this over, the intellect was scarcely ever nourished by the actual facts, but was filled with the husks of words, with a windy and parrot-like loquacity, and with the chaff of opinions.
11. The study of the Latin language alone (to take this subject as an example), good heavens! how intricate, how complicated, and how prolix it was! Camp followers and military attendants, engaged in the kitchen and in other menial occupations, learn a tongue that differs from their own, sometimes two or three, quicker than the children in schools learn Latin only, though children have abundance of time, and devote all their energies to it. And with what unequal progress! The former gabble their languages after a few months, while the latter, after fifteen or twenty years, can only put a few sentences into Latin with the aid of grammars and of dictionaries, and cannot do even this without mistakes and hesitation. Such a disgraceful waste of time and of labour must assuredly arise from a faulty method.
12. On this subject the celebrated Eilhard Lubinus, professor in the University of Rostock, has with justice remarked: “When I consider the ordinary method of teaching boys in schools, it seems to me as if it had been laboriously devised with a view to make it impossible for teachers and pupils alike to lead or to be led to a knowledge of the Latin tongue, without great labour, great tedium, infinite trouble, and the greatest possible consumption of time. A state of things which I cannot think of without shuddering.” And a little farther on: “After frequent consideration of these matters I find myself always led to the conclusion, that the entire system must have been introduced into schools by some evil and envious genius, the enemy of the human race.” So says Lubinus, who is only one out of many authorities whom I could quote in my favour.
13. But what need is there of witnesses? How many of us there are who have left the schools and universities with scarcely a notion of true learning! I, unfortunate
