future development now became clearly established. The drawing given here
will help to make this evident. It will be seen from this that not only
was the secondary school still the dominant type, though elementary
schools began for the first time to be considered as important also, but
that the secondary schools were wholly independent of the elementary
schools which now began to be created. The elementary schools were in the
vernacular and for the masses; the secondary schools were in the Latin
tongue and for the training of the scholarly leaders. Between these two
schools, so different in type and in clientèle, there was little in
common. This difference was further emphasized with time. The elementary
schools later on added subjects of use to the common people, while the
secondary schools added subjects of use for scholarly preparation or for
university entrance. The secondary schools also frequently provided
preparatory schools for their particular classes of children. As a result,
all through Europe two school systems--an elementary-school system for the
masses, and a secondary-school system for the classes--exist to-day side
by side. We in America did not develop such a class school system, though
we started that way. This was because the conception of education we
finally developed was a product of a new democratic spirit, as will be
explained later on.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Compare the attention to careful religious instruction in the secondary
schools provided by the Lutherans, Calvinists, and English. What analogous
instruction do we provide in the American high schools? Is it as thorough
or as well done?
2. Compare the scope and ideals of the educational system provided by the
Calvinists with the same for the Lutherans and Anglicans.
3. Compare the characteristics of Calvinistic (Huguenot) education, as
summarized by Foster, with present-day state educational purposes.
4. Just what kind of a school system did Knox propose (1560) for Scotland?
5. Show how the educational program of the Jesuits reveals Ignatius Loyola
as a man of vision.
6. Viewed from the purposes the Order had in mind, was it warranted in
neglecting the education of the masses?
7. Does the success of the Order show the importance to society of finding
and educating the future leader? Can all men be trained for leadership?
8. What does the statement that the Jesuits were "too practical to make
many changes," but had "a keen eye for what was best" in the work of
others, indicate as to the nature of school administration and educational
progress?
9. Indicate the advantages which the Jesuits had in their teachers and
teaching-aim over us of to-day. How could we develop an aim as clearly
defined and potent as theirs? Could we select teachers with such care?
How?
10. Compare the religious and educational propaganda of the Jesuits with
the recent political propaganda of the Germans.
11. What is meant by the statement that the Jesuit teaching method, like
that of the modern German _Volksschule_, was a teaching and not a
questioning method?
12. Compare present American standards for teacher-training for elementary
and secondary teaching with those required by the Jesuits:--(_a_) as to
length of preparation; (_b_) as to nature and scope of preparation.
13. How do you explain the introduction of sewing into the elementary
vernacular Catholic schools for girls, so long before handiwork for boys
was thought of?
14. In schools so formally organized as those of La Salle, how do you
explain the great freedom allowed in questioning on arithmetic and the
Catechism?
15. Why should La Salle's work have been so opposed by both Church and
civil authorities? Do you consider that his Order ever made what would be
called rapid progress?
16. Why must the education of leaders always precede the education of the
masses?
17. Explain how European countries came naturally to have two largely
independent school systems--a secondary school for leaders and an
elementary school for the masses--whereas we have only one continuous
system.
18. Explain why modern state systems of education developed first in the
German States, and why England and the Catholic nations of Europe were so
long in developing state school systems.
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:
175. Woodward: Course of Study at the College of Geneva.
176. Synod of Dort: Scheme of Christian Education adopted.
177. Kilpatrick: Work of the Dutch in developing Schools.
178. Kilpatrick: Character of the Dutch Schools of 1650.
179. Statutes: The Scotch School Law of 1646.
180. Pachtler: The _Ratio Studiorum_ of the Jesuits.
181. Gérard: The Dominant Religious Purpose in the Education of French
Girls.
182. La Salle: Rules for the "Brothers of the Christian Schools."
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. Was the College at Geneva (175) a true humanistic-revival school?
2. Just what did the Synod of Dort provide for (176) in the matter of
schools, school supervision, and ministerial duties?
3. Compare the work of the Dutch (177) and the Lutherans (159-163) in
creating schools.
4. Just what type of school is indicated by selection 178?
5. Just what did the Scotch law of 1646 provide for (179)?
6. Characterize the schools provided for by La Salle (182).
7. Compare the religious care at Port Royal (181) with that suggested by
Saint Jerome (R. 45).
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
Baird, C. W. _History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France_.
Baird, C. W. _Huguenot Emigration to America_.
Grant, Jas. _History of the Burgh Schools of Scotland_.
Hughes, Thos. _Loyola, and the Educational System of the Jesuits_.
Kilpatrick, Wm. H. _The Dutch Schools of New Netherlands and Colonial
New York_.
Laurie, S. S. _History of Educational Opinion since the
Renaissance_.
Ravelet, A. _Blessed J. B. de la Salle_.
Schwickerath, R. _Jesuit Education; its History and Principles in the
Light of Modern Educational Problems_.
Woodward, W. H. _Education during the Renaissance_.
CHAPTER XV
EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS
III. THE REFORMATION AND AMERICAN EDUCATION
THE PROTESTANT SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA. Columbus had discovered the new
world just twenty-five years before Luther nailed his theses to the church
door at Wittenberg, and by the time the northern continent had been
roughly explored and was ready for settlement, Europe was in the midst of
a century of warfare in a vain attempt to extirpate the Protestant heresy.
By the time that the futility of fire and sword as means for religious
conversion had finally dawned upon Christian Europe and found expression
in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which closed the terrible Thirty Years'
War (p. 301), the first permanent settlements in a number of the American
colonies had been made. These settlements, and the beginnings of education
in America, are so closely tied up with the Protestant Revolts in Europe
that a chapter on the beginnings of American education belongs here as
still another phase of the educational results of the Protestant Revolts.
Practically all the early settlers in America came from among the peoples
and from those lands which had embraced some form of the Protestant faith,
and many of them came to America to found new homes and establish their
churches in the wilderness, because here they could enjoy a religious
freedom impossible in their old home-lands. This was especially true of
the French Huguenots, many of whom, after the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes [1] (1685), fled to America and settled along the coast of the
Carolinas; the Calvinistic Dutch and Walloons, who settled in and about
New Amsterdam; the Scotch and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, who settled in
New Jersey, and later extended along the Allegheny Mountain ridges into
all the southern colonies; the English Quakers about Philadelphia, who
came under the leadership of William Penn, and a few English Baptists and
Methodists in eastern Pennsylvania; the Swedish Lutherans, along the
Delaware; the German Lutherans, Moravians, Mennonites, Dunkers, and
Reformed-Church Germans, who settled in large numbers in the mountain
valleys of Pennsylvania; and the Calvinistic dissenters from the English
National Church, known as Puritans, who settled the New England colonies,
and who, more than any others, gave direction to the future development of
education in the American States. Very many of these early religious
groups came to America in little congregations, bringing their ministers
with them. Each set up, in the colony in which it settled, what were
virtually little religious republics, that through them they might the
better perpetuate the religious principles for which they had left the
land of their birth. Education of the young for membership in the Church,
and the perpetuation of a learned ministry for the congregations, from the
first elicited the serious attention of these pioneer settlers.
Englishmen who were adherents of the English national faith (Anglicans)
also settled in Virginia and the other southern colonies, and later in New
York and New Jersey, while Maryland was founded as the only Catholic
colony, in what is now the United States, by a group of persecuted English
Catholics who obtained a charter from Charles I, in 1632. These
settlements are shown on the map on the following page. As a result of
these settlements there was laid, during the early colonial period of
American history, the foundation of those type attitudes toward education
which subsequently so materially shaped the educational development of the
different American States during the early part of our national history.
THE PURITANS IN NEW ENGLAND. Of all those who came to America during this
early period, the Calvinistic Puritans who settled the New England
colonies contributed most that was valuable to the future educational
development of America, and because of this will be considered first.
[Illustration: FIG. 107. MAP SHOWING THE RELIGIOUS SETTLEMENTS IN AMERICA]
The original reformation in England, as was stated in chapters XII and
XIII, had been much more nominal than real. The English Bible and the
English Prayer-Book had been issued to the churches (R. 170), and the King
instead of the Pope had been declared by the Act of Supremacy (R. 153) to
be the head of the English National Church. The same priests, though, had
continued in the churches under the new régime, and the church service had
not greatly changed aside from its transformation from Latin into English.
Neither the Church as an organization nor its members experienced any
great religious reformation. Not all Englishmen, though, took the change
in allegiance so lightly (R. 183), and in consequence there came to be a
gradually increasing number who desired a more fundamental reform of the
English Church. By 1600 the demand for Church reform had become very
insistent, and the question of Church purification (whence the name
"Puritans") had become a burning question in England.
[Illustration: FIG. 108. HOMES OF THE PILGRIMS, AND THEIR ROUTE TO
AMERICA]
The English Puritans, moreover, were of two classes. One was a moderate
but influential "low-church" group within the "high" State Church,
possessed of no desire to separate Church and State, but earnestly
insistent on a simplification of the Church ceremonial, the elimination of
a number of the vestiges of the old Romish-Church ritual, and particularly
the introduction of more preaching into the service. The other class
constituted a much more radical group, and had become deeply imbued with
Calvinistic thinking. This group gradually came into open opposition to
any State Church, stood for the local independence of the different
churches or congregations, and desired the complete elimination of all
vestiges of the Romish faith from the church services. [2] They became
known as Independents, or Separatists, and formed the germs of the later
Congregational groups of early New England. Both Elizabeth (1558-1603) and
James I (1603-25) savagely persecuted this more radical group, and many of
their congregations were forced to flee from England to obtain personal
safety and to enjoy religious liberty (R. 184). One of these fugitive
congregations, from Scrooby, in north-central England, after living for
several years at Leyden, in Holland, finally set sail for America, landed
on Plymouth Rock, in 1620, and began the settlement of that "bleak and
stormy coast." Other congregations soon followed, it having been estimated
that twenty thousand English Puritans migrated [3] to the New England
wilderness before 1640. These represented a fairly well-to-do type of
middle-class Englishmen, practically all of whom had had good educational
advantages at home.
Settling along the coast in little groups or congregations, they at once
set up a combined civil and religious form of government, modeled in a way
after Calvin's City-State at Geneva, and which became known as a New
England town. [4] In time the southern portion of the coast of New England
was dotted with little self-governing settlements of those who had come to
America to obtain for themselves that religious freedom which had been
denied them at home. These settlements were loosely bound together in a
colony federation, in which each town was represented in a General Court,
or legislature. The extent of these settlements by 1660 is shown on the
map on the opposite page.
BEGINNINGS OF SCHOOLS IN NEW ENGLAND. Having come to America to secure
religious freedom, it was but natural that the perpetuation of their
particular faith by means of education should have been one of the first
matters to engage their attention, after the building of their homes and
the setting up of the civil government (R. 185). Being deeply imbued with
Calvinistic ideas as to government and religion, they desired to found
here a religious commonwealth, somewhat after the model of Geneva (p.
298), or Scotland (p. 335), or the Dutch provinces (p. 334), the corner-
stones of which should be religion and education.
[Illustration: FIG. 109. NEW ENGLAND SETTLEMENTS, 1660]
At first, English precedents were followed. Home instruction, which was
quite common in England among the Puritans, was naturally much employed to
teach the children to read the Bible and to train them to participate in
both the family and the congregational worship. After 1647, town
elementary schools under a master, and later the English "dame schools"
(chapter XVIII), were established to provide this rudimentary instruction.
