“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.”
“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.”
“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 heirloomswill 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’sC., 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’sGesch., pp. 312, ff.) So for Cicero and Virgil he would substitute, and his contemporaries at first seemed willing to accept, theJanua Linguarum. But though there may be much more “real” knowledge in theJanua, 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.”
“We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love,And e’en as these are well and wisely fixed,In dignity of being we ascend.”
“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 ofwhat 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, andtaking 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 naturewithoutman (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’sGesch. 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 Philosopherwho 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’sL. of Miltonvol. 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 affordingat once an introduction to the knowledge ofthingsand 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 Massonut 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, andat the same timewere 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 instructionin 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 theexecution. 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. ofJanua.)
§ 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, hecould 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 workcontains 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 quaintmanner 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. ofOrbis Pictus, dated “From my school inLothbury, 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 withEndter at Nürnberg in 1657 was published the first edition of a book which long outlived theJanua. This was the famousOrbis 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 theJanua, 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 SchaffhausenJanua(Editio secunda, SchaffhusI, 1658), in Daniel’s edition of theJanua, 1562, and the very small but beautiful illustrations in theVestibulumof “Jacob Redinger and J. S.” (Amsterdam, 1673). However, theOrbis Pictusgives 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.theVestibulumand theJanuaand even theOrbis Pictuswhich 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 thatman 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 theOrbis Pictushe said of it: “It isa 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 ourlittle encyclopædiaof 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 andnothing else. Their successors seem to think that boys should not learn Latin and Greek Grammar buteverything 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 inHoræ 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 advantageouslymaybe 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.
The quantity and the diffuseness of the writings of Comenius are truly bewildering. In these days eminent men, Carlyle,e.g., sometimes find it difficult to get into print; but printing-presses all over Europe seemed to be at the service of Comenius. An account of the various editions of theJanuawould be an interesting piece of bibliography, but the task of making it would not be a light one. The earliest copy of which I can find a trace is entered in the catalogue of the Bodleian: “Comenius J. A.Janua Linguarum, 8vo, Lips (Leipzig) 1632.” I also find there another copy entered “per Anchoranum, cum clave per W. Saltonstall, London, 1633.”The fame of Comenius is increasing and many interesting works have now been written about him. I have already mentioned the English books of Benham and Laurie. In German I have the following books, but not the time to read them all:—Daniel, H. A.Zerstreute Blätter.Halle, 1866.Free, H.Pädagogik d. Comenius.Bernburg, 1884.Hiller, R.Latein Methode d. J. A. Comenius.Zschopau, 1883. (v. g. and terse; only 46 pp.)Müller, Walter.Comenius ein Systematiker in d. Päd.Dresden, 1887.Pappenheim, E.Amos Comenius.Berlin, 1871.Seyffarth, L. W.J. A. Comenius.Leipzig, 2nd edition, 1871. (A careful and, as far as I can judge in haste, an excellent piece of work.)Zoubek, Fr. J.J. A. Comenius.Eine quellenmässige Lebensskizze, (Prefixed to trans. ofDidac. M.in Richter’sPäd. Bibliothek.)For a Port-Royalist’s criticism of theJanua,see infra. (p. 185note.)
The quantity and the diffuseness of the writings of Comenius are truly bewildering. In these days eminent men, Carlyle,e.g., sometimes find it difficult to get into print; but printing-presses all over Europe seemed to be at the service of Comenius. An account of the various editions of theJanuawould be an interesting piece of bibliography, but the task of making it would not be a light one. The earliest copy of which I can find a trace is entered in the catalogue of the Bodleian: “Comenius J. A.Janua Linguarum, 8vo, Lips (Leipzig) 1632.” I also find there another copy entered “per Anchoranum, cum clave per W. Saltonstall, London, 1633.”
The fame of Comenius is increasing and many interesting works have now been written about him. I have already mentioned the English books of Benham and Laurie. In German I have the following books, but not the time to read them all:—
Daniel, H. A.Zerstreute Blätter.Halle, 1866.
