to mutter anything before such an assemblage. He was by this time an
utterly broken and disgraced old man; wishful, of all things, to get
away and hide himself and his miseries from the public gaze; probably
with his senses deadened and stupefied by the mental sufferings he had
undergone, and no longer able to think or care about anything--except
perhaps his daughter--certainly not about any motion of this wretched
earth.
Far and wide the news of the recantation spread. Copies of the
abjuration were immediately sent to all universities, with instructions
to the professors to read it publicly. At Florence, his home, it was
read out in the cathedral church, all his friends and adherents being
specially summoned to hear it.
For a short time more he was imprisoned in Rome, but at length was
permitted to depart, nevermore of his own will to return.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] They remained there till 1835, when they were dropped.
EDUCATIONAL REFORM OF COMENIUS
A.D. 1638
S. S. LAURIE
John Amos Comenius (1592-1671) is now generally recognized as
the founder of modern education. Just what his work has been is
best left to Mr. Laurie, the leading authority upon his life.
What the schools were before his time is almost too dreary a
picture to attempt to draw. Everything was hopelessly
haphazard, almost hopelessly uninteresting. Only in the schools
of the Jesuits was anything approaching skill employed to
stimulate the learner. If a child did not advance, the teacher
held himself no way responsible. The lad was adjudged a dullard
and left to remain in his stupidity with the rest of the
blockhead world.
The chief work of Comenius, the _Didactica Magna_, was probably
finished about 1638, and was shown in manuscript to many
persons at that time. Its ideas as to education were widely
accepted, and its influence and that of its author spread
rapidly over much of Europe. The publication of his works was
delayed until 1657.
In the history of education it is important to recognize the existence
of the two parallel streams of intellectual and spiritual regeneration.
The leaders of both, like the leaders of all great social changes, at
once bethought themselves of the schools. Their hope was in the young,
and hence the reform of education early engaged their attention.
The improvements made in the grammar-schools under the influence of
Melanchthon and Sturm, and in England of Colet and Ascham, did not
endure, save in a very limited sense. Pure classical literature was now
read--a great gain certainly, but this was all. There was no tradition
of method, as was the case in the Jesuit order. During the latter half
of the sixteenth century, the complaints made of the state of the
schools, the waste of time, the barbarous and intricate grammar rules,
the cruel discipline, were loud and long, and proceeded from men of the
highest intellectual standing. To unity in the Reformed churches they
looked, but looked in vain, for a settlement of opinion, and to the
school they looked as the sole hope of the future. The school, as it
actually existed, might have well filled them with despair.
Even in the universities Aristotelian physics and metaphysics, and with
them the scholastic philosophy, still held their own. The reforms
initiated mainly by Melanchthon had not, indeed, contemplated the
overthrow of Aristotelianism. He and the other humanists merely desired
to substitute Aristotle himself in the original for the Latin
translation from the Arabic, necessarily misleading, and the Greek and
Latin classics for barbarous epitomes. These very reforms, however,
perpetuated the reign of Aristotle, when the spirit that actuated the
Reformers was dead, and there had been a relapse into the old
scholasticism. The Jesuit reaction, also, which recovered France and
South Germany for the papal see, was powerful enough to preserve a
footing for the metaphysical theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and the
schoolmen. In England, Milton was of opinion that the youth of the
universities were, even so late as his time, still presented with an
"asinine feast of sow-thistles." These retrogressions in school and
university serve to show how exceedingly difficult it is to contrive any
system of education, middle or upper, which will work itself when the
contrivers pass from the scene. Hence the importance, it seems to us, of
having in every university, as part of the philosophical faculty, a
department for the exposition of this very question of education--surely
a very important subject in itself as an academic study, and in its
practical relations transcending perhaps all others. How are the best
traditions of educational theory and practice to be preserved and handed
down if those who are to instruct the youth of the country are to be
sent forth to their work from our universities with minds absolutely
vacant as to the principles and history of their profession--if they
have never been taught to ask themselves the question, "What am I going
to do?" "Why?" and "How?" This subject is one worthy of consideration
both by the universities and the state. It was the want of method that
led to the decline of schools after the Reformation period; it was the
study of method which gave the Jesuits the superiority that on many
parts of the Continent they still retain.[34]
In 1605 there appeared a book which was destined to place educational
method on a scientific foundation, although its mission is not yet, it
is true, accomplished. This was Francis Bacon's _Advancement of
Learning_, which was followed some years later by the _Organum_. For
some time the thoughts of men had been turning to the study of nature.
Bacon represented this movement, and gave it the necessary impulse by
his masterly survey of the domain of human knowledge, his pregnant
suggestions, and his formulation of scientific method. Bacon was not
aware of his relations to the science and art of education; he praises
the Jesuit schools, not knowing that he was subverting their very
foundations. We know inductively: that was the sum of Bacon's teaching.
