chapter 5 (section 92-93).

EDUCATION: Rabelais' Gargantua.

Rabelais' description of the imaginary education of Gargantua gives us the educational ideas of a man of genius in the 16th century: "Gargantua," he writes, "awaked, then, about four o'clock in the morning. Whilst they were rubbing him, there was read unto him some chapter of the Holy Scripture aloud and clearly, with a pronunciation fit for the matter, and hereunto was appointed a young page born in Basché, named Anagnostes. According to the purpose and argument of that lesson, he oftentimes gave himself to revere, adore, pray, and send up his supplications to that good God whose word did show His majesty and marvellous judgments. Then his master repeated what had been read, expounding unto him the most obscure and difficult points. They then considered the face of the sky, if it was such as they had observed it the night before, and into what signs the sun was entering, as also the moon for that day. This done, he was appareled, combed, curled, trimmed and perfumed, during which time they repeated to him the lessons of the day before. He himself said them by heart, and upon them grounded practical cases concerning the estate of man, which he would prosecute sometimes two or three hours, but ordinarily they ceased as soon as he was fully clothed. Then for three good hours there was reading. This done, they went forth, still conferring of the substance of the reading, and disported themselves at ball, tennis, or the 'pile trigone,' gallantly exercising their bodies, as before they had done their minds. All their play was but in liberty, for they left off when they pleased, and that was commonly when they did sweat, or were otherwise weary. Then were they very well dried and rubbed, shifted their shirts, and walking soberly, went to see if dinner was ready. Whilst they stayed for that, they did clearly and eloquently recite some sentences that they had retained of the lecture. In the mean time Master Appetite came, and then very orderly sat they down at table. At the beginning of the meal there was read some pleasant history of ancient prowess, until he had taken his wine. Then, if they thought good, they continued reading, or began to discourse merrily together; speaking first of the virtue, propriety, efficacy, and nature of all that was served in at that table; of bread, of wine, of water, of salt, of flesh, fish, fruits, herbs, roots, and of their dressing. By means whereof, he learned in a little time all the passages that on these subjects are to be found in Pliny, Athenæus, Dioscorides, Julius, Pollux, Galen, Porphyrius, Oppian, Polybius, Heliodorus, Aristotle, Œlian, and others. {703} Whilst they talked of these things, many times, to be the more certain, they caused the very books to be brought to the table, and so well and perfectly did he in his memory retain the things above said, that in that time there was not a physician that knew half so much as he did. Afterwards they conferred of the lessons read in the morning, and ending their repast with some conserve of quince, he washed his hands and eyes with fair fresh water, and gave thanks unto God in some fine canticle, made in praise of the divine bounty and munificence. This done, they brought in cards, not to play, but to learn a thousand pretty tricks and new inventions, which were all grounded upon arithmetic. By this means he fell in love with that numerical science, and every day after dinner and supper he passed his time in it as pleasantly as he was wont to do at cards and dice. ... After this they recreated themselves with singing musically, in four or five parts, or upon a set theme, as it best pleased them. In matter of musical instruments, he learned to play the lute, the spinet, the harp, the German flute, the flute with nine holes, the violin, and the sackbut. This hour thus spent, he betook himself to his principal study for three hours together, or more, as well to repeat his matutinal lectures as to proceed in the book wherein he was, as also to write handsomely, to draw and form the antique and Roman letters. This being done, they went out of their house, and with them a young gentleman of Touraine, named Gymnast, who taught the art of riding. Changing then his clothes, he mounted on any kind of horse, which he made to bound in the air, to jump the ditch, to leap the palisade, and to turn short in a ring both to the right and left hand. ... The time being thus bestowed, and himself rubbed, cleansed, and refreshed with other clothes, they returned fair and softly; and passing through certain meadows, or other grassy places, beheld the trees and plants: comparing them with what is written of them in the books of the ancients, such as Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Marinus, Pliny, Nicander, Macer, and Galen, and carried home to the house great handfuls of them, whereof a young page called Rhizotomos had charge--together with hoes, picks, spuds, pruning-knives, and other instruments requisite for herborising. Being come to their lodging, whilst supper was making ready, they repeated certain passages of that which had been read, and then sat down at table. ... During that repast was continued the lesson read at dinner as long as they thought good: the rest was spent in good discourse, learned and profitable. After that they had given thanks, they set themselves to sing musically, and play upon harmonious instruments, or at those pretty sports made with cards, dice or cups,--thus made merry till it was time to go to bed; and sometimes they would go make visits unto learned men, or to such as had been travellers in strange countries. At full night they went into the most open place of the house to see the face of the sky, and there beheld the comets, if any were, as likewise the figures, situations, aspects, oppositions, and conjunctions of the stars. Then with his master did he briefly recapitulate, after the manner of the Pythagoreans, that which he had read, seen, learned, done, and understood in the whole course of that day. Then they prayed unto God the Creator, falling down before Him, and strengthening their faith towards Him, and glorifying Him for His boundless bounty; and, giving thanks unto Him for the time that was past, they recommended themselves to His divine clemency for the future. Which being done, they entered upon their repose."

