Part 13

§ 48. On this subject Comenius may speak for himself: “The ground of this business is, that sensual objects [we now say _sensible_: why not _sensuous_?] be rightly presented to the senses, for fear they may not be received. I say, and say it again aloud, that this last is the foundation of all the rest: because we can neither act nor speak wisely, unless we first rightly understand all the things which are to be done and whereof we have to speak. Now there is nothing in the understanding which was not before in the sense. And therefore to exercise the senses well about the right perceiving the differences of things will be to lay the grounds for all wisdom and all wise discourse and all discreet actions in one’s course of life. Which, because it is commonly neglected in Schools, and the things that are to be learned are offered to scholars without their being understood or being rightly presented to the senses, it cometh to pass that the work of teaching and learning goeth heavily onward and affordeth little benefit.” (Preface to _Orbis Pictus_, Hoole’s trans. A.D. 1658.)

§ 49. Without going into any metaphysical discussion, we must all agree that a vast amount of impressions come to children through the senses, and that it is by the exercise of the senses that they learn most readily. As Comenius says: “The senses (being the main guides of childhood, because therein the mind doth not as yet raise up it self to an abstracted contemplation of things) evermore seek their own objects; and if these be away, they grow dull, and wry themselves hither and thither out of a weariness of themselves: but when their objects are present, they grow merry, wax lively, and willingly suffer themselves to be fastened upon them till the thing be sufficiently discerned.” (P. to _Orbis._) This truth lay at the root of most of the methods of Pestalozzi; and though it has had little effect on teaching in England (where for the word _anschaulich_ there is no equivalent), everything that goes on in a German Folkschool has reference to it.

§ 50. For children then Comenius gave good counsel when he would have their senses exercised on the world about them. But after all, whatever may be thought of the proposition that all knowledge comes through the senses, we must not ignore what is bequeathed to us, both in science and in literature. Comenius says: “And now I beseech you let this be our business that the schools may cease to _persuade_ and begin to _demonstrate_; cease to _dispute_ and begin to _look_; cease lastly to _believe_ and begin to _know_. For that Aristotellical maxim ‘_Discentem oportet credere_, A learner must believe,’ is as tyrannical as it is dangerous; so also is that same Pythagorean ‘_Ipse dixit_, The Master has said it.’ Let no man be compelled to swear to his Masters words, but let the things themselves constrain the intellect.” (P. to _Nat. Phil. R._) But the things themselves will not take us far. Even in Natural Science we need teachers, for Science is not reached through the senses but through the intellectual grasp of knowledge which has been accumulating for centuries. If the education of times past has neglected the senses, we must not demand that the education of the future should care for the senses only. There is as yet little danger of our thinking too much of physical education; but we sometimes hear reformers talking as if the true ideal were sketched in “Locksley Hall:”

“Iron-jointed, supple-sinew’d, they shall dive, and they shall run, Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun, Whistle back the parrot’s call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks; Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books.”

There seems, however, still some reason for counting “the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.” And the reason is that we are “the heirs of all the ages.” Our education must enable every child to enter in some measure on his inheritance; and not a few of our most precious heirlooms will be found not only in scientific discoveries but also in those great works of literature which the votaries of science are apt to despise as “miserable books.” This truth was not duly appreciated by Comenius. As Professor Laurie well says, “he accepted only in a half-hearted way the products of the genius of past ages.” (Laurie’s _C._, p. 22.) In his day there was a violent reaction from the Renascence passion for literature, and Comenius would entirely banish from education the only literatures which were then important, the “heathen” literatures of Greece and Rome. “Our most learned men,” says he, “even among the theologians take from Christ only the mask: the blood and life they draw from Aristotle and a crowd of other heathens.” (See Paulsen’s _Gesch._, pp. 312, ff.) So for Cicero and Virgil he would substitute, and his contemporaries at first seemed willing to accept, the _Janua Linguarum_. But though there may be much more “real” knowledge in the _Janua_, the classics have survived it.[82] In these days there is a passion for the study of things which in its intensity resembles the Renascence passion for literature. There is a craving for knowledge, and we know only the truths we can verify; so this craving must be satisfied, not by words, but things. And yet that domain which the physicists contemptuously describe as the study of words must not be lost sight of, indeed cannot be, either by young or old. As Matthew Arnold has said, “those who are for giving to natural knowledge the chief place in the education of the majority of mankind leave one important thing out of their account—the constitution of human nature.”

“We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love, And e’en as these are well and wisely fixed, In dignity of being we ascend.”