In the sphere of outer nature, the scholastic saying, "_Nihil est in
intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu_," was accepted, but with this
addition, that the impressions on our senses were not themselves to be
trusted. The mode of verifying sense-impressions, and the grounds of
valid and necessary inference, had to be investigated and applied. It is
manifest that if we can tell how it is we know, it follows that the
method of intellectual instruction is scientifically settled.
But Bacon not only represented the urgent longing for a coördination of
the sciences and for a new method, he also represented the weariness of
words, phrases, and vain subtleties which had been gradually growing in
strength since the time of Montaigne, Ludovicus Vives, and Erasmus. The
poets, also, had been placing nature before the minds of men in a new
aspect. The humanists, as we have said, while unquestionably improving
the aims and procedure of education, had been powerless to prevent the
tendency to fall once more under the dominion of words, and to revert to
mere form. The realism of human life and thought, which constituted
their _raison d'être_, had been unable to sustain itself as a principle
of action, because there was no school of method. It was the study of
the realities of sense that was finally to place education on a
scientific basis, and make reaction, as to method at least, impossible.
The thought of any age determines the education of the age which is to
succeed it. Education follows; it does not lead. The school and the
church alike march in the wake of science, philosophy, and political
ideas. We see this illustrated in every epoch of human history, and in
none so conspicuously as in the changes which occurred in the philosophy
and education of ancient Rome during the lifetime of the elder Cato, and
in modern times during the revival of letters and the subsequent rise of
the Baconian induction. It is impossible, indeed, for any great movement
of thought to find acceptance without its telling to some extent on
every department of the body politic. Its influence on the ideas
entertained as to the education of the rising generation must be, above
all, distinct and emphatic. Every philosophical writer on political
science has recognized this, and has felt the vast significance of the
educational system of a country both as an effect--the consequence of a
revolution in thought--and as a cause, a moving force of incalculable
power in the future life of a commonwealth. Thus it was that the
humanistic movement which preceded and accompanied the Reformation of
religion shook to its centre the mediæval school system of Europe; and
that subsequently the silent rise of the inductive spirit subverted its
foundations.
Bacon, though not himself a realist in the modern and abused sense of
that term, was the father of realism. It was this side of his teaching
which was greedily seized upon, and even exaggerated. Educational zeal
now ran in this channel. The conviction of the churches of the time,
that one can make men what one pleases--by fair means or foul--was
shared by the innovators. By education, rightly conceived and rightly
applied, the enthusiasts dreamed that they could manufacture men, and,
in truth, the Jesuits had shown that a good deal could be done in this
direction. The new enthusiasts failed to see that the genius of
Protestantism is the genius of freedom, and that man refuses to be
manufactured except on suicidal terms. He must first sacrifice that
which is his distinctive title to manhood--his individuality and will.
That the prophets of educational realism should have failed to see this
is not to be laid at their door as a fault; it merely shows that they
belonged to their own time, and not to ours. They failed then, as some
fail now, to understand man and his education, because they break with
the past. The record of the past is with them merely a record of
blunders. The modern humanist more wisely accepts it as the storehouse
of the thoughts and life of human reason. In the life of man each
individual of the race best finds his own true life. This is modern
humanism--the realism of thought.
Yet it is to the sense-realists of the earlier half of the seventeenth
century that we owe the scientific foundations of educational method,
and the only indication of the true line of answer to the complaints of
the time. In their hands sense-realism became allied with Protestant
theology, and pure humanism disappeared. They were represented first by
Wolfgang von Ratich, a native of Holstein, born in 1571. Ratich was a
man of considerable learning. The distractions of Europe, and the want
of harmony, especially among the churches of the Reformation, led him to
consider how a remedy might be found for many existing evils. He thought
that the remedy was to be found in an improved school system--improved
in respect both of the substance and method of teaching. In 1612,
accordingly, he laid before the Diet of the German empire at Frankfort a
memorial, in which he promised, "with the help of God, to give
instruction for the service and welfare of all Christendom."
The torch that fell from Ratich's hand was seized, ere it touched the
ground, by John Amos Comenius, who became the head, and still continues
the head, of the sense-realistic school. His works have a present and
practical, and not merely a historical and speculative, significance.
