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THE GREAT DIDACTIC

suitable occupations, such as agriculture, mechanics, or trade.

5. Secondly, if each student devote his undivided energies to that subject for which he is evidently suited by nature. For some men are more suited than others to be theologians, doctors, or lawyers, just as others have a natural aptitude for and excel in music, poetry, or oratory. This is a matter in which we are apt to make frequent mistakes, trying to carve statues out of every piece of wood, and disregarding the intention of nature. The result is that many enter on branches of study for which they have no vocation, produce no good results in them, and attain to greater success in their subsidiary pursuits than in those that they have chosen.

A public examination, therefore, should be held for the students who leave the Latin-School, and from its results the masters may decide which of them should be sent to the University, and which should enter on the other occupations of life. Those who are selected will pursue their studies, some choosing theology, some politics, and some medicine, in accordance with their natural inclination and with the needs of the Church and of the state.

6. Thirdly, those of quite exceptional talent should be urged to pursue all the branches of study, that there may always be some men whose knowledge is encyclopædic.

7. Care should be taken to admit to the University only those who are diligent and of moral character. False students, who waste their patrimony and their time in ease and luxury, and thus set a bad example to others, should not be tolerated. Thus, if there is no disease, there can be no infection, and all will be intent upon their work.

8. We said that every class of author should be read in the University. Now this would be a laborious task, but its use is great, and it is therefore to be hoped that men of learning, philologers, philosophers, theologians, physicians, etc., will render the same service to students as has been rendered to those who study geography by geo-