Institutio Oratoria

I do not think that I need waste much time in pointing out how much better it is to absorb the best possible principles, or how hard it is to get rid of faults which have once become engrained; for it places a double burden on the shoulders of the later teacher and the preliminary task of unteaching is harder than that of teaching.

It is for this reason that the famous piper Timotheus is said to have demanded from those who had previously been under another master a fee double the amount which he charged for those who came to him untaught. The mistake to which I am referring is, however, twofold. First they regard these inferior teachers as adequate for the time being and are content with their instruction because they have a stomach that will swallow anything:

this indifference, though blameworthy in itself, would yet be tolerable, if the teaching provided by these persons were merely less in quantity and not inferior in quality as well. Secondly, and this is a still commoner delusion, they think that those who are blest with greater gifts of speaking will not condescend to the more elementary details, and that consequently they sometimes disdain to give attention to such inferior subjects of study and sometimes are incapable of so doing.

For my part I regard the

which is specially developed in learned men, is all-important in teaching, while finally no one is eminent in the greater things of his art if he be lacking in the lesser. Unless indeed we are asked to believe that while Phidias modelled his Jupiter to perfection, the decorative details of the statue would have been better executed by another artist, or that an orator does not know how to speak, or a distinguished physician is incapable of treating minor ailments.