_W. Besant, Readings in Rabelais, pages 20-29._

EDUCATION: Germany.

"The schools of France and Italy owed little to the great modern movement of the Renaissance. In both these countries that movement operated, in both it produced mighty results; but of the official establishments for instruction it did not get hold. In Italy the mediæval routine in those establishments at first opposed a passive resistance to it; presently came the Catholic reaction, and sedulously shut it out from them. In France the Renaissance did not become a power in the State, and the routine of the schools sufficed to exclude the new influence till it took for itself other channels than the schools. But in Germany the Renaissance became a power in the State; allied with the Reformation, where the Reformation triumphed in German countries the Renaissance triumphed with it, and entered with it, into the public schools. Melancthon and Erasmus were not merely enemies and subverters of the dominion of the Church of Rome, they were eminent humanists; and with the great but single exception of Luther, the chief German reformers were all of them distinguished friends of the new classical learning, as well as of Protestantism. The Romish party was in German countries the ignorant party also, the party untouched by the humanities and by culture. Perhaps one reason why in England our schools have not had the life and growth of the schools of Germany and Holland is to be found in the separation, with us, of the power of the Reformation and the power of the Renaissance. With us, too, the Reformation triumphed and got possession of our schools; but our leading reformers were not at the same time, like those of Germany, the nation's leading spirits in intellect and culture. In Germany the best spirits of the nation were then the reformers; in England our best spirits,--Shakspeare, Bacon, Spenser,--were men of the Renaissance, not men of the Reformation, and our reformers were men of the second order. The Reformation, therefore, getting hold of the schools in England was a very different force, a force far inferior in light, resources, and prospects, to the Reformation getting hold of the schools in Germany. But in Germany, nevertheless, as Protestant orthodoxy grew petrified like Catholic orthodoxy, and as, in consequence, Protestantism flagged and lost the powerful impulse with which it started, the school flagged also, and in the middle of the last century the classical teaching of Germany, in spite of a few honourable names like Gesner's, Ernesti's, and Heyne's, seems to have lost all the spirit and power of the 16th century humanists, to have been sinking into a mere church appendage, and fast becoming torpid. A theological student, making his livelihood by teaching till he could get appointed to a parish, was the usual school-master. 'The schools will never be better,' said their great renovator, Friedrich August Wolf, the well-known critic of Homer, 'so long as the school-masters are theologians by profession. {704} A theological course in a university, with its smattering of classics, is about as good a preparation for a classical master as a course of feudal law would be.' Wolf's coming to Halle in 1783, invited by Von Zedlitz, the minister for public worship under Frederick the Great, a sovereign whose civil projects and labours were not less active and remarkable than his military, marks an era from which the classical schools of Germany, reviving the dormant spark planted in them by the Renaissance, awoke to a new life."

