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 Source: Migne PL 23.1037b

A time for silence and a time for speech. 1 I think that the Pythagoreans, who had the discipline that one should be silent for fifteen years and afterwards speak as one educated, drew their decree from this origin. So let us learn to refrain from speaking, so that we might open the mouth of the teacher in speech. Let us be silent for a certain time and let us depend on speech. Nothing seems right to us unless that by learning in much silence teachers are made from pupils. But now every day of this age we fall into a worse vice, for we teach 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 what we have been able to persuade others about. We do not learn every art from a teacher, only those vile and easy ones have no need of a master. Saint Jerome, Commentary on Ecclesiastes 1 Eccl 3.7