writing, that he speaks of; beyond this, nothing. The instruction of boys meant, with Vives, as with everybody in those days, Latin chiefly; and he gives eight or nine years to the acquisition of this language1. Into the school curriculum, however, he would introduce Greek, history, geography, and nature-knowledge. But he does not seem to have had any idea of a curriculum through which, with a view to mindculture generally, all boys should be carried. His remarks are generally pertinent and sagacious, and it is believed that the Jesuit teachers learned much from him; but to the specific subject of method, in our modern sense, he does not seem to have made any contribution of value. There is, I suspect, little in Vives that may not be found in Quintilian and Plutarch. The severe discipline of the time, and the want of lightness and variety in school-work, are condemned by him, but in this and in other respects he only shares his opinion with many writers. This slight sketch of the teaching of Vives will suffice to show that Comenius may have owed to him suggestion and stimulus, but nothing more.

The educational activity of men like Vives supports the view set forth in the beginning of this book, viz. that it is impossible clearly to apprehend the history of education from the close of the Middle Ages down to this century, unless we distinctly recognize two lines of thought which run side. by side in their beginning, but soon cross each other—the theological and the literary. The Renaissance had many aspects; in its purely educational aims it was an attempt to rouse men from dogmatic slumber, and to bring them face to face once more with nature and life as that was interpreted

1 The latter half of the 15th century was full of complaints as to the time spent in learning Latin and full also of short ways, but no one then or for 150 years after doubted its absolute necessity. John Sturm states the case thus:"Romanus sermo per omnes nationes et populos et regna commeat. Neque usquam gentium venias ubi non Latinum hospitem invenias qui viam proficiscenti monstret. Adeó linguam hanc hospitalem esse voluit Deus quam laté terrarum orbis patet, hominibus."

in the great literatures of Greece and Rome. The Reformation of religion was only a part of the movement, and, till Luther's time, a subordinate part. When the Lutheran movement, however, fairly took hold of men's minds, literature and pure Humanism found a potent rival in theology and the new ideal of justification, saving grace, and personal piety. "By faith are ye saved"—not by literature. Unquestionably, the more enlightened reformers, and notably Luther and Melanchthon, accepted literature and a genial view of human life. But the literary and artistic interest was not dominant with them, as with Erasmus. Faith, justification in the sight of God, and morality as fruit of faith, constituted the chief end of man, and consequently of the education of the young. But the reformed faith did not, as yet, wholly break with Humanism, as Christianity had done before the fifth century.

After Luther and Sturm and Ascham, however, the paramount interest began to obscure the less important. The career of Casaubon illustrates this. Though much had been done to improve the curriculum of schools, the literary enthusiasm had exhausted itself, and there was unquestionably a relapse into the old formalism. The Catholic reaction, also, called many minds away to the main issue of modern civilization-personality versus organized spiritual despotism. Then came on the scene a new educational force-the potent ideas of Realism as represented by Bacon. Nature was to be studied at first hand, and studied by silent and faithful observation. This study had more than a mere theoretical interest. The observation of nature and of its teachings was to accomplish great things for the improvement of the social and industrial conditions of human life. In a letter addressed by Bacon to Casaubon, these words are used: "The contemplations I have in view are those which may bring about the better ordering of man's life, with all its turmoil'." Nature, in 1 Footnote in Pattison's Life of Casaubon, p. 335. The letter was

never sent.

short, was to be used as a gift of God to man. There was nothing in this nearly so dangerous to the Protestant theological conception of life as pure Humanism was, which in some of its manifestations had little to distinguish it from a cultured paganism; and this the Christian Church had always feared as its chief enemy, until in the middle of the sixteenth century the Jesuits suborned it. There was nothing, in truth, to prevent the whole-hearted union of Realism and a liberal reformed theology; but in their relations to Realism the Jesuits, who had already captured Humanism and subordinated it to the Church, had to reconsider their ways; and are still reconsidering them. Science and the scientific spirit gave them their death-blow, though it is true they are long of dying.