The English apprentice system was also established (R. 201), and the
masters of apprentices gave similar instruction to boys entrusted to their
care. The town religious governments, under which all the little
congregations organized themselves, much as the little religious parishes
had been organized in old England, also began the voluntary establishment
of town grammar schools, as a few towns in England had done (R. 143)
before the Puritans migrated. The "Latin School" at Boston dates from
1635, and has had a continuous existence since that time. The grammar
school at Charlestown dates from 1636, that at Ipswich from the same year,
and the school at Salem from 1637. In 1639 Dorchester voted:
that there shall be a rent of 20 lb a year for ever imposed upon
Tomsons Island ... toward the mayntenance of a schoole in Dorchester.
This rent of 20 lb yearly to bee payd to such a schoole-master as
shall vndertake to teach english, latine, and other tongues, and also
writing. The said schoole-master to bee chosen from tyme to tyme p'r
the freemen.
Newbury, in 1639, voted "foure akers of upland" and "sixe akers of salt
marsh" to Anthony Somerby "for his encouragement to keepe schoole for one
yeare," and later levied a town rate of £24 for a "schoole to be kepte at
the meeting house." Cambridge also early established a Latin grammar
school "for the training up of Young Schollars, and fitting them [5] for
_Academicall Learning_" (R. 185).
The support for the town schools thus founded was derived from various
sources, such as the levying of tuition fees, the income from town lands
or fisheries set aside for the purpose, [6] voluntary contributions from
the people of the town, [7] a town tax, or a combination of two or more of
these methods. The founding of the "free (grammar) school" at Roxburie, in
1645, is representative (R. 188) of the early methods. There was no
uniform plan as yet, in either old or New England.
FOUNDING OF HARVARD COLLEGE. In addition to establishing Latin grammar
schools, a college was founded, in 1636, by the General Court
(legislature) of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to perpetuate learning and
insure an educated ministry (R. 185) to the churches after "our present
ministers shall lie in the dust." This new college, located at Newtowne,
was modeled after Emmanuel College at Cambridge, an English Puritan
college in which many of the early New England colonists had studied, [8]
and in loving memory of which they rechristened Newtowne as Cambridge. In
1639 the college was christened Harvard College, after a graduate of
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, by the name of John Harvard, who died in
Charlestown, a year after his arrival in the colony, and who left the
college his library of two hundred and sixty volumes and half his
property, about £850.
The instruction in the new college was a combination of the arts and
theological instruction given in a mediaeval university, though at Harvard
the President, Master Dunster (R. 185), did all the teaching. For the
first fifty years at Harvard this continued to be true, the attendance
during that time seldom exceeding twenty. The entrance requirements for
the college (R. 186 a) call for the completion of a typical English Latin
grammar-school education; the rules and precepts for the government of the
college (R. 186 b) reveal the deep religious motive; and the schedule of
studies (R. 186 c) and the requirements for degrees (R. 186 d) both show
that the instruction was true to the European type. In the charter for the
college, granted by the colonial legislature in 1650 (R. 187 a), we find
exemptions and conditions which remind one strongly of the older European
foundations. A century later Brown College, in Rhode Island, was granted
even more extensive exemptions (R. 187 b).
THE FIRST COLONIAL LEGISLATION: THE LAW OF 1642. We thus see manifested
early in New England the deep Puritan-Calvinistic zeal for learning as a
bulwark of Church and State. We also see the establishment in the
wilderness of New England of a typical English educational system--that
is, private instruction in reading and religion by the parents in the home
and by the masters of apprentices, and later by a town schoolmaster; the
Latin grammar school in the larger towns, to prepare boys for the college
of the colony; and an English-type college to prepare them for the
ministry. As in England, too, all was clearly subordinate to the Church.
Still further, as in England also, the system was voluntary, the deep
religious interest which had brought the congregations to America being
depended upon to insure for all the necessary education and religious
training.
It early became evident, though, that these voluntary efforts on the part
of the people and the towns would not be sufficient to insure that general
education which was required by the Puritan religious theory. Under the
hard pioneer conditions, and the suffering which ensued, many parents and
masters of apprentices evidently proved neglectful of their educational
duties. Accordingly the Church appealed to its servant, the State, as
represented in the colonial legislature (General Court) to assist it in
compelling parents and masters to observe their religious obligations. The
result was the famous Massachusetts Law of 1642 (R. 190), which directed
"the chosen men" (Selectmen; Councilmen) of each town to ascertain, from
time to time, if the parents and masters were attending to their
educational duties; if the children were being trained "in learning and
labor and other employments ... profitable to the Commonwealth"; and if
children were being taught "to read and understand the principles of
religion and the capital laws of the country," and empowered them to
impose fines on "those who refuse to render such accounts to them when
required." In 1645 the General Court further ordered that all youth
between ten and sixteen years of age should also receive instruction "in
ye exercise of arms, as small guns, halfe pikes, bowes & arrows, &c."
[Illustration: PLATE 9. Two TABLETS ON THE WEST GATEWAY AT HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
Reproducing colonial records relating to the founding of Harvard College.]
The Law of 1642 is remarkable in that, for the first time in the English-
speaking world, a legislative body representing the State ordered that all
children should be taught to read. The law shows clearly not only the
influence of the Reformation theory as to personal salvation and the
Calvinistic conception of the connection between learning and religion,
but also the influence of the English Poor-Law legislation which had
developed rapidly during the half-century immediately preceding the coming
of the Puritans to America (R. 173). On the foundations of the English
Poor Law of 1601 (R. 174) our New England settlers moulded the first
American law relating to education, adding to the principles there
established (p. 326) a distinct Calvinistic contribution to our new-world
life that, the authorities of the civil town should see that all children
were taught "to read and understand the principles of religion and the
capital laws of the country." This law the Selectmen, or the courts if
they failed to do so, were ordered to enforce, and the courts usually
looked after their duties in the matter (R. 192).
_The Law of 1647._ The Law of 1642, while ordering "the chosen men" of
each town to see that the education and training of children was not
neglected, and providing for fines on parents and masters who failed to
render accounts when required, did not, however, establish schools, or
direct the employment of schoolmasters. The provision of education, after
the English fashion, was still left with the homes. After a trial of five
years, the results of which were not satisfactory, the General Court
enacted another law by means of which it has been asserted that "the
Puritan government of Massachusetts rendered probably its greatest service
to the future."
After recounting in a preamble (R. 191) that it had in the past been "one
cheife proiect of y't ould deluder, Satan, to keepe men from the knowledge
of y'e Scriptures, ... by keeping y'm in an unknowne tongue," so now "by
pswading from y'e use of tongues," and "obscuring y'e true sence & meaning
of y'e originall" by "false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers," learning
was in danger of being "buried in y'e grave of o'r fath'rs in y'e church
and comonwealth"; the Court ordered:
1. That every town having fifty householders should at once appoint a
teacher of reading and writing, and provide for his wages in such
manner as the town might determine; and
2. That every town having one hundred householders must provide a
grammar school to fit youths for the university, under a penalty of
£5 (afterwards increased to £20) for failure to do so.
This law represents a distinct step in advance over the Law of 1642, and
for this there are no English precedents. It was not until the latter part
of the nineteenth century that England took such a step. The precedents
for the compulsory establishment of schools lie rather in the practices of
the different German States (p. 318), the actions of the Dutch synods (R.
176) and provinces (p. 335), the Acts of the Scottish parliament of 1633
and 1646 (p. 334; R. 179), and the general Calvinistic principle that
education was an important function of a religious State.
PRINCIPLES ESTABLISHED. The State here, acting again as the servant of the
Church, enacted a law and fixed a tradition which prevailed and grew in
strength and effectiveness after State and Church had parted company. Not
only was a school system ordered established--elementary for all towns and
children, and secondary for youths in the larger towns--but, for the first
time among English-speaking people, there was an assertion of the right of
the State to require communities to establish and maintain schools, under
penalty if they refused to do so. It can be safely asserted, in the light
of later developments, that the two laws of 1642 and 1647 represent the
foundations upon which our American state public-school systems have been
built. Mr. Martin, the historian of the Massachusetts public-school
system, states the fundamental principles which underlay this legislation,
as follows: [9]
1. The universal education of youth is essential to the well-being of
the State.
2. The obligation to furnish this education rests primarily upon the
parent.
3. The State has a right to enforce this obligation.
4. The State may fix a standard which shall determine the kind of
education, and the minimum amount.
5. Public money, raised by general tax, may be used to provide such
education as the State requires. The tax may be general, though the
school attendance is not.
6. Education higher than the rudiments may be supplied by the State.
Opportunity must be provided, at public expense, for youths who
wish to be fitted for the university.
"It is important to note here," adds Mr. Martin, "that the idea underlying
all this legislation is neither paternalistic nor socialistic. The child
is to be educated, not to advance his personal interests, but because the
State will suffer if he is not educated. The State does not provide
schools to relieve the parent, nor because it can educate better than the
parent can, but because it can thereby better enforce the obligation which
it imposes." To prevent a return to the former state of religious
ignorance it was important that education be provided. To assure this the
colonial legislature enacted a law requiring the maintenance and support
of schools by the towns. This law became the corner-stone of our American
state school systems.
Influence on other New England colonies. Connecticut Colony, in its Law of
1650 establishing a school system, combined the spirit of the
Massachusetts Law of 1642, though stated in different words (R. 193), and
the Law of 1647, stated word for word. New Haven Colony, in 1655, ordered
that children and apprentices should be taught to read, as had been done
in Massachusetts, in 1642, but on the union of New Haven and Connecticut
Colonies, in 1665, the Connecticut Code became the law for the united
colonies. In 1702 a college was founded (Yale) and finally located at New
Haven, to offer preparation for the ministry in the Connecticut colony, as
had been done earlier in Massachusetts, and Latin grammar schools were
founded in the Connecticut towns to prepare for the new college, as also
had been done earlier in Massachusetts. The rules and regulations for the
grammar school at New Haven (R. 189) reveal the purpose and describe the
instruction provided in one of the earliest and best of these.
[Illustration: FIG. 111. WHERE YALE COLLEGE WAS FOUNDED]
Plymouth Colony, in 1658 and again in 1663, proposed to the towns that
they "sett vp" a schoolmaster "to traine vp children to reading and
writing" (R. 194 a). In 1672 the towns were asked to aid Harvard College
by gifts (R. 194 b). In 1673-74 the income from the Cape Cod fisheries was
set aside for the support of a (grammar) school (R. 194 c). Finally, in
1677, all towns having over fifty families and maintaining a grammar
school were ordered aided from the fishery proceeds (R. 194 d).
The Massachusetts laws also applied to Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont,
as these were then a part of Massachusetts Colony. After New Hampshire
separated, in 1680, the Massachusetts Law of 1647 was virtually readopted
in 1719-21. In Maine and Vermont there were so few settlers, until near
the beginning of our national life, that the influence of the
Massachusetts legislation on these States was negligible until a later
period.
Only in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, of all the New England
colonies, did the Massachusetts legislation fail to exert a deep
influence. Settled as these two had been by refugees from New England, and
organized on a basis of hospitality to all who suffered from religious
oppression elsewhere, the religious stimulus to the founding of schools
naturally was lacking. As the religious basis for education was as yet the
only basis, the first development of schools in Rhode Island awaited the
humanitarian and economic influences which did not become operative until
early in the nineteenth century.
Outside of the New England colonies, the appeal to the State as the
servant of the Church was seldom made during the early colonial period,
the churches handling the educational problem in their own way. As a
result the beginnings of State oversight and control were left to New
England. In the central colonies a series of parochial-school systems came
to prevail, while in Episcopalian Virginia and the other colonies to the
south the no-business-of-the-State attitude assumed toward education by
the mother country was copied.
