distinguishes studies into two grades,--Grammar and Rhetoric. “As
soon as the child is able to read and write, he must be placed
in the hands of the grammarian.” Grammar was divided into two
parts,--the art of speaking correctly and the explication of
the poets. Exercises in composition, development lessons called
_Chriæ_, and narratives, accompanied the theoretical study of the
rules of grammar.[47] It is to be observed that Quintilian gives
a high place to etymological studies, and that he attaches great
importance to reading aloud. “That the child may read well, let
him have a good understanding of what he reads.... When he reads
the poets, let him shun affected modulations. It is with reference
to this manner of reading that Cæsar, still a young man, made this
excellent observation: ‘If you are singing, you sing poorly; if you
are reading, why do you sing?’”
57. THE SIMULTANEOUS STUDY OF THE SCIENCES.--Quintilian is very far
from confining his pupil within the narrow circle of grammatical
study. Persuaded that the child is capable of learning several
things at the same time, he would have him taught geometry, music,
and philosophy simultaneously:--
“Must he learn grammar alone, and then geometry, and in the
meanwhile forget what he first learned? As well advise a farmer
not to cultivate, at the same time, his fields, his vines, his
olive trees, and his orchards, and not to give his thought
simultaneously to his meadows, his cattle, his gardens, and his
bees.”[48]
Of course Quintilian considers the different studies which he
sets before his pupil only as the instruments for an education in
oratory. Philosophy, which comprises dialectics or logic, physics
or the science of nature, and lastly morals, furnish the orator
with ideas, and teach him the art of distributing them into a
consecutive line of argument. And so geometry, a near relative of
dialectics, disciplines the mind, and teaches it to distinguish
the true from the false. Lastly, music is an excellent preparation
for eloquence; it cultivates the sense of harmony and a taste for
number and measure.
58. THE SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY.--By the side of the schools of
rhetoric, in which the art of speech was cultivated, imperial
Rome saw flourish in great numbers schools of philosophy, whose
purpose was the formation of morals. It was through no lack of
moral sermonizing that there was a degeneration in the virtues of
the Romans. All the schools of Greece, especially the Stoics and
the Epicureans, and also the schools of Pythagoras, of Socrates,
of Plato, and of Aristotle, had their representatives at Rome; but
their obscure names have scarcely survived.
59. SENECA.--Among these philosophers and these moralists of the
first century of the Christian era, Seneca has the distinction
of standing in the front rank. It is true that he was not the
founder of a school, but by his numerous writings he succeeded
in maintaining among his contemporaries at least some vestiges
of the ancient virtues. His _Letters to Lucilius_, letters
abounding in real intellectual and moral insight, also contain
some pedagogical precepts. Seneca attempts to direct school
instruction to practical ends, in following out the thought of this
famous precept: “We should learn, not for the sake of the school,
but for the purposes of life” (_Non scholæ, sed vitæ discimus_).
Moreover, he criticises confused and ill-directed reading that does
not enrich the understanding, and concludes by recommending the
profound study of a single book (_timeo hominem unius libri_). In
another letter he remarks that the best means for giving clearness
to one’s own ideas is to communicate them to others; the best way
of being taught is to teach (_docendo discimus_). Let us quote
this other maxim so often repeated: “The end is attained sooner
by example than by precept” (_longum iter per præcepta, breve per
exempla_).
60. PLUTARCH (50-138 A.D.).--In the last period of Roman
civilization two names deserve to arrest the attention of the
educator,--Plutarch and Marcus Aurelius. Although he was born in
Bœotia, and wrote in Greek, Plutarch belongs to the Roman world.
He lived at Rome at several different times, and there opened a
school in the reign of Domitian, where he lectured on philosophy,
literature, and history. Numerous works have transmitted to us
the substance of that instruction which had such an extraordinary
success.
61. THE LIVES OF ILLUSTRIOUS MEN.--Translated in the fifteenth
century by Amyot, the _Parallel Lives_ of Plutarch were for our
fathers a true code of morals founded on history. How many of our
great men, or how many of our men of worth, have drawn from this
book, at least in part, the material which has nurtured their
virtues! L’Hôpital and d’Aubigné enriched their lives from this
source. Henry IV. said of this book: “It has been to me as my
conscience, and has whispered in my ear many virtuous suggestions
and excellent maxims for my own conduct and for the management of
my affairs.”[49]
62. THE ESSAY ON THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN.--The celebrated essay
entitled _Of the Training of Children_,[50] is the first treatise,
especially devoted to education, that antiquity has bequeathed to
us. Its authenticity has been called in question by German critics;
but this is of little moment, since these critics are the first to
recognize the fact that the author of this essay, whoever he might
have been, was intimately acquainted with Plutarch, and has given
us a sufficiently exact summary of the ideas which are more fully
developed in others of his works.[51]
We shall not give an analysis of this work, which, however, abounds
in interesting reflections on the primary period of education. We
shall simply note the fundamental thought of the essay, its salient
and original characteristic, which is its warm appreciation of the
family. In society, as Plutarch conceives it, the State no longer
exercises absolute sovereignty. Upon the ruins of the antique
commonwealth Plutarch builds the family. It is to the family
that he addresses himself in order to assure the education of
children.[52] On this point he is not in accord with Quintilian.
What he recommends is an education that is domestic and individual.
He scarcely admits the need of public schools save for the higher
instruction. At a certain age a young man, already trained by the
watchful care of a preceptor under the supervision of his parents,
shall go abroad to hear the lectures of the moralists and the
philosophers, and to read the poets.
63. THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.--One of the consequences of the
exalted function which Plutarch ascribes to the family is that
by this single act he raises the material and moral condition of
woman. In his essay entitled _Conjugal Precepts_, which recalls
the _Economics_ of Xenophon, he restores to the wife her place in
the household. He associates her with the husband in the material
support of the family, as well as in the education of the children.
The mother is to nurse her offspring. “Providence,” he naively
says, “hath also wisely ordered that women should have two breasts,
that so, if any of them should happen to bear twins, they might
have two several springs of nourishment ready for them.”[53] The
mother shall also take part in the instruction of her children, and
so she must herself be educated. Plutarch proposes for her the
highest studies, such as mathematics and philosophy. But he counts
much more upon her natural qualities, than upon the science that
she may acquire. “With women,” he says, “tenderness of heart is
enhanced by a pleasing countenance, by sweetness of speech, by an
affectionate grace, and by a high degree of sensitiveness.”
64. THE FUNCTION OF POETRY IN EDUCATION.--In the essay entitled
_How a Young Man Ought to Hear Poems_, Plutarch has given his
opinion as to the extent to which poetry should be made an element
in education. More just than Plato, he does not condemn the reading
of the poets. He simply demands that this reading should be done
with discretion, by choosing those who, in their compositions,
mingle moral inspiration with poetic inspiration. “Lycurgus,”
he says, “did not act like a man of sound reason in the course
which he took to reform his people that were much inclined to
drunkenness, by traveling up and down to destroy all the vines in
the country; whereas he should have ordered that every vine should
have a well of water near it, that (as Plato saith) the drunken
deity might be reduced to temperance by a sober one.”[54]
65. THE TEACHING OF MORALS.--Plutarch is above all else a moralist.
If he adds nothing in the way of theory to the lofty doctrines of
the Greek philosophers from whom he catches his inspiration, at
least he enters more profoundly into the study of practical methods
which insure the efficacy of fine precepts and exalted doctrines.
“That contemplation which is dissociated from practice,” he says,
“is of no utility.” He would have young men come from lectures
on morals, not only better instructed, but more virtuous. Of
what consequence are beautiful maxims unless they are embodied
in action? The young man, then, shall early accustom himself to
self-government, to reflection upon his own conduct, and to taking
counsel of his own reason. Moreover, Plutarch gives him a director
of conscience, a philosopher, whom he will go to consult in his
doubts, and to whom he will entrust the keeping of his soul. But
that which is of most consequence in his eyes is personal effort,
reflection always on the alert, and that inward effort which causes
our soul to assimilate the moral lessons which we have received,
and which causes them to enter into the very structure and fibre of
our personality.
“As it would be with a man who, going to his neighbor’s to borrow
fire, and finding there a great and bright fire, should sit down
to warm himself and forget to go home; so is it with the one who
comes to another to learn, if he does not think himself obliged
to kindle his own fire within, and influence his own mind, but
continues sitting by his master as if he were enchanted, delighted
by hearing.”[55]
So are those who are not striving to have a personal morality,
but who, incapable of self-direction, are always in need of the
tutorship of another.
The great preoccupation of Plutarch--and by this trait he has a
legitimate place among the great educators of the world--was to
awaken, to excite, the interior forces of the conscience, and to
stimulate the intelligence to a high state of activity. When he
wrote this famous maxim, “The soul is not a vase to be filled, but
is rather a hearth which is to be made to glow,”[56] he was not
thinking alone of moral education, but also of a false intellectual
education which, instead of training the mind, is content with
accumulating in the memory a mass of indigested materials.[57]
66. MARCUS AURELIUS.--The wisest of the Roman emperors, the author
of the book entitled _To Myself_, better known as _Meditations_,
Marcus Aurelius deserves mention in the history of pedagogy. He is
perhaps the most perfect representative of Stoic morality, which is
itself the highest expression of ancient morality. He is the most
finished type of what can be effected in the way of soul-culture
by the influence of home-training and the personal effort of the
conscience. His teacher of rhetoric was the celebrated Fronto,
of whose character we may judge from this one characteristic: “I
toiled hard yesterday,” he wrote to his pupil; “I composed a few
figures of speech, with which I am pleased.” On the other hand,
Marcus Aurelius found examples for imitation in his own family. “My
uncle,” he says reverently, “taught me patience.... From my father
I inherited modesty.... To my mother I owe my feelings of piety.”
Notwithstanding the modesty that led him to attribute to others
the whole of his moral worth, it is especially to himself, to a
persistent effort of his own will, and to a ceaseless examination
of his own conscience, that he is indebted for becoming the most
virtuous of men, and the wisest and purest, next to Socrates, of
the moralists of antiquity. His _Meditations_ show us in action
that self-education which in our time has suggested such beautiful
reflections to Channing.
67. CONCLUSION.--Finally, it must be admitted that Roman literature
is poor in material for educational study. Some passages, scattered
here and there in the classical authors, nevertheless prove that
they were not absolutely strangers to pedagogical questions.
Thus Horace professed independence of mind; he declares that he is
not obliged to swear by the “words of any master.”[58] On the other
hand, Juvenal defined the ideal purpose of life and of education
when he said that the desirable thing above all others is “a sound
mind in a sound body.”[59] Finally, Pliny the Younger, in three
words, _multum, non multa_, “much, not many things,” fixes one
essential point in educational method, and recommends the thorough
study of one single subject in preference to a superficial study
which extends over too many subjects.
While by their taste, their accuracy of thought, and the perfection
of their style, the Latin writers are worthy of being placed by
the side of the Greeks as proficients in education of the literary
type, they at the same time deserve to be regarded as reputable
guides in moral education. At Rome, as at Athens, that which formed
the basis of instruction was the search after virtue. That which
preoccupied Cicero as well as Plato, Seneca as well as Aristotle,
was not so much the extension of knowledge and the development of
instruction as the progress of manners and the moral perfection of
man.
[68. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. In contrast with Greek education,
the chief characteristic of which was intellectual discipline
or culture, Roman education may be called _practical_. Greece
and Rome have thus furnished the world with two distinct types
of education, and their modern representatives are seen in our
classical and scientific courses respectively.
2. The disinclination of the Roman mind to speculative inquiry,
was a bar to the production of any contributions to the theory of
education.
3. In the _Institutes_ of Quintilian we see the first attempt to
expound the art of teaching; and in the _Morals_ of Plutarch we
have the first formal treatise on the education of children.
4. In the later period of Roman education, we see a higher
appreciation of woman, and a nobler conception of the family life.
5. In common with all the systems of education thus far studied,
Roman education is essentially literary, ethical, and prudential,
as distinguished from an education in science. The conception of
the money value of knowledge had not yet appeared.]
FOOTNOTES:
[41] Plutarch, _Morals_, vol. I. p. 9.
[42] Cicero, _De Republica_, IV. 115.
[43] Cicero, _De Divinatione_, II. 2.
[44] In principle, this is the same as the system of writing
commended by Locke: “Get a plate graved with the Characters of
such a Hand as you like best ... let several sheets of good
Writing-paper be printed off with red Ink, which he has nothing to
do but go over with a good Pen fill’d with black Ink, which will
quickly bring his Hand to the Formation of those Characters, being
first shewed where to begin, and how to form every Letter.” (_On
Education_, § 160.) (P.)
[45] “Quintilian has treated this question with great breadth and
eloquence.” (_Traité des Études_, Liv. IV. Art. 2.)
