revolutionized school method. The specific application of these

we are to see later.

tor, not a

Bacon's Place in Education, as in the history of human A formulathought, is usually either much exaggerated or undervalued. discoverer On the one hand he was not the discoverer of a new method of thought, for he had predecessors as well as colaborers. He formulated this method, however, showing that hitherto nature had been rather anticipated by happy chance than interpreted by certain method. Nor on the other hand was he a man who simply repeated what was a time-worn familiarity with all great thinkers. He showed that, while all men have experience and guide their conduct by it, experience not scientifically tested has far less value than explicit discovery through scientific method. Nor is he to be charged with the narrowness of some of his followers in exalting one phase of the thought process to the exclusion of all others, or identifying the test of knowledge with the source from which all knowledge is obtained.

Wolfgang Ratke1 (Ratichius or Ratich), who lived from 1571 to 1635, first formulated in educational terms those ideas concerning the new subject-matter of study and the new methods of investigation that were a part of the new spirit of the early seventeenth century and were first definitely formulated by Bacon. In an address to the Diet of the German Empire at Frankfort, in 1612, Ratke claimed: (1) By his new method to be able to teach Latin, Greek and Hebrew tongues more thoroughly and in a much shorter time than had hitherto been devoted even to the one; (2) by use of the vernacular as the basis for instruction, to give to all children a thorough knowledge of all the arts and sciences; (3) through the continual use of the vernacular and the new methods to bring about the use of one language among all the German people in place of the multitudinous dialects, and thus to lay the basis in the uniform language for uniformity in

A more adequate treatment is given in the translation of Von Raumer, in Barnard's German Teachers and Educators, pp. 319–347. This is condensed in Quick's Educational Reformers, Ch. 1X.

Ratke first

applies the Baconian

principles to

educational methods

བྱུའི ་་,་

.

1

religion and ultimately for uniformity in government. Ratke failed, however, of the success in the practical application of his ideas that he attained in their theoretical presentation on account of defects in his character and in his personality.

The thought underlying all the other principles was that everything should be done in its natural order, or in the course of nature. "Since nature uses a particular method, proper to herself, with which the understanding of man is in a certain connection, regard must be had to it also in the art of teaching; for all unnatural and violent or forcible teaching and learning is harmful, and weakens nature." While this was a direct attempt at a general method, it was not based upon psychological principle. It was founded rather upon general and often artificial comparisons with the phenomena of nature, or upon purely superficial resemblances between the processes of the mind and the processes of biological development in plant or in animal.

Some others of Ratke's principles, important as reformatory influences and as permanent truths, can only be suggested: each thing should be oft repeated; everything first in the mother tongue; everything without compulsion; nothing should be learned by rote; mutual conformity in all things (i.e. comparative grammatical study of the languages); first the thing itself, and afterward the explanation of the thing; all things through experience and investigation or experiment. The last of these contains the essentials of the Baconian reforms; the next to the last, the essentials of the Pestalozzian reforms; all of them are foreshadowings of the Comenian reforms.

John Amos Comenius (1592-1670). — Whether considered from the point of view of theoretical writings or from that of direct treatment of schoolroom problems, Comenius is one of the most important representatives of the realistic movement as well as one of the leading characters in the history of education. Nevertheless, his actual influence on his own and the following generations was slight save in one respect. This was in the use of a more scientific method of teaching the

languages embodied in the Comenian text-books. For almost two centuries even the very knowledge of his most important educational writings ceased to exist. Consequently, they had little or no influence upon later educational reformers until the time of Froebel. Few biographies of educational leaders possess more interest; but reference to several excellent works of recent publication must answer as a substitute for a study of the life of Comenius in these pages.

1

education

ent concep

tion con

cerning hov.

these ends

Purpose of Education. "The ultimate end of man is Ultimate eternal happiness with God," Comenius stated as the primary purpose of principle of the Great Didactic. The purpose of education was found in to assist in attaining this great end. So far, all the educators religion of these centuries agreed. But it was in the conception of education as a means that they differed so widely. Hitherto education strove for this end by attempting to eradicate But a radithe natural desires, instincts and emotions, and by furnish- cally differing an appropriate mental and moral discipline. Comenius worked along an entirely new line, one that ultimately became the path of modern educational endeavor, though with fundamental purposes formulated somewhat differently. With Comenius the ultimate religious end was to be obtained through moral control over one's self, and this in turn was to be secured by knowledge of one's self, and consequently of all things. Knowledge, virtue and piety, in this order of their acquisition, were the aims of education. What Sturm and the Reformation Emphasis .educators propounded as isolated ends, Comenius unified in a logical and psychological relationship, and gave a radically things different interpretation of the initial element, knowledge,

the one element relating directly to the school. This advance, however, was so radical that it affected vitally every phase of education, content, organization, method and text-books.

Content of Education. This change respecting the subjectmatter of education can best be presented through an explana

1 Quick, Educational Reformers, Ch. X; Monroe, W. S. Comenius; Keatinge, The Great Didactic, Introduction; Quick, Comenius.

were to be

reached

on knowl

edge of

pedias of the seventeenth century

tion of the great purpose and endeavor of the entire life of Comenius. His religious activity and his contributions to the improvement of schoolroom procedure were immediate duties which he did not shirk. But both were of subordinate importance when compared with his greatest aspiration; namely, the complete reorganization of human knowledge, along Baconian lines, with the consequent expansion of that knowledge and of human power and happiness. This pansophic movement of the seventeenth century produced many notable attempts at The encyclo- reorganization. Of these the Advancement of Learning of Bacon and the Encyclopedias of Henry Alsted and of Campanella were notable examples. Probably both Alsted and Campanella had greater influence on Comenius than did Bacon. This idea of the encyclopedic organization of human knowledge was a common one throughout the Middle Ages; but the execution attempted by Comenius and by the pansophic writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was quite different. menius's aim was to give "an accurate anatomy of the universe, dissecting the veins and limbs of all things in such a way that there shall be nothing that is not seen, and that each part shall appear in its proper place and without confusion." Previous encyclopedias had been mere collections of facts; his was to be an arrangement of facts around universal principles, so that in all the arts and sciences, starting from the essential point of the universal law as a basis, study could proceed from what is best known, by slow degrees, to what is less familiar, until all knowledge was compassed. So in the text-books of Comenius, each chapter and each paragraph leads up to the next, and thus embodies his universal principle of method.

Comenius

arranges his encyclopedic writ

beings on the inductive principle

Natural phenomena of fundamental

Co

The knowledge of physical phenomena was, for him, the most important object of study, and the main influence of his teachimportance ings in respect to subject-matter was the introduction of such material into the school-books actually used, together with the exposition of this idea in all his works.

in these

Method. The general thought of a method "according to

method

nature," which Comenius advocated and applied throughout all Inductive his writings, must be distinguished from that particular part used only of it which approximated the Baconian induction and formed partially; the basal idea of his text-books. Comenius argued that Bacon's method was competent to distinguish truth from falsity, but that it applied only to natural phenomena, while pansophy considered the entire universe. In the introduction of his first pansophic work he states that the three channels through which knowledge comes to us are the senses, the intellect and divine revelation; and that "error will cease if the balance between them be preserved." In The Great Didactic Comenius specifically states that the principles of that work were formulated a priori and does not even mention Bacon in the entire work. held to be Essences and principles find place in his philosophy as in that insufficient of the fantastic pseudo-scientists of the Middle Ages. In his Physics the world is constituted from the three principles of matter, spirit, light; while the "qualities" of all things are consistency (salt), oleosity (sulphur), and aquosity (mercury). Yet despite these survivals of the mediæval, he stands distinctly for the study of natural phenomena and the dependence upon sense perception as the source of knowledge concerning nature. Notwithstanding this partial grasp of the significance of the Insight into inductive method when applied to the investigation of natural practical phenomena, when it came to the practical problems of instruc- problems tion in the schoolroom, Comenius did clearly see the importance of the new method and first applied it to the actual processes of instruction. This is a field where Bacon was much more of a stranger than was Comenius in the realm of the larger philosophical and scientific problems. In the chapter on the Method of the Sciences Comenius states nine principles of method, which must have grown out of his own long experience as a teacher. It was the concrete embodiment of these ideas that led to the remarkable success of the text-books and to the beginning of radical reforms in schoolroom work. They are stated thus:

R

schoolroom