For a boy of quality then, who pretends to letters not upon the
account of profit (for so mean an object as that is unworthy of the
grace and favor of the Muses, and moreover, in it a man directs his
service to and depends upon others), nor so much for outward ornament,
as for his own proper and peculiar use, and to furnish and enrich
himself within, having rather a desire to come out an accomplished
cavalier than a mere scholar or learned man; for such a one, I say,
I would, also, have his friends solicitous to find him out a tutor,
who has rather a well-made than a well-filled head; seeking, indeed,
both the one and the other, but rather of the two to prefer manners
and judgment to mere learning, and that this man should exercise his
charge after a new method.

    'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in
their pupil's ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, while the
business of the pupil is only to repeat what the others have said: now
I would have a tutor to correct this error, and, that at the very
first, he should, according to the capacity he has to deal with, put
it to the test, permitting his pupil himself to taste things, and of
himself to discern and choose them, sometimes opening the way to
him, and sometimes leaving him to open it for himself; that is, I
would not have him alone to invent and speak, but that he should
also hear his pupil speak in turn. Socrates, and since him Arcesilaus,
made first their scholars speak, and then they spoke to them. "Obest
plerumque iis, qui discere volunt, auctoritas eorum, qui docent." It
is good to make him, like a young horse, trot before him that he may
judge of his going and how much he is to abate of his own speed, to
accommodate himself to the vigor and capacity of the other. For want
of which due proportion we spoil all; which also to know how to
adjust, and to keep within an exact and due measure, is one of the
hardest things I know, and 'tis the effect of a high and well-tempered
soul to know how to condescend to such puerile motions and to govern
and direct them. I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down.

    Such as, according to our common way of teaching, undertake,
with one and the same lesson, and the same measure of direction, to
instruct several boys of differing and unequal capacities, are
infinitely mistaken; and 'tis no wonder, if in a whole multitude of
scholars, there are not found above two or three who bring away any
good account of their time and discipline. Let the master not only
examine him about the grammatical construction of the bare words of
his lesson, but about the sense and substance of them, and let him
judge of the profit he has made, not by the testimony of his memory,
but by that of his life. Let him make him put what he has learned into
a hundred several forms, and accommodate it to so many several
subjects, to see if he yet rightly comprehends it, and has made it his
own, taking instruction of his progress by the pedagogic
institutions of Plato. 'Tis a sign of crudity and indigestion to
disgorge what we eat in the same condition it was swallowed; the
stomach has not performed its office unless it have altered the form
and condition of what was committed to it to concoct. Our minds work
only upon trust, when bound and compelled to follow the appetite of
another's fancy, enslaved and captivated under the authority of
another's instruction; we have been so subjected to the trammel,
that we have no free, nor natural pace of our own; our own vigor and
liberty are extinct and gone: "Nunquam tutelae suae fiunt."

    I was privately carried at Pisa to see a very honest man, but so
great an Aristotelian, that his most usual thesis was: "That the
touchstone and square of all solid imagination, and of all truth,
was an absolute conformity to Aristotle's doctrine; and that all
besides was nothing but inanity and chimera; for that he had seen all,
and said all." A position, that for having been a little too
injuriously and broadly interpreted, brought him once and long kept
him in great danger of the Inquisition at Rome.

    Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift everything he
reads, and lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon
trust. Aristotle's principles will then be no more principles to
him, than those of Epicurus and the Stoics: let this. diversity of
opinions be propounded to, and laid before him; he will himself
choose, if he be able; if not, he will remain in doubt.

          "Che, non men che saper, dubbiar m' aggrata,"

for, if he embrace the opinions of Xenophon and Plato, by his own
reason, they will no more be theirs, but become his own. Who follows
another, follows nothing, finds nothing, nay, is inquisitive after
nothing. "Non sumus sub rege; sibi quisque se vindicet." Let him at
least, know that he knows. It will be necessary that he imbibe their
knowledge, not that he be corrupted with their precepts; and no matter
if he forgot where he had his learning, provided he know how to
apply it to his own use. Truth and reason are common to every one, and
are no more his who spake them first, than his who speaks them
after: 'tis no more according to Plato, than according to me, since
both he and I equally see and understand them. Bees cull their several
sweets from this flower and that blossom, here and there where they
find them, but themselves afterward make the honey, which is all and
purely their own, and no more thyme and marjoram: so the several
fragments he borrows from others, he will transform and shuffle
together to compile a work that shall be absolutely his own; that is
to say, his judgment: his instruction, labor and study, tend to
nothing else but to form that. He is not obliged to discover whence he
got the materials that have assisted him, but only to produce what
he has himself done with them. Men that live upon pillage and
borrowing, expose their purchases and buildings to every one's view:
but do not proclaim how they came by the money. We do not see the fees
and perquisites of a gentleman of the long robe; but we see the
alliances wherewith he fortifies himself and his family, and the