So says Wordsworth, and if this assertion cannot be verified, no more can it be disproved; that the words have become almost proverbial shows that it commends itself to the general consciousness. Whatever knowledge we may acquire, it will have little effect on our lives unless we can “relate it” (again to use Matthew Arnold’s words), “to our sense of conduct and our sense of beauty.” (_Discourses in America._ “Literature and Science.”) So long as we retain our sense for these, “the humanities” are safe. Like Milton we may have no inclination to study “modern Januas,” but we shall not cease to value many of the works which the Janua of Comenius was supposed to have supplanted.[83]

§ 51. “Analogies are good for illustration, not for proof.” If Comenius had accepted this caution, he would have escaped much useless labour, and might have had a better foundation for his rules than fanciful applications of what he observed in the external world. “Comenius” as August Vogel has said, “is unquestionably right in wishing to draw his principles of education from Nature; but instead of examining the proper constitution and nature of man, and taking that as the basis of his theory, he watches the life of birds, the growth of trees, or the quiet influence of the sun, and thus substitutes for the nature of man nature _without_ man (_die objective Natur_). And yet by Nature he understands that first and primordial state to which as to our original [idea] we should be restored, and by the voice of Nature he understands the universal Providence of God or the ceaseless influence of the Divine Goodness working all in all, that is, leading every creature to the state ordained for it. The vegetative and animal life in Nature is according to Comenius himself not life at all in its highest sense, but the only true life is the intellectual or spiritual life of Man. No doubt in the two lower kinds of life certain analogies may be found for the higher; but nothing can be less worthy of reliance and less scientific than a method which draws its principles for the higher life from what has been observed in the lower.” (A. Vogel’s _Gesch. d. Pädagogik als Wissenschaft_, p. 94.)

§ 52. This seems to me judicious criticism; but whatever mistakes he may have made, Comenius, like Froebel long after him, strove after a higher unity which should embrace knowledge of every kind. The connexion of knowledges (so constantly overlooked in the schoolroom) was always in his thoughts. “We see that the branches of a tree cannot live unless they all alike suck their juices from a common trunk with common roots. And can we hope that the branches of Wisdom can be torn asunder with safety to their life, that is to truth? Can one be a Natural Philosopher who is not also a Metaphysician? or an Ethical Thinker who does not know something of Physical Science? or a Logician who has no knowledge of real matters? or a Theologian, a jurisconsult, or a Physician, who is not first a Philosopher? or an Orator or Poet, who is not all these at once? He deprives himself of light, of hand, and of regulation, who pushes away from him any shred of the knowable.” (Quoted in Masson’s _L. of Milton_ vol. iij., p. 213 from the Delineatio, [i.e., _Pansophiæ Prodromus_]. Conf. J. H. Newman, _Idea of a University_, Disc. iij.)

§ 53. We see then that on the side of theory, Comenius was truly great. But the practical man who has always been the tyrant of the schoolroom cared nothing for theory and held, with a modern English minister responsible for education, who proved his ignorance of theory by his “New Code,” that there was, and could be no such thing. So the reputation of Comenius became pretty much what our great authority Hallam has recorded, that he was a person of some ingenuity and little judgment who invented a new way of learning Latin. This estimate of him enables us to follow some windings in the stream of thought about education. Comenius faced the whole problem in its double bearing, theory and practice: he asked, What is the educator’s task? How can he best accomplish it? But his contemporaries had not yet recovered from the idolatry of Latin which had been bequeathed to them by their fathers from the Renascence, and they too saw in Comenius chiefly an inventor of a new way of learning Latin. He sought to train up children for this world and the next; they supposed, as Oxenstiern himself said, that the main thing to be remedied was the clumsy way of teaching Latin. So Comenius was little understood. His books were seized upon as affording at once an introduction to the knowledge of _things_ and a short way of learning Latin. But in the long run they were found more tiresome than the old classics: so they went out of fashion, and their author was forgotten with them. Now that schoolmasters are forming a more worthy conception of their office, they are beginning to do justice to Comenius.

§ 54. As the Jesuits kept to Latin as the common language of the Church, so Comenius thought to use it as a means of inter-communication for the instructed of every nationality. But he was singularly free from over-estimating the value of Latin, and he demanded that all nations should be taught in their own language wherein they were born. On this subject he expresses himself with great emphasis. “We desire and protest that studies of wisdom be no longer committed to Latin alone, and kept shut up in the schools, as has hitherto been done, to the greatest contempt and injury of the people at large, and the popular tongues. Let all things be delivered to each nation in its own speech.” (_Delineatio_ [_Prodromus_] in Masson _ut supra_.)