THE CHURCH SCHOOLS OF NEW YORK. New Netherland, as New York Colony was
called before the English occupation, was settled by the Dutch West India
Company, and some dozen villages about New York and up the Hudson had been
founded by the time it passed to the control of the English, in 1664. In
these the Dutch established typical home-land public parochial schools,
under the control of the Reformed Dutch Church. The schoolmaster was
usually the reader and precentor in the church as well (R. 195), and often
acted, as in Holland, as sexton besides. Girls attended on equal terms
with boys, but sat apart and recited in separate classes. The instruction
consisted of reading and writing Dutch, sometimes a little arithmetic, the
Dutch Catechism, the reading of a few religious books, and certain
prayers. The rules (1661) for a schoolmaster in New Amsterdam (R. 196),
and the contract with a Dutch schoolmaster in Flatbush (R. 195), dating
from 1682, reveal the type of schools and school conditions provided. All
except the children of the poor paid fees to the schoolmaster. [10] He was
licensed by the Dutch church authorities. As the Dutch had not come to
America because of persecution, and were in no way out of sympathy with
religious conditions in the home-land, the schools they developed here
were typical of the Dutch European parochial schools of the time (R. 178).
A _trivial_ (Latin) school was also established in New York, in 1652.
After the English occupation the English principle of private and church
control of education, with schooling on a tuition or a charitable basis,
came to prevail, and this continued up to the beginning of our national
period. [11] Of the English colonial schools of New York Draper has
written: [12]
All the English schools in the province from 1700 down to the time of
the Declaration of Independence were maintained by a great religious
society organized under the auspices of the Church of England--and, of
course, with the favor of the government--called "The Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." The law governing this
Society provided that no teacher should be employed until he had
proved "his affection for the present government" and his "conformity
to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England." Schools
maintained under such auspices were in no sense free schools. Indeed,
humiliating as it is, no student of history can fail to discern the
fact that the government of Great Britain, during its supremacy in
this territory, did nothing to facilitate the extension or promote the
efficiency of free elementary schools among the people.
THE PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS OF PENNSYLVANIA. Pennsylvania was settled by
Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, German Lutherans, Moravians,
Mennonites, and members of the German Reformed Church, all of whom came to
America to secure greater religious liberty and had been attracted to this
colony by the freedom of religious worship which Penn had provided for
there. All these were Protestant sects, all believed in the necessity of
learning to read the Bible as a means to personal salvation, and all made
efforts looking toward the establishment of schools as a part of their
church organization. Unlike New England, though, no sect was in a
majority; church control for each denomination was considered as most
satisfactory; and no appeal was made to the State to have it assist the
churches in the enforcement of their religious purposes. The clergymen
were usually the teachers in the parochial schools established, [13] while
private pay schools were opened in the villages and towns. These were
taught in English, German, or the Moravian tongue (Czech), according to
the original language of the different immigrants. The Quakers seem to
have taken particular interest in schools (R. 199), a Quaker school in
Philadelphia (R. 198) having been established the year the city was
founded. Girls were educated as well as boys, and the emphasis was placed
on reading, writing, counting, and religion, rather than upon any higher
form of training.
[Illustration: FIG. 112. AN OLD QUAKER MEETING-HOUSE AND SCHOOL AT
LAMPETER, PENNSYLVANIA
(From an old drawing)]
The result was the development in this colony of a policy of depending on
church and private effort, and the provision of education, aside from
certain rudimentary and religious instruction, was left largely for those
who could afford to pay for the privilege. Charitable education was
extended to but a few, for a short time, while, under the freedom allowed,
many communities made but indifferent provisions or suffered their schools
to lapse. Under the primitive conditions of the time the interest even in
religious education often declined almost to the vanishing point. So lax
in the matter of providing schooling had many communities become that the
second Provincial Assembly, sitting in Philadelphia, in 1683, passed an
ordinance requiring (R. 197) that all persons having children must cause
them to be taught to read and write, so that they might be able to read
the Scriptures by the time they were twelve years old, and also that all
children be taught some useful trade. A fine of £5 was to be assessed for
failure to comply with the law. So much in advance of English ideas as to
what was fitting and proper was this compulsory law that it was vetoed by
William and Mary, when submitted to their majesties for approval. Ten
years later it was reënacted by the Governor and Assembly of the colony,
but proved so difficult of enforcement that it was soon dropped, and the
chance of starting education in Pennsylvania somewhat after the New
England model was lost. The colony now settled down to a policy of non
state action, and this in time became so firmly established that the do-
as-you-please idea persisted in this State up to the establishment of the
first free state school system, in 1834.
MIXED CONDITIONS IN NEW JERSEY. In New Jersey, situated as it was near the
center of the different colonies, the early development of education there
was the product of a number of different influences. The Dutch crossed
from New Amsterdam, the English came from Connecticut and later from New
York, Scotch and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians came from the mother country,
Swedish Lutherans settled along the Delaware, and Quakers and German
Lutherans came over from Pennsylvania. The educational practice of the
colony or land from which each group of settlers came was reproduced in
the colony. After the English succeeded the Dutch in New Amsterdam (1664),
English methods and practice in education gradually came into control
throughout most of New Jersey, and as a result here, as in New York, but
little was accomplished in providing schools for other than a select few
until well after the beginning of the nineteenth century. Neither New
Jersey, New York, nor Pennsylvania may be said to have developed any
colonial educational policy aside from that of allowing private and
parochial effort to provide such schools as seemed desirable.
VIRGINIA AND THE SOUTHERN TYPE. Almost all the conditions attending the
settlement of Virginia were in contrast to those of the New England
colonies. The early settlers were from the same class of English yeomen
and country squires, but with the important difference that whereas the
New England settlers were Dissenters from the Church of England and had
come to America to obtain freedom in religious worship, the settlers in
Virginia were adherents of the National Church and had come to America for
gain. The marked differences in climate and possible crops led to the
large plantation type of settlement, instead of the compact little New
England town; the introduction of large numbers of "indentured white
servants," and later negro slaves, led to the development of classes in
society instead of to the New England type of democracy; and the lack of a
strong religious motive for education naturally led to the adoption of the
customary English practices instead of to the development of colonial
schools. The tutor in the home, education in small private pay schools, or
education in the mother country were the prevailing methods adopted among
the well-to-do planters, while the poorer classes were left with only such
advantages as apprenticeship training or charity schools might provide.
Throughout the entire colonial period Virginia remained most like the
mother country in spirit and practice, and stands among the colonies as
the clearest example of the English attitude toward school support and
control. As in the mother country, education was considered to be no
business of the State. Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and
the Carolinas followed the English attitude, much after the fashion of
Virginia.
Practically all the Virginia colonial legislation relating to education
refers either to William and Mary College (founded in 1693), or to the
education of orphans and the children of the poor. Both these interests,
as we have previously seen, were typically English. All the seventeenth-
century legislation relating to education is based on the English Poor-Law
legislation, [14] previously described (p. 325), and included the
compulsory apprenticeship of the children of the poor, training in a
trade, the requirement that the public authorities must provide
opportunities for this type of education, and the use of both local and
colony funds for the purpose (R. 200 a), all, as the Statutes state,
"according to the aforesaid laudable custom in the Kingdom of England." It
was not until 1705 that Virginia reached the point, reached by
Massachusetts in 1642, of requiring that "the master of the [apprenticed]
orphan shall be obliged to teach him to read and write." In all the
Anglican colonies the apprenticing of the children of the poor (see R. 200
b for some interesting North Carolina records) was a characteristic
feature. During the entire colonial period the indifference of the mother
country to general education was steadily reflected in Virginia and in the
colonies which were essentially Anglican in religion, and followed the
English example.
TYPE PLANS REPRESENTED BY 1750. The seventeenth century thus witnessed the
transplanting of European ideas as to government, religion, and education
to the new American colonies, and by the eighteenth century we find three
clearly marked types of educational practice or conception as to
educational responsibility established on American soil.
The first was the strong Calvinistic conception of a religious State,
supporting a system of common vernacular schools, higher Latin schools,
and a college, for both religious and civic ends. This type dominated New
England, and is best represented by Massachusetts. From New England this
attitude was carried westward by the migrations of New England people, and
deeply influenced the educational development of all States to which the
New Englander went in any large numbers. This was the educational
contribution of Calvinism to America. [15] Out of it our state school
systems of to-day, by the separation of Church and State, have been
evolved.
The second was the parochial-school conception of the Dutch, Moravians,
Mennonites, German Lutherans, German Reformed Church, Quakers,
Presbyterians, Baptists, and Catholics. This type is best represented by
Protestant Pennsylvania and Catholic Maryland. It stood for church control
of all educational efforts, resented state interference, was dominated
only by church purposes, and in time came to be a serious obstacle in the
way of rational state school organization and control.
The third type, into which the second type tended to fuse, conceived of
public education, aside from collegiate education, as intended chiefly for
orphans and the children of the poor, and as a charity which the State was
under little or no obligation to assist in supporting. All children of the
upper and middle classes in society attended private or church schools, or
were taught by tutors in their homes, and for such instruction paid a
proper tuition fee. Paupers and orphans, in limited numbers and for a
limited time, might be provided with some form of useful education at the
expense of either Church or State. This type is best represented by
Anglican Virginia, which typified well the _laissez-faire_ policy which
dominated England from the time of the Protestant Reformation until the
latter half of the nineteenth century.
These three types of attitude toward the provision of education became
fixed American types, and each deeply influenced subsequent American
educational development, as we shall point out in a later chapter.
DOMINANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS MOTIVE. The seventeenth century was essentially
a period of the transplanting, almost unchanged in form, of the
characteristic European institutions, manners, religious attitudes, and
forms of government to American shores. Each sect or nationality on
arriving set up in the new land the characteristic forms of church and
school and social observances known in the old home-land. Dutch, Germans,
English, Scotch, Calvinists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians--
reproduced in the American colonies the main type of schools existing at
the time of their migration in the mother land from which they came. They
were also dominated by the same deep religious purpose.
The dominance of this religious purpose in all instruction is well
illustrated by the great beginning-school book of the time, _The New
England Primer_. A digest of the contents of this, with a few pages
reproduced, is given in R. 202. This book, from which all children learned
to read, was used by Dissenters and Lutherans alike in the American
colonies. This book Ford well characterizes in the following words:
As one glances over what may truly be called "The Little Bible of New
England," and reads its stern lessons, the Puritan mood is caught with
absolute faithfulness. Here was no easy road to knowledge and salvation;
but with prose as bare of beauty as the whitewash of their churches, with
poetry as rough and stern as their storm-torn coast, with pictures as
crude and unfinished as their own glacial-smoothed boulders, between stiff
oak covers which symbolized the contents, the children were tutored,
until, from being unregenerate, and as Jonathan Edwards said, "young
vipers, and infinitely more hateful than vipers" to God, they attained
that happy state when, as expressed by Judge Sewell's child, they were
afraid that they "should goe to hell," and were "stirred up dreadfully to
seek God." God was made sterner and more cruel than any living judge, that
all might be brought to realize how slight a chance even the least erring
had of escaping eternal damnation.
One learned to read chiefly that one might be able to read the Catechism
and the Bible, and to know the will of the Heavenly Father. There was
scarcely any other purpose in the maintenance of elementary schools. In
the grammar schools and the colleges students were "instructed to consider
well the main end of life and studies." These institutions existed mainly
to insure a supply of learned ministers for service in Church and State.
