Page 272 - 聖母軍團員手冊（英文版，2014年5月-2022年1月更新版）

Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 267

CHAPTER 38 THE PATRICIANS 267
spirit. Individuals endeavour to keep up with a group to
which they belong, a fact which can work for good or for evil.
They cease to be purely passive. They share in the life of the
group. If they are at home in it, they will be a force in it.
Applied to the Patricians, this means that a quiet but
irresistible pressure exerts itself on all, including the most
backward, to assimilate what they hear and to keep up in
other ways. Of course, a group, while accomplishing that
much, can itself fail to advance. This is provided against in
the Patricians by having some high-minded members who
will ensure the flow of superior ideas. By the force of that
group psychology, these ideas will be absorbed by the
members, so that the body can be made to expand in quality
all the time.

2. The painful pauses. Long silences between contributions
may prove disconcerting. The chairperson is tempted to start
pressing the members to speak. This would be wrong policy. A
sense of strain would be created, rendering everyone the less
inclined to speak. The proper point of view here is that
families do not feel the need for non-stop talking and that
there is comfort in occasional pauses. So when that silence
occurs, let all sit placidly as they would at home. The silence
has to break. When it does, it will ordinarily be followed by an
atmosphere of ease in which tongues move freely.
3. Postponement of solution. There are two broad ways of
settling a problem. One is to get the answer straight away
from an expert. The other is to try to work it out for oneself.
The former seems the direct and simple way, and most
education is based upon it. Its defects are that the answer is
often only half-understood, and that the pupils’ resource and
sense of responsibility are not developed. The second method
is more laborious. It throws the problem on to the learners.
They must make their own effort. When they present their
rough product, expert guidance is given to them. Then again
they are thrown on their own to struggle a little higher. The
final result of this process of aided self-help is that they have
really learned. As the solution has emerged from their own
slow fashioning, they are at ease with it, will remember it,
and are made confident for the future. That is the Patrician
method. It further requires that when something inaccurate is