_M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent, chapter 14._

It is surprising to learn "how much was left untaught, in the sixteenth century, in the schools. Geography and history were entirely omitted in every scheme of instruction, mathematics played but a subordinate part, while not a thought was bestowed either upon natural philosophy or natural history. Every moment and every effort were given to the classical languages, chiefly to the Latin. But we should be overhasty, should we conclude, without further inquiry, that these branches, thus neglected in the schools, were therefore every where untaught. Perhaps they were reserved for the university alone, and there, too, for the professors of the philosophical faculty, as is the case even at the present day with natural philosophy and natural history; nay, logic, which was a regular school study in the sixteenth century, is, in our day, widely cultivated at the university. We must, therefore, in order to form a just judgment upon the range of subjects taught in the sixteenth century, as well as upon the methods of instruction, first cast a glance at the state of the universities of that period, especially in the philosophical faculties. A prominent source of information on this point is to be found in the statutes of the University of Wittenberg, revised by Melancthon, in the year 1545. The theological faculty appears, by these statutes, to have consisted of four professors, who read lectures on the Old and New Testaments,--chiefly on the Psalms, Genesis, Isaiah, the Gospel of John, and the Epistle to the Romans. They also taught dogmatics, commenting upon the Nicene creed and Augustine's book, 'De spiritu et litera.' The Wittenberg lecture schedule for the year 1561, is to the same effect; only we have here, besides exegesis and dogmatics, catechetics likewise. According to the statutes, the philosophical faculty was composed of ten professors. The first was to read upon logic and rhetoric; the second, upon physics, and the second book of Pliny's natural history; the third, upon arithmetic and the 'Sphere' of John de Sacro Busto; the fourth, upon Euclid, the 'Theoriæ Planetarum' of Burbach, and Ptolemy's' Almagest'; the fifth and sixth, upon the Latin poets and Cicero; the seventh, who was the 'Pedagogus,' explained to the younger class, Latin Grammar, Linacer 'de emendata structura Latini sermonis,' Terence, and some of Plautus; the eighth, who was the 'Physicus,' explained Aristotle's 'Physics and Dioscorides'; the ninth gave instruction in Hebrew; and the tenth reviewed the Greek Grammar, read lectures on Greek Classics at intervals, also on one of St. Paul's Epistles, and, at the same time, on ethics. ... Thus the philosophical faculty appears to have been the most fully represented at Wittenberg, as it included ten professors, while the theological had but four, the medical but three. ... We have a ... criterion by which to judge of the limited nature of the studies of that period, as compared with the wide field which they cover at the present day, in the then almost total lack of academical apparatus and equipments. The only exception was to be found in the case of libraries; but, how meager and insufficient all collections of books must have been at that time, when books were few in number and very costly, will appear from the fund, for example, which was assigned to the Wittenberg library; it yielded annually but one hundred gulden, (about $63,) with which, 'for the profit of the university and chiefly of the poorer students therein, the library may be adorned and enriched with books in all the faculties and in every art, as well in the Hebrew and Greek tongues.' Of other apparatus, such as collections in natural history, anatomical museums, botanical gardens, and the like, we find no mention; and the less, inasmuch as there was no need of them in elucidation of such lectures as the professors ordinarily gave. When Paul Eber, the theologian, read lectures upon anatomy, he made no use of dissection."

_K. von Raumer, Universities in the Sixteenth Century (Barnard's American Journal of Education, volume 5, pages 535-540)._

EDUCATION: Luther and the Schools.

