PROLOGUE
John Senior has written, in his unpublished manuscript The Restoration of Innocence: An Idea of a School, that, ultimately, what a true teacher does is to “teach himself,” whereas a true student “studies himself.” Such a characterization of the pedagogical activity seems, to our contemporary ears, to be an assertion of a position in line with the most disorienting subjectivist teachings of our age; the teacher as nonconformist exhibitionist and the student as self-absorbed pragmatist. Leibnizian monads that “touch” but never meet. Such an evaluation of Senior’s statement is, of course, a complete misunderstanding. By saying that a teacher “teaches himself,” and here it is not meant that the teacher “instructs himself,” is to say that the most significant thing that a teacher can communicate to his students is his own personal and intellectual encounter with the Created and the Uncreated Order. By instructing the youth in a specific discipline, the teacher is...