[46] Quintilian, _Institutes of Oratory_, Watson’s Translation,
Book I. chap. II. 6, 7.
[47] _Institutes_, Book I. chap. IX.
[48] _Institutes_, Book I. chap. XII.
[49] Equally great has been Plutarch’s influence on English thought
and life. Sir Thomas North’s translation of Amyot’s version
appeared in 1579, and furnished Shakespeare with the materials
for his _Coriolanus_, _Julius Cæsar_, and _Antony and Cleopatra_.
Milton, Wordsworth, and Browning are also debtors to the _Parallel
Lives_. (P.)
[50] “Comment il faut nourrir les enfants,” in the translation by
Amyot. “Of the Training of Children,” in Goodwin’s edition of the
_Morals_ (Vol. I.).
[51] The references that follow are to Plutarch’s _Morals_. The
first translation into English was by Philemon Holland, in 1603.
The American edition in five volumes (Boston, 1871) is worthy of
all commendation. The references I make are to this edition. (P.)
[52] Of course Plutarch, like all the writers of antiquity, writes
only in behalf of free-born children in good circumstances. “He
abandons,” as he himself admits, “the education of the poor and the
lowly.”
Plutarch seems to aim at what appears to him to be _practicable_.
That he was liberal in his opinions must be evident, I think, from
this extract: “It is my desire that all children whatsoever may
partake of the benefits of education alike; but if yet any persons,
by reason of the narrowness of their estates, cannot make use of my
precepts, let them not blame me that give them, but Fortune, which
disableth them from making the advantage by them they otherwise
might. Though even poor men must use their utmost endeavor to
give their children the best education; or, if they can not, they
must bestow upon them the best that their abilities will reach.”
(_Morals_, vol. I. pp. 19, 20.) (P.)
[53] _Of the Training of Children_, § 6.
[54] _Morals_, vol. II. p. 44.
[55] _Morals_, I. p. 463. This language directly follows the
quotation given in the note (1) at the close of this paragraph. (P.)
[56] The exact reading is as follows: “For the mind requires not
like an earthen vessel to be filled up; convenient fuel and aliment
only will influence it with a desire of knowledge and ardent love
of truth.” (_Morals_, I. p. 463.) This makes the author’s meaning
more apparent. (P.)
[57] This does not mean that Plutarch sets a low value on memory,
for he says: “Above all things, we must exercise the memory of
children, for it is the treasury of knowledge.”
[58] “_Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri_.”
[59] “_Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano_.” (Sat. x.
356.)
CHAPTER IV.
THE EARLY CHRISTIANS AND THE MIDDLE AGE.
THE NEW SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY; THE POVERTY OF THE EARLY
CHRISTIAN CENTURIES IN RESPECT OF EDUCATION; THE FATHERS OF
THE CHURCH; SAINT JEROME AND THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS; PHYSICAL
ASCETICISM; INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL ASCETICISM; PERMANENT TRUTHS;
INTELLECTUAL FEEBLENESS OF THE MIDDLE AGE; CAUSES OF THE
IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGE; THE THREE RENASCENCES; CHARLEMAGNE;
ALCUIN; THE SUCCESSORS OF CHARLEMAGNE; SCHOLASTICISM; ABELARD;
THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS; METHODS AND DISCIPLINE; THE UNIVERSITIES;
GERSON; VITTORINO DA FELTRE; OTHER TEACHERS AT THE CLOSE OF THE
MIDDLE AGE; RECAPITULATION; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
69. THE NEW SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY.--By its dogmas, by the
conception of the equality of all human creatures, by its spirit of
charity, Christianity introduced new elements into the conscience,
and seemed called to give a powerful impetus to the moral education
of men. The doctrine of Christ was at first a reaction of free
will and of personal dignity against the despotism of the State.
“A full half of man henceforth escaped the action of the State.
Christianity taught that man no longer belonged to society except
in part; that he was under allegiance to it by his body and his
material interests; that being subject to a tyrant, he must
submit; that as a citizen of a republic, he ought to give his
life for it; but that in respect of his soul, he was free, and
owed allegiance only to God.”[60] Henceforth it was not simply a
question of training citizens for the service of the State; but
the conception of a disinterested development of the human person
made its appearance in the world. On the other hand, in proclaiming
that all men had the same destiny, and that they were all equal in
the sight of God, Christianity raised the poor and the disinherited
from their condition of misery, and promised them all the same
instruction. To the idea of liberty was added that of equality; and
equal justice for all, and participation in the same rights, were
contained in germ in the doctrine of Christianity.
70. POVERTY OF THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CENTURIES IN RESPECT OF
EDUCATION.--Nevertheless, the germs contained in the doctrines of
the new religion did not bear fruit at once. It is easy to analyze
the causes which led to the poverty of educational thought during
the first centuries of the Christian era.
In the first place, the Christian instruction was addressed to
barbarous peoples who could not at once rise to a high intellectual
and moral culture. According to the celebrated comparison of
Jouffroy, the invasion of the barbarians into the midst of ancient
society was like an armful of green wood thrown upon a blazing
fire; at first there could issue from it only a mass of smoke.
Moreover, we must take into account the fact that the early
Christians, in order to establish their faith, had to struggle
against difficulties which were ever being renewed. The
first centuries were a period of struggle, of conquest, and
of organization, which left but little opportunity for the
disinterested study of education. In their contests with the
ancient world, the early Christians came to include in a common
hatred classical literature and pagan religion. Could they receive
with sympathy the literary and scientific inheritance of a society
whose morals they repudiated, and whose beliefs they were bent on
destroying?
On the other hand, the social condition of the men who first
attached themselves to the new religion turned them aside from the
studies which are a preparation for real life. Obliged to conceal
themselves, to betake themselves to the desert, true Pariahs of
the pagan world, they lived a life of contemplation; they were
naturally led to conceive an ascetic and monastic existence as the
ideal of education.
Moreover, by its mystical tendencies, Christianity at the first
could not be a good school for a practical and humane system of
education. The Christian was detached from the commonwealth of man,
only to enter into the commonwealth of God. He must break with a
corrupt and perverse world. By privations, and by the renunciation
of every pleasure, he must react against the immorality of
Græco-Roman society. Man must aspire to imitate God; and God
is absolute holiness, the very negation of all the conditions
of earthly life,--supreme perfection. The very disproportion
between such an ideal and human weakness as an actual fact must
have betrayed the early Christians into leading a mystical life
which was but a preparation for death. And the consequence of
these doctrines was to make of the Church the exclusive mistress
of education and instruction. Individual initiative, if called
into play, on the one hand, by the fundamental doctrines of
Christianity, was stifled, on the other, under the domination of
the Church.
71. THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH.--Of the celebrated doctors who,
by their erudition and eloquence, if not by their taste, made
illustrious the beginning of Christianity, some were jealous
mystics and sectaries, in whose eyes philosophical curiosity was a
sin, and the love of letters a heresy; and others were Christians
of a conciliatory temperament, who, in a certain measure, allied
religious faith and literary culture.
Tertullian rejected all pagan education. He saw in classical
culture only a robbery from God; a road to the false and arrogant
wisdom of the ancient philosophers. Even Saint Augustine, who in
his youth could not read the fourth book of the Æneid without
shedding tears, and who had been devotedly fond of ancient poetry
and eloquence, renounced, after his conversion, his literary tastes
as well as the mad passions of his early manhood. It was by his
influence that the Council of Carthage forbade the bishops to read
the pagan authors.
This was not the course of Saint Basil, who demands, on the
contrary, that the young Christian shall be conversant with the
orators, poets, and historians of antiquity; who thinks that the
poems of Homer inspire a love for virtue; and who desires, finally,
that full use should be made of the treasures of ancient wisdom in
the training of the young.[61] Nor was this the thought of Saint
Jerome, who said he would be none the less a Ciceronian in becoming
a Christian.
72. SAINT JEROME AND THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.--The letters of Saint
Jerome on the education of girls form the most valuable educational
document of the first centuries of Christianity.[62] They have
excited high admiration. Erasmus knew them by heart, and Saint
Theresa read selections from them every day. It is impossible,
to-day, while admiring certain parts of them, not to condemn the
general spirit which pervades them,--a narrow spirit, distrustful
of the world, which pushes the religious sentiment even to
mysticism, and disdain for human affairs to asceticism.
73. PHYSICAL ASCETICISM.--It is no longer the question of giving
power to the body, and thus of making of it the robust instrument
of a cultured spirit, as the Greeks would have it. The body is
an enemy that must be subdued by fasting, by abstinence, and by
mortifications of the flesh.
“Do not allow Paula to eat in public, that is, do not let her take
part in family entertainments, for fear that she may desire the
meats that may be served there. Let her learn not to use wine, for
it is the source of all impurity. Let her food be vegetables, and
only rarely of fish; and let her eat so as always to be hungry.”
Contempt for the body is carried so far that cleanliness is almost
interdicted.
“For myself, I entirely forbid a young girl to bathe.”
It is true that, alarmed at the consequences of such austerity,
Saint Jerome, by way of exception, permits children the use of the
bath, of wine, and of meat, but only “when necessity requires it,
and lest the feet may fail them before having walked.”
74. INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL ASCETICISM.--For the mind, as well as
for the body, we may say of Saint Jerome what Nicole wrote to a
nun of his time: “You feed your pupils on bread and water.” The
Bible is the only book recommended, and this is little; but it is
the Bible entire, which is too much. _The Song of Songs_, with
its sensual imagery, would be strange reading for a young girl.
The arts, like letters, find no favor with the mysticism of Saint
Jerome.
“Never let Paula listen to musical instruments; let her even be
ignorant of the uses served by the flute and the harp.”
As for the flute, which the Greek philosophers also did not like,
let it be so; but what shall we say of this condemnation of the
harp, the instrument of David and the angels, and of religious
music itself! How far we are, in common with Saint Jerome, from
that complete life, from that harmonious development of all the
faculties, which modern educators, Herbert Spencer, for example,
present to us with reason as the ideal of education! Saint Jerome
goes so far as to proscribe walking:--
“Do not let Paula be found in the ways of the world (emphatic
paraphrase for _streets_), in the gatherings and in the company of
her kindred; let her be found only in retirement.”
The ideal of Saint Jerome is a monastic and cloistered life,
even in the world. But that which is graver still, that which is
the fatal law of mysticism, is that Saint Jerome, after having
proscribed letters, arts, and necessary and legitimate pleasures,
even brings his condemnation to bear on the most honorable
sentiments of the heart. The heart is human also, and everything
human is evil and full of danger:
“Do not allow Paula to feel more affection for one of her
companions than for others; do not allow her to speak with such
a one in an undertone.” And as he held in suspicion even the
affections of the family, the Doctor of the Church concludes thus:--
“Let her be educated in a cloister, where she will not know
the world, where she will live as an angel, having a body but
not knowing it, and where, in a word, you will be spared the
care of watching over her.... If you will send us Paula, I will
charge myself with being her master and nurse; I will give her
my tenderest care; my old age will not prevent me from untying
her tongue, and I shall be more renowned than the philosopher
Aristotle, since I shall instruct, not a mortal and perishable
king, but an immortal spouse of the Heavenly King.”
75. PERMANENT TRUTHS.--The pious exaggerations of Saint Jerome only
throw into sharper relief the justice and the excellence of some
of his practical suggestions,--upon the teaching of reading, for
example, or upon the necessity of emulation:--
“Put into the hands of Paula letters in wood or in ivory, and teach
her the names of them. She will thus learn while playing. But it
will not suffice to have her merely memorize the names of the
letters, and call them in succession as they stand in the alphabet.
You should often mix them, putting the last first, and the first in
the middle.
“Induce her to construct words by offering her a prize, or by
giving her, as a reward, what ordinarily pleases children of her
age.... Let her have companions, so that the commendation she may
receive may excite in her the feeling of emulation. Do not chide
her for the difficulty she may have in learning. On the contrary,
encourage her by commendation, and proceed in such a way that she
shall be equally sensible to the pleasure of having done well, and
to the pain of not having been successful.... Especially take care
that she do not conceive a dislike for study that might follow her
into a more advanced age.”[63]
76. INTELLECTUAL FEEBLENESS OF THE MIDDLE AGE.--If the early
doctors of the Church occasionally expressed some sympathy for
profane letters, it is because, in their youth, before having
received baptism, they had themselves attended the pagan schools.
But these schools once closed, Christianity did not open others,
and, after the fourth century, a profound night enveloped humanity.