Not only had the general question of education engaged many minds for a
century and more before Comenius arose, but the apparently subsidiary,
yet all-important, question of method, in special relation to the
teaching of the Latin tongue, had occupied the thoughts and pens of many
of the leading scholars of Europe. The whole field of what we now call
secondary instruction was occupied with the one subject of Latin; Greek,
and occasionally Hebrew, having been admitted only in the beginning of
the sixteenth century, and then only to a subordinate place. This of
necessity. Latin was the one key to universal learning. To give to boys
the possession of this key was all that teachers aimed at until their
pupils were old enough to study rhetoric and logic. Of these writers on
the teaching of Latin, the most eminent were Sturm, Erasmus,
Melanchthon, Lubinus, Vossius, Sanctius (the author of the _Minerva_),
Ritter, Helvicus, Bodinus, Valentinus Andreæ, and, among Frenchmen,
Coecilius Frey. Nor were Ascham and Mulcaster in England the least
significant of the critics of method. Comenius was acquainted with
almost all previous writers on education, except probably Ascham and
Mulcaster, to whom he never alludes. He read everything that he could
hear of with a view to find a method, and he does not appear ever to
have been desirous to supersede the work of others. If he had found what
he wanted, he would, we believe, have promulgated it, and advocated it
as a loyal pupil. That he owed much to the previous writers is certain;
but the prime characteristic of his work on Latin was his own.
Especially does he introduce a new epoch in education, by constructing a
general methodology which should go beyond mere Latin, and be equally
applicable to all subjects of instruction.
Before bringing his thoughts into definite shape, he wrote to all the
distinguished men to whom he could obtain access. He addressed Ratich,
among others, but received no answer; many of his letters also were
returned, because the persons addressed could not be found. Valentinus
Andreæ wrote to him in encouraging terms, saying that he gladly passed
on the torch to him. His mind became now much agitated by the importance
of the question and by the excitement of discovery. He saw his whole
scheme assuming shape under his pen, and was filled, like other zealous
men, before and since, with the highest hopes of the benefits which he
would confer on the whole human race by his discoveries. He resolved to
call his treatise _Didactica Magna_, or _Omnes omnia docendi
Artificium_. He found a consolation for his misfortunes in the work of
invention, and even saw the hand of Providence in the coincidence of the
overthrow of schools, through persecutions and wars, and those ideas of
a new method which had been vouchsafed to him, and which he was
elaborating. Everything might now be begun anew, and untrammelled by the
errors and prejudices of the past.
Some scruples as to a theologian and pastor being so entirely
preoccupied with educational questions he had, however, to overcome.
"Suffer, I pray, Christian friends, that I speak confidentially with you
for a moment. Those who know me intimately know that I am a man of
moderate ability and of almost no learning, but one who, bewailing the
evils of his time, is eager to remedy them, if this in any be granted me
to do, either by my own discoveries or by those of another--none of
which things can come save from a gracious God. If, then, anything be
here found well done, it is not mine, but his, who from the mouths of
babes and sucklings hath perfected praise, and who, that he may in
verity show himself faithful, true, and gracious, gives to those who
ask, opens to those who knock, and offers to those who seek. Christ my
Lord knows that my heart is so simple that it matters not to me whether
I teach or be taught, act the part of teacher of teachers or disciple of
disciples. What the Lord has given me I send forth for the common good."
His deepest conviction was that the sole hope of healing the dissensions
of both church and state lay in the proper education of youth.
When he had completed his _Great Didactic_, he did not publish it, for
he was still hoping to be restored to his native Moravia, where he
proposed to execute all his philanthropic schemes; indeed, the treatise
was first written in his native Slav or Czech tongue. In 1632 there was
convened a synod of the Moravian Brethren at Lissa, at which Comenius,
now forty years of age, was elected to succeed his father-in-law,
Cyrillus, as bishop of the scattered brethren--a position which enabled
him to be of great service, by means of correspondence, to the members
of the community, who were dispersed in various parts of Europe.
Throughout the whole of his long life he continued this fatherly charge,
and seemed never quite to abandon the hope of being restored, along with
his fellow-exiles, to his native land--a hope doomed to disappointment.
In his capacity of pastor-bishop he wrote several treatises, such as a
_History of the Persecutions of the Brotherhood_, an account of the
Moravian Church discipline and order, and polemical tracts against a
contemporary Socinian.
Meanwhile his great didactic treatise, which had been written in his
native Czech tongue, was yet unpublished. He was, it would appear,
stimulated to the publication of it by an invitation he received in
1638, from the authorities in Sweden, to visit their country and
undertake the reformation of their schools. He replied that he was
unwilling to undertake a task at once so onerous and so invidious, but
that he would gladly give the benefit of his advice to anyone of their
own nation whom they might select for the duty. These communications led
him to resume his labor on the _Great Didactic_, and to translate it
into Latin, in which form it finally appeared.