Such studies as history, geography, science, music, drawing, secular
literature, and organized play were unknown. Children were constantly
surrounded, week days and Sundays, by the somber Calvinistic religious
atmosphere in New England, [16] and by the careful religious oversight of
the pastors and elders in the colonies where the parochial-school system
was the ruling plan for education. Schoolmasters were required to
"catechise their scholars in the principles of the Christian religion,"
and it was made "a chief part of the schoolmaster's religious care to
commend his scholars and his labors amongst them unto God by prayer
morning and evening, taking care that his scholars do reverently attend
during the same." Religious matter constituted the only reading matter,
outside the instruction in Latin in the grammar schools. The Catechism was
taught, and the Bible was read and expounded. Church attendance was
required, and grammar-school pupils were obliged to report each week on
the Sunday sermon. This insistence on the religious element was more
prominent in Calvinistic New England than in the colonies to the south,
but everywhere the religious purpose was dominant. The church parochial
and charity schools were essentially schools for instilling the church
practices and beliefs of the church maintaining them. This state of
affairs continued until well toward the beginning of the nineteenth
century.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Compare the conservative and radical groups in the English purification
movement with the conservative and radical groups, as typified by Erasmus
and Luther, at the time of the Reformation.
2. Show how, for each group, the schools established were merely homeland
foreign-type religious schools, with nothing distinctively American about
them.
3. Show why such copying of home-land types, even to the Latin grammar
school, was perfectly natural.
4. The provision of the Law of 1642 requiring instruction in "the capital
laws of the country" was new. How do you explain this addition to mother-
land practices?
5. Show why the Law of 1642 was Calvinistic rather than Anglican in its
origin.
6. Explain the meaning of the preamble to the Law of 1647.
7. Show how the Law of 1647 must go back for precedents to German, Dutch,
and Scotch sources.
8. Apply the six principles stated by Mr. Martin, as embodied in the
legislation of 1647, to modern state school practice, and show how we have
adopted each in our laws.
9. Show also that the Law of 1647, as well as modern state school laws, is
neither paternalistic nor socialistic in essential purpose.
10. Show that, though the mixture of religious sects in Pennsylvania made
colonial legislation difficult, still it would have been possible to have
enforced the Massachusetts Law of 1642, or the Pennsylvania laws of 1683
or 1693, in the colony. How do you explain the opposition and failure to
do so?
11. Show how the charity schools for the poor, and church missionary-
society schools, were the natural outcome of the English attitude toward
elementary education.
12. Which of the three type plans in the American colonies by 1750 most
influenced educational development in your State?
13. State the important contribution of Calvinism to our new-world life.
14. Explain the indifference of the Anglican Church to general education
during the whole of our colonial period.
15. Explain what is meant by "The Puritan Church applied to its servant,
the State," etc.
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:
183. Nichols: The Puritan Attitude.
184. Gov. Bradford: The Puritans leave England.
185. First Fruits: The Founding of Harvard College.
186. First Fruits: The First Rules for Harvard College.
(a) Entrance Requirements.
(b) Rules and Precepts.
(c) Time and Order of Studies.
(d) Requirements for Degrees.
187. College Charters: Extracts from, showing Privileges.
(a) Harvard College, 1650.
(b) Brown College, 1764.
188. Dillaway: Founding of the Free School at Roxburie.
189. Baird: Rules and Regulations for Hopkins Grammar School.
190. Statutes: The Massachusetts Law of 1642.
191. Statutes: The Massachusetts Law of 1647.
192. Court Records: Presentment of Topsfield for Violating the Law of
1642.
193. Statutes: The Connecticut Law of 1650.
194. Statutes: Plymouth Colony Legislation.
195. Flatbush: Contract with a Dutch Schoolmaster.
196. New Amsterdam: Rules for a Schoolmaster in.
197. Statutes: The Pennsylvania. Law of 1683.
198. Minutes of Council: The First School in Philadelphia.
199. Murray: Early Quaker Injunctions regarding Schools.
200. Statutes: Apprenticeship Laws in the Southern Colonies.
(a) Virginia Statutes.
(b) North Carolina Court Records.
201. Stiles: A New England Indenture of Apprenticeship.
202. The New England Primer: Description and Digest.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. What does the selection on The Puritan Attitude (183) reveal as to the
extent and depth of the Reformation in England?
2. Characterize the feelings and emotions and desires of the Puritans, as
expressed in the extract (184) from Governor Bradford's narrative.
3. Characterize the spirit behind the founding of Harvard College, as
expressed in the extract from New England's First Fruits (185).
4. What was the nature and purpose of the Harvard College instruction as
shown by the selection 186 a-d?
5. Point out the similarity between the exemptions granted to Harvard
College by the Legislature of the colony (187 a) and those granted to
mediaeval universities (103-105). Compare the privileges granted Brown
(187 b) and those contained in 104.
6. Compare the founding of the Free School at Roxbury (188) with the
founding of an English Grammar School (141-43).
7. What does the distribution of scholars at Roxbury (188) show as to the
character of the school?
8. State the essentials of the Massachusetts Law of 1642 (190).
9. Compare the Massachusetts Law of 1642 and the English Poor-Law of 1601
(190 with 174) as to fundamental principles involved in each.
10. What does the court citation of Topsfield (192) show?
11. What new principle is added (191) by the Law of 1647, and what does
this new law indicate as to needs in the colony for classical learning?
12. Show how the Connecticut Law of 1650 (193) was based on the
Massachusetts Law (190) of 1642.
13. What does the Plymouth Colony appeal for Harvard College (194 b)
indicate as to community of ideas in early New England?
14. What type of school was it intended to endow from the Cape Cod
fisheries (194 c)?
15. What is the difference between the Plymouth requirement as to grammar
schools (194 d) and the Massachusetts requirement (191)?
16. Compare the rules for the New Haven Grammar School (189) with those
for Colet's London School (138 a-c).
17. Characterize the early Dutch schools as shown by the rules for the
schoolmaster (196) and the Flatbush contract (195).
18. Just what type of education did the Quakers mean to provide for, as
shown in the extract from their Rules of Discipline (199)?
19. What kind of a school was the first one established in Philadelphia
(198)?
20. Compare the proposed Pennsylvania Law of 1683 (197) and the
Massachusetts Law of 1642 (190).
21. What conception of education is revealed by the Virginia
apprenticeship laws (200 a, 1-3) and the North Carolina court records (200
b, 1-3)?
22. Characterize the New England Indenture of Apprenticeship given in 201.
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
Boone, R. G. _Education in the United States_.
Brown, S. W. _The Secularization of American Education_.
Cheyney, Edw. P. _European Background of American Education_.
Dexter, E.G. _A History of Education in the United States_.
* Eggleston, Edw. _The Transit of Civilization_.
Fisk, C. R. "The English Parish and Education at the Beginning of
American Civilization"; in _School Review_, vol. 23, pp. 433-49.
(September, 1915.)
* Ford, P. L. _The New England Primer_.
* Heatwole, C. J. _A History of Education in Virginia_.
Jackson, G. L. _The Development of School Support in Colonial
Massachusetts_.
* Kilpatrick, Wm. H. _The Dutch Schools of New Netherlands and Colonial
New York_.
* Knight, E. W. _Public School Education in North Carolina_.
* Martin, Geo. H. _Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School
System_.
Seybolt, R. F. _Apprenticeship and Apprentice Education in Colonial
New York and New England_.
* Small, W. H. "The New England Grammar School"; in _School Review_,
vol. 10, pp. 513-31. (September, 1902.)
Small, W. H. _Early New England Schools_.
CHAPTER XVI
THE RISE OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY
NEW ATTITUDES AFTER THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. From the beginning of the
twelfth century onward, as we have already noted, there had been a slow
but gradual change in the character of human thinking, and a slow but
certain disintegration of the Mediaeval System, with its repressive
attitude toward all independent thinking. Many different influences and
movements had contributed to this change--the Moslem learning and
civilization in Spain, the recovery of the old legal and medical
knowledge, the revival of city life, the beginnings anew of commerce and
industry, the evolution of the universities, the rise of a small scholarly
class, the new consciousness of nationality, the evolution of the modern
languages, the beginnings of a small but important vernacular literature,
and the beginnings of travel and exploration following the Crusades--all
of which had tended to transform the mediaeval man and change his ways of
thinking. New objects of interest slowly came to the front, and new
standards of judgment gradually were applied. In consequence the mediaeval
man, with his feeling of personal insignificance and lack of self-
confidence, came to be replaced by a small but increasing number of men
who were conscious of their powers, possessed a new self-confidence, and
realized new possibilities of intellectual accomplishment.
The Revival of Learning, first in Italy and then elsewhere in western
Europe, was the natural consequence of this awakening of the modern
spirit, and in the careful work done by the humanistic scholars of the
Italian Renaissance in collecting, comparing, questioning, inferring,
criticizing, and editing the texts, and in reconstructing the ancient life
and history, we see the beginnings of the modern scientific spirit. It was
this same critical, questioning spirit which, when applied later to
geographical knowledge, led to the discovery of America and the
circumnavigation of the globe; which, when applied to matters of Christian
faith, brought on the Protestant Revolts; which, when applied to the
problems of the universe, revealed the many wonderful fields of modern
science; and which, when applied to government, led to a questioning of
the divine right of kings and the rise of constitutional government. The
awakening of scientific inquiry and the scientific spirit, and the attempt
of a few thinkers to apply the new method to education, to which we now
turn, may be regarded as only another phase of the awakening of the modern
inquisitive spirit which found expression earlier in the rise of the
universities, the recovery and reconstruction of the ancient learning, the
awakening of geographical discovery and exploration, and the questioning
of the doctrines and practices of the Mediaeval Church.
INSUFFICIENCY OF ANCIENT SCIENCE. From the point of view of scientific
inquiry, all ancient learning possessed certain marked fundamental
defects. The Greeks had--their time and age in world-civilization
considered--made many notable scientific observations and speculations,
and had prepared the way for future advances. Thales (636?-546? B.C.),
Xenophanes (628?-520? B.C.), Anaximenes (557-504 B.C.), Pythagoras (570-
500 B.C.), Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.), Empedocles (460?-361? B.C.), and
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) had all made interesting speculations as to the
nature of matter, [1] Aristotle finally settling the question by naming
the world-elements as earth, water, air, fire, and ether. Hippocrates
(460-367? B.C.), as we have seen (p. 197), had observed the sick and had
recorded and organized his observations in such a manner [2] as to form
the foundations upon which the science of medicine could be established.
The Greek physician, Galen (130-200 A.D.) added to these observations, and
their combined work formed the basis upon which modern medical science has
slowly been built up.
On the other hand, some of what each wrote was mere speculation and error,
[3] and modern physicians were compelled to begin all over and along new
lines before any real progress in medicine could be made. Aristotle had
done a notable work in organizing and codifying Greek scientific
knowledge, as the list of his many scientific treatises in use in Europe
by 1300 (R. 87) will show, but his writings were the result of a mixture
of keen observation and brilliant speculation, contained many
inaccuracies, and in time, due to the reverence accorded him as an
authority by the mediaeval scholars and the church authorities, proved
serious obstacles to real scientific progress.