The labor of the Greeks and the Romans was as though it never had
been. The past no longer existed. Humanity began anew. In the fifth
century, Apollinaris Sidonius declares that “the young no longer
study, that teachers no longer have pupils, and that learning
languishes and dies.” Later, Lupus of Ferrières, the favorite
of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald, writes that the study
of letters had almost ceased. In the early part of the eleventh
century, the Bishop of Laon, Adalberic, asserts that “there is more
than one bishop who cannot count the letters of the alphabet on his
fingers.” In 1291, of all the monks in the convent of Saint Gall,
there was not one who could read and write. It was so difficult
to find notaries public, that acts had to be passed verbally. The
barons took pride in their ignorance. Even after the efforts of
the twelfth century, instruction remained a luxury for the common
people; it was the privilege of the ecclesiastics, and even they
did not carry it very far. The Benedictines confess that the
mathematics were studied only for the purpose of calculating the
date of Easter.
77. CAUSES OF THE IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGE.--What were the
permanent causes of that situation which lasted for ten centuries?
The Catholic Church has sometimes been held responsible for this.
Doubtless the Christian doctors did not always profess a very
warm sympathy for intellectual culture. Saint Augustine had said:
“It is the ignorant who gain possession of heaven (_indocti cœlum
rapiunt_).” Saint Gregory the Great, a pope of the sixth century,
declared that he would blush to have the holy word conform to
the rules of grammar. Too many Christians, in a word, confounded
ignorance with holiness. Doubtless, towards the seventh century,
the darkness still hung thick over the Christian Church. Barbarians
invaded the Episcopate, and carried with them their rude manners.
Doubtless, also, during the feudal period the priest often became
soldier, and remained ignorant. It would, however, be unjust to
bring a constructive charge against the Church of the Middle Age,
and to represent it as systematically hostile to instruction.
Directly to the contrary, it is the clergy who, in the midst of the
general barbarism, preserved some vestiges of the ancient culture.
The only schools of that period are the episcopal and claustral
schools, the first annexed to the bishops’ palaces, the second
to the monasteries. The religious orders voluntarily associated
manual labor with mental labor. As far back as 530, Saint Benedict
founded the convent of Monte Cassino, and drew up statutes which
made reading and intellectual labor a part of the daily life of the
monks.
In 1179, the third Lateran Council promulgated the following
decree:--
“The Church of God, being obliged like a good and tender mother to
provide for the bodily and spiritual wants of the poor, desirous
to procure for poor children the opportunity for learning to read,
and for making advancement in study, orders that each cathedral
shall have a teacher charged with the gratuitous instruction of
the clergy of that church, and also of the indigent scholars,
and that he be assigned a benefice, which, sufficient for his
subsistence, may thus open the door of the school to the studious
youth. A tutor[64] shall be installed in the other churches and in
the monasteries where formerly there were funds set apart for this
purpose.”
It is not, then, to the Church that we must ascribe the general
intellectual torpor of the Middle Age. Other causes explain
that long slumber of the human mind. The first is the social
condition of the people. Security and leisure, the indispensable
conditions for study, were completely lacking to people always at
war, overwhelmed in succession by the barbarians, the Normans,
the English, and by the endless struggles of feudal times. The
gentlemen of the time aspired only to ride, to hunt, and to figure
in tournaments and feats of arms. Physical education was above
all else befitting men whose favorite vocation, both by habit and
necessity, was war. On the other hand, the enslaved people did
not suspect the utility of instruction. In order to comprehend
the need of study, that great liberator, one must already have
tasted liberty. In a society where the need of instruction had not
yet been felt, who could have taken the initiative in the work of
instructing the people?
Let us add that the Middle Age presented still other conditions
unfavorable for the propagation of instruction, in particular, the
lack of national languages, those necessary vehicles of education.
The vernacular languages are the instruments of intellectual
emancipation. Among a people where a dead language is supreme, a
language of the learned, accessible only to the select few, the
lower classes necessarily remain buried in ignorance. Moreover,
Latin books themselves were rare. Lupus of Ferrières was obliged
to write to Rome, and to address himself to the Pope in person, in
order to procure for his use a work of Cicero’s. Without books,
without schools, without any of the indispensable implements of
intellectual labor, what could be done for the mental life? It took
refuge in certain monasteries; erudition flourished only in narrow
circles, with a privileged few, and the rest of the nation remained
buried in an obscure night.
78. THE THREE RENASCENCES.--It has been truly said that there
were three Renascences: the first, which owed its beginning to
Charlemagne, and whose brilliancy did not last; the second, that of
the twelfth century, the issue of which was Scholasticism; and the
third, the great Renaissance of the sixteenth century, which still
lasts, and which the French Revolution has completed.
79. CHARLEMAGNE.--Charlemagne undoubtedly formed the purpose of
diffusing instruction about him. He ardently sought it for himself,
drilled himself in writing, and learned Latin and Greek, rhetoric
and astronomy. He would have communicated to all who were about
him the same ardor for study. “Ah! that I had twelve clerics,” he
exclaimed, “as perfectly instructed as were Jerome and Augustine!”
It was naturally upon the clergy that he counted, to make of them
the instruments of his plans; but, as one of his capitularies of
788 shows, there was need that the clergy themselves should be
reminded of the need of instruction: “We have thought it useful
that, in the bishops’ residences, and in the monasteries, care be
taken not only to live according to the rules of our holy religion,
but, in addition, to teach the knowledge of letters to those who
are capable of learning them by the aid of our Lord. Although
it avails more to practise the law than to know it, it must be
known before it can be practised. Several monasteries having
sent us manuscripts, we have observed that, in the most of them,
the sentiments were good, but the language bad. We exhort you,
then, not only not to neglect the study of letters, but to devote
yourselves to them with all your power.”
On the other hand, the nobles did not make any great effort to
justify their social rank by the degree of their knowledge.
One day, as Charlemagne entered a school, displeased with the
indolence and the ignorance of the young barons who attended it,
he addressed them in these severe terms: “Do you count upon your
birth, and do you feel a pride in it? Take notice that you shall
have neither government nor bishoprics, if you are not better
instructed than others.”
80. ALCUIN (735-804).--Charlemagne was seconded in his efforts by
Alcuin of England, of whom it might be said, that he was the first
minister of public instruction in France. It is he who founded
the Palatine school, a sort of imperial and itinerant academy
which followed the court on its travels. It was a model school,
where Alcuin had for his pupils the four sons and two daughters of
Charlemagne, and Charlemagne himself, always eager to be instructed.
Alcuin’s method was not without originality, but it is a great
mistake to say that it resembles the method of Socrates. Alcuin
doubtless proceeds by interrogation; but here it is the pupil who
interrogates, and the teacher who responds.
“What is speech? asks Pepin, the eldest son of Charlemagne. It is
the interpreter of the soul, replies Alcuin. What is life? It is an
enjoyment for some, but for the wretched it is a sorrow, a waiting
for death. What is sleep? The image of death. What is writing? It
is the guardian of history. What is the body? The tenement of the
soul. What is day? A summons to labor.”[65]
All this is either commonplace or artificial. The sententious
replies of Alcuin may be fine maxims, fit for embellishing the
memory; but in this procedure of the mere scholar, affected by the
over-refinements of his time, there is nothing which can call into
activity the intelligence of the pupil.
Nevertheless the name of Alcuin marks an era in the history of
education. His was the first attempt to form an alliance between
classical literature and Christian inspiration,--to create a
“Christian Athens,” according to the emphatic phrase of Alcuin
himself.
81. THE SUCCESSORS OF CHARLEMAGNE.--It had been the ambition of
Charlemagne to reign over a civilized society, rather than over a
barbarous people. Convinced that the only basis of political unity
is a unity of ideas and of morals, he thought to find the basis of
that moral unity in religion, and religion itself he purposed to
establish upon a more widely diffused system of instruction. But
these ideas were too advanced for the time, and their execution
too difficult for the circumstances then existing. A new decadence
followed the era of Charlemagne. The clergy did not respond to the
hopes which the great emperor had placed on them. As far back as
817, the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle decided that henceforth no more
day-pupils should be received into the conventual schools, for the
reason that too large a number of pupils would make impossible the
maintenance of the monastic discipline. No one of Charlemagne’s
successors seems to have taken up the thought of the great emperor;
no one of them was preoccupied with the problems of education. It
is upon despotic authority, and not upon the intellectual progress
of their subjects, that those unintelligent rulers wished to found
their power. Under Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald there were
constructed more castles than schools.
The kings of France were far from imitating the Anglo-Saxon king,
Alfred the Great (849-901), to whom tradition ascribes these two
sayings: “The English ought always to be free, as free as their own
thoughts”; “Free-born sons should know how to read and write.”
82. SCHOLASTICISM.--It was not till the twelfth century that the
human mind was awakened. That was the age of Scholasticism, the
essential character of which was the study of reasoning, and the
practice of dialectics, or syllogistic reasoning. The syllogism,
which reaches necessary conclusions from given premises, was the
natural instrument of an age of faith, when men wished simply to
demonstrate immutable dogmas, without ever making an innovation
on established beliefs. It has often been observed that the art
of reasoning is the science of a people still in the early stage
of its progress; we might almost say of a barbarous people. A
subtile dialectic is in perfect keeping with manners still rude,
and with a limited state of knowledge. It is only an intellectual
machine. It was not then a question of original thinking. All
that was necessary was simply to reason upon conceptions already
acquired, and the sacred depository of these was kept in charge
by Theology. Consequently, there was no independent science.
Philosophy, according to the language of the times, was but the
humble servant of Theology. The dialectics of the doctors of the
Middle Age was but a subtile commentary on the sacred books and on
the doctrines of Aristotle.[66] It seems, says Locke, to see the
inertness of the Middle Age, that God was pleased to make of man a
two-footed animal, while leaving to Aristotle the task of making
him a thinking being. From his point of view, an able educator of
the seventeenth century, the Abbé Fleury, pronounces this severe
judgment on the scholastic method:--
“This way of philosophizing on words and thoughts, without
examining the things themselves, was certainly an easy way of
getting along without a knowledge of facts, which can be acquired
only by reading” (Fleury should have added _and by observation_);
“and it was an easy way of dazzling the ignorant laics by peculiar
terms and vain subtilties.”
But Scholasticism had its hour of glory, its erudite doctors, its
eloquent professors, chief among whom was Abelard.
83. ABELARD (1079-1142).--A genuine professor of higher
instruction, Abelard, by the prestige of his eloquence, gathered
around him at Paris thousands of students. Human speech, the
living words of the teacher, had then an authority, an importance,
which it has lost in part since books, everywhere distributed,
have, to a certain extent, superseded oral instruction. At a time
when printing did not exist, when manuscript copies were rare,
a teacher who combined knowledge with the gift of speech was a
phenomenon of incomparable interest, and students flocked from all
parts of Europe to take advantage of his lectures. Abelard is the
most brilliant representative of the scholastic pedagogy, with an
original and personal tendency towards the emancipation of the
mind. “It is ridiculous,” he said, “to preach to others what we can
neither make them understand, nor understand ourselves.” With more
boldness than Saint Anselm, he applied dialectics to theology, and
attempted to reason out the grounds of his faith.
84. THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS.--The seven liberal arts constituted
what may be called the secondary instruction of the Middle Age,
such as was given in the claustral or conventual schools, and
later, in the universities. The liberal arts were distributed into
two courses of study, known as the _trivium_ and the _quadrivium_.
The _trivium_ comprised grammar (Latin grammar, of course),
dialectics, or logic, and rhetoric; and the _quadrivium_, music,
arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. It is important to note the
fact that this programme contains only abstract and _formal_
studies,--no real and concrete studies. The sciences which teach us
to know man and the world, such as history, ethics, the physical
and natural sciences, were omitted and unknown, save perhaps in a
few convents of the Benedictines. Nothing which can truly educate
man, and develop his faculties as a whole, enlists the attention
of the Middle Age. From a course of study thus limited there might
come skillful reasoners and men formidable in argument, but never
fully developed men.[67]
85. METHODS AND DISCIPLINE.--The methods employed in the
ecclesiastical schools of the Middle Age were in accord with the
spirit of the times, when men were not concerned about liberty and
intellectual freedom; and when they thought more about the teaching
of dogmas than about the training of the intelligence. The teachers
recited or read their lectures, and the pupils learned by heart.
The discipline was harsh. Corrupt human nature was distrusted. In
1363, pupils were forbidden the use of benches and chairs, on the
pretext that such high seats were an encouragement to pride. For
securing obedience, corporal chastisements were used and abused.
The rod is in fashion in the fifteenth as it was in the fourteenth
century.
“There is no other difference,” says an historian, “except that
the rods in the fifteenth century are twice as long as those in
the fourteenth.”[68] Let us note, however, the protest of Saint
Anselm, a protest that pointed out the evil rather than cured it.