§ 55. Comenius was then neither a verbalist nor a classicist, and yet his contemporaries were not entirely wrong in thinking of him as “a man who had invented a new way of learning Latin.” His great principle was that instruction in words and things should go together.[84] The young were to learn about things, and _at the same time_ were to acquire both in the vernacular and also in Latin, the international tongue, the words which were connected with the things. Having settled on this plan of concurrent instruction in words and things, Comenius determined to write a book for carrying it out. Just then there fell into his hands a book which a less open-minded man might have thrown aside on account of its origin, for it was written by the bitter foes and persecutors of the Bohemian Protestants, by the Jesuits. But Comenius says truly, “I care not whether I teach or whether I learn,” and he gave a marvellous proof of this by adopting the linguistic method of the Jesuits’ _Janua Linguarum_.[85] This “Noah’s Ark for words,” treated in a series of proverbs of all kinds of subjects, in such a way as to introduce in a natural connection every common word in the Latin language. “The idea,” says Comenius, “was better than the execution. Nevertheless, inasmuch as they (the Jesuits) were the prime inventors, we thankfully acknowledge it, nor will we upbraid them with those errors they have committed.” (Preface to Anchoran’s trans. of _Janua_.)

§ 56. The plan commended itself to Comenius on various grounds. First, he had a notion of giving an outline of all knowledge before anything was taught in detail. Next, he could by such a book connect the teaching about simple things with instruction in the Latin words which applied to them. And thirdly, he hoped by this means to give such a complete Latin vocabulary as to render the use of Latin easy for all requirements of modern society. He accordingly wrote a short account of things in general, which he put in the form of a dialogue, and this he published in Latin and German at Leszna in 1531. The success of this work, as we have already seen, was prodigious. No doubt the spirit which animated Bacon was largely diffused among educated men in all countries, and they hailed the appearance of a book which called the youth from the study of old philosophical ideas to observe the facts around them.

§ 57. The countrymen of Bacon were not backward in adopting the new work, as the following, from the title-page of a volume in the British Museum, will show: “The Gate of Tongues Unlocked and Opened; or else, a Seminary or Seed-plot of all Tongues and Sciences. That is, a short way of teaching and thoroughly learning, within a yeare and a half at the furthest, the Latine, English, French and any other tongue, with the ground and foundation of arts and sciences, comprised under a hundred titles and 1058 periods. In Latin first, and now, as a token of thankfulness, brought to light in Latine, English and French, in the behalfe of the most illustrious Prince Charles, and of British, French, and Irish youth. The 4th edition, much enlarged, by the labour and industry of John Anchoran, Licentiate in Divinity, London. Printed by Edward Griffin for Michael Sparke, dwelling at the Blew Bible in Green Arbor, 1639.” The first edition must have been some years earlier, and the work contains a letter to Anchoran from Comenius dated “Lessivæ polonorum (Leszna) 11th Oct, 1632.” So we see that, however the connexion arose, it was Anchoran not Hartlib who first made Comenius known in England.

§ 58. In the preface to the volume (signed by Anchoran and Comenius) we read of the complaints of “Ascam, Vives, Erasmus, Sturmius, Frisclinus, Dornavius and others.” The Scaligers and Lipsius did climb but left no track. “Hence it is that the greater number of schools (howsoever some boast the happinesse of the age and the splendour of learning) have not as yet shaked off their ataxies. The youth was held off, nay distracted, and is yet in many places delayed with grammar precepts infinitely tedious, perplexed, obscure, and (for the most part) unprofitable, and that for many years.” The names of things were taught to those who were in total ignorance of the things themselves.

§ 59. From this barren region the pupil was to escape to become acquainted with things. “Come on,” says the teacher in the opening dialogue, “let us go forth into the open air. There you shall view whatsoever God produced from the beginning, and doth yet effect by nature. Afterwards we will go into towns, shops, schools, where you shall see how men do both apply those Divine works to their uses, and also instruct themselves in arts, manners, tongues. Then we will enter into houses, courts, and palaces of princes, to see in what manner communities of men are governed. At last we will visit temples, where you shall observe how diversely mortals seek to worship their Creator and to be spiritually united unto Him, and how He by His Almightiness disposeth all things.” (This is from the 1656 edition, by “W.D.”)

The book is still amusing, but only from the quaint manner in which the mode of life two hundred years ago is described in it.[86]

§ 60. But though parts of the book may on first reading have gratified the youth of the seventeenth century, a great deal of it gave scanty information about difficult subjects, such as physiology, geometry, logic, rhetoric, and that too in the driest and dullest way. Moreover, in his first version (much modified at Saros-Patak) Comenius following the Jesuit boasts that no important word occurs twice; so that the book, to attain the end of giving a perfect stock of Latin words, would have to be read and re-read till it was almost known by heart; and however amusing boys might find an account of their toys written in Latin the first time of reading, the interest would somewhat wear away by the fifth or sixth time. We cannot then feel much surprised on reading this “general verdict,” written some years later, touching those earlier works of Comenius: “They are of singular use, and very advantageous to those of more discretion (especially to such as have already got a smattering in Latin), to help their memories to retain what they have scatteringly gotten here and there, and to furnish them with many words which perhaps they had not formerly read or so well observed; but to young children (whom we have chiefly to instruct, as those that are ignorant altogether of most things and words), they prove rather a mere toil and burden than a delight and furtherance.” (Chas. Hoole’s preface to his trans. of _Orbis Pictus_, dated “From my school in _Lothbury_, London, Jan. 25, 1658.”)