Now, Ratke and Comenius were the apostolic missionaries of the specific Baconian realistic movement in the field of education. They adopted the saying that "there was nothing in the understanding which had not first been in sense"; but neither they nor any of their contemporaries saw the farreaching and fatal philosophical and theological effects of such a doctrine. The maxim was used only to establish the necessity of founding all instruction on sense, and on all the senses, and the importance of cultivating the powers of observation. "Live we not in the garden of Nature, as well as those who have gone before us?......Why, then, learn the works of Nature otherwise than through our senses? Why not substitute for dead books the living book of Nature?" The philosophical consequences, I say, of the celebrated dictum as to intellect and sense could not occur to such men as Comenius; for, in his crude psychology, there was, quite apart from the mere understanding, the "soul," and the spiritual life of the soul in God.

Bacon's interest lay in the sphere of the higher education. He was a pansophist, and his ambition was to see a visible organization of science, in the form of a great State-supported academy of investigation and teaching. In this respect

Comenius directly affiliates himself to Bacon. All that Comenius did in this department of his activity derives itself from the Englishman. The Advancement of Learning and the New Atlantis were the teachers of Comenius. The same magnificent conception lay at the foundation of the "Institut National," projected by the French revolutionaries in 1795. "Finally, we propose to you to create a National Institute," they said to the Government, "able in its several parts to give every branch of public instruction and collectively human knowledge carried to its highest point: everything which men know must be taught there to its highest perfection: every man must be able to learn there how to do what any man of any country, aglow with the fire of genius, has done, and is able still to do. This establishment must honour, not France only, but the whole human race, astonishing it by the spectacle of its power and the development of its strength1." The names of the first members of the Institute were those of men capable of doing the work expected of them-Lagrange, Laplace, Legendre, Cuvier, Volney, Sainte Pierre, Lakanal, Chénier, Lebrun, and Fontanes. It is a curious fact that the Long Parliament (also a revolutionary Parliament) contemplated, in 1641, handing over Chelsea College to carry out the pansophic views of Comenius, thus anticipating the action of the French Republic by one hundred and fifty years. The Baconian, Comenian, and revolutionary ideas have now been, in some places, almost realized; and, in so far as they are not realized, they still enter into the dreams of university reformers. It is of importance to insist on this, because it has been customary to look on the fervent old bishop as a visionary, whereas he was the most practical of men-only living a few centuries too soon.

The advocacy of pansophy and realism did not exhaust the powers of Comenius. He was an ardent worker, as I have

1 Quoted from a paper by Mr. Jamson Smith, Birmingham.

indicated above, in the cause of a Protestant union, based on the vital and essential interests of Christianity. His Unum Necessarium had this for its aim. The fanatical divisions of Protestantism had been the Jesuits' opportunity. Being an unorganized mass, they had been swept back by the serried ranks of Loyola. Protestantism was in a critical position.

It has been sometimes said that Comenius owed much to Valentine Andreä, his senior by four years. This remarkable man, born at Herrenburg in 1586, was distinguished for his learning, energy, and originality, and stood eminent among his contemporaries. Of him Herder said that he "blossomed as a rose among thorns." He was a man of poetic and ideal character, and yet, like Comenius, in the highest degree practical. Like other educational reformers, he attacked the mechanical character of grammar-school instruction, and the equally mechanical character of the people's schools, and of the instruction of children in the Catechism. He desiderated

a better method in both the primary and secondary schools, and the substitution of an evangelical spirit for the heathenism and arid curriculum of the latter. His disgust of the narrow range of school instruction made him lean to realistic studies and hail with enthusiasm Comenius's Didactica. Realist as he was, however, education by means of language, and education by means of things, was subordinated to the religious aim-" omnis spiritus cedat Christo." His educational ideas are contained in his Reipublicae Christianopolitanae Descriptio, 1619. A book published in his youth, called Idea Bonae Institutionis, is lost. The dates of these books show that he had anticipated Comenius as an educational writer; but there is no evidence that Comenius owed anything to him which he did not himself already ascribe to the general influence of Vives. Impulse, sympathy, and encouragement he found, doubtless, in Andreä's strongly expressed views, as he did in the personal recognition and encouragement which Andreä himself generously extended to him by letter; but this was all.