“Day and night,” said an abbot to Saint Anselm, “we do not cease
to chastise the children confided to our care, and they grow worse
and worse.” Anselm replied, “Indeed! You do not cease to chastise
them! And when they are grown up, what will they become? Idiotic
and stupid. A fine education that, which makes brutes of men! ...
If you were to plant a tree in your garden, and were to enclose it
on all sides so that it could not extend its branches, what would
you find when, at the end of several years, you set it free from
its bands? A tree whose branches would be bent and crooked; and
would it not be your fault, in having so unreasonably confined it?”
86. THE UNIVERSITIES.--Save claustral and cathedral schools, to
which must be added some parish schools, the earliest example
of our village schools, the sole educational establishment of
the Middle Age was what is called the _University_. Towards the
thirteenth and fourteenth century we see multiplying in the
great cities of Europe those centres of study, those collections
of students which recall from afar the schools of Plato and
Aristotle. Of such establishments were the university which opened
at Paris for the teaching of theology and philosophy (1200);
the universities of Naples (1224), of Prague (1345), of Vienna
(1365), of Heidelberg (1386), etc.[69] Without being completely
affranchised from sacerdotal control, these universities were a
first expansion of free science. As far back as the ninth century,
the Arabs had given an example to the rest of Europe by founding at
Salamanca, at Cordova, and in other cities of Spain, schools where
all the sciences were cultivated.
87. GERSON (1363-1429).--With the gentle Gerson, the supposed
author of the _Imitation_, it seems that the dreary dialectics
disappear to let the heart speak and make way for feeling. The
Chancellor of the University of Paris is distinguished from the
men of his time by his love for the people. He wrote in the common
tongue little elementary treatises for the use and within the
comprehension of the _plain people_. His Latin work, entitled _De
parvulis ad Christum trahendis_ (“Little children whom we must
lead to Christ”), gives evidence of a large spirit of sweetness
and goodness. It abounds in subtile and delicate observations.
For example, Gerson demands of teachers patience and tenderness:
“Little children,” he says, “are more easily managed by caresses
than by fear.” For these frail creatures he dreads the contagion
of example. “No living being is more in danger than the child
of allowing himself to be corrupted by another child.” In his
eyes, the little child is a delicate plant that must be carefully
protected against every evil influence, and, in particular, against
pernicious literature, such as the _Roman de la Rose_. Gerson
condemns corporal punishment, and requires that teachers shall have
for their pupils the affection of a father:--
“Above all else, let the teacher make an effort to be a father to
his pupils. Let him never be angry with them. Let him always be
simple in his instruction, and relate to his pupils that which is
wholesome and agreeable.” Tender-hearted and exalted spirit, Gerson
is a precursor of Fenelon.[70]
88. VITTORINO DA FELTRE (1379-1446).--It is a pleasure to place
beside Gerson one of his Italian contemporaries, the celebrated
Vittorino da Feltre, a professor in the University of Padua. It
was as preceptor to the sons of the Prince of Gonzagas, and as
founder of an educational establishment at Venice, that Vittorino
found occasion to show his aptitude for educational work. With
him, education again became what it was in Greece,--the harmonious
development of mind and body. Gymnastic exercises, such as
swimming, riding, fencing, restored to honor; attention to the
exterior qualities of fine bearing; an interesting and agreeable
method of instruction; a constant effort to discover the character
and aptitudes of children; a conscientious preparation for each
lesson; assiduous watchfulness over the work of pupils; such are
the principal features of the pedagogy of Vittorino da Feltre, a
system of teaching evidently in advance of his time, and one which
deserves a longer study.
89. OTHER TEACHERS AT THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGE.--Were we writing
a work of erudition, there would be other thinkers to point out
in the last years of the Middle Age, in that uncertain and, so to
speak, twilight period which serves as a transition from the night
of the Middle Age to the full day of the Renaissance. Among others,
let us notice the Chevalier de la Tour-Landry and Æneas Sylvius
Piccolomini.
The Chevalier de la Tour-Landry, in the work which he wrote for the
education of his daughters (1372), scarcely rises above the spirit
of his time. Woman, as he thinks, is made to pray and to go to
church. The model which he sets before his daughters is a countess,
who “each day wished to hear three masses.” He recommends fasting
three times a week in order “the better to subdue the flesh,” and
to prevent it “from diverting itself too much.” There is neither
responsibility nor proper dignity for the wife, who owes obedience
to her husband, her lord, and “should do his will, whether wrong
or right; if wrong, she is absolved from blame, as the blame falls
on her lord.”
Æneas Sylvius, the future Pope Pius II., in his tract on _The
Education of Children_ (1451), is already a man of the Renaissance,
since he recommends with enthusiasm the reading and study of most
of the classical authors. However, he traces a programme of studies
relatively liberal. By the side of the humanities he places the
sciences of geometry and arithmetic, “which are necessary,” he
says, “for training the mind and assuring rapidity of conceptions”;
and also history and geography. He had himself composed historical
narratives accompanied by maps. The distrusts of an overstrained
devotion were no longer felt by a teacher who wrote, “There is
nothing in the world more precious or more beautiful than an
enlightened intelligence.”
90. RECAPITULATION.--It is thus that the Middle Age in drawing to a
close came nearer and nearer, in the way of continuous progress, to
the decisive emancipation which the Renaissance and the Reformation
were soon to perpetuate. But the Middle Age, in itself, whatever
effort may be put forth at this day to rehabilitate it, and to
discover in it the golden age of modern societies, remains an
ill-starred epoch. A few virtues, negative for the most part,
virtues of obedience and consecration, cannot atone for the real
faults of those rude and barbarous centuries. A higher education
reserved to ecclesiastics and men of noble rank; an instruction
which consisted in verbal legerdemain, which developed only the
mechanism of reasoning, and made of the intelligence a prisoner
of the formal syllogism; agreeably to the barbarism of primitive
times, a fantastic pedantry which lost itself in superficial
discussions and in verbal distinctions; popular education almost
null, and restricted to the teaching of the catechism in Latin;
finally, a Church, absolute and sovereign, which determined for
all, great and small, the limits of thought, of belief, and of
action; such was, from our own point of view, the condition of
the Middle Age. It was time for the coming of the Renaissance to
affranchise the human mind, to excite and to reveal to itself the
unconscious need of instruction, and by the fruitful alliance of
the Christian spirit and profane letters, to prepare for the coming
of modern education.
[91. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. The fundamental characteristic of
Middle Age education was the domination of religious conceptions.
The training was for the life to come, rather than for this life;
it was almost exclusively religious and moral; was based on
authority; and included the whole human race.
2. This alliance of church and school, while giving an exclusive
aim to education, also gave it a spirit of intense seriousness
and earnestness. The survivals of this historical alliance are
church and parish schools, and a disposition of the modern Church
to dispute the right of the State to educate.
3. The supreme importance attached to the Scriptures made
education literary; made instruction dogmatic and arbitrary;
exalted words over things; inculcated a taste for abstract and
formal reasoning; made learning a process of memorizing; and
stifled the spirit of free inquiry.
4. The inclusion of the whole world in one Christian
Commonwealth, led to the intellectual enfranchisement of woman
and to the rise of primary education proper.
5. The general tendency was towards harshness in discipline,
coarseness in habits and manners, and a contempt for the
amenities of life.
6. Scholasticism erred by exaggeration; but its general effect
was to develop the power of deductive reasoning, to teach the use
of language as the instrument of thought, and to make apparent
the need of nice discriminations in the use of words.
7. The great intellectual lesson taught is the extreme difficulty
of attaining compass, symmetry, and moderation.]
FOOTNOTES:
[60] Fustel de Coulanges, _La Cité antique_, p. 476.
[61] See the Homily of Saint Basil _On the Utility which the young
can derive from the reading of profane authors_.
[62] _Letter to Læta on the education of her daughter Paula_ (403).
_Letter to Gaudentius on the education of the little Pacatula._ The
letter to Gaudentius is far inferior to the other by reason of the
perpetual digressions into which the author permits himself to be
drawn.
[63] For writing, Saint Jerome, like Quintilian, recommends that
children first practise on tablets of wood on which letters have
been engraved.
[64] _Écolâtre._ The history of this word, as given by Littré, is
instructive. “There was no cathedral church (sixteenth century) in
which a sum was not appropriated for the salary of one who taught
the ordinary subjects, and another for one who had leisure for
teaching Theology. The first was called _escolastre_ (_écolâtre_),
the second _theologal_.” Pasquier. (P.)
[65] For other examples, see the _Life of Alcuin_, by Lorenz; and
for Middle Age education in general, consult _Christian Schools and
Scholars_, by Augusta Theodosia Drane. (P.)
[66] The following quotation illustrates this servile dependence on
authority:
“At the time when the discovery of spots on the sun first began to
circulate, a student called the attention of his old professor to
the rumor, and received the following reply: ‘There can be no spots
on the sun, for I have read Aristotle twice from beginning to end,
and he says the sun is incorruptible. Clean your lenses, and if
the spots are not in the telescope, they must be in your eyes!’”
Naville, _La Logique de l’Hypothèse_. (P.)
[67] This is no exception to the rule that the education of an age
is the exponent of its real or supposed needs. (P.)
[68] Monteil, _Histoire des Français des divers états_.
[69] Cambridge (1109), Oxford (1140).
[70] In the _Traité de la visite des diocèses_, in 1400, he
directed the bishops to inquire whether each parish had a school,
and, in case there were none, to establish one.
CHAPTER V.
THE RENAISSANCE AND THE THEORIES OF EDUCATION IN THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EDUCATION OF THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY; CAUSES OF THE RENAISSANCE IN EDUCATION; THE THEORY AND
THE PRACTICE OF EDUCATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY; ERASMUS
(1467-1536); EDUCATION OF ERASMUS; THE JEROMITES; PEDAGOGICAL
WORKS OF ERASMUS; JUVENILE ETIQUETTE; EARLY EDUCATION; THE
INSTRUCTION OF WOMEN; RABELAIS (1483-1553); CRITICISM OF THE
OLD EDUCATION; GARGANTUA AND EUDEMON; THE NEW EDUCATION;
PHYSICAL EDUCATION; INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION; THE PHYSICAL AND
NATURAL SCIENCES; OBJECT LESSONS; ATTRACTIVE METHODS; RELIGIOUS
EDUCATION; MORAL EDUCATION; MONTAIGNE (1533-1592) AND RABELAIS;
THE PERSONAL EDUCATION OF MONTAIGNE; EDUCATION SHOULD BE
GENERAL; THE PURPOSE OF INSTRUCTION; EDUCATION OF THE JUDGMENT;
EDUCATIONAL METHODS; STUDIES RECOMMENDED; MONTAIGNE’S ERRORS;
INCOMPLETENESS OF HIS VIEWS ON THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN; ANALYTICAL
SUMMARY.
92. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EDUCATION OF THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY.--Modern education begins with the Renaissance. The
educational methods that we then begin to discern will doubtless
not be developed and perfected till a later period; the new
doctrines will pass into practice only gradually, and with the
general progress of the times. But from the sixteenth century
education is in possession of its essential principles. The
education of the Middle Age, over-rigid and repressive, which
condemned the body to a régime too severe, and the mind to a
discipline too narrow, is to be succeeded, at least in theory,
by an education broader and more liberal; which will give due
attention to hygiene and physical exercises; which will enfranchise
the intelligence, hitherto the prisoner of the syllogism; which
will call into play the moral forces, instead of repressing them;
which will substitute real studies for the verbal subtilties of
dialectics; which will give the preference to things over words;
which, finally, instead of developing but a single faculty,
the reason, and instead of reducing man to a sort of dialectic
automaton, will seek to develop the whole man, mind and body, taste
and knowledge, heart and will.
93. CAUSES OF THE RENAISSANCE IN EDUCATION.--The men of the
sixteenth century having renewed with classical antiquity an
intercourse that had been too long interrupted, it was natural that
they should propose to the young the study of the Greeks and the
Romans. What is called secondary instruction really dates from the
sixteenth century. The crude works of the Middle Age are succeeded
by the elegant compositions of Athens and Rome, henceforth made
accessible to all through the art of printing; and, with the
reading of the ancient authors, there reappear through the fruitful
effect of imitation, their qualities of correctness in thought,
of literary taste, and of elegance in form. In France, as in
Italy, the national tongues, moulded, and, as it were, consecrated
by writers of genius, become the instruments of an intellectual
propaganda. Artistic taste, revived by the rich products of a race
of incomparable artists, gives an extension to the horizon of life,
and creates a new class of emotions. Finally, the Protestant Reform
develops individual thought and free inquiry, and at the same time,
by its success, it imposes still greater efforts on the Catholic
Church.