At Alexandria the most notable Greek scientific work had been done. Euclid
(323-283 B.C.) in geometry; Aristarchus (third century B.C.), who
explained the motion of the earth; Eratosthenes (270-196 B.C.), who
measured the size of the earth; Archimedes (270?-212 B.C.), a pupil of
Euclid's, who applied science in many ways and laid the foundations of
dynamics; Hipparchus (160-125 B.C.), the father of astronomy, who studied
the heavens and catalogued the stars, were among the more famous Greeks
who studied and taught there in the days when Alexandria had succeeded
Athens as the intellectual capital of the Greek world. Some remarkable
advances also were made in the study of human anatomy and medicine by two
Greeks, Herophilus (335-280 B.C.) and Erasistratus (d. 280 B.C.), who
apparently did much dissecting.
But even at Alexandria the promise of Greek science was unfulfilled.
Despite many notable speculations and scientific advances, the hopeful
beginnings did not come to any large fruitage, and the great contribution
made by the Greeks to world civilization was less along scientific lines
than along the lines of literature and philosophy. Their great strength
lay in the direction of philosophic speculation, and this tendency to
speculate, rather than to observe and test and measure and record, was the
fundamental weakness of all Greek science. The Greeks never advanced in
scientific work to the invention and perfection of instruments for the
standardization of their observations. As a result they passed on to the
mediaeval world an extensive "book science" and not a little keen
observation, of which the works of Aristotle and the Alexandrian
mathematicians and astronomers form the most conspicuous examples, but
little scientific knowledge of which the modern world has been able to
make much use. The "book science" of the Greeks, and especially that of
Aristotle, was highly prized for centuries, but in time, due to the many
inaccuracies, had to be discarded and done anew by modern scholars.
The Romans, as we have seen (chapter III), were essentially a practical
people, good at getting the work of the world done, but not much given to
theoretical discussion or scientific speculation. They were organizers,
governors, engineers, executives, and literary workers rather than
scientists. They executed many important undertakings of a practical
character, such as the building of roads, bridges, aqueducts, and public
buildings; organized government and commerce on a large scale; and have
left us a literature and a legal system of importance, but they
contributed little to the realm of pure science. The three great names in
science in all their history are Strabo the geographer (63 B.C.-24 A.D.);
Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.), who did notable work as an observer in
natural history; and Galen (a Roman-Greek), in medicine. They, like the
Greeks, were pervaded by the same fear that their science might prove
useful, whereas they cultivated it largely as a mental exercise (R. 203).
THE CHRISTIAN REACTION AGAINST INQUIRY. The Christian attitude toward
inquiry was from the first inhospitable, and in time became exceedingly
intolerant. The tendency of the Western Church, it will be remembered (p.
94), was from the first to reject all Hellenic learning, and to depend
upon emotional faith and the enforcement of a moral life. By the close of
the third century the hostility to pagan schools and Hellenic learning had
become so pronounced that the _Apostolic Constitutions_ (R. 41) ordered
Christians to abstain from all heathen books, which could contain nothing
of value and only served "to subvert the faith of the unstable." In 401
A.D. the Council of Carthage forbade the clergy to read any heathen
author, and Greek learning now rapidly died out in the West. For a time it
was almost entirely lost. In consequence Greek science, then best
represented by Alexandrian learning, and which contained much that was of
great importance, was rejected along with other pagan learning. The, very
meager scientific knowledge that persisted into the Middle Ages in the
great mediaeval textbooks (p. 162), as we have seen in the study of the
Seven Liberal Arts (chapter VII), came to be regarded as useful only in
explaining passages of Scripture or in illustrating the ways of God toward
man. The one and only science worthy of study was Theology, to which all
other learning tended (see Figure 44, p. 154).
The history of Christianity throughout all the Dark Ages is a history of
the distrust of inquiry and reason, and the emphasis of blind emotional
faith. Mysticism, good and evil spirits, and the interpretation of natural
phenomena as manifestations of the Divine will from the first received
large emphasis. The worship of saints and relics, and the great
development of the sensuous and symbolic, changed the earlier religion
into a crude polytheism. During the long period of the Middle Ages the
miraculous flourished. The most extreme superstition pervaded all ranks of
society. Magic and prayers were employed to heal the sick, restore the
crippled, foretell the future, and punish the wicked. Sacred pools, the
royal touch, wonder-working images, and miracles through prayer stood in
the way of the development of medicine (R. 204). Disease was attributed to
satanic influence, and a regular schedule of prayers for cures was in use.
Sanitation was unknown. Plagues and pestilences were manifestations of
Divine wrath, and hysteria and insanity were possession by the devil to be
cast out by whipping and torture. One's future was determined by the
position of the heavenly bodies at the time of birth. Eclipses, meteors,
and comets were fearful portents of Divine displeasure:
Eight things there be a Comet brings,
When it on high doth horrid rage;
Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings,
War, Earthquakes, Floods, and Direful Change. [4]
The literature on magic was extensive. The most miraculous happenings were
recorded and believed. Trial by ordeal, following careful religious
formulae, was common before 1200, though prohibited shortly afterward by
papal decrees (1215, 1222). The insistence of the Church on "the willful,
devilish character of heresy," and the extension of heresy to cover almost
any form of honest doubt or independent inquiry, caused an intellectual
stagnation along lines of scientific investigation which was not relieved
for more than a thousand years. The many notable advances in physics,
chemistry, astronomy, and medicine made by Moslem scholars (chapter VIII)
were lost on Christian Europe, and had to be worked out again centuries
later by the scholars of the western world. Out of the astronomy of the
Arabs the Christians got only astrology; out of their chemistry they got
only alchemy. Both in time stood seriously in the way of real scientific
thinking and discovery.
GROWING TOLERANCE CHANGED BY THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS. After the rise of the
universities, the expansion of the minds of men which followed the
Crusades and the revival of trade and industry, the awakening which came
with the revival of the old learning and the rise of geographical
discovery, the church authorities assumed a broader and a more tolerant
attitude toward inquiry and reason than had been the case for hundreds of
years. It would have been surprising, with the large number of university-
trained men entering the service of the Church, had this not been the
case. By the middle of the fifteenth century it looked as though the
Renaissance spirit might extend into many new directions, and by 1500 the
world seemed on the eve of important progress in almost every line of
endeavor. As was pointed out earlier (p. 259), the Church was more
tolerant than it had been for centuries, and about the year 1500 was the
most stimulating time in the history of our civilization since the days of
Alexandria and ancient Rome.
In 1517 Luther nailed his theses to the church door in Wittenberg. The
Church took alarm and attempted to crush him, and soon the greatest
contest since the conflict between paganism and Christianity was on.
Within half a century all northern lands had been lost to the ancient
Church (see map, p. 296); the first successful challenge of its authority
during its long history.
The effect of these religious revolts on the attitude of the Church toward
intellectual liberty was natural and marked. The tolerance of inquiry
recently extended was withdrawn, and an era of steadily increasing
intolerance set in which was not broken for more than a century. In an
effort to stop the further spread of the heresy, the Church Council of
Trent (1545-63) adopted stringent regulations against heretical teachings
(p. 303), while the sword and torch and imprisonment were resorted to to
stamp out opposition and win back the revolting lands. A century of
merciless warfare ensued, and the hatreds engendered by the long and
bitter struggle over religious differences put both Catholic and
Protestant Europe in no tolerant frame of mind toward inquiry or new
ideas. The Inquisition, a sort of universal mediaeval grand jury for the
detection and punishment of heretics, was revived, and the Jesuits,
founded in 1534-40, were vigorous in defense of the Church and bitter in
their opposition to all forms of independent inquiry and Protestant
heresy.
It was into this post-Reformation atmosphere of suspicion and distrust and
hatred that the new critical, inquiring, questioning spirit of science, as
applied to the forces of the universe, was born. A century earlier the
first scientists might have obtained a respectful hearing, and might have
been permitted to press their claims; after the Protestant Revolts had
torn Christian Europe asunder this could hardly be. As a result the early
scientists found themselves in no enviable position. Their theories were
bitterly assailed as savoring of heresy; their methods and purposes were
alike suspected; and any challenge of an old long-accepted idea was likely
to bring a punishment that was swift and sure. From the middle of the
sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century was not a time when new
ideas were at a premium anywhere in western Europe. It was essentially a
period of reaction, and periods of reaction are not favorable to
intellectual progress. It was into this century of reaction that modern
scientific inquiry and reasoning, itself another form of expression of the
intellectual attitudes awakened by the work of the humanistic scholars of
the Italian Renaissance, made its first claim for a hearing.
THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC METHOD. One of the great problems
which has always deeply interested thinking men in all lands is the nature
and constitution of the material universe, and to this problem people in
all stages of civilization have worked out for themselves some kind of an
answer. It was one of the great speculations of the Greeks, and it was at
Alexandria, in the period of its decadence, that the Egyptian geographer
Ptolemy (138 A.D.) had offered an explanation which was accepted by
Christian Europe and which dominated all thinking on the subject during
the Middle Ages. He had concluded that the earth was located at the center
of the visible universe, immovable, and that the heavenly bodies moved
around the earth, in circular motion, fixed in crystalline spheres. [5]
This explanation accorded perfectly with Christian ideas as to creation,
as well as with Christian conceptions as to the position and place of man
and his relation to the heavens above and to a hell beneath. This theory
was obviously simple and satisfactory, and became sanctified with time. As
we see it now the wonder is that such an explanation could have been
accepted for so long. Only among an uninquisitive people could so
imperfect a theory have endured for over fourteen centuries.
[Illustration: FIG. 113. NICHOLAS KOPERNIK (Copernicus), (1473-1543)]
In 1543 a Bohemian church canon and physician by the name of Nicholas
Copernicus published his _De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium_, in which he
set forth the explanation of the universe which we now know. He piously
dedicated the work to Pope Paul III, and wisely refrained from publishing
it until the year of his death. [6] Anything so completely upsetting the
Christian conception as to the place and position of man in the universe
could hardly be expected to be accepted, particularly at the time of its
publication, without long and bitter opposition.
In the dedicatory letter (R. 205), Copernicus explains how, after feeling
that the Ptolemaic explanation was wrong, he came to arrive at the
conclusions he did. The steps he set forth form an excellent example of a
method of thinking now common, but then almost unknown. They were:
1. Dissatisfaction with the old Ptolemaic explanation.
2. A study of all known literature, to see if any better explanation
had been offered.
3. Careful thought on the subject, until his thinking took form in a
definite theory.
4. Long observation and testing out, to see if the observed facts
would support his theory.
5. The theory held to be correct, because it reduced all known facts
to a systematic order and harmony.
This is as clear a case of inductive reasoning as was L. Valla's exposure
of the forgery of the so-called "Donation of Constantine," an example of
deductive reasoning. Both used a new method--the method of modern
scholarship. In both cases the results were revolutionary. As Petrarch
stands forth in history as the first modern classical scholar, so
Copernicus stands forth as the first modern scientific thinker. The
beginnings of all modern scientific investigation date from 1543. Of his
work a recent writer (E. C. J. Morton) has said:
Copernicus cannot be said to have flooded with light the dark places
of nature--in the way that one stupendous mind subsequently did--
but still, as we look back through the long vista of the history of
science, the dim Titanic figure of the old monk seems to rear itself
out of the dull flats around it, pierces with its head the mists that
overshadow them, and catches the first gleam of the rising sun,...
Like some iron peak, by the Creator
Fired with the red glow of the rushing morn.
