A History of Education During the Middle Ages and the Transition to Modern Times

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Macmillan, 1910 - 328 pages
 

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Page 255 - And though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only.
Page 307 - As the strength of the body lies chiefly in being able to endure hardships, so also does that of the mind. And the great principle and foundation of all virtue and worth is placed in this, that a man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs as best, though the appetite lean the other way.
Page 264 - Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant ; they only collect and use : the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course ; it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own.
Page 254 - And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities ; partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, •which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled by long reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention.
Page 254 - Hence appear the many mistakes which have made learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful; first, we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek, as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year.
Page 249 - It is not a soul, it is not a body, that we are training up; it is a man, and we ought not to divide him into two parts...
Page 256 - I call therefore a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.
Page 307 - I have mentioned mathematics as a way to settle in the mind a habit of reasoning closely and in train; not that I think it necessary that all men should be deep mathematicians, but that, having got the way of reasoning, which that study necessarily brings the mind to, they might be able to transfer it to other parts of knowledge, as they shall have occasion.
Page 257 - Learning must be had, but in the second place, as subservient only to greater qualities. Seek out somebody that may know how discreetly to frame his manners ; place him in hands where you may, as much as possible, secure his innocence, cherish and nurse up the good, and gently correct and weed out any bad inclinations, and settle in him good habits. This is the main point ; and this being provided for, learning may be had into the bargain, and that, as I think, at a very easy rate, by methods that...
Page 263 - ... proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all.

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