Sometimes these were assigned to the boys as single subjects of a theme or declamation: so the same poet speaks sarcastically to Hannibal,

. I demens, & sævas curre per Alpes,

Ut pueris placeas & declamatio fias.

SAT. X.

Go climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool,

To please the boys, and be a theme at school.

See more of this matter in Kennet's antiquities of Rome,

in the second essay on the Roman education.

CHAPTER XIII.

Of Academic or Sholastic Disputation.

THE common methods in which disputes are managed in the schools of learning, are these, viz.

I. The tutor appoints a question in some of the sciences to be debated amongst his students: one of them undertakes to affirm or to deny the question, and to defend his assertion or negation, and to answer all objections against it; he is called the respondent: and the rest of the students in the same class, or who pursue the same science, are the opponents, who are appointed to dispute or raise objections against the proposition thus affirmed or denied.

II. Each of the students successively in their turn becomes the respondent or the defender of the proposition, while the rest oppose it also successively in their

turns.

III. It is the business of the respondent to write a thesis. in latin, or short discourse on the question proposed; and he either affirms or denies the question according to the opinion of the tutor, which is supposed to be the truth, and he reads it at the beginning of the dispute.

IV. In his discourse (which is written with as great accuracy as the youth is capable of) he explains the terms of the question, frees them from all ambiguity

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fixes their sense, declares the true intent and meaning of the question itself, separates it from other questions with which it may have been complicated, and distinguishes it from other questions which may happen to be akin to it, and then pronounces in the negative or affirmative concerning it.

V. When this is done, then in the second part of his discourse he gives his own strongest arguments to confirm the proposition he has laid down, i. e, to vindicate his own side of the question: but he does not usually proeeed to represent the objections against it, and to solve or answer them; for it is the business of the other students to raise objections in disputing.

VI. Note, In some schools the respondent is admitted to talk largely upon the question with many flourishes and illustrations, to introduce great authorities from ancient and modern writings for the support of it, and to scatter latin reproaches in abundance on all those who are of a different sentiment. But this is not always permitted, nor should it indeed be ever indulged, lest it teach youth to reproach instead of reasoning.

VII. When the respondent has read over his thesis in the school, the junior student makes an objection, and draws it up in the regular form of a syllogism: the respondent repeats the objection, and either denies the major or minor proposition directly, or he distinguishes upon some word or phrase in the major or minor, and shews in what sense the proposition may be true, but that that sense does not affect the question; and then declares that in the sense which affects the present ques

tion the proposition is not true, and consequently he denies it.

VIII. Then the opponent proceeds by another syllogism to vindicate the proposition that is denied: again the respondent answers by denying or distinguishing.

Thus the disputation goes on in a series or succession of syllogisms and answers, till the objector is silenced, and has no more to say.

IX, When he can go no further, the next student begins to propose his objection, and then the third and the fourth, even to the senior, who is the last opponent.

X. During this time the tutor sits in the chair as president or moderator, to see that the rules of disputation and decency be observed on both sides; and to admonish each disputant of any irregularity in their conduct. His work is also to illustrate and explain the answer or distinction of the respondent where it is obscure, to strengthen it where it is weak, and to correct it where it is false: and when the respondent is pinched with a strong objection, and is at a loss for an answer, the moderator assists him, and suggests some answer to the objection of the opponent, in defence of the question, according to his own opinion or sentiment.

XI. In public disputes, where the opponents and respondents chuse their own side of the question, the moderator's work is not to favour either disputant; but he only sits as a president to see that the laws of disputation be observed, and a decorum maintained.

XII. Now the laws of disputation relate either to the opponent, or to the respondent, or to both.

The laws obliging the opponent are these.

1. That he must directly contradict the proposition of the respondent, and not merely attack any of the arguments whereby the respondent has supported that proposition; for it is one thing to confute à single argument of the respondent, and another to confute the thesis itself.

2. (Which is akin to the former) he must contradict or oppose the very sense and intention of the proposition as the respondent has stated it, and not merely oppose the words of the thesis in any other sense; for this would be the way to plunge the dispute into ambiguity and darkness, and to talk beside the question, to wrangle about words, and to attack a proposition different from what the respondent has espoused, which is called ignoratio elenchi.

3. He must propose his argument in a plain, short and syllogistic form, according to the rules of logic, without flying to fallacies or sophisms, and as far as may be he should use categorical syllogisms.

4. Though the respondent may be attacked either upon a point of his own concession, which is called argumentum ex concessis, or by reducing him to an absurdity, which is called reductio ad absurdum, yet it is the neatest, the most useful, and the best sort of disputation, where the opponent draws his objections from the nature of the question itself.