27. Various Deviations.—It is therefore wrong to teach the unknown through the medium of that which is equally unknown, as is the case: (i) If boys who are beginning Latin are taught the rules in Latin. This is just as if the attempt were made to explain Hebrew by Hebrew rules, or Arabic by Arabic rules.
(ii) If these same beginners are given as assistance a Latin-German instead of a German-Latin dictionary. For they do not want to learn their mother-tongue by the aid of Latin, but to learn Latin through the medium of the language that they already know. (On this error we will say more in chap. xxii.)
(iii) If boys are given a foreign teacher who does not understand their language. For if they have no common medium through which they can hold communication with him, and can only guess at what he is saying, can anything but a Tower of Babel be the result?
(iv) A deviation is made from the right method of teaching, if boys of all nations (i.e. French, German, Bohemian, Polish, or Hungarian boys) are taught in accordance with the same rules of grammar (those of Melanchthon or of Ramus,26 for example), since each of these languages stands in its own particular relation to Latin, and this relation must be well understood if Latin is to be thoroughly taught to boys of these several nationalities.
28. Rectification.—These errors may be avoided
(i) If the teachers and their pupils talk the same language.
(ii) If all explanations are given in the language that the pupils understand.
(iii) If grammars and dictionaries are adapted to the language through the medium of which the new one is to be learned (that is to say, the Latin Grammar to the mother-tongue, and Greek Grammar to the Latin language).
(iv) If the study of a new language be allowed to proceed gradually and in such a way that the scholar learn first to understand (for this is the easiest), then to write