This is not saying that everything is faultless in the educational
efforts of the sixteenth century. First, as is natural for
innovators, the thought of the teachers of this period is marked
by enthusiasm rather than by precision. They are more zealous in
pointing out the end to be attained, than exact in determining
the means to be employed. Besides, some of them are content to
emancipate the mind, but forget to give it proper direction.
Finally, others make a wrong use of the ancients; they are too
much preoccupied with the form and the purity of language;
they fall into _Ciceromania_, and it is not their fault if a
new superstition, that of rhetoric, does not succeed the old
superstition, that of the syllogism.
94. THE THEORY AND THE PRACTICE OF EDUCATION IN THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY.--In the history of education in the sixteenth century, we
must, moreover, carefully distinguish the theory from the practice.
The theory of education is already boldly put forward, and is in
advance of its age; while the practice is still dragging itself
painfully along on the beaten road, notwithstanding some successful
attempts at improvement.
The theory we must look for in the works of Erasmus, Rabelais,
and Montaigne, of whom it may be said, that before pretending
to surpass them, even at this day, we should rather attempt to
overtake them, and to equal them in the most of their pedagogical
precepts.
The practice is, first, the development of the study of the
humanities, particularly in the early colleges of the Jesuits, and,
before the Jesuits, in certain Protestant colleges, particularly
in the college at Strasburg, so brilliantly administered by the
celebrated Sturm (1507-1589). Then it is the revival of higher
instruction, denoted particularly by the foundation of the College
of France (1530), and by the brilliant lectures of Ramus. Finally,
it is the progress, we might almost say the birth, of primary
instruction, through the efforts of the Protestant reformers, and
especially of Luther.
Nevertheless, the educational thought of the sixteenth century is
in advance of educational practice; theories greatly anticipate
applications, and constitute almost all that is deserving of
special note.
95. ERASMUS (1467-1536).--By his numerous writings, translations,
grammars, dictionaries, and original works, Erasmus diffused about
him his own passionate fondness for classical literature, and
communicated this taste to his contemporaries. Without having a
direct influence on education, since he scarcely taught himself,
he encouraged the study of the ancients by his example, and by his
active propagandism. The scholar who said, “When I have money, I
will first buy Greek books and then clothes,” deserves to be placed
in the first rank among the creators of secondary instruction.
96. THE EDUCATION OF ERASMUS: THE JEROMITES.--Erasmus was educated
by the monks, as Voltaire was by the Jesuits, a circumstance
that has cost these liberal thinkers none of their independent
disposition, and none of their satirical spirit. At the age of
twelve, Erasmus entered the college of Deventer, in Holland. This
college was conducted by the Jeromites, or _Brethren of the Common
Life_. Founded in 1340 by Gerard Groot, the association of the
Jeromites undertook, among other occupations, the instruction of
children. Very mystical, and very ascetic at first, the disciples
of Gerard Groot restricted themselves to teaching the Bible, to
reading, and writing. They proscribed, as useless to piety, letters
and the sciences. But in the fifteenth century, under the influence
of John of Wessel and Rudolph Agricola, the Jeromites became
transformed; they were the precursors of the Renaissance, and the
promoters of the alliance between profane letters and Christianity.
“We may read Ovid once,” said John of Wessel, “but we ought to
read Virgil, Horace, and Terence, with more attention.” Horace and
Terence were precisely the favorite authors of Erasmus, who learned
them by heart at Deventer. Agricola, of whom Erasmus speaks only
with enthusiasm, was also the zealous propagator of the great works
of antiquity, and, at the same time, the severe critic of the state
of educational practice of the time when the school was too much
like a prison.
“If there is anything which has a contradictory name,” he said, “it
is the school. The Greeks called it σχολὴ, which means _leisure_,
_recreation_; and the Latins, _ludus_, that is, _play_. But there
is nothing farther removed from recreation and play. Aristophanes
called it φροντιστήριον, that is, _place of care_, _of torment_,
and this is surely the designation which best befits it.”
Erasmus then had for his first teachers enlightened men, who,
notwithstanding their monastic condition, both knew and loved
antiquity. But, as a matter of fact, Erasmus was his own teacher.
By personal effort he put himself at the school of the ancients.
He was all his life a student. Now he was a foundation scholar at
the college of Montaigu, in Paris, and now preceptor to gentlemen
of wealth. He was always in pursuit of learning, going over the
whole of Europe, that he might find in each cultivated city new
opportunities for self-instruction.
97. PEDAGOGICAL WORKS OF ERASMUS.--Most of the works written by
Erasmus relate to instruction. Some of them are fairly to be
classed as text-books, elementary treatises on practical education,
as, for example, his books _On the Manner of writing Letters_,
_Upon Rules of Etiquette for the Young_, etc. We may also notice
his _Adages_, a vast repertory of proverbs and maxims borrowed from
antiquity; his _Colloquies_, a collection of dialogues for the use
of the young, though the author here treats of many things which a
pupil should never hear spoken of. Another category should include
works of a more theoretical character, in which Erasmus sets forth
his ideas on education. In the essay _On the Order of Study_
(_de Ratione Studii_), he seeks out the rules for instruction in
literature, for the study of grammar, for the cultivation of the
memory, and for the explication of the Greek and Latin authors.
Another treatise, entitled _Of the First Liberal Education of
Children_ (_De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis_), is
still more important, and covers the whole field of education.
Erasmus here studies the character of the child, the question of
knowing whether the first years of child-life can be turned to good
account, and the measures that are to be taken with early life. He
also recommends methods that are attractive, and heartily condemns
the barbarous discipline which reigned in the schools of his time.
98. JUVENILE ETIQUETTE.--Erasmus is one of the first educators
who comprehended the importance of politeness. In an age still
uncouth, where the manners of even the cultivated classes tolerated
usages that the most ignorant rustic of to-day would scorn, it was
good to call the attention to outward appearances and the duties
of politeness. Erasmus knew perfectly well that politeness has a
moral side, that it is not a matter of pure convention, but that it
proceeds from the inner disposition of a well-ordered soul. So he
assigns it an important place in education:
“The duty of instructing the young,” he says, “includes several
elements, the first and also the chief of which is, that the
tender mind of the child should be instructed in piety; the second,
that he love and learn the liberal arts; the third, that he be
taught tact in the conduct of social life; and the fourth, that
from his earliest age he accustom himself to good behavior, based
on moral principles.”
We need not be astonished, however, to find that the civility of
Erasmus is still imperfect, now too free, now too exacting, and
always ingenuous. “It is a religious duty,” he says, “to salute him
who sneezes.” “Morally speaking, it is not a proper thing to throw
the head back while drinking, after the manner of storks, in order
to drain the last drop from the glass.” “If one let bread fall on
the ground, he should kiss it after having picked it up.” On the
other hand, Erasmus seems to allow that the nose may be wiped with
the fingers, but he forbids the use of the cap or the sleeve for
this purpose. He requires that the face shall be bathed with pure
water in the morning; “but,” he adds, “to repeat this afterwards is
nonsense.”
99. EARLY EDUCATION.--Like Quintilian, by whom he is often
inspired, Erasmus does not scorn to enter the primary school, and
to shape the first exercises for intellectual culture. Upon many
points, the thought of the sixteenth century scholar is but an
echo of the _Institutes of Oratory_, or of the educational essays
of Plutarch. Some of his maxims deserve to be reproduced: “We
learn with great willingness from those whom we love;” “Parents
themselves cannot properly bring up their children if they make
themselves only to be feared;” “There are children who would be
killed sooner than made better by blows: by mildness and kind
admonitions, one may make of them whatever he will;” “Children
will learn to speak their native tongue without any weariness, by
usage and practice;” “Drill in reading and writing is a little bit
tiresome, and the teacher will ingeniously palliate the tedium
by the artifice of an attractive method;” “The ancients moulded
toothsome dainties into the forms of the letters, and thus, as
it were, made children swallow the alphabet;” “In the matter of
grammatical rules, instruction should at the first be limited to
the most simple;” “As the body in infant years is nourished by
little portions distributed at intervals, so should the mind of the
child be nurtured by items of knowledge adapted to its weakness,
and distributed little by little.”
From out these quotations there appears a method of instruction
that is kindly, lovable, and full of tenderness for the young.
Erasmus claims for them the nourishing care and caresses of the
mother, the familiarity and goodness of the father, cleanliness,
and even elegance in the school, and finally, the mildness and
indulgence of the teacher.
100. THE INSTRUCTION OF WOMEN.--The scholars of the Renaissance did
not exclude women from all participation in the literary treasures
that a recovered antiquity had disclosed to themselves. Erasmus
admits them to an equal share.
In the _Colloquy of the Abbé and the Educated Woman_, Magdala
claims for herself the right to learn Latin, “so that she may
hold converse each day with so many authors who are so eloquent,
so instructive, so wise, and such good counsellors.” In the book
called _Christian Marriage_, Erasmus banters young ladies who learn
only to make a bow, to hold the hands crossed, to bite their lips
when they laugh, to eat and drink as little as possible at table,
after having taken ample portions in private. More ambitious for
the wife, Erasmus recommends her to pursue the studies which will
assist her in educating her own children, and in taking part in the
intellectual life of her husband.
Vives, a contemporary of Erasmus (1492-1540), a Spanish teacher,
expressed analogous ideas in his books on the education of women,
in which he recommends young women to read Plato and Seneca.
To sum up, the pedagogy of Erasmus is not without value; but
with him, education ran the risk of remaining exclusively Greek
and Latin. A humanist above everything else, he granted but very
small place to the sciences, and to history, which it sufficed to
skim over, as he said; and, what reveals his inmost nature, he
recommended the study of the physical sciences for this reason in
particular, that the writer will find in the knowledge of nature an
abundant source of metaphors, images, and comparisons.
101. RABELAIS (1483-1553).--Wholly different is the spirit of
Rabelais, who, under a fanciful and original form, has sketched a
complete system of education. Some pages of marked gravity in the
midst of the epic vagabondage of his burlesque work, give him the
right to appear in the first rank among those who have reformed the
art of training and developing the human soul.[71]
The pedagogy of Rabelais is the first appearance of what may be
called _realism_ in instruction, in distinction from the scholastic
_formalism_. The author of _Gargantua_ turns the mind of the young
man towards objects truly worthy of occupying his attention. He
catches a glimpse of the future reserved to scientific education,
and to the study of nature. He invites the mind, not to the labored
subtilties and complicated tricks which scholasticism had brought
into fashion, but to manly efforts, and to a wide unfolding of
human nature.
102. CRITICISM OF THE OLD EDUCATION: GARGANTUA AND EUDEMON.--In
the manners of the sixteenth century, the keen satire of Rabelais
found many opportunities for disporting itself; and his book may be
regarded as a collection of pamphlets. But there is nothing that he
has pursued with more sarcasms than the education of his day.
At the outset, Gargantua is educated according to the scholastic
methods. He works for twenty years with all his might, and learns
so perfectly the books that he studies that he can recite them by
heart, backwards and forwards, “and yet his father discovered that
all this profited him nothing; and what is worse, that it made him
a madcap, a ninny, dreamy, and infatuated.”
To that unintelligent and artificial training which surcharges the
memory, which holds the pupil for long years over insipid books,
which robs the mind of all independent activity, which dulls rather
than sharpens the intelligence,--to all this Rabelais opposes a
natural education, which appeals to experience and to facts, which
trains the young man, not only for the discussions of the schools,
but for real life, and for intercourse with the world, and which,
finally, enriches the intelligence and adorns the memory without
stifling the native graces and the free activities of the spirit.
Eudemon, who, in Rabelais’ romance, represents the pupil trained by
the new methods, knows how to think with accuracy and speak with
facility; his bearing is without boldness, but with confidence.
When introduced to Gargantua, he turns towards him, “cap in hand,
with open countenance, ruddy lips, steady eyes, and with modesty
becoming a youth”; he salutes him elegantly and graciously. To all
the pleasant things which Eudemon says to him, Gargantua finds
nothing to say in reply: “His countenance appeared as though he had
taken to crying immoderately; he hid his face in his cap, and not
a single word could be drawn from him.”
In these two pupils, so different in manner, Rabelais has
personified two contrasted methods of education: that which,
by mechanical exercises of memory, enfeebles and dulls the
intelligence; and that which, with larger grants of liberty,
develops keen intelligences, and frank and open characters.
103. THE NEW EDUCATION.--Let us now notice with some detail how
Rabelais conceives this new education.[72] After having thrown into
sharp relief the faults contracted by Gargantua in the school of
his first teachers, he entrusts him to a preceptor, Ponocrates, who
is charged with correcting his faults, and with re-moulding him; he
is to employ his own principles in the government of his pupil.
Ponocrates proceeds slowly at first; he considers that “nature does
not endure sudden changes without great violence.” He studies and
observes his pupil; he wishes to judge of his natural disposition.