[Illustration: FIG. 114. TYCHO BRAHE (1546-1601)]
THE NEW METHOD OF INQUIRY APPLIED BY OTHERS. At first Copernicus' work
attracted but little attention. An Italian Dominican by the name of
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), deeply impressed by the new theory, set forth
in Latin and Italian the far-reaching and majestic implications of such a
theory of creation, and was burned at the stake at Rome for his pains. A
Dane, Tycho Brahe, after twenty-one years of careful observation of the
heavens, during which time he collected "a magnificent series of
observations, far transcending in accuracy [7] and extent anything that
had been accomplished by his predecessors," showed Aristotle to be wrong
in many particulars. His observations of the comet of 1577 led him to
conclude that the theory of crystalline spheres was impossible, and that
the common view of the time as to their nature [8] was absurd. In 1609 a
German by the name of Johann Kepler (1571-1630), using the records of
observations which Tycho Brahe had accumulated and applying them to the
planet Mars, proved the truth of the Copernican theory and framed his
famous three laws for planetary motion.
[Illustration: FIG. 115. GALILEO GALILEI (1564-1642)]
Finally an Italian, Galileo Galilei, a professor at the University of
Pisa, developing a telescope that would magnify to eight diameters,
discovered Jupiter's satellites and Saturn's rings. The story of his
discovery of the satellites of Jupiter is another interesting illustration
of the careful scientific reasoning of these early workers (R. 206).
Galileo also made a number of discoveries in physics, through the use of
new scientific methods, which completely upset the teachings of the
Aristotelians, and made the most notable advances in mechanics since the
days of Archimedes. For his pronounced advocacy of the Copernican theory
he was called to Rome (1615) by the Cardinals of the Inquisition, the
Copernican theory was condemned as "absurd in philosophy" and as
"expressly contrary to Holy Scripture," and Galileo was compelled to
recant (1616) his error. [9] For daring later (1632) to assume that he
might, under a new Pope, defend the Copernican theory, even in an indirect
manner, he was again called before the inquisitorial body, compelled to
recant and abjure his errors (R. 207) to escape the stake, and was then
virtually made a prisoner of the Inquisition for the remainder of his
life. So strongly had the forces of medievalism reasserted themselves
after the Protestant Revolts!
[Illustration: FIG. 116. SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727)]
Finally the English scholar Newton (1642-1728), in his _Principia_ (1687),
settled permanently all discussions as to the Copernican theory by his
wonderful mathematical studies. He demonstrated mathematically the motions
of the planets and comets, proved Kepler's laws to be true, explained
gravitation and the tides, made clear the nature of light, and reduced
dynamics to a science. Of his work a recent writer, Karl Pearson, has
said:
The Newtonian laws of motion form the starting point of most modern
treatises on dynamics, and it seems to me that physical science, thus
started, resembles the mighty genius of an Arabian tale emerging amid
metaphysical exhalations from the bottle in which for long centuries it
had been corked down.
So far-reaching in its importance was the scientific work of Newton that
Pope's couplet seems exceedingly applicable:
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
THE NEW METHOD APPLIED IN OTHER FIELDS. The new method of study was soon
applied to other fields by scholars of the new type, here and there, and
always with fruitful results. The Englishman, William Gilbert (1540-1603)
published, in 1600, his _De Arte Magnetica_, and laid the foundations of
the modern study of electricity and magnetism. A German-Swiss by the name
of Hohenheim, but who Latinized his name to Paracelsus (1493-1541), and
who became a professor in the medical faculty at the University of Basle,
in 1526 broke with mediaeval traditions by being one of the first
university scholars to refuse to lecture in Latin. He ridiculed the
medical theories of Hippocrates (p. 197) and Galen (p. 198), and,
regarding the human body as a chemical compound, began to treat diseases
by the administration of chemicals. A Saxon by the name of Landmann, who
also Latinized his name to Agricola (1494-1555), applied chemistry to
mining and metallurgy, and a French potter named Bernard Palissy (c. 1500-
88) applied chemistry to pottery and the arts. To Paracelsus, Agricola,
and Palissy we are indebted for having laid, in the sixteenth century, the
foundations of the study of modern chemistry.
[Illustration: FIG. 117. WILLIAM HARVEY (1578-1657)]
A Belgian by the name of Vesalius (1514-64) was the first modern to
dissect the human body, and for so doing was sentenced by the Inquisition
to perform a penitential journey to Jerusalem. One of his disciples
discovered the valves in the veins and was the teacher of the Englishman,
William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood and later
(1628) dared to publish the fact to the world. These men established the
modern studies of anatomy and physiology. Another early worker was a Swiss
by the name of Conrad Gessner (1516-65), who observed and wrote
extensively on plants and animals, and who stands as the first naturalist
of modern times.
The sixteenth century thus marks the rise of modern scientific inquiry,
and the beginnings of the study of modern science. The number of scholars
engaged in the study was still painfully small, and the religious
prejudice against which they worked was strong and powerful, but in the
work of these few men we have not only the beginnings of the study of
modern astronomy, physics, chemistry, metallurgy, medicine, anatomy,
physiology, and natural history, but also the beginnings of a group of
men, destined in time to increase greatly in number, who could see
straight, and who sought facts regardless of where they might lead and
what preconceived ideas they might upset. How deeply the future of
civilization is indebted to such men, men who braved social ostracism and
often the wrath of the Church as well, for the, to them, precious
privilege of seeing things as they are, we are not likely to over-
estimate. In time their work was destined to reach the schools, and to
materially modify the character of all education.
[Illustration: FIG. 118. FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)]
HUMAN REASON IN THE INVESTIGATION OF NATURE. To the English statesman and
philosopher, Francis Bacon, more than to any one else, are we indebted for
the proper formulation and statement of this new scientific method. Though
not a scientist himself, he has often been termed "the father of modern
science." Seeing clearly the importance of the new knowledge, he broke
entirely with the old scholastic deductive logic as expressed in the
_Organon_, of Aristotle, and formulated and expressed the methods of
inductive reasoning in his _Novum Organum_, published in 1620. In this he
showed the insufficiency of the method of argumentation; analyzed and
formulated the inductive method of reasoning, of which his study as to the
nature of heat [10] is a good example; and pointed out that knowledge is a
process, and not an end in itself; and indicated the immense and fruitful
field of science to which the method might be applied. By showing how to
learn from nature herself he turned the Renaissance energy into a new
direction, and made a revolutionary break with the disputations and
deductive logic of the Aristotelian scholastics which had for so long
dominated university instruction.
In formulating the new method he first pointed out the defects of the
learning of his time, which he classified under the head of "distempers,"
three in number, and as follows:
1. _Fantastic learning_: Alchemy, magic, miracles, old-wives,
tales, credulities, superstitions, pseudo-science, and impostures of
all sorts inherited from an ignorant past, and now conserved as
treasures of knowledge.
2. _Contentious learning_: The endless disputations of the
Scholastics about questions which had lost their significance,
deductive in character, not based on any observation, not aimed
primarily to arrive at truth, "fruitful of controversy, and barren of
effect."
3. _Delicate learning_: The new learning of the humanistic
Renaissance, verbal and not real, stylish and polished but not
socially important, and leading to nothing except a mastery of itself.
As an escape from these three types of distempers, which well
characterized the three great stages in human progress from the sixth to
the fifteenth centuries, Bacon offered the inductive method, by means of
which men would be able to distinguish true from false, learn to see
straight, create useful knowledge, and fill in the great gaps in the
learning of the time by actually working out new knowledge from the
unknown. The collecting, organizing, comparing, questioning, and inferring
spirit of the humanistic revival he now turned in a new direction by
organizing and formulating for the work a new _Organum_ to take the place
of the old _Organon_ of Aristotle. In Book 1 he sets forth some of the
difficulties (R. 208) with which those who try new experiments or work out
new methods of study have to contend from partisans of old ideas.
The _Novum Organum_ showed the means of escape from the errors of two
thousand years by means of a new method of thinking and work. Bacon did
not invent the new method--it had been used since man first began to
reason about phenomena, and was the method by means of which Wycliffe,
Luther, Magellan, Copernicus, Brahe, and Gilbert had worked--but he was
the first to formulate it clearly and to point out the vast field of new
and useful knowledge that might be opened up by applying human reason,
along inductive lines, to the investigation of the phenomena of nature.
His true service to science lay in the completeness of his analysis of the
inductive process, and his declaration that those who wish to arrive at
useful discoveries must travel by that road. As Macaulay well says, in his
essay on Bacon:
He was not the maker of that road; he was not the discoverer of that
road; he was not the person who first surveyed and mapped that road.
But he was the person who first called the public attention to an
inexhaustible mine of wealth which had been utterly neglected, and
which was accessible by that road alone.
To stimulate men to the discovery of useful truth, to turn the energies of
mankind--even slowly--from assumption and disputation to patient
experimentation, [11.] and to give an impress to human thinking which it
has retained for centuries, is, as Macaulay well says, "the rare
prerogative of a few imperial spirits." Macaulay's excellent summary of
the importance of Bacon's work (R. 209) is well worth reading at this
point.
THE NEW METHOD IN THE HANDS OF SUBSEQUENT WORKERS. By the middle of the
seventeenth century many important advances had been made in many
different lines of scientific work. In the two centuries between 1450 and
1650, the foundations of modern mathematics and mechanics had been laid.
At the beginning of the period Arabic notation and the early books of
Euclid were about all that were taught; at its end the western world had
worked out decimals, symbolic algebra, much of plane and spherical
trigonometry, mechanics, logarithms (1614) and conic sections (1637), and
was soon to add the calculus (1667-87). Mercator had published the map of
the world (1569) which has ever since born his name, and the Gregorian
calendar had been introduced (1572). The barometer, thermometer, air-pump,
pendulum clock, and the telescope had come into use in the period. Alchemy
had passed over into modern chemistry; and the astrologer was finding less
and less to do as the astronomer took his place. The English Hippocrates,
Thomas Sydenham (1624-89), during this period laid the foundations of
modern medical study, and the microscope was applied to the study of
organic forms. Modern ideas as to light and optics and gases, and the
theory of gravitation, were about to be set forth. All these advances had
been made during the century following the epoch-making labors of
Copernicus, the first modern scientific man to make an impression on the
thinking of mankind.
[Illustration: FIG. 119. THE LOSS AND RECOVERY OF THE SCIENCES Each short
horizontal line indicates the life-span of a very distinguished scholar in
the science. Mohammedan scientists have not been included. The relative
neglect or ignorance of a science has been indicated by the depth of the
shading. The great loss to civilization caused by the barbarian inroads
and the hostile attitude of the early Church is evident.]
Accompanying this new scientific work there arose, among a few men in each
of the western European countries, an interest in scientific studies such
as the world had not witnessed since the days of the Alexandrian Greek.
This interest found expression in the organization of scientific
societies, wholly outside the universities of the time, for the reporting
of methods and results, and for the mingling together in sympathetic
companionship of these seekers after new truth. The most important dates
connected with the rise of these societies are:
1603. The Lyncean Society at Rome.
1619. Jungius founded the Natural Science Association at Rostock.
1645. The Royal Society of London began to meet; constituted in 1660;
chartered in 1662.
1657. The Academia del Cimento at Florence.
1662. The Imperial Academy of Germany.
1666. The Academy of Sciences in France.
1675. The National Observatory at Greenwich established.
After 1650 the advance of science was rapid. The spirit of modern inquiry,
which in the sixteenth century had animated but a few minds, by the middle
of the seventeenth had extended to all the principal countries of Europe.
The striking results obtained during the seventeenth century revealed the
vast field waiting to be explored, and filled many independent modern-type
scholars with an enthusiasm for research in the new domain of science. By
the close of the eighteenth century the main outlines of most of the
modern sciences had been established.