Free, H.Pädagogik d. Comenius.Bernburg, 1884.
Hiller, R.Latein Methode d. J. A. Comenius.Zschopau, 1883. (v. g. and terse; only 46 pp.)
Müller, Walter.Comenius ein Systematiker in d. Päd.Dresden, 1887.
Pappenheim, E.Amos Comenius.Berlin, 1871.
Seyffarth, L. W.J. A. Comenius.Leipzig, 2nd edition, 1871. (A careful and, as far as I can judge in haste, an excellent piece of work.)
Zoubek, Fr. J.J. A. Comenius.Eine quellenmässige Lebensskizze, (Prefixed to trans. ofDidac. M.in Richter’sPäd. Bibliothek.)
For a Port-Royalist’s criticism of theJanua,see infra. (p. 185note.)
§ 1. In the sixteen-hundreds by far the most successful schoolmasters were the Jesuits. In spite of their exclusion from the University, they had in the Province of Paris some 14,000 pupils, and in Paris itself at the Collège de Clermont, 1,800. Might they not have neglected “the Little Schools,” which were organized by the friends and disciples of the Abbé de Saint-Cyran, schools in which the numbers were always small, about twenty or twenty-five, and only once increasing to fifty? And yet the Jesuits left no stone unturned, no weapon unemployed, in their attack on “the Little Schools.” The conflict seems to us like an engagement between a man-of-war and a fishing-boat. That the poor fishing-boat would soon be beneath the waves, was clear enough from the beginning, and she did indeed speedily disappear; but the victors have never recovered from their victory and never will. Whenever we think of Jesuitism we are not more forcibly reminded of Loyola than of Pascal. All educated Frenchmen, most educated people everywhere, get their best remembered impressions of the Society of Loyola from the Provincial Letters.[89]
§ 2. The Society had a long standing rivalry with the University of Paris, and the University not only refused to admit the Jesuits, but several times petitioned the Parliament to chase them out of France. On one of these occasions the advocate who was retained by the University was Antoine Arnauld, a man of renowned eloquence; and he threw himself into the attack with all his heart. From that time the Jesuits had a standing feud with the house of Arnauld.
§ 3. But it was no mere personal dislike that separated the Port-Royalists and the Jesuits. Port-Royal with which the Arnauld family was so closely united, became the stronghold of a theology which was unlike that of the Jesuits, and was denounced by them as heresy. The daughter of Antoine Arnauld was made, at the age of eleven years, Abbess of Port-Royal, a Cistercian convent not far from Versailles. This position was obtained for her by a fraud of Marion, Henry IV’s advocate-general, who thought only of providing comfortably for one of the twenty children to whom his daughter, Made. Arnauld, had made him grandfather. Never was a nomination more scandalously obtained or used to better purpose. The Mère Angélique is one of the saints of the universal church, and she soon became the restorer of the religious life first in her own and then by her influence and example in other convents of her Order.
§ 4. In these reforms she had nothing to fear from her hereditary foes the Jesuits; but she soon came under the influence of a man whose theory of life was as much opposedto the Jesuits’ theory as to that of the world which found in the Jesuits the most accommodating father confessors.
Duvergier de Hauranne (1581-1643) better known by the name of his “abbaye,” Saint-Cyran, was one of those commanding spirits who seem born to direct others and form a distinct society. In vain Richelieu offered him the posts most likely to tempt him. The prize that Saint-Cyran had set his heart upon was not of this world, and Richelieu could assist him in one way only—by persecution. This assistance the Cardinal readily granted, and by his orders Saint-Cyran was imprisoned at Vincennes, and not set at liberty till Richelieu was himself summoned before a higher tribunal.
§ 5. Driven by prevailing sickness from Port-Royal des Champs, the Mère Angélique transported her community (in 1626) to a house purchased for them in Paris by her mother who in her widowhood became one of the Sisters. In Paris Angélique sought for herself and her convent the spiritual direction of Saint-Cyran (not yet a prisoner), and from that time Saint-Cyran added the Abbess and Sisters of Port-Royal to the number of those who looked up to him as their pattern and guide in all things.
Port-Royal des Champs was in course of time occupied by a band of solitaries who at the bidding of Saint-Cyran renounced the world and devoted themselves to prayer and study. To them we owe the works of “the Gentlemen of Port-Royal.”
§ 6. It is then to Saint-Cyran we must look for the ideas which became the distinctive mark of the Port-Royalists.
Saint-Cyran was before all things a theologian. In his early days at Bayonne his studies had been shared by afriend who afterwards was professor of theology at Louvain, and then Bishop of Ypres. This friend was Jansenius. Their searches after truth had brought them to opinions which in the England of the nineteenth century are known as “Evangelical.” According to “Catholic” teaching all those who receive the creed and the sacraments of the Church and do not commit “mortal” sin are in a “state of salvation,” that is to say the great majority of Christians are saved. This teaching is rejected by those of another school of thought who hold that only a few “elect” are saved and that the great body even of Christians are doomed to perdition.
§ 7. Such a belief as this would seem to be associated of necessity with harshness and gloom; but from whatever cause, there has been found in many, even in most, cases no such connexion. Those who have held that the great mass of their fellow-creatures had no hope in a future world, have thrown themselves lovingly into all attempts to improve their condition in this world. Still, their main effort has always been to increase the number of the converted and to preserve them from the wiles of the enemy. This Saint-Cyran sought to do by selecting a few children and bringing them up in their tender years like hot-house plants, in the hope that they would be prepared when older and stronger, to resist the evil influences of the world.
§ 8. His first plan was to choose out of all Paris six children and to confide them to the care of a priest appointed to direct their consciences, and a tutor of not more than twenty-five years old, to teach them Latin. “I should think,” says he, “it was doing a good deal if I did not advance them far in Latin before the age of twelve, and made them pass their first years confined to one house or amonastery in the country where they might be allowed all the pastimes suited to their age and where they might see only the example of a good life set by those about them.” (Letter quoted by Carré, p. 20.)
§ 9. His imprisonment put a stop to this plan, “but,” says Saint-Cyran, “I do not lightly break off what I undertake for God;” so when intrusted with the disposal of 2,000 francs by M. Bignon, he started the first “Little School,” in which two small sons of M. Bignon’s were taken as pupils. The name of “Little Schools,” was given partly perhaps because according to their design the numbers in any school could never be large, partly no doubt to deprecate any suspicion of rivalry with the schools of the University. The children were to be taken at an early age, nine or ten, before they could have any guilty knowledge of evil, and Saint-Cyran made in all cases a stipulation that at any time a child might be returned to his friends; but in cases where the master’s care seemed successful, the pupils were to be kept under it till they were grown up.
§ 10. The Little Schools had a short and troubled career of hardly more than fifteen years. They were not fully organized till 1646; they were proscribed a few years later and in 1661 were finally broken up by Louis XIV, who was under the influence of their enemies the Jesuits. But in that time the Gentlemen of Port-Royal had introduced new ideas which have been a force in French education and indeed in all literary education ever since.
To Saint-Cyran then we trace the attempt at a particular kind of school, and to his followers some new departures in the training of the intellect.
§ 11. Basing his system on the Fall of Man, Saint-Cyran came to a conclusion which was also reached by Lockethough by a different road. To both of them it seemed that children require much more individual care and watching than they can possibly get in a public school. Saint-Cyran would have said what Locke said: “The difference is great between two or three pupils in the same house and three or four score boys lodged up and down: for let the master’s industry and skill be never so great, it is impossible he should have fifty or one hundred scholars under his eye any longer than they are in school together: Nor can it be expected that he should instruct them successfully in anything but their books; the forming of their minds and manners [preserving them from the danger of the enemy, Saint-Cyran would have said] requiring a constant attention and particular application to every single boy, which is impossible in a numerous flock, and would be wholly in vain (could he have time to study and correct everyone’s peculiar defects and wrong inclinations) when the lad was to be left to himself or the prevailing infection of his fellows the greater part of the four-and-twenty hours.” (Thoughts c. Ed.§ 70.)
§ 12. An English public schoolmaster told the Commission on Public Schools, that he stoodin loco parentisto fifty boys. “Rather a large family,” observed one of the Commissioners drily. The truth is that in the bringing up of the young there is the place of the schoolmaster and of the school-fellows, as well as that of the parents; and of these several forces one cannot fulfil the functions of the others.
§ 13. According to the theory or at least the practice of English public schools, boys are left in their leisure hours to organize their life for themselves, and they form a community from which the masters are, partly by their own over-work,partly by the traditions of the school, utterly excluded. From this the intellectual education of the boys no doubt suffers. “Engage them in conversation with men of parts and breeding,” says Locke; and this was the old notion of training when boys of good family grew up as pages in the household of some nobleman. But, except in the holidays, the young aristocrats of the present day talk only with other boys, and servants, and tradesmen. Hence the amount of thought and conversation given to school topics, especially the games, is out of all proportion to the importance of such things; and this does much to increase what Matthew Arnold calls “the barbarians’” inaptitude for ideas.
§ 14. What are we to say about the effects of the system on the morals of the boys? If we were to start like Saint-Cyran from the doctrine of human depravity, we should entirely condemn the system and predict from it the most disastrous results;[90]but from experience we come to a verydifferent conclusion. Bishop Dupanloup, indeed, spoke of the public schools of France as “ces gouffres.” This is not what is said or thought of the English schools, and they are filled with boys whose fathers and grandfathers were brought up in them, and desire above all things to maintain the old traditions.
§ 15. The Little Schools of Port-Royal aimed at training a few boys very differently; each master had the charge of five or six only, and these were never to be out of his presence day or night.[91]
§ 16. It may reasonably be objected that such schools would be possible only for a few children of well-to-do parents, and that men who would thus devote themselves could be found only at seasons of great enthusiasm. Under ordinary circumstances small schools have most of the drawbacks and few of the advantages which are to be found in largeschools. As I have already said, parents, schoolmasters, and school-fellows have separate functions in education; and even in the smallest school the master can never take the place of the parent, or the school become the home. Children at home enter into the world of their father and mother; the family friends aretheirfriends, the family events affect them as a matter of course. But in the school, however small, the children’s interests are unconnected with the master and the master’s family. The boys may be on the most intimate, even affectionate terms with the grown people who have charge of them; but the mental horizon of the two parties is very different, and their common area of vision but small. In such cases the young do not rise into the world of the adults, and it is almost impossible for the adults to descend into theirs. They are “no company” the one for the other, and to be constantly in each other’s presence would subject both to very irksome restraint. When left to themselves, boys in small numbers are far more likely to get into harm than boys in large numbers. In large communities even of boys, “the common sense of most” is a check on the badly disposed. So as it seems to me if from any cause the young cannot live at home and attend a day-school, they will be far better off in a large boarding school than in one that would better fulfil the requirements of Erasmus,[92]Saint-Cyran, and Locke.
§ 17. As Saint-Cyran attributed immense importance to the part of the master in education, he was not easily satisfied with his qualifications. “There is no occupation in the Church that is more worthy of a Christian; next to giving up one’s life there is no greater charity.... The charge of the soul of one of these little ones is a higher employment than the government of all the world.” (Cadet, 2.) So thought Saint-Cyran, and he was ready to go to the ends of the earth to find the sort of teacher he wanted.
§ 18. He was so anxious that the children should see only that which was good that the servants were chosen with peculiar care.
§ 19. For the masters his favourite rule was: “Speak little; put up with much; pray still more.” Piety was not to be instilled so much by precepts as by the atmosphere in which the children grew up. “Do not spend so much time in speaking to them about God as to God about them:” so formal instruction was never to be made wearisome. But there was to be an incessant watch against evil influences and for good. “In guarding the citadel,” says Lancelot, “we fail if we leave open a single gateway by which the enemy might enter.”
§ 20. Though anxious, like the Jesuits, to make their boys’ studies “not only endurable, but even delightful,” the Gentlemen of Port-Royal banished every form of rivalry. Each pupil was to think of one whom he should try to catch up, but this was not a school-fellow, but his own higher self, hisideal. Here Pascal admits that the exclusion of competition had its drawbacks and that the boys sometimes became indifferent—“tombent dans la nonchalance,” as he says.
§ 21. As for the instruction it was founded on this principle: the object of schools being piety rather than knowledge there was to be no pressure in studying, but the children were to be taught what was sound and enduring.
§ 22. In all occupations there is of necessity a tradition. In the higher callings the tradition may be of several kinds. First there may be a tradition of noble thoughts and high ideals, which will be conveyed in the words of the greatest men who have been engaged in that calling, or have thought out the theory of it. Next there will be the tradition of the very best workers in it. And lastly there is the tradition of the common man who learns and passes on just the ordinary views of his class and the ordinary expedients for getting through ordinary work. Of these different kinds of tradition, the school-room has always shown a tendency to keep to this last, and the common man is supreme. Young teachers are mostly required to fulfil their daily tasks without the smallest preparation for them; so they have to get through as best they can, and have no time to think of any high ideal, or of any way of doing their work except that which gives them least trouble. “Practice makes perfect,” says the proverb, but it would be truer to say that practice in doing work badly soon makes perfect in contentment with bad workmanship. Thus it is that the tradition of the school-room settles down for the most part into a deadly routine, and teachers who have long been engaged in carrying it on seem to lose their powers of vision like horses who turn mills in the dark.
The Gentlemen of Port-Royal worked free from school-roomtradition. “If the want of emulation was a drawback,” says Sainte-Beuve, “it was a clear gain to escape from all routine, from all pedantry.La crasse et la morgue des régents n’en approchaient pas.” (P.R.vol. iij, p. 414) Piety as we have seen was their main object. Next to it they wished to “carry the intellects of their pupils to the highest point they could attain to.”
§ 23. In doing this they profited by their freedom from routine to try experiments. They used their own judgments and sought to train the judgment of their pupils. Themselves knowing the delights of literature, they resolved that their pupils should know them also. They would banish all useless difficulties and do what they could to “help the young and make study even more pleasant to them than play and pastime.” (Preface to Cic.’sBillets, quoted by Sainte-Beuve, vol. iij, p. 423.)
§ 24. One of their innovations, though startling to their contemporaries, does not seem to us very surprising. It was the custom to begin reading with a three or four years’ course of reading Latin, because in that language all the letters were pronounced. The connexion between sound and sense is in our days not always thought of, but even among teachers no advocates would now be found for the old method which kept young people for the first three or four years uttering sounds they could by no possibility understand. The French language might have some disadvantage from its silent letters, but this was small compared with the disadvantage felt in Latin from its silent sense. So the Port-Royalists began reading with French.
§ 25. Further than this, they objected to reading through spelling, and pointed out that as consonants cannot be pronounced by themselves they should be taken only inconnexion with the adjacent vowel. Pascal applied himself to the subject and invented the method described in the 6th chap. of the General Grammar (Carré, p. xxiij) and introduced by his sister Jacqueline at Port-Royal des Champs.
§ 26. When the child could read French, the Gentlemen of Port-Royal sought for him books within the range of his intelligence. There was nothing suitable in French, so they set to work to produce translations in good French of the most readable Latin books, “altering them just a little—en y changeant fort peu de chose,” as said the chief translator De Saci, for the sake of purity. In this way they gallicised the Fables of Phædrus, three Comedies of Terence, and the Familiar Letters (Billets) of Cicero.
§ 27. In this we see an important innovation. As I have tried to explain (suprapp. 14 ff.) the effect of the Renascence was to banish both the mother-tongue and literature proper from the school-room; for no language was tolerated but Latin, and no literature was thought possible except in Latin or Greek. Before any literature could be known, or indeed, instruction in any subject could be given, the pupils had to learn Latin. This neglect of the mother-tongue was one of the traditional mistakes pointed out and abandoned by the Port-Royalists. “People of quality complain,” says De Saci, “and complain with reason, that in giving their children Latin we take away French, and to turn them into citizens of ancient Rome we make them strangers in their native land. After learning Latin and Greek for 10 or 12 years, we are often obliged at the age of 30 to learn French.” (Cadet, 10.) So Port-Royal proposed breaking through this bondage to Latin, and laid down the principle, new in France, though not in the country ofMulcaster or of Ratke, that everything should be taught through the mother-tongue.
Next, the Port-Royalists sought to give their pupils an early and a pleasing introduction to literature. The best literature in those days was the classical; and suitable works from that literature might be made intelligibleby means of translations. In this way the Port-Royalists led their pupils to look upon some of the classical authors not as inventors of examples in syntax, but as writers of books thatmeantsomething. And thus both the mother-tongue and literature were brought into the school-room.
§ 28. When the boys had by this means got some feeling for literature and some acquaintance with the world of the ancients, they began the study of Latin. Here again all needless difficulties were taken out of their way. No attempt indeed was made to teach language without grammar, the rationale of language, but the science of grammar was reduced to first principles (set forth in theGrammaire Générale et Raisonnéeof Arnauld and Lancelot), and the special grammar of the Latin language was no longer taught by means of the work established in the University, theLatinLatin Grammar of Despautère, but by a “New Method” written in French which gave essentials only and had for its motto: “Mihi inter virtutes grammatici habebitur aliqua nescire—To me it will be among the grammarian’s good points not to know everything.” (Quintil.)[93]
§ 29. With this minimum of the essentials of the grammar and with a previous acquaintance with the sense of the book the pupils were introduced to the Latin language and were taught to translate a Latin author into French. This was a departure from the ordinary route, which after a course of learning grammar-rules in Latin went to the “theme,”i.e., to composition in Latin.
The art of translating into the mother-tongue was made much of. School “construes,” which consist in substituting a word for a word, were entirely forbidden, and the pupils had to produce the old writer’s thoughtsin French.[94]
§30. From this we see that the training was literary. But in the study of form the Port-Royalists did not neglect the inward for the outward. Their great work, which still stands the attacks of time, is the Port-RoyalLogic, or the Art of Thinking(see Trans, by T. Spencer Baynes, 1850). This was substantially the work of Arnauld; and it was Arnauld who led the Port-Royalists in their rupture with the philosophy of the Middle Age, and who openly followed Descartes. In theLogicwe find the claims of reason asserted as if in defiance of the Jesuits. “It is a heavy bondage to think oneself forced to agree in everything with Aristotle and to take him as the standard of truth in philosophy.... The world cannot long continue in this restraint, and is recovering by degrees its natural and reasonable liberty, which consists in accepting that which we judge to be true and rejecting that which we judge to be false.” (Quoted by Cadet, p. 31.)[95]
§ 31. To mark the change, the Port-Royalists called their book not “the Art of Reasoning,” but “the Art of Thinking,” and it was in this art of thinking that they endeavoured to train their scholars. They paid great attention to geometry, and Arnauld wrote a book (“New Elements of Geometry”) which so well satisfied Pascal that after reading the MS. he burnt a similar work of his own.
§ 32. The Port-Royalists then sought to introduce into the school-room a “sweet reasonableness.” They were not touched, as Comenius was, by the spirit of Bacon, and knew nothing of a key for opening the secrets of Nature. They loved literature and resolved that their pupils should love it also; and with this end they would give the first notions of it in the mother-tongue; but the love of literature still bound them to the past, and they aimed simply at making the best of the Old Education without any thought of a New.
§ 33. In one respect they seem less wise than Rabelais and Mulcaster, less wise perhaps than their foes the Jesuits. They gave little heed to training the body, and thought of the soul and the mind only; or if they thought of the body they were concerned merely that it should do no harm. “Not only must we form the minds of our pupils to virtue,”says Nicole, “we must also bend their bodies to it, that is, we must endeavour that the body do not prove a hindrance to their leading a well-regulated life or draw them by its weight to any disorder. For we should know that as men are made up of mind and body, a wrong turn given to the body in youth is often in after life a great hindrance to piety.” (Vues p. bien élever un prince, quoted by Cadet, p. 206.)
§ 34. But let us not underrate the good effect produced by this united effort of Christian toil and Christian thought. “Nothing should be more highly esteemed than good sense,” (Preface to theLogique), and Port-Royal did a great work in bringing good sense and reason to bear on the practice of the school-room. When the Little Schools were dispersed the Gentlemen still continued to teach, but the lessons they gave were now in the “art of thinking” and in the art of teaching; and all the world might learn of them, for they taught in the only way left open to them; they published books.
§ 35. Of these writers on pedagogy the most distinguished was “the great Arnauld,”i.e., Antoine Arnauld, (1612-1694) brother of the Mère Angélique. His “Règlement des Études” shows us how literary instruction was given at Port-Royal. In these directions we have not so much the rules observed in the Little Schools as the experience of the Little Schools rendered available for the schools of the University. On this account Sainte-Beuve speaks of theRèglementof Arnauld as forming a preface to theTreatise on Studies(Traité des Études) of Rollin. In theRèglementwe see Arnauld yielding to what seems a practical necessity and admitting competition and prizes. Some excellent advice is given, especially on practice in the use of themother-tongue. The young people are to question and answer each other about the substance of what they have read, about the more remarkable thoughts in their author or the more beautiful expressions. Each day two of the boys are to narrate a story which they themselves have selected from a classical author.[96]
§ 36. With the notable exception of Pascal, Arnauld was the most distinguished writer among the Gentlemen of Port-Royal. A writer less devoted to controversy than Arnauld, less attached to the thought of Saint-Cyran and of Descartes, but of wider popularity, was Nicole, who had Made. de Sévigné for an admirer, and Locke for one of his translators.
Nicole has given us a valuable contribution to pedagogy in his essay on the right bringing-up of a prince. (Vues générales pour bien élever un prince.) In this essay he shows us with what thought and care he had applied himself to the art of instruction, and he gives us hints that all teachers may profit by. Take the following:—
§ 37. “Properly speaking it is not the masters, it is no instruction from without, that makes things understood; at the best the masters do nothing but expose the things to the interior light of the mind, by which alone they can be understood. It follows that where this light is wanting instruction is as useless as trying to shew pictures in the dark. The very greatest minds are nothing but lights in confinement, and they have always sombre and shady spots; but in children the mind is nearly full of shade and emitsbut little rays of light. So everything depends on making the most of these rays, on increasing them and exposing to them what one wishes to have understood. For this reason it is hard to give general rules for instructing anyone, because the instruction must be adapted to the mixture of light and darkness, which differs widely in different minds, especially with children. We must look where the day is breaking and bring to it what we wish them to understand; and to do this we must try a variety of ways for getting at their minds and must persevere with such as we find have most success.
“But generally speaking we may say that, as in children the light depends greatly on their senses, we should as far as possible attach to the senses the instruction we give them, and make it enter not only by the ear but also by the sight, as there is no sense which makes so lively an impression on the mind and forms such sharp and clear ideas.”
This is excellent. There is a wise proverb that warns us that “however soon we get up in the morning the sunrise comes never the earlier.” A vast amount of instruction is thrown away because the instructors will not wait for the day-break.
§ 38. For the moral training of the young there is one qualification in the teacher which is absolutely indispensable—goodness. Similarly for the intellectual training, there is an indispensable qualification—intelligence. This is the qualification required by the system of Port-Royal, but not required in working the ordinary machinery of the school-room either in those days or in ours. When Nicole has described how instruction should be given so as to train the judgment and cultivate the taste, he continues:
“As this kind of instruction comes without observation,so is the profit derived from it likely to escape observation also; that is, it will not announce itself by anything on the surface and palpable to the common man. And on this account persons of small intelligence are mistaken about it and think that a boy thus instructed is no better than another, because he cannot make a better translation from Latin into French, or beat him in saying his Virgil. Thus judging of the instruction by these trifles only, they often make less account of a really able teacher than of one of little science and of a mind without light.” (Nicole in Cadet, p. 204; Carré, p. 187.)
In these days of marks and percentages we seem agreed that it must be all right if the children can stand the tests of the examiner or the inspector. Something may no doubt be got at by these tests; but we cannot hope for any genuine care for education while everything is estimated “par des signes grossiers et extérieurs.”
§ 39. Whatever was required to adapt the thought of Port-Royal to the needs of classical schools, especially the schools of the University of Paris was supplied by Rollin (1661-1741) whoseTraité des Étudesor “Way of teaching and studying Literature,” united the lessons of Port-Royal with much material drawn from his own experience and from his acquaintance with the writings of other authors, especially Quintilian and Seneca. Having been twice Rector of the University (in 1694 and 1695) Rollin had managed to bring into the schools much that was due to Port-Royal; and in hisTraitéhe has the tact to give the improved methods as the ordinary practice of his colleagues.
§ 40. Much that Rollin has said applies only to classical or at most to literary instruction; but some of his advice will be good for all teachers as long as the human mindneeds instruction. I have met with nothing that seems to me to go more truly to the very foundation of the art of teaching than the following:
“We should never lose sight of this grand principle thatstudy depends on the will, and the will does not endure constraint: ‘Studium discendi voluntate quæ cogi non potest constat.’ (Quint. j, 1, cap. 3.)[97]We can, to be sure, put constraint on the body and make a pupil, however unwilling, stick to his desk, can double his toil by punishment, compelhim to finish a task imposed upon him, and with this object we can deprive him of play and recreation. But is this work of the galley-slave studying? And what remains to the pupil from this kind of study but a hatred of books, of learning, and of masters, often till the end of his days? It is then the will that we must draw on our side, and this we must do by gentleness, by friendliness, by persuasion, and above all by the allurement of pleasure.” (Traité, 8th Bk.Du Gouvernement des Classes, 1re Partie, Art. x.)
§ 41. The passage I have quoted is from theArticle“on giving a taste for study (rendre l’étude aimable);” and if some masters do not agree that this is “one of the most important points concerning education,” they will not deny that “it is at the same time one of the most difficult.” As Rollin truly says, “among a very great number of masters who in other respects are highly meritorious there will be found very few who manage to get their pupils to like their work.”
§ 42. One of the great causes of the disinclination for school work is to be found according to Rollin and Quintilian, in the repulsive form in which children first become acquainted with the elements of learning. “In this matter success depends very much on first impressions; and the main effort of the masters who teach the first rudiments should be so to do this, that the child who cannot as yet love study should at least not get an aversion for it from that time forward, for fear lest the bitter taste once acquired should still be in his mouth when he grows older.”[98](Begin. of Art. x, as above.)
§ 43. In this matter Rollin was more truly the disciple of the Port-Royalists than of Quintilian. They it was who protested against the dismal “grind” of learning to read first in an unknown tongue, and of studying the rules of Latin in Latin with no knowledge of Latin, a course which professed to lead, as Sainte-Beuve puts it, “to the unknown through the unintelligible.” They directed their highly-trained intellects to the teaching of the elements, and succeeded in proving that the ordinary difficulties were due not to the dulness of the learners, but to the stupidity of the masters. They showed how much might be done to remove these difficulties by following not routine but the dictates of thought, and study and love of the little ones.