Then he sets himself to work; he undertakes a general recasting of
the character and spirit of Gargantua, while directing, at the same
time, his physical, intellectual, and moral education.
104. PHYSICAL EDUCATION.--Hygiene and gymnastics, cleanliness which
protects the body, and exercise which strengthens it,--these two
essential parts of physical education receive equal attention from
Rabelais. Erasmus thought it was nonsense (“_ne rime à rien_”)
to wash more than once a day. Gargantua, on the contrary, after
eating, bathes his hands and his eyes in fresh water. Rabelais
does not forget that he has been a physician; he omits no detail
relative to the care of the body, even the most repugnant. He is
far from believing, with the mystics of the Middle Age, that it is
permissible to lodge knowledge in a sordid body, and that a foul
or neglected exterior is not unbefitting virtuous souls. The first
preceptors of Gargantua said that it sufficed to comb one’s hair
“with the four fingers and the thumb; and that whoever combed,
washed, and cleansed himself otherwise, was losing his time in this
world.” With Ponocrates, Gargantua reforms his habits, and tries to
resemble Eudemon, “whose hair was so neatly combed, who was so well
dressed, of such fine appearance, and was so modest in his bearing,
that he much more resembled a little angel than a man.”
Rabelais attaches equal importance to gymnastics, to walking, and
to active life in the open air. He does not allow Gargantua to grow
pale over his books, and to protract his study into the night.
After the morning’s lessons, he takes him out to play. Tennis and
ball follow the application to books: “He exercises his body just
as vigorously as he had before exercised his mind.” And so, after
the study of the afternoon till the supper hour, Gargantua devotes
his time to physical exercises. Riding, wrestling, swimming,
every species of physical recreation, gymnastics under all its
forms,--there is nothing which Gargantua does not do to give
agility to his limbs and to strengthen his muscles. Here, as in
other places, Rabelais stretches a point, and purposely resorts
to exaggeration in order to make his thought better comprehended.
It would require days of several times twenty-four hours, in
order that a real man could find the time to do all that the
author of Gargantua requires of his giant. In contrast with the
long asceticism of the Middle Age, he proposes a real revelry of
gymnastics for the colossal body of his hero. We will not forget
that here, as in all the other parts of Rabelais’ work, fiction
is ever mingled with fact. Rabelais wrote for giants, and it is
natural that he should demand gigantesque efforts of them. In order
to comprehend the exact thought of the author, it is necessary to
reduce his fantastic exaggerations to human proportions.
105. INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.--For the mind, as for the body,
Rabelais requires prodigies of activity. Gargantua rises at four
in the morning, and the greater part of the long day is filled
with study. For the indolent contemplations of the Middle Age,
Rabelais substitutes an incessant effort and an intense activity of
the mind. Gargantua first studies the ancient languages, and the
first place is given to Greek, which Rabelais rescues from the long
discredit into which it had fallen in the Middle Age, as is proved
by the vulgar adage, “_Græcum est, non legitur_.”
“Now, all disciplines are restored, and the languages
reinstated,--Greek (without which it is a shame for a person to
call himself learned), Hebrew, Chaldean, Latin. There are very
elegant and correct editions in use, which have been invented in
my age by divine inspiration, as, on the other hand, artillery was
invented by diabolic suggestion. The whole world is full of wise
men, of learned teachers, and of very large libraries, and it is my
opinion that neither in the time of Plato nor in that of Cicero,
nor in that of Papinian, were there such opportunities for study as
we see to-day.”
Like all his contemporaries, Rabelais is an enthusiast in classical
learning; but he is distinguished from them by a very decided
taste for the sciences, and in particular for the natural sciences.
106. THE PHYSICAL AND NATURAL SCIENCES.--The Middle Age had
completely neglected the study of nature. The art of observing was
ignored by those subtile dialecticians, who would know nothing of
the physical world except through the theories of Aristotle or the
dogmas of the sacred books; who attached no value to the study of
the material universe, the transient and despised abode of immortal
souls; and who, moreover, flattered themselves that they could
discover at the end of their syllogisms all that was necessary to
know about it. Rabelais is certainly the first, in point of time,
of that grand school of educators who place the sciences in the
first rank among the studies worthy of human thought.
The scholar of the Middle Age knew nothing of the world. Gargantua
requires of his son that he shall know it under all its aspects:
“As to the knowledge of the facts of nature,” he writes to
Pantagruel, “I would have you devote yourself to them with great
care, so that there shall be neither sea, river, nor fountain,
whose fish you do not know. All the birds of the air, all the
trees, shrubs, and fruits of the forests, all the grasses of the
earth, all the metals concealed in the depths of the abysses, the
precious stones of the entire East and South,--none of these should
be unknown to you. By frequent dissections, acquire a knowledge of
the other world, which is man. In a word, I point out a new world
of knowledge.”
Nothing is omitted, it is observed, from what constitutes the
science of the universe or the knowledge of man.
It is further to be noticed, that Rabelais wishes his pupil not
only to know, but to love and experience nature. He recommends
his pupils to go and read the _Georgics_ of Virgil in the midst
of meadows and woods. The precursor of Rousseau on this point as
upon some others, he thinks there is a gain in spiritual health by
refreshing the imagination and giving repose to the spirit, through
the contemplation of the beauties of nature.
Ponocrates, in order to afford Gargantua distraction from his
extreme attention to study, recommended once each month some very
clear and serene day, on which they set out at an early hour from
the city, and went to Chantilly, or Boulogne, or Montrouge, or Pont
Charenton, or Vannes, or Saint Cloud. And there they passed the
whole day in playing, singing, dancing, frolicking in some fine
meadow, hunting for sparrows, collecting pebbles, fishing for frogs
and crabs.[73]
107. OBJECT LESSONS.--In the scheme of studies planned by Rabelais,
the mind of the pupil is always on the alert, even at table. There,
instruction takes place while talking. The conversation bears
upon the food, upon the objects which attract the attention of
Gargantua, upon the nature and properties of water, wine, bread,
and salt. Every sensible object becomes material for questions
and explanations. Gargantua often takes walks across fields,
and he studies botany in the open country, “passing through
meadows or other grassy places, observing trees and plants,
comparing them with ancient books where they are described, ...
and taking handfuls of them home.” There are but few didactic
lessons; intuitive instruction, given in the presence of the
objects themselves, such is the method of Rabelais. It is in the
same spirit that he sends his pupil to visit the stores of the
silversmiths, the founderies, the alchemists’ laboratories, and
shops of all kinds,--real scientific excursions, such as are in
vogue to-day. Rabelais would form a complete man, skilled in art
and industry, and also capable, like the _Émile_ of Rousseau, of
devoting himself to manual labor. When the weather is rainy, and
walking impracticable, Gargantua employs his time in splitting and
sawing wood, and in threshing grain in the barn.
108. ATTRACTIVE METHODS.--By a reaction against the irksome
routine of the Middle Age, Rabelais would have his pupil study
while playing, and even learn mathematics “through recreation
and amusement.” It is in handling playing-cards that Gargantua
is taught thousands of “new inventions which relate to the
science of numbers.” The same course is followed in geometry and
astronomy. The accomplishments are not neglected, especially
fencing. Gargantua is an enormous man, who is to be developed in
all directions. The fine arts, music, painting, and sculpture,
are not strangers to him. The hero of Rabelais represents, not so
much an individual man, as a collective being who personifies the
whole of society, with all the variety of its new aspirations, and
with all the intensity of its multiplied needs. While the Middle
Age, through a narrow spirit, left in inaction certain natural
tendencies, Rabelais calls them all into life, without choice, it
is true, and without discrimination, with the whole ardor of an
emancipated imagination.
109. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.--In respect of religion as of everything
else, Rabelais is the adversary of an education wholly exterior
and of pure form. He ridicules his Gargantua, who, before his
intellectual conversion, when he was still at the school of “his
preceptors, the sophists,” goes to church, after a hearty dinner,
to hear twenty-six or thirty masses. What he substitutes for this
exterior devotion, for this abuse of superficial practices, is a
real feeling of piety, and the direct reading of the sacred texts:
“It is while Gargantua was being dressed that there was read to him
a page of Divine Scripture.”[74] Still more, it is the intimate
and personal adoration “of the great psalmodist of the universe,”
excited by the study of the works of God. Gargantua and his master,
Ponocrates, have scarcely risen when they observe the state of the
heavens, and admire the celestial vault. In the evening they devote
themselves to the same contemplation. After his meals, as before
going to sleep, Gargantua offers prayers to God, to adore Him, to
confirm his faith, to glorify Him for His boundless goodness, to
thank Him for all the time past, and to recommend himself to Him
for the time to come. The religious feeling of Rabelais proceeds
at the same time, both from the sentiment which provoked the
Protestant Reformation, of which he came near being an adherent,
and from tendencies still more modern,--those, for example, which
animate the deistic philosophy of Rousseau.
110. MORAL EDUCATION.--Those who know Rabelais only by reputation,
or through some of his innumerable drolleries, will perhaps be
astonished that the jovial author can be counted a teacher of
morals. It is impossible, however, to misunderstand the sincere and
lofty inspiration of such passages as this:
“Because, according to the wise Solomon, wisdom does not enter into
a malevolent soul, and knowledge without conscience is but the
ruin of the soul; it becomes you to serve, to love, and to fear
God, and to place on Him all your thoughts, all your hopes....
Be suspicious of the errors of the world. Apply not your heart
to vanity, for this life is transitory; but the word of God
endures forever. Be useful to all your neighbors, and love them as
yourself. Revere your teachers, flee the company of men whom you
would not resemble; and the grace which God has given you receive
not in vain. And when you think you have all the knowledge that can
be acquired by this means, return to me, so that I may see you, and
give you my benediction before I die.”[75]
111. MONTAIGNE (1533-1592) AND RABELAIS.--Between Erasmus, the
learned humanist, exclusively devoted to belles-lettres, and
Rabelais, the bold innovator, who extends as far as possible the
limits of the intelligence, and who causes the entire encyclopædia
of human knowledge to enter the brain of his pupil at the risk
of splitting it open, Montaigne occupies an intermediate place,
with his circumspect and conservative tendencies, with his
discreet and moderate pedagogy, the enemy of all excesses. It
seemed that Rabelais would develop all the faculties equally, and
place all studies, letters, and sciences upon the same footing.
Montaigne demands a choice. Between the different faculties he
attempts particularly to train the judgment; among the different
knowledges, he recommends by preference those which form sound
and sensible minds. Rabelais overdrives mind and body. He dreams
of an extravagant course of instruction where every science shall
be studied exhaustively.[76] Montaigne simply demands that “one
taste the upper crust of the sciences”; that one skim over them
without going into them deeply, “in French fashion.” In his view,
a well-made head is worth more than a head well filled. It is not
so much to accumulate, to amass, knowledge, as to assimilate as
much of it as a prudent intelligence can digest without fatigue.
In a word, while Rabelais sits down, so to speak, at the banquet
of knowledge with an avidity which recalls the gluttony of the
Pantagruelian repasts, Montaigne is a delicate connoisseur, who
would only satisfy with discretion a regulated appetite.
112. THE PERSONAL EDUCATION OF MONTAIGNE.--One often becomes
teacher through recollection of his personal education. This is
what happened to Montaigne. His pedagogy is at once an imitation of
the methods which a father full of solicitude had himself applied
to him, and a protest against the defects and the vices of the
college of Guienne, which he entered at the age of six years. The
home education of Montaigne affords the interesting spectacle of a
child who develops freely. My spirit, he himself says, was trained
with all gentleness and freedom, without severity or constraint.
His father, skilful in his tender care, had him awakened each
morning at the sound of musical instruments, so as to spare him
those brusque alarms that are bad preparations for toil. In a word,
he applied to him that tempered discipline, at once indulgent
and firm, equally removed from complacency and harshness, which
Montaigne has christened with the name of _severe mildness_.
Another characteristic of Montaigne’s education is, that he learned
Latin as one learns his native tongue. His father had surrounded
him with domestics and teachers who conversed with him only in
Latin. The result of this was, that at the age of six he was so
proficient in the language of Cicero, that the best Latinists
of the time feared to address him (_craignissent à l’accoster_).