LEADING THINKERS OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSITIES. During the seventeenth century,
and largely during the eighteenth as well, the extreme conservatism of the
universities, their continued control by their theological faculties, and
their continued devotion to theological controversy and the teachings of
state orthodoxy rather than the advancement of knowledge, served to make
of them such inhospitable places for the new scientific method that
practically all the leading workers with it were found outside the
universities. This was less true of England than other lands, but was in
part true of English universities as well. As civil servants, court
attachés, pensioners of royalty, or as private citizens of means they
found, as independent scholars reporting to the recently formed scientific
societies, a freedom for investigation and a tolerance of ideas then
scarcely possible anywhere in the university world.
[Illustration: FIG. 120. RENÉ DESCARTES (1596-1650)]
Tycho Brahe and Kepler were pensioners of the Emperor at Prague. Lord
Bacon was a lawyer and political leader, and became a peer of England.
Descartes, the mathematician and founder of modern philosophy, to whom we
are indebted for conic sections; Napier, inventor of logarithms; and Ray
and Willoughby, who did the first important work in botany and zoology in
England, were all independent scholars. The air-pump was invented by the
Burgomaster of Madgeburg. Huygens, the astronomer and inventor of the
clock was a pensioner of the King of France. Cassini, who explained the
motion of Jupiter's satellites, was Astronomer Royal at Paris. Halley, who
demonstrated the motions of the moon and who first predicted the return of
a comet, held a similar position at Greenwich. Van Helmont and Boyle, who
together laid the foundations of our chemical knowledge, were both men of
noble lineage who preferred the study of the new sciences to a life of
ease at court. Harvey was a physician and demonstrator of anatomy in
London. Sydenham, the English Hippocrates, was a pensioner of Cromwell and
a physician in Westminster. The German mathematical scholar, Leibnitz, who
jointly with Newton discovered the calculus, scorned a university
professorship and remained an attaché of a German court. Newton, though
for a time a professor at Cambridge, during most of his mature life held
the royal office of Warden of the Mint. These are a few notable
illustrations of scientific scholars of the first rank who remained
outside the universities to obtain advantages and freedom not then to be
found within their walls. Much these same conditions continued throughout
most of the eighteenth century, during which many remarkable advances in
all lines of pure science were made. By the close of this century the
universities had been sufficiently modernized that scientific workers
began to find in them an atmosphere conducive to scientific teaching and
research; during the nineteenth century they became the homes of
scientific progress and instruction; to-day they are deeply interested in
the promotion of scientific research.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Show that the rise of scientific inquiry was but another manifestation
of the same inquiring spirit which had led to the recovery of the ancient
literatures and history.
2. What do you understand to be meant by the failure of the Greeks to
standardize their observations by instruments?
3. Show that it would be possible largely to determine the character of a
civilization, if one knew only the prevailing ideas and conceptions as to
scientific and religious matters.
4. Show the two different types of reasoning involved in the deduction of
L. Valla (p. 246) and the induction of Copernicus.
5. Of which type was the reasoning of Galileo as to Jupiter's satellites?
6. Show that the three "distempers" described by Bacon characterize the
three great stages in human progress from the sixth to the fifteenth
centuries.
7. How do you explain the long rejection of the new sciences by the
universities?
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:
203. Macaulay: Attitude of the Ancients toward Scientific Inquiry.
204. Franck: The Credulity of Mediaeval People.
205. Copernicus: How he arrived at the theory he set forth.
206. Brewster: Galileo's Discovery of the Satellites of Jupiter.
207. Inquisition: The Abjuration of Galileo.
208. Bacon: On Scientific Progress.
209. Macaulay: The Importance of Bacon's Work.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. How do you explain the attitude of the ancients toward scientific
inquiry?
2. State the ancient purpose in pursuing scientific studies.
3. Contrast Bacon and Plato as to aims.
4. Show that the thinking of Copernicus as to the motions of the heavenly
bodies was an excellent example of deductive thinking.
5. Show that the discovery and reasoning of Galileo was an example of the
common method of reasoning of to-day.
6. Were the difficulties that surrounded scientific inquiry and progress,
as described by Bacon, easily removed?
7. Explain the readiness with which the clergy have so commonly opposed
scientific inquiry for fear that the results might upset preconceived
theological ideas.
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
Ball, W. R. R. _History of Mathematics at Cambridge_.
* Libby, Walter. _An Introduction to the History of Science_.
Ornstein, Martha. _Role of the Scientific Societies in the Seventeenth
Century_.
* Routledge, Robert. _A Popular History of Science_.
* Sedgwick, W. T. and Tyler, H. W. _A Short History of Science_.
* White, A. D. _History of the Warfare of Science with Theology_, 2
vols. Wordsworth Christopher. _Scholae Academicae; Studies at the
English Universities in the Eighteenth Century_.
CHAPTER XVII
THE NEW SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND THE SCHOOLS
THE RISE OF REALISM IN EDUCATION. As will be remembered from our study of
the educational results of the Revival of Learning (chapter XI), the new
schools established in the reaction against medievalism, to teach pure
Latin and Greek, in time became formal and lifeless (p. 283), and their
aim came to be almost entirely that of imparting a mastery of the
Ciceronian style, both in writing and in speech. This idea, first clearly
inaugurated by Sturm at Strassburg (R. 137), had now become fixed, and in
its extreme is illustrated by the teachings of the Jesuit Campion at
Prague (R. 146). As a reaction against this extreme position of the
humanistic scholars there arose, during the sixteenth century, and as a
further expression of the new critical spirit awakened by the Revival of
Learning, a demand for a type of education which would make truth rather
than beauty, and the realities of the life of the time rather than the
beauties of a life of Roman days, the aim and purpose of education. This
new spirit became known as Realism, was contemporaneous with the rise of
scientific inquiry, and was an expression of a similar dissatisfaction
with the learning of the time. As applied to education this new spirit may
be said to have manifested itself in three different stages, as follows:
1. Humanistic realism.
2. Social realism.
3. Sense realism.
We will explain each of these, briefly, in order.
1. HUMANISTIC REALISM
A NEW AIM IN INSTRUCTION. Humanistic realism represents the beginning of
the reaction against form and style and in favor of ideas and content. The
humanistic realists were in agreement with the classical humanists that
the old classical literatures and the Bible contained all that was
important in the education of youth. The ancient literatures, they held,
presented "not only the widest product of human intelligence, but
practically all that was worthy of man's attention." The two groups
differed, however, in that the classical humanists conceived the aim of
education to be the mastery of the vocabulary and style of Cicero, and the
production of a new race of Roman youths for a revived Latin scholarly
world, while the new humanistic realists wanted to use the old literatures
as a means to a new end--that of teaching knowledge that would be useful
in the world in which they lived. Monroe has so well expressed the
humanistic-realist attitude that a passage from his History is worth
quoting here. He says:
Not only did ancient philosophy contain the true philosophy of this
life, but languages were the key to the real understanding of the
Christian religion. Not only did mastery of these languages give power
of speech, and hence influence over one's fellows; but, if military
science was to be studied, it could in no place be better searched for
than in Caesar and in Xenophon; was agriculture to be practiced, no
better guide was to be found than Virgil or Columella; was
architecture to be mastered, no better way existed than through
Vitruvius; was geography to be considered, it must be through Mela or
Solinus; was medicine to be understood, no better means than Celsus
existed; was natural history to be appreciated, there was no more
adequate source of information than Pliny and Seneca. Aristotle
furnished the basis of all the sciences, Plato of all philosophy,
Cicero of all institutional life, and the Church Fathers and the
Scriptures of all religion.
EXPONENTS OF HUMANISTIC REALISM. The Dutch international scholar Erasmus
(1467?-1536) (p. 274), the Frenchman Rabelais (1483-1553), and the English
poet Milton (1608-74) stand as the clearest representatives of this new
humanistic realism.
Erasmus had clearly distinguished between the education of words and the
education of things, had pointed out the ease with which real truth is
learned and retained, and had urged the study of the content rather than
the form of the ancient authors. In his _System of Studies_ he said:
From these very authors (Latin and Greek), whom we read for the sake
of improving our language, incidentally, in no small degree is a
knowledge of things gathered.
In his _Ciceronian_ he had ridiculed those who mistook the form for the
spirit of the ancients.
The French non-conforming monk, curé, physician, and university scholar,
François Rabelais, in his satirical _Life of Gargantua_ (1535) and _The
Heroic Deeds of Pantagruel_ (1533) had set forth, even more clearly, the
idea of obtaining from a study of the ancient authors (R. 210) knowledge
that would be useful. Writing largely in the character of a clown and a
fool, because such was a safer method, he protested against the formal,
shallow, and insincere life of his age. He made as vigorous a protest
against medievalism and formalism as he dared, for he lived in a time when
new ideas were dangerous commodities for one to carry about or to try to
express. He ridiculed the old scholastic learning, set forth the idea of
using the old classics for realistic as well as humanistic ends, and also
advocated physical, moral, social, and religious education in the spirit
of the best writers and teachers of the Italian Renaissance. His book was
extensively read and had some influence in shaping thinking, though
Rabelais's importance in the history of education lies rather in his
influence on later educational thinkers than on the life of his time.
[Illustration: FIG. 121. FRANÇOIS RABELAIS (1483-1553)]
Perhaps the clearest example of humanistic realism is found in the
writings of the English poet and humanitarian, John Milton. His _Tractate
on Education_ (1644) was extensively read, and was influential in shaping
educational practice in the non-conformist secondary academies which arose
a little later in England. Still later his ideas indirectly somewhat
influenced American development.
Milton first gives us an excellent statement of the new religious-civic
aim of post-Reformation education (R. 211), and then points out the
defects of the existing education, whereby boys "spend seven or eight
years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latine and Greek, as
might be learnt otherwise easily and delightfully in one year." He then
presents his plan for "a compleat and generous Education" for "noble and
gentle youths," and tells "how all this may be done between twelve and one
and twenty, less time than is now bestowed in pure trifling at Grammar and
Sophistry." The course of study he outlines (R. 212) is enormous. The
first year, that is beginning at twelve, the boy is to learn Latin
grammar, arithmetic, and geometry, and to read simple Latin and Greek.
During the next three or four years the pupil is to master Greek, and to
study agriculture, geography, natural philosophy, physiology, mathematics,
fortification, engineering, architecture, and natural history, all by
reading the chief writings of the ancients, in prose and poetry, on these
subjects. During the remaining years to twenty-one the pupil, similarly,
is to obtain ethical instruction from the Greeks and the Bible; learn
Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Saxon law; learn Italian and Hebrew; and study
economics, politics, history, logic, rhetoric, and poetry by reading
selected ancient authors. What Rabelais suggested in jest for his giant,
Milton adopted as a program for the school. In addition, in thoroughly
characteristic modern English fashion, he makes careful provision for
daily exercise and play. Aside, though, from its impossibility of
accomplishment except by a superior few, Milton's plan is thoroughly
representative of the new humanistic-realistic point of view-that is, that
education should impart useful information, though the information as
Milton conceived it was to be drawn almost entirely from the books of the
ancients.
[Illustration: FIG. 122. JOHN MILTON (1608-74)]
EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF HUMANISTIC REALISM. The importance of humanistic
realism in the history of education lies largely in that it was the first
of a series of reactions that led later to sense-realism--that is, to the
study of science and the application of scientific method in the schools.
