The name is absent

Middle Ages and Renaissance 227
sophomore. A witty upperclassman in the eighteenth cen-
tury defined sophomore as a combination of sophos and
moron; but it probably meant one who was practising his
“sophomes” or disputations in preparation for being a
sophister, or scholar skilled in Logic.

The essential thing a sophister did was to enter the pub-
lic debates, or disputations: discussions in Latin, without
notes, of some thesis (proposition), or question, by the
recognized rules of Logic. Lectures required only a passive
process of assimilation on the student’s part, but the disputa-
tion offered him abundant opportunity to express himself,
and to perform. From the time he ceased to be a freshman,
the medieval student was constantly practising this art. At
their best, these exercises trained men in oratory and debate,
taught them to think on their feet, stimulated the sluggard,
and showed up the bluffer. At its worst, the disputation was
a mere play on words, obscuring sound habits of thought and
rewarding the superficially clever. Nevertheless, the method
had such recognized pedagogic value that it long outlasted
the scholastic philosophy and manner of thinking to which
it was peculiarly adapted. In our colonial colleges, the
disputation still received the medieval emphasis; and when
it disappeared, in the nineteenth century, there was left a
void in the outgoing aspect of education that themes, reports,
and debating societies only partially filled. Indeed the recent
advocacy of “discussion groups,” “socialized recitations,”
and the like is a recognition that the middle ages were right
in placing this active method of education beside the passive
ones of hearing lectures and reading books. The Jesuit
colleges, very wisely, maintain disputations to this day.

The bachelor’s degree in the medieval universities was
but a half-way house to the M.A. ; baccalaureus meant simply
apprentice, and no student was a full-fledged “artist” until

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