On the other hand, he knew no more of French than he did of
Arabic.[77] It is evident that Montaigne’s father had taken a false
route, but at least Montaigne derived a just conception from this
experience, namely, that the methods ordinarily pursued in the
study of the dead languages are too slow and too mechanical; that
an abuse is made of rules, and that sufficient attention is not
given to practice: “No doubt but _Greek_ and _Latin_ are very great
ornaments, and of very great use, but we buy them too dear.”[78]
At the college of Guienne, where he passed seven years, Montaigne
learned to detest corporal chastisements and the hard discipline
of the scholars of his day: “ ... Instead of tempting and alluring
children to letters by apt and gentle ways, our pedants do in
truth present nothing before them but rods and ferules, horror and
cruelty. Away with this violence! away with this compulsion! than
which, I certainly believe, nothing more dulls and degenerates a
well-descended nature.... The strict government of most of our
colleges has evermore displeased me.... ’Tis the true house of
correction of imprisoned youth.... Do but come in when they are
about their lesson, and you shall hear nothing but the outcries
of boys under execution, with the thundering noise of their
_Pedagogues_, drunk with fury, to make up the consort. A pretty
way this! to tempt these tender and timorous souls to love their
book, with a furious countenance, and a rod in hand. A cursed and
pernicious way of proceeding.... How much more decent would it be
to see their classes strewed with green leaves and fine flowers,
than with bloody stumps of birch and willows? Were it left to my
ordering, I should paint the school with the pictures of Joy and
Gladness, Flora and the Graces ... that where their profit is, they
might have their pleasure too.”[79]
113. IMPORTANCE OF A GENERAL RATHER THAN A SPECIAL EDUCATION.--If
Montaigne, in different chapters of his essays,[80] has given
passing attention to pedagogical questions, it is not only through
a recollection of his own years of apprenticeship, but also because
of his judgment as a philosopher, that “the greatest and most
important task of human understanding is in those matters which
concern the nurture and instruction of children.”
For him, education is the art of forming men, and not specialists.
This he explains in his original manner under the form of an
anecdote:
“Going to Orleans one day, I met in that plain this side Clery, two
pedants who were going towards Bordeaux, about fifty paces distant
from one another. Still further back of them, I saw a troop of
horse, and at their head a gentleman who was the late Count de la
Rochefoucault. One of my company inquired of the foremost of these
dominies, who that gentleman was who was following him. He had not
observed the train that was following after, and thought that the
question related to his companion; and so he replied pleasantly,
‘He is not a gentleman, but a grammarian, and I am a logician.’
Now, as we are here concerned in the training, not of a grammarian,
or of a logician, but of a complete gentleman, we will let those
who will abuse their leisure; but we have business of another
nature.”[81]
It is true that Montaigne says gentleman, and not simply man; but
in reality his thought is the same as that of Rousseau and of all
those who require a general education of the human soul.
114. THE PURPOSE OF INSTRUCTION.--From what has now been said, it
is easy to comprehend that, in the opinion of Montaigne, letters
and other studies are but the means or instrument, and not the
aim and end of instruction. The author of the _Essays_ does not
yield to the literary craze, which, in the sixteenth century,
took certain scholars captive, and made the ideal of education to
consist of a knowledge of the ancient languages. It is of little
consequence to him that a pupil has learned to write in Latin;
what he does require, is that he become better and more prudent,
and have a sounder judgment. “If his soul be not put into better
rhythm, if the judgment be not better settled, I would rather have
him spend his time at tennis.”[82]
115. EDUCATION OF THE JUDGMENT.--Montaigne has expressed his
dominant thought on education in a hundred different ways. He is
preoccupied with the training of the judgment, and on this point we
might quote whole pages:
“ ... According to the fashion in which we are instructed, it is
not singular that neither scholars nor masters become more able,
although they become more wise. In fact, our parents devote their
care and expense to furnishing our heads with knowledge; but to
judgment and virtue no additions are made. Say of a passer-by to
people, ‘O what a learned man!’ and of another, ‘O what a good
man goes there!’ and they will not fail to turn their eyes and
attention towards the former. There should be a third to cry, ‘O
the blockheads!’ Men are quick to inquire, ‘Does he know Greek or
Latin? Does he write in verse or in prose?’ But whether he has
become better or more prudent, which is the principal thing, this
receives not the least notice; whereas we ought to inquire who is
the better learned, rather than who is the more learned?”
“We labor only at filling the memory, and leave the understanding
and the conscience void. Just as birds sometimes go in quest of
grain, and bring it in their bills without tasting it themselves,
to make of it mouthfuls for their young; so our pedants go
rummaging in books for knowledge, only to hold it at their tongues’
end, and then distribute it to their pupils.”[83]
116. STUDIES RECOMMENDED.--The practical and utilitarian mind of
Montaigne dictates to him his programme of studies. With him it
is not a question of plunging into the depths of the sciences;
disinterested studies are not his affair. If Rabelais proposed to
develop the speculative faculties, Montaigne, on the contrary, is
preoccupied with the practical faculties, and he makes everything
subordinate to morals. For example, he would have history learned,
not for the sake of knowing the facts, but of appreciating them. It
is not so necessary to imprint in the memory of the child “the date
of the fall of Carthage as the character of Hannibal and Scipio,
nor so much where Marcellus died as why it was unworthy of his duty
that he died there.”[84]
And so in philosophy, it is not the general knowledge of man and
nature that Montaigne esteems and recommends; but only those parts
that have a direct bearing on morals and active life.
“It is a pity that matters should be at such a pass as they are
in our time, that philosophy, even with people of understanding,
should be looked upon as a vain and fanciful name, a thing of no
use and no value, either for opinion or for action. I think that
it is the love of quibbling that has caused things to take this
turn.... Philosophy is that which teaches us to live.”[85]
117. EDUCATIONAL METHODS.--An education purely bookish is not to
Montaigne’s taste. He counts less upon books than upon experience
and mingling with men; upon the observation of things, and upon the
natural suggestions of the mind:
“For learning to judge well and speak well, whatever presents
itself to our eyes serves as a sufficient book. The knavery of
a page, the blunder of a servant, a table witticism,--all such
things are so many new things to think about. And for this purpose
conversation with men is wonderfully helpful, and so is a visit to
foreign lands ... to bring back the customs of those nations, and
their manners, and to whet and sharpen our wits by rubbing them
upon those of others.”
“ ... The lesson will be given, sometimes by conversation,
sometimes by book.... Let the child examine every man’s talent,
a peasant, a mason, a passer-by. Put into his head an honest
curiosity in everything. Let him observe whatever is curious in
his surroundings,--a fine house, a delicate fountain, an eminent
man, the scene of an ancient battle, the routes of Cæsar, or of
Charlemagne....”[85]
Things should precede words. On this point Montaigne anticipates
Comenius, Rousseau, and all modern educators.
“Let our pupil be provided with things; words will follow only too
fast.”[86]
“The world is given to babbling; I hardly ever saw a man who did
not rather prate too much, than speak too little. Yet the half
of our life goes in that way; we are kept four or five years in
learning words....”[87]
“This is not saying that it is not a fine and good thing to speak
well; but not so good as it is made out to be. I am vexed that our
life is so much occupied with all this.”
118. HOW WE SHOULD READ.--Montaigne has keenly criticised the abuse
of books: “I would not have this boy of ours imprisoned, and made a
slave to his book.... I would not have his spirit cow’d and subdu’d
by applying him to the rack, and tormenting him, as some do,
fourteen or fifteen hours a day, and so make a pack-horse of him.
Neither should I think it good, when, by a solitary and melancholic
complexion, he is discovered to be much addicted to his book, to
nourish that humor in him, for that renders them unfit for civil
conversation, and diverts them from better employments.”[88]
But while he advises against excess in reading, he has admirably
defined the manner in which we ought to read. Above all, he says,
let us assimilate and appropriate what we read. Let the work of
the reader resemble that of bees, that, on this side and on that,
tap the flowers for their sweet juices, and make them into honey,
which is no longer thyme nor marjoram. In other terms, we should
read with reflection, and with a critical spirit, while mastering
the thoughts of the author by our personal judgment, without ever
becoming slaves to them.
119. MONTAIGNE’S ERRORS.--Montaigne’s greatest fault, it must
be confessed, is that he is somewhat heartless. Somewhat of an
egoist and Epicurean, he celebrates only the easy virtues that
are attained “by shady routes through green meadows and fragrant
flowers.” Has he himself ever performed painful duties that demand
effort? To love children, he waits till they are amiable; while
they are small, he disdains them, and keeps them at a distance from
him:
“I cannot entertain that passion of dandling and caressing an
infant, scarcely born, having as yet neither motion of soul nor
shape of body distinguishable, by which they can render themselves
amiable; and have not suffered them to be nursed near me....”[89]
“Never take, and, still less, never give, to the women of your
household the care of the feeding of your children!”
Montaigne joined precept to example. He somewhere says unfeelingly:
“My children all died while at nurse.”[90] He goes so far as to
say that a man of letters ought to prefer his writings to his
children: “The births of our intelligence are the children the most
truly our own.”[91]
120. INCOMPLETENESS OF HIS VIEWS ON THE EDUCATION OF
WOMEN.--Another mental defect in Montaigne is, that, by reason of
his moderation and conservatism, he remains a little narrow. High
conceptions of human destiny are not to be expected of him; his
manner of conceiving of it is mean and commonplace. This lack of
intellectual breadth is especially manifest in his reflections on
the education of women. Montaigne is of that number, who, through
false gallantry, would keep woman in a state of ignorance on the
pretext that instruction would mar her natural charms. In their
case, he would prohibit even the study of rhetoric, because, he
says, that would “conceal her charms under borrowed charms.” Women
should be content with the advantages which their sex assures to
them. With the knowledge which they naturally have, “they command
with the switch, and rule both the regents and the schools.”
However, he afterwards thinks better of it; but in his concessions
there is more of contempt than in his prohibitions: “If, however,
it displeases them to make us any concessions whatever, and they
are determined, through curiosity, to know something of books,
poetry is an amusement befitting their needs; for it is a wanton,
crafty art, disguised, all for pleasure, all for show, just as they
are.”[92]
The following passage may also be quoted:--
“When I see them tampering with rhetoric, law, logic, and the like,
so improper and unnecessary for their business, I begin to suspect
that the men who inspire them with such things do it that they may
govern them upon that account.”[93]
It is impossible to express a greater contempt for women. Montaigne
goes so far as to deny her positive qualities of heart. He chances
to say, with reference to Mlle. de Gournay, his adopted daughter:
“The perfection of the most saintly affection has been attained
when it does not exhibit the least trace of sex.”
To conclude: notwithstanding some grave defects, the pedagogy of
Montaigne is a pedagogy of good sense, and certain parts of it
will always deserve to be admired. The Jansenists, and Locke,
and Rousseau, in different degrees, draw their inspiration from
Montaigne. In his own age, it is true, his ideas were accepted by
scarcely any one save his disciple Charron, who, in his book of
_Wisdom_,[94] has done scarcely more than to arrange in order the
thoughts that are scattered through the _Essays_. But if he had
no influence upon his own age, Montaigne has at least remained,
after three centuries, a sure guide in the matter of intellectual
education.
[121. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. The dominant characteristic of
education during the Renaissance period is the reaction which it
exhibits against certain errors in Middle Age education.
2. A second characteristic is a disposition to conciliate or
harmonize principles and methods whose fault is exaggeration.
3. Against instruction based almost wholly on authority, there is
a reaction in favor of free inquiry.
4. Opposed to an education of the professional or technical type,
there is proposed an education of the general or liberal type.
5. From being almost exclusively ethical and religious, education
tends to become secular.
6. Didactic, formal instruction out of books, dealing in
second-hand knowledge, is succeeded by informal, intuitive
instruction from natural objects, dealing in knowledge at first
hand.
7. The conception that education is a process of manufacture
begins to give place to the conception that it is a process of
growth.
8. Teaching whose purpose was information is succeeded by
teaching whose purpose is formation, discipline, or training.
9. A discipline that was harsh and cruel is succeeded by a
discipline comparatively mild and humane; and manners that were
rude and coarse, are followed by a finer code of civility.]
FOOTNOTES:
[71] See especially the following chapters: Book I. chaps. XIV.,
XV., XXI., XXII., XXIV.; Book II. chaps. V., VI., VII., VIII.
[72] The contrast between the general system of education that
culminated with the Reformation, and the system that had its rise
at the same period, is so marked that there is an historical
propriety in calling the first the old education, and the second,
or later, the new education. Recollecting the tendency of the
human mind to pass from one extreme to an opposite extreme, we may
suspect that the final state of educational thought and practice
will represent a mean between these two contrasted systems: it is
inconceivable that the old was wholly wrong, or that the new is
wholly right. (P.)
[73] Book I. chap. XXIV.
[74] Rabelais recommends the study of Hebrew, so that the sacred
books may be known in their original form. In some place he says:
“I love much more to hear the Gospel than to hear the life of Saint
Margaret or some other cant.”
[75] Book II. chap. VIII.
[76] This pansophic scheme of Rabelais has been revived in later
times by Bentham, in his _Chrestomathia_, and still later by
Spencer, in his _Education_. It seems to have been forgotten that
the division of labor affects education in much the same way as it
affects all other departments of human activity: that there is no
more need of having as a personal possession all the knowledge we
need for guidance, than for owning all the agencies we need for
locomotion or communication. (P.)