§ 61. The “_Janua_” would, therefore, have had but a short-lived popularity with teachers, and a still shorter with learners, if Comenius had not carried out his principle of appealing to the senses, and adopted a plan which had been suggested, nearly 50 years earlier, by a Protestant divine, Lubinus,[87] of Rostock. The artist was called in, and with Endter at Nürnberg in 1657 was published the first edition of a book which long outlived the _Janua_. This was the famous _Orbis Sensualium Pictus_, which was used for a century at least in many a schoolroom, and lives in imitations to the present day. Comenius wrote this book on the same lines as the _Janua_, but he goes into less detail, and every subject is illustrated by a small engraving. The text is mostly on the opposite page to the picture, and is connected with it by a series of corresponding numbers. Everything named in the text is numbered as in the picture. The artist employed must have been a bold man, as he sticks at nothing; but in skill he was not the equal of many of his contemporaries; witness the pictures in the Schaffhausen _Janua_ (Editio secunda, SchaffhusI, 1658), in Daniel’s edition of the _Janua_, 1562, and the very small but beautiful illustrations in the _Vestibulum_ of “Jacob Redinger and J. S.” (Amsterdam, 1673). However, the _Orbis Pictus_ gives such a quaint delineation of life 200 years ago that copies with the original engravings keep rising in value, and an American publisher (Bardeen of Syracuse, New York), has lately reproduced the old book with the help of photography.

§ 62. And yet as instruments of teaching, these books, _i.e._ the _Vestibulum_ and the _Janua_ and even the _Orbis Pictus_ which in a great measure superseded both, proved a failure. How shall we account for this?

Comenius immensely over-estimated the importance of knowledge and the power of the human mind to acquire knowledge. He took it for the heavenly idea that _man should know all things_. This notion started him on the wrong road for forming a scheme of instruction, and it needed many years and much experience to show him his error. When he wrote the _Orbis Pictus_ he said of it: “It is _a little book_, as you see, of no great bulk, yet a brief of the whole world and a whole language;” (Hoole’s trans. Preface); and he afterwards speaks of “this our _little encyclopædia_ of things subject to the senses.” But in his old age he saw that his text-books were too condensed and attempted too much (Laurie, p. 59); and he admitted that after all Seneca was right: “Melius est scire pauca et iis recté uti quam scire multa, quorum ignores usum. It is better to know a few things and have the right use of them than to know many things which you cannot use at all.”

§ 63. The attempt to give “information” has been the ruin of a vast number of professing educators since Comenius. Masters “of the old school” whom some of us can still remember made boys learn Latin and Greek Grammar and _nothing else_. Their successors seem to think that boys should not learn Latin and Greek Grammar but _everything else_: and the last error I take to be much worse than the first. As Ruskin has neatly said, education is not teaching people to know what they do not know, but to behave as they do not behave. It is to be judged not by the knowledge acquired, but the habits, powers, interests: knowledge must be thought of “last and least.”

§ 64. So the attempt to teach about everything was unwise. The means adopted were unwise also. It is a great mistake to suppose that a “general view” should come first; this is not the right way to give knowledge in any subject. “A child begins by seeing bits of everything—here a little and there a little; it makes up its wholes out of its own littles, and is long in reaching the fulness of a whole; and in this we are children all our lives in much.” (Dr. John Brown in _Horæ Subsecivæ_, p. 5.) So nothing could have been much more unfortunate than an attempt to give the young “a brief of the whole world.” _Compendia, dispendia._

§ 65. Corresponding to “a brief of the whole world,” Comenius offers “a brief of a whole language.” The two mistakes were well matched. In “the whole world” there are a vast number of things of which we must, and a good number of which we very advantageously _may_ be ignorant. In a language there are many words which we cannot know and many more which we do not want to know. The language lives for us in a small vocabulary of essential words, and our hold upon the language depends upon the power we have in receiving and expressing thought by means of those words. But the Jesuit Bath, and after him Comenius, made the tremendous mistake of treating all Latin words as of equal value, and took credit for using each word once and once only! Moreover, Comenius wrote not simply to teach the Latin language, but also to stretch the Latin language till it covered the whole area of modern life. He aimed at two things and missed them both.

§ 66. We see then that Comenius was not what Hallam calls him, “a man who invented a new way of learning Latin.” He did not do this, but he did much more than this. He saw that every human creature should be trained up to become a reasonable being, and that the training should be such as to draw out God-given faculties. Thus he struck the key-note of the science of education.