In England it possesses still larger importance. Milton had called his
institution an "Academy." [1] After the restoration of the Stuarts
(Charles II, 1660), some two thousand non-conforming clergymen were
"dispossessed" by the Act of Conformity (1662; R. 166), and soon after
this the children of Non-Conformists were excluded from the grammar
schools and universities. Many of these clergymen now turned to teaching
as a means of earning a livelihood and serving their people, and the ideas
of the non-conformist Milton were influential in turning the schools thus
established even further toward the study of useful subjects. Many of the
new schools offered instruction in the modern languages, logic, rhetoric,
ethics, geography, astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, surveying,
navigation, history, oratory, economics, and natural and moral philosophy,
as well as the old classical subjects. All teaching, too, was done in
English, and the study of English language and literature was emphasized.
This made these non-conformist academies in many respects superior to the
older Latin grammar schools. After the enactment of the Toleration Act, in
1689, these schools were allowed to incorporate and were gradually
absorbed into the existing Latin grammar-school system of England, but
unfortunately without producing much change in the character of these
older institutions.
The idea of offering instruction in these new studies was in time carried
to America, where better results were obtained. At first a few of the
subjects, such as the mathematical studies, surveying, navigation, and
English, were introduced into the existing Latin grammar or other schools
of secondary grade. Especially was this true in the colonies south of New
England. After 1751, and especially after about 1780, distinct Academies
arose in the United States (chapter XVIII), whose purpose was to offer
instruction in all these new subjects of study. From these our modern high
schools have been derived.
II. SOCIAL REALISM
[Illustration: FIG. 123. MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE (1533-92)]
MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. Social realism represents a still further reaction
away from the humanistic schools. It was the natural reaction of practical
men of the new world against a type of education that tended to perpetuate
the pedantry of an earlier age, by devoting its energies to the production
of the scholar and professional man to the neglect of the man of affairs.
The social realists were small in number, but powerful because of their
important social connections and wealth, and they were very determined to
have an education suited to their needs, even if they had to create it
themselves (R. 213). The French nobleman, scholar, author, and civic
officer, M. de Montaigne (1533-92), and the English philosopher, John
Locke (1632-1704), were the clearest exponents of this new point of view,
though it found expression in the writings of many others. Each declared
for a practical, useful type of education for the young boy who was to
live the life of a gentleman in the world of affairs.
Neither had any sympathy with the colleges and grammar schools of the time
(R. 214), and both rejected the school for the private tutor. This tutor
must be selected with great care, and first of all must be a well-bred
gentleman--a man, as Montaigne says, "who has rather a well-made than a
well-filled head" (R. 215). Locke cautions that "one fit to educate and
form the Mind of a young Gentleman is not every where to be found," and of
the common type of teacher he asks, "When such an one has empty'd out into
his Pupil all the Latin and Logick he has brought from the University,
will that Furniture make him a fine Gentleman?" (R. 216).
Both condemn the school training of their time, and both urge that the
tutor train the judgment and the understanding rather than the memory. To
impart good manners rather than mere information, and to train for life in
the world rather than for the life of a scholar, seem to both of
fundamental importance in the education of a boy. "The great world," says
Montaigne, "is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves. In short, I
would have this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the
most attention." "Latin and Learning," says Locke, "make all the Noise;
and the main Stress is laid upon Proficiency in Things a great Part
whereof belong not to a Gentleman's Calling; which is to have the
Knowledge of a Man of Business, a Carriage suitable to his Rank, and to be
eminent and useful to his Country, according to his Station" (R. 216).
Both emphasized the importance of travel abroad as an important factor in
the education of a gentleman.
THEIR PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. Both Montaigne and Locke were
concerned alone with the education of the sons of gentlemen, individuals
now coming rapidly into prominence to dispute place in the world of
affairs with the higher nobility on the one hand and the clergy on the
other. With the education of any other class Montaigne never concerned
himself. As for Locke, he was later appointed a King's Commissioner, with
certain oversight of the poor, and for the education of the children of
such he drew up a careful report which, in true English fashion, provided
for their training in workhouses and their apprenticeship to a trade (R.
217). He wrote nothing with regard to the education of the children of
middle-class workers and tradesmen. Both authors also deal entirely with
the work of a tutor, and not with the work of a teacher in a school.
Neither deals specifically with elementary education, but rather with
what, in Europe, would be called the secondary-school period in the
education of a boy. Locke was extensively read by the gentry of England,
as expressive of the best current practice of their class, and his ideas
as to education were also of some influence in shaping the instruction of
the non-conformist teachers in the academies there. His place in the
history of education is also of some importance, as we shall point out
later, for the disciplinary theory of education which he set forth. Still
more, Locke later exerted a deep influence on the writings of Rousseau
(chapter XXI), and hence helped materially to shape modern educational
theory.
[Illustration: FIG. 124. JOHN LOCKE (1631-1704)]
THE NEW SCHOOLS FOR THE SONS OF THE GENTRY. Both Montaigne and Locke, in
their emphasis on the importance of a practical education for the social
and political demands of a gentleman concerned with the affairs of the
modern world, represent a still further reaction against the humanistic
schools of the time than did the humanistic realists whom we have just
considered. Still more, both are expressive of the attitude of the
nobility and gentry of the time, who had almost deserted the schools as
pedantic institutions of little value. France was then the great country
of Europe, and French language, French political ideas, French manners,
and French tutors found their way into all neighboring lands. A new social
and political ideal was erected--that of the polished man of the world,
who could speak French, had traveled, knew history and politics, law and
geography, heraldry and genealogy, some mathematics and physics with their
applications, could use the sword and ride, was adept in games and
dancing, and was skilled in the practical affairs of life.
[Illustration: FIG. 125. AN ACADEMIE DES ARMES
From an early eighteenth-century Parisian poster, advertising an Academy.]
To give such training the French created numerous Academies in their
cities. A writer of 1649 states that there were twelve such institutions
at that time in Paris alone. Not infrequently some nobleman was at the
head. Boys were first educated at home by tutors, and then sent to the
Academy to be trained in riding, the military arts, fortification,
mathematics, the modern languages, and the many graces of a gentleman. The
Englishman, John Evelyn, who was in France in 1644, thus describes the
French Academies:
At the Palais Cardinal in Paris I frequently went to see them ride and
exercise the Greate Horse, especially at the Academy of Monsieur du
Plessis, and de Veau, whose scholes of that art are frequented by the
Nobility; and here also young gentlemen are taught to fence, daunce,
play on musiq, and something in fortifications and mathematics.
At Richelieu, near Tours, belongs an Academy where besides the
exercise of the horse, armes, dauncing, etc., all the sciences are
taught in the vulgar French by Professors stipendiated by the great
Cardinal. The Academy of Juilly included some study of physical
science, mathematics, geography, heraldry, French history, Italian,
and Spanish, besides the riding and gentlemanly arts.
In England the tutor in the home became the type form for the education of
the sons of a gentleman, the boys frequently being sent abroad to complete
their education. In German lands, which in the seventeenth century were in
close sympathy with French life and thought, Heidelberg being a center for
the dissemination of French ideas, the French academy idea was copied, and
what were called _Ritterakademieen_ (knightly academies) were founded in
the numerous court cities [2] for the education, along such lines, of the
sons of the many grades of the German nobility. Between 1620 and 1780,
before the rise of the German nationalistic movement which sought to
replace French ideas by native German culture, was the great period of
these German court schools, and during this period they bestowed on the
sons of the German nobility the courtly and military education of the
French academies. The education of the nobility was in consequence
segregated from the intellectual life of other classes. "Gallants" and
"pedants" were the respective outputs of the two types of schools.
III. SENSE REALISM
THE NEW EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THIS GROUP. This represented a still further
and more important step in advance than either of the preceding. In a very
direct way sense realism in education was an outgrowth of the organizing
work of Francis Bacon. Its aim was:
(1) To apply the same inductive method formulated by Bacon for the
sciences to the work of education, with a view to organizing a general
method which would greatly simplify the instructional process, reduce
educational work to an organized system, and in consequence effect a
great saving of time; and
(2) To replace the instruction in Latin by instruction in the
vernacular, [3] and to substitute new scientific and social studies,
deemed of greater value for a modern world, for the excessive devotion
to linguistic studies.
The sixteenth century had been essentially a period of criticism in
education, and the leading thinkers on education, as in other lines of
intellectual activity, were not in the schools. In the seventeenth century
we come to a new group of men who attempted to think out and work out in
practice the ideas advanced by the critics of the preceding period. In the
seventeenth century we have, in consequence, the first serious attempt to
formulate an educational method since the days of the Athenian Greeks and
the treatise of Quintilian.
The possibility of formulating an educational method that would simplify
the educational process and save time in instruction, appealed to a number
of thinkers, in different lands. This group of thinkers, due to their new
methods of attack and thought, the German historian of education, Karl von
Raumer, has called _Innovators_. The chief pedagogical ideas of the
Innovators were:
1. That education should proceed from the simple to the complex, and
the concrete to the abstract.
2. That things should come before rules.
3. That students should be taught to analyze, rather than to
construct.
4. That each student should be taught to investigate for himself,
rather than to accept or depend upon authority.
5. That only that should be memorized which is clearly understood and
of real value.
6. That restraint and coercion should be replaced by interest in the
studies taught.
7. That the vernacular should be used as the medium for all
instruction.
8. That the study of real things should precede the study of words
about things.
9. That the order and course of Nature be discovered, and that a
method of teaching based on this then be worked out.
10. That physical education should be introduced for the sake of
health, and not merely to teach gentlemanly sports.
11. That all should be provided with the opportunity for an education
in the elements of knowledge. This to be in the vernacular.
12. That Latin and Greek be taught only to those likely to complete an
education, and then through the medium of the mother tongue.
13. That a uniform and scientific method of instruction could be worked
out, which would reduce education to a science and serve as a guide
for teachers everywhere.
The Englishman, Francis Bacon, whom we have previously considered; the
German, Wolfgang Ratichius (or Ratke); and the Moravian bishop and
teacher, Johann Amos Comenius, stand as perhaps the clearest examples of
this organizing tendency in education. Ratke and Comenius will be
considered here as types.
WOLFGANG RATKE. Bacon had believed that the new scientific knowledge
should be incorporated into the instruction of the schools, and had
suggested, in his _Advancement of Learning_ (1603-05), a broader course
of study for them, and better facilities for scientific investigation and
teaching. While Bacon was not a teacher and did not write specifically on
school instruction, his writings nevertheless deeply influenced many of
those who followed his thinking.
The first writer to apply Bacon's ideas to education and to attempt to
evolve a new method and a new course of instruction was a German, by the
name of Wolfgang Ratke (1571-1635). While studying in England he had read
Bacon's _Advancement of Learning_, and from Bacon's suggestions Ratke
tried to work out a new method of instruction. This he offered, and with
much secrecy, unsuccessfully for sale at various German courts. Finally he
issued an "Address" to the princes of Germany, assembled at an Electoral
Diet at Frankfurt-am-Main, in 1612. In this he told them of his new
method, which followed Nature, and declared that it was "fraught with
momentous consequences" for mankind. He claimed that he could:
1. By using the German language in the earlier years:
(a) Bring about the use of one common language among the German
people, and thus lay the basis for unity in government and
religion;
(b) Impart to children a knowledge of the useful arts and sciences.
2. Teach Latin. Greek, and Hebrew better, and in far less time, than
had previously been required for one language only.
This method he offered to sell to the princes, and he would impart it only
on the promise that it be not revealed to others. Two professors were
appointed to examine Ratke, and they reported very favorably on his plan.
In 1617 Ratke published, in Leipzig, his _Methodus Nova_, which was the
pioneer work on school method, and is Ratke's chief claim to mention here.
In this he laid down the fundamental rules for teaching, as he had thought
them out. They were as follows:
1. The order of Nature was to be sought and followed.