[77] “I was above six years of age before I understood either
_French_ or _Perigordian_ any more than Arabic, and without art,
book, grammar, or precept, whipping, or the experience of a tear,
had by that time learned to speak as pure _Latin_ as my master
himself.” _Essays_, Book I. chap. XXV. In this chapter I have
several times quoted from Cotton’s translation. (London: 1711.) (P.)
[78] Book I. chap. XXV.
[79] Book I. chap. XXV.
[80] See particularly Chap. XXIV. of Book I., _Of Pedantry_; Chap.
XXV. Book I., _Of the Education of Children_; Chap. VIII. Book II.,
_Of the Affection of Fathers to their Children_.
[81] Book I. chap. XXV.
[82] Book I. chap. XXIV.
[83] Book I. chap. XXIV.
[84] Book I. chap. XXV.
[85] Book I. chap. XXV.
[86] Has not this extravagant preference for things, as
distinguished from words, become a new superstition in educational
theory? Considering the misuse made of words by Scholasticism, it
was time for Montaigne to summon the attention outwards to sensible
realities; but it is more than doubtful whether there is any valid
ground for the absolute rule of modern pedagogy, “first the idea,
then the term.” In actual experience, there is no invariable
sequence. The really important thing is, that _terms be made
significant_. (P.)
[87] Book I. chap. XXV.
[88] Book I. chap. XXV.
[89] Book II. chap. VIII.
[90] I am not sure that this remark does not do Montaigne
injustice, especially when we consider the connection in which the
original remark is made: “I am of opinion that what is not to be
done by reason, prudence, and address, is never to be effected by
force. I myself was brought up after that manner; and they tell me
that, in all my first age, I never felt the rod but twice, and then
very easily. I have practised the same method with my children,
who all of them dy’d at nurse; but Leonora, my only daughter,
is arrived to the age of six years and upwards without other
correction for her childish faults than words only, and those very
gentle.” Book II. chap. VIII. (P.)
[91] Book III. chap. XIII.
[92] Book III. chap. III.
[93] Book III. chap. III.
[94] See particularly Chap. XIV. of Book III.
CHAPTER VI.
PROTESTANTISM AND PRIMARY INSTRUCTION. LUTHER AND COMENIUS.
ORIGIN OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION; SPIRIT OF THE PROTESTANT REFORM;
CALVIN, MELANCTHON, ZWINGLI; LUTHER (1483-1546); APPEAL ADDRESSED
TO THE MAGISTRATES AND LEGISLATORS OF GERMANY; DOUBLE UTILITY
OF INSTRUCTION; NECESSITY OF A SYSTEM OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION;
CRITICISM OF THE SCHOOLS OF THE PERIOD; ORGANIZATION OF NEW
SCHOOLS; PROGRAMME OF STUDIES; PROGRESS IN METHODS; THE STATES
GENERAL OF ORLEANS (1560); RATICH (1571-1635); COMENIUS
(1592-1671); HIS CHARACTER; BACONIAN INSPIRATION; LIFE OF
COMENIUS; HIS PRINCIPAL WORKS; DIVISION OF INSTRUCTION INTO FOUR
GRADES; ELEMENTARY INITIATION INTO ALL THE STUDIES; THE PEOPLE’S
SCHOOL; SITE OF THE SCHOOL; INTUITIONS OF SENSE; SIMPLIFICATION
OF GRAMMATICAL STUDIES; PEDAGOGICAL PRINCIPLES OF COMENIUS;
ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
122. ORIGIN OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.--With La Salle and the
foundation of the Institute of the Brethren of the Christian
Schools, the historian of education recognizes the Catholic origin
of primary instruction; in the decrees and laws of the French
Revolution, its lay and philosophical origin; but it is to the
Protestant Reformers,--to Luther in the sixteenth century, and to
Comenius in the seventeenth--that must be ascribed the honor of
having first organized schools for the people. In its origin, the
primary school is the child of Protestantism, and its cradle was
the Reformation.
123. SPIRIT OF THE PROTESTANT REFORM.--The development of primary
instruction was the logical consequence of the fundamental
principles of the Protestant Reform. As Michel Bréal has said:
“In making man responsible for his own faith, and in placing the
source of that faith in the Holy Scriptures, the Reform contracted
the obligation to put each one in a condition to save himself by
the reading and the understanding of the Bible.... The necessity
of explaining the Catechism, and making comments on it, was for
teachers an obligation to learn how to expound a thought, and to
decompose it into its elements. The study of the mother tongue
and of singing, was associated with the reading of the Bible
(translated into German by Luther) and with religious services.”
The Reform, then, contained, in germ, a complete revolution in
education; it enlisted the interests of religion in the service
of instruction, and associated knowledge with faith. This is the
reason that, for three centuries, the Protestant nations have led
humanity in the matter of primary instruction.
124. CALVIN (1509-1564), MELANCTHON (1497-1560), ZWINGLI
(1484-1532).--However, all the Protestant Reformers were far from
exhibiting the same zeal in behalf of primary instruction. Calvin,
absorbed in religious struggles and polemics, was not occupied
with the organization of schools till towards the close of his
life, and even the college that he founded at Geneva, in 1559, was
scarcely more than a school for the study of Latin. Melancthon, who
has been called “the preceptor of Germany,” worked more for high
schools than for schools for the people. He was above all else a
professor of Belles-Lettres; and it was with chagrin that he saw
his courses in the University of Wittenberg deserted by students
when he lectured on the _Olynthiacs_ of Demosthenes. Before Calvin
and Melancthon, the Swiss reformer Zwingli had shown his great
interest in primary teaching, in his little book “upon the manner
of instructing and bringing up boys in a Christian way” (1524). In
this he recommended natural history, arithmetic, and also exercises
in fencing, in order to furnish the country with timely defenders.
125. LUTHER (1483-1546).--The German reformer Luther is, of all his
co-religionists, the one who has served the cause of elementary
instruction with the most ardor. He not only addressed a pressing
appeal to the ruling classes in behalf of founding schools for
the people, but, by his influence, methods of instruction were
improved, and the educational spirit was renewed in accordance
with the principles of Protestantism. “Spontaneity,” it has been
said, not without some exaggeration, “free thought, and free
inquiry, are the basis of Protestantism; where it has reigned,
there have disappeared the method of repeating and of learning by
heart without reflection, mechanism, subjection to authority, the
paralysis of the intelligence oppressed by dogmatic instruction,
and science put in tutelage by the beliefs of the Church.”[95]
126. APPEAL ADDRESSED TO THE MAGISTRATES AND LEGISLATORS OF
GERMANY.--In 1524, Luther, in a special document addressed to
the public authorities of Germany, forcibly expressed himself
against the neglect into which the interests of instruction had
fallen. This appeal has this characteristic, that the great
reformer, while assuming that the Church is the mother of the
school, seems especially to count on the secular arm, upon the
power of the people, to serve his purposes in the cause of
universal instruction. “Each city,” he said, “is subjected to great
expense every year for the construction of roads, for fortifying
its ramparts, and for buying arms and equipping soldiers. Why
should it not spend an equal sum for the support of one or two
school-masters? The prosperity of a city does not depend solely on
its natural riches, on the solidity of its walls, on the elegance
of its mansions, and on the abundance of arms in its arsenals;
but the safety and strength of a city reside above all in a
good education, which furnishes it with instructed, reasonable,
honorable, and well-trained citizens.”[96]
127. DOUBLE UTILITY OF INSTRUCTION.--A remarkable fact about Luther
is, that as a preacher of instruction, he does not speak merely
from the religious point of view. After having recommended schools
as institutions auxiliary to the Church, he makes a resolute
argument from the human point of view. “Were there neither soul,
heaven, nor hell,” he says, “it would still be necessary to have
schools for the sake of affairs here below, as the history of
the Greeks and the Romans plainly teaches. The world has need of
educated men and women, to the end that the men may govern the
country properly, and that the women may properly bring up their
children, care for their domestics, and direct the affairs of their
households.”
128. NECESSITY OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.--The objection will perhaps
be made, says Luther, that for the education of children the home
is sufficient, and that the school is useless: “To this I reply:
We clearly see how the boys and girls are educated who remain at
home.” He then shows that they are ignorant and “stupid,” incapable
of taking part in conversation, of giving good advice, and without
any experience of life; while, if they had been educated in the
schools, by teachers who could give instruction in the languages,
in the arts, and in history, they might in a little time gather
up within themselves, as in a mirror, the experience of whatever
has happened since the beginning of the world; and from this
experience, he adds, they would derive the wisdom they need for
self-direction and for giving wise counsel to others.
129. CRITICISM OF THE SCHOOLS OF THE PERIOD.--But since there must
be public schools, can we not be content with those which already
exist? Luther replies by proving that parents neglect to send their
children to them, and by denouncing the uselessness of the results
obtained by those who attend them. “We find people,” he says, “who
serve God in strange ways. They fast and wear coarse clothing, but
they pass blindly by the true divine service of the home,--they do
not know how to bring up their children.... Believe me, it is much
more necessary to give attention to your children and to provide
for their education than to purchase indulgencies, to visit foreign
churches, or to make solemn vows.... All people, especially the
Jews, oblige their children to go to school more than Christians
do. This is why the state of Christianity is so low, for all its
force and power are in the rising generation; and if these are
neglected, there will be Christian churches like a garden that has
been neglected in the spring-time.... Every day children are born
and are growing up, and, unfortunately, no one cares for the poor
young people, no one thinks to train them; they are allowed to go
as they will. Was it not lamentable to see a lad study in twenty
years and more only just enough bad Latin to enable him to become a
priest, and to go to mass? And he who attained to this was counted
a very happy being! Right happy the mother who bore such a child!
And he has remained all his life a poor unlettered man. Everywhere
we have seen such teachers and masters, who knew nothing themselves
and could teach nothing that was good and useful; they did not even
know how to learn and to teach. Has anything else been learned up
to this time in the high schools and in the convents except to
become asses and blockheads? ...”
130. ORGANIZATION OF THE NEW SCHOOLS.--So Luther resolves on the
organization of new schools. The cost of their maintenance he makes
a charge on the public treasury; he demonstrates to parents the
moral obligation to have their children instructed in them; to
the duty of conscience he adds civil obligation; and, finally, he
gives his thought to the means of recruiting the teaching service.
“Since the greatest evil in every place is the lack of teachers, we
must not wait till they come forward of themselves; we must take
the trouble to educate them and prepare them.” To this end Luther
keeps the best of the pupils, boys and girls, for a longer time in
school; gives them special instructors, and opens libraries for
their use. In his thought he never distinguishes women teachers
from men teachers; he wants schools for girls as well as for boys.
Only, not to burden parents and divert children from their daily
labor, he requires but little time for school duties. “You ask:
Is it possible to get along without our children, and bring them
up like gentlemen? Is it not necessary that they work at home? I
reply: I by no means approve of those schools where a child was
accustomed to pass twenty or thirty years in studying Donatus or
Alexander[97] without learning anything. Another world has dawned,
in which things go differently. My opinion is that we must send the
boys to school one or two hours a day, and have them learn a trade
at home for the rest of the time. It is desirable that these two
occupations march side by side. As it now is, children certainly
spend twice as much time in playing ball, running the streets, and
playing truant. And so the girls can equally well devote nearly the
same time to school, without neglecting their home duties; they
lose more time than this in over-sleeping and in dancing more than
is meet.”
131. PROGRAMME OF STUDIES.--Luther gives the first place to the
teaching of religion: “Is it not reasonable that every Christian
should know the Gospel at the age of nine or ten?”
Then come the languages, not, as might be hoped, the mother tongue,
but the learned languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Luther had
not yet been sufficiently rid of the old spirit to comprehend that
the language of the people ought to be the basis of universal
instruction. He left to Comenius the glory of making the final
separation of the primary school from the Latin school. But yet,
Luther gave excellent advice for the study of languages, which must
be learned, he said, less in the abstract rules of grammar than in
their concrete reality.
Luther recommends the mathematics, and also the study of nature;
but he has a partiality for history and historians, who are, he
says, “the best people and the best teachers,” on the condition
that they do not tamper with the truth, and that “they do not make
obscure the work of God.”
Of the liberal arts of the Middle Age, Luther does not make much
account. He rightly says of dialectics, that it is no equivalent
for real knowledge, and that it is simply “an instrument by which
we render to ourselves an account of what we know.”
Physical exercises are not forgotten in Luther’s pedagogical
regulations. But he attaches an especial importance to singing.
“Unless a schoolmaster know how to sing, I think him of no
account.” “Music,” he says again, “is a half discipline which makes
men more indulgent and more mild.”