Fourth Problem
How is it possible to teach everything according to one and the same method?
39. That there is only one natural method for all the sciences, and only one for all the arts and languages, will be shown in chaps. xx., xxi., and xxii. Any deviations that may be necessary are not important enough to constitute a fresh class, and are due less to peculiarities in the subject-matter an to the tea himself, who must be guided by the ability, or the reverse, of his pupils and by the progress that they make in the actual languages or arts that he is teaching. The universal adoption of the natural method, therefore, will be as great a boon to scholars as a plain and undeviating road is to travellers It will be easier to point out special aberrations, if the universal principle be first laid down as indisputable.
Fifth Problem
How can many things be explained in a few words?
40. To fill the minds of scholars with a dreary waste of books and of words is lost labour. For it is certain that a crust of bread and a mouthful of wine are more nutritious than a paunchful of trifle and of ragout, and that it is better to have a few gold pieces in one’s purse than a hundred-weight of lead. Rightly does Seneca say of instruction: “Its administration should resemble the sowing of seed, in which stress is laid, not on quantity, but on quality.” The conclusion, therefore, that we reached in chap. v. holds good: In man, the microcosm, everything is contained potentially. Bring light and he will straightway see.
And indeed for men who are working in the dark the faintest glimmer of light is sufficient. It is therefore necessary to select or to write handbooks of the sciences and languages which are small in compass and practically
