogenes, about writing at the expense of true exercise. He notes the plan of Xeniades the Corinthian, who gave a written compendium to the young people, but one so short that they had to have the best part of their learning in their heads. The Socratic method was eminently one of living speech. And, as to Aristotle's "peripatetic" school, which was conducted while walking about the Lyceum, that was certainly neither in practice nor in principle favorable to writing. Coming to speak expressly of dictation and citing a pleasant old rhyme:—
Quod si charta cadat, secum sapientia vadat,[271]
Possevino goes on to plead for the chests of the students, and says that the ink is the price of their blood, and the end of their studies becomes the end of their lives. Hence one singular result of it all is, that scholars even employ amanuenses to go to school instead of themselves, and bring back in writing what was said. But all that money, says Possevino, could have been reserved for the buying of books, to supplement real study.
Then he enforces what he has said with a piece of university history, wherein perhaps no one of his time was better versed. The University of Paris, two and a half centuries before, had legislated against dictating, and against the Doctors who used it, and who were dubbed Nominatores ad pennam. One century before, the Cardinal Legate had again formulated a law on the subject. And finally the Jesuits, "of whom a great number are chiefly engaged in this profession, taught by experience the evils of that system, have long understood the necessity, not merely of moderating it, but simply doing away with it. Wherefore the Fathers in the universities of Portugal have already published a part of Natural Philosophy, whereby writing is dispensed with, room is left for quickening genius, and much material stored up to bring into the arena of discussion."[272]
[CHAPTER XV.]
FORMATION OF THE SCHOLAR. SYMMETRY OF THE COURSES. THE PRELECTION. BOOKS.
What is developed to perfection can make other things like unto itself; it is prolific. So the Aristotelian principle has it: Perfectum est, quod generat simile sibi. This is the outcome and test of perfection. Having followed the Master, therefore, till he was complete in his own formation, we have now turned to look in another direction, and see him reacting upon those whom he is to form. Though much has been said already implicitly or otherwise, on the method and principles of this reactive process, yet something remains, especially with regard to the lower faculties, the literary courses. In this chapter, we may consider the attitude which the Professors take, singly and as a body, towards the students and towards their own courses; and then their chief manner of imparting knowledge, or what is called in the Ratio the prælectio. In the next chapter we can survey the principal class exercises, and the method of school management, throughout the lower grades. And, in the chapter after that, I shall sketch the system of grades from the lowest to the highest.