"Luther ... felt that, to strengthen the Reformation, it was requisite to work on the young, to improve the schools, and to propagate throughout Christendom the knowledge necessary for a profound study of the holy Scriptures. This, accordingly, was one of the objects of his life. He saw it in particular at the period which we have reached, and wrote to the councillors of all the cities of Germany, calling upon them to found Christian schools. 'Dear sirs,' said he, 'we annually expend so much money on arquebuses, roads, and dikes; why should we not spend a little to give one or two schoolmasters to our poor children? God stands at the door, and knocks; blessed are we if we open to him. Now the word of God abounds. O my dear Germans, buy, buy, while the market is open before your houses. ... Busy yourselves with the children,' continues Luther, still addressing the magistrates; 'for many parents are like ostriches; they are hardened towards their little ones, and satisfied with having laid the egg, they care nothing for it afterwards. The prosperity of a city does not consist merely in heaping up great treasures, in building strong walls, in erecting splendid mansions, in possessing glittering arms. If madmen fall upon it, its ruin will only be the greater. The true wealth of a city, its safety, and its strength, is to have many learned, serious, worthy, well-educated citizens. And whom must we blame because there are so few at present, except you magistrates, who have allowed our youth to grow up like trees in a forest?' Luther particularly insisted on the necessity of studying literature and languages: 'What use is there, it may be asked, in learning Latin, Greek, and Hebrew? We can read the Bible very well in German. Without languages,' replies he, 'we could not have received the gospel. ... Languages are the scabbard that contains the sword of the Spirit; they are the casket that guards the jewels; they are the vessel that holds the wine; and as the gospel says, they are the baskets in which the loaves and fishes are kept to feed the multitude. If we neglect the languages, we shall not only eventually lose the gospel, but be unable to speak or write in Latin or in German. {705} No sooner did men cease to cultivate them than Christendom declined, even until it fell under the power of the pope. But now that languages are again honored, they shed such light that all the world is astonished, and everyone is forced to acknowledge that our gospel is almost as pure as that of the apostles themselves. In former times the holy fathers were frequently mistaken, because they were ignorant of languages. ... If the languages had not made me positive as to the meaning of the word, I might have been a pious monk, and quietly preached the truth in the obscurity of the cloister; but I should have left the pope, the sophists, and their antichristian empire still unshaken."

_J. H. Merle d' Aubigné, History of the Reformation of the 16th Century, book 10, chapter 0 (volume 3)._

Luther, in his appeal to the municipal magistrates of Germany, calls for the organization of common schools to be supported at public cost. "Finally, he gives his thought to the means of recruiting the teaching service. 'Since the greatest evil in every place is the lack of teachers, we must not wait till they come forward of themselves; we must take the trouble to educate them and prepare them.' To this end Luther keeps the best of the pupils, boys and girls, for a longer time in school; gives them special instructors, and opens libraries for their use. In his thought he never distinguishes women teachers from men teachers; he wants schools for girls as well as for boys. Only, not to burden parents and divert children from their daily labor, he requires but little time for school duties. ... 'My opinion is [he says] that we must send the boys to school one or two hours a day, and have them learn a trade at home for the rest of the time. It is desirable that these two occupations march side by side.' ... Luther gives the first place to the teaching of religion: 'Is it not reasonable that every Christian should know the Gospel at the age of nine or ten?' Then come the languages, not, as might be hoped, the mother tongue, but the learned languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Luther had not yet been sufficiently rid of the old spirit to comprehend that the language of the people ought to be the basis of universal instruction. He left to Comenius the glory of making the final separation of the primary school from the Latin school. ... Physical exercises are not forgotten in Luther's pedagogical regulations. But he attaches an especial importance to singing. 'Unless a school-master know how to sing, I think him of no account.' 'Music,' he says again, 'is a half discipline which makes men more indulgent and more mild.' At the same time that he extends the programme of studies, Luther introduces a new spirit into methods. He wishes more liberty and more joy in the school. 'Solomon,' he says, 'is a truly royal schoolmaster. He does not, like the monks, forbid the young to go into the world and be happy. Even as Anselm said: "A young man turned aside from the world is like a young tree made to grow in a vase." The monks have imprisoned young men like birds in their cage. It is dangerous to isolate the young.' ... Do not let ourselves imagine, however, that Luther at once exercised a decisive influence on the current education of his day. A few schools were founded, called writing schools; but the Thirty Years' War, and other events, interrupted the movement of which Luther has the honor of having been the originator. ... In the first half of the seventeenth century, Ratich, a German, and Comenius, a Slave, were, with very different degrees of merit, the heirs of the educational thought of Luther. With something of the charlatan and the demagogue, Ratich devoted his life to propagating a novel art of teaching, which be called didactics, and to which he attributed marvels. He pretended, by his method of languages, to teach Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in six months. But nevertheless, out of many strange performances and lofty promises, there issue some thoughts of practical value. The first merit of Ratich was to give the mother tongue, the German language, the precedence over the ancient languages."

_G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy,