Silence and Learning

'Tempus tacendi, et tempus loquendi.'  Pythagoricos reor, quorum disciplina est tacere per quinquennium, et postea eruditos loqui, hinc originem sui traxisse decreti. Discamus itaque et nos prius non loqui, ut postea ad loquendum praeceptoris ora reseremus. Sileamus certo tempore, et ad eloquia pendeamus. Nihil nobis videatur rectum esse, nisi quod discimus, ut post multum silentium, de discipulis efficiamur magistri. Nunc vero pro saeculorum quotidie in pejus labentium vitio, docemus in ecclesiis, quod nescimus. Et si compositione verborum, vel instinctu diaboli, qui fautor errorum est, plausus populi excitaverimus, contra conscientiam nostram scire nos arbitramur, de quo aliis potuimus persuadere. Omnes artes absque doctore non discimus: sola haec tam vilis et facilis est, ut non indigeat praeceptore. Sanctus Hieronymous, Commentarius Ecclesiasten

'A time for silence and a time for speech,'1 The Pythagoreans, I think, of whom the discipline to be silent for fifteen years and afterwards to speak as one educated, from this origin drew their decrees. So let us learn not to speak, that we might open in speech the mouth of the teacher. Let us be silent for a certain time and let us depend on speech. Nothing seems right to us, unless by learning, after much silence, from pupils teachers are made. Now truly every day of this age we fall into a worse vice, teaching in the churches what we do not know. And if the arrangement of the words, or the instigation of the devil, who is the promoter of error, excites the applause of the people, we judge ourselves to know against our conscience that which we have been able to persuade others. We do not learn every art from a teacher, only those vile and easy have no need of a master.   Saint Jerome, Commentary on Ecclesiastes 1 Ec 3.7