Humanism, which had practically failed in the school, had, apart from
this fact, no attractions for Comenius, and still less had the worldly
wisdom of Montaigne. He was a leading Protestant theologian--a pastor
and bishop of a small but earnest and devoted sect--and it was as such
that he wrote on education. The best results of humanism could, after
all, be only culture, and this not necessarily accompanied by moral
earnestness or personal piety: on the contrary, probably dissociated
from these, and leaning rather to scepticism and intellectual
self-indulgence.
At the same time it must be noted that he never fairly faced the
humanistic question; he rather gave it the cold shoulder from the first.
His whole nature pointed in another direction. When he has to speak of
the great instruments of humanistic education--ancient classical
writers--he exhibits great distrust of them, and, if he does not banish
them from the school altogether, it is simply because the higher
instruction in the Latin and Greek tongues is seen to be impossible
without them. Even in the universities, as his pansophic scheme shows,
he would have Plato and Aristotle taught chiefly by means of analyses
and epitomes. It might be urged in opposition to this view of the
anti-humanism of Comenius, that he contemplated the acquisition of a
good style in Latin in the higher stages of instruction: true, but in so
far as he did so, it was merely with a practical aim--the more
effective, and, if need be, oratorical, enforcement of moral and
religious truth. The beauties and subtleties of artistic expression had
little charm for him, nor did he set much store by the graces. The most
conspicuous illustration of the absence of all idea of art in Comenius
is to be found in his school drama. The unprofitable dreariness of that
production would make a reader sick were he not relieved by a feeling of
its absurdity.
The educational spirit of the Reformers, the conviction that all--even
the humblest--must be taught to know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has
sent, was inherited by Comenius in its completeness. In this way, and in
this way only, could the ills of Europe be remedied and the progress of
humanity assured. While, therefore, he sums up the educational aim
under the three-fold heads of Knowledge, Virtue, and Piety or Godliness,
he in truth has mainly in view the last two. Knowledge is of value only
in so far as it forms the only sound basis, in the eyes of a Protestant
theologian, of virtue and godliness. We have to train for a hereafter.
In virtue and godliness Comenius did not propose to teach anything save
what the Reformed religion taught. His characteristic merits in this
department of instruction were:
1. Morality and godliness were to be taught from the first. Parents and
teachers were to begin to train at the beginning of the child's
conscious life.
2. Parents and teachers were to give milk to babes, and reserve the
stronger meat for the adolescent and adult mind. They were to be content
to proceed gradually, step by step.
3. The method of procedure was not only to be adapted to the growing
mind, but the mode of enforcement was to be mild, and the manner of it
kind and patient.
Had Comenius done nothing more than put forth and press home these
truths he would have deserved our gratitude as an educationalist.
But he did more than this. He related virtue and godliness to knowledge.
By knowledge Comenius meant knowledge of nature and of man's relation to
nature. It is this important characteristic of Comenius' educational
system that reveals the direct influence of Bacon and his school. To the
great Verulam he pays reverence for what he owed him, but he owed him
even more than he knew.
In this field of knowledge, the leading characteristic of the
educational system of Comenius is his realism. We have pointed out, in
contradiction of the assumptions of the modern sensationalist school,
that the humanists were in truth realists, and it may be safely said
that there can be no question among competent judges as to the realism
which ought to characterize all rational and sound instruction. The
question rather is as to the field in which the real is to be sought--in
the mind of man, or in external nature. As the former may be called
humanistic-realism, so the latter may be called sense- or
naturalistic-realism. Of the latter, Comenius is the true founder,
although his indebtedness to Ratich was great. Mere acquisition of the
ordered facts of nature, and man's relation to them, was with him the
great aim--if not the sole aim--of all purely intellectual instruction.
And here there necessarily entered the governing idea, encyclopædism or
pansophism. Let all the sciences, he said, be taught in their elements
in all schools, and more fully at each successive stage of the pupil's
progress. It is by knowledge that we are what we are, and the necessary
conclusion from this must be, let all things be taught to all.
It is at this point that many will part company with Comenius. The mind
stored with facts, even if these be ordered facts, will not necessarily
be much raised in the scale of humanity as an intelligence. The natural
powers may be simply overweighted by the process, and the natural
channels of spontaneous reason choked. In education, while our main
business is to promote the growth of moral purpose and of a strong sense
of duty, we have to support these by the discipline of intelligence, and
by training to power and work rather than by information. On the other
hand, only those who are ignorant of the history and the recognized
results of education will wholly abjure realism in the Comenian sense;
but it has to be assigned its own place, and nothing more than this, in
the education of a human being. The sum of the matter seems to be this,
that while a due place in all education is to be assigned to
sense-realistic studies, especially in the earlier years of family and
school life, the humanistic agencies must always remain the most potent
in the making of a man.