NEW ATTITUDES AFTER THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. From the beginning of the twelfth century onward, as we have already noted, there had been a slow but gradual change in the character of human thinking, and a slow but certain disintegration of the Mediaeval System, with its repressive attitude toward all independent thinking. Many different influences and movements had contributed to this change—the Moslem learning and civilization in Spain, the recovery of the old legal and medical knowledge, the revival of city life, the beginnings anew of commerce and industry, the evolution of the universities, the rise of a small scholarly class, the new consciousness of nationality, the evolution of the modern languages, the beginnings of a small but important vernacular literature, and the beginnings of travel and exploration following the Crusades—all of which had tended to transform the mediaeval man and change his ways of thinking. New objects of interest slowly came to the front, and new standards of judgment gradually were applied. In consequence the mediaeval man, with his feeling of personal insignificance and lack of self- confidence, came to be replaced by a small but increasing number of men who were conscious of their powers, possessed a new self-confidence, and realized new possibilities of intellectual accomplishment.
The Revival of Learning, first in Italy and then elsewhere in western Europe, was the natural consequence of this awakening of the modern spirit, and in the careful work done by the humanistic scholars of the Italian Renaissance in collecting, comparing, questioning, inferring, criticizing, and editing the texts, and in reconstructing the ancient life and history, we see the beginnings of the modern scientific spirit. It was this same critical, questioning spirit which, when applied later to geographical knowledge, led to the discovery of America and the circumnavigation of the globe; which, when applied to matters of Christian faith, brought on the Protestant Revolts; which, when applied to the problems of the universe, revealed the many wonderful fields of modern science; and which, when applied to government, led to a questioning of the divine right of kings and the rise of constitutional government. The awakening of scientific inquiry and the scientific spirit, and the attempt of a few thinkers to apply the new method to education, to which we now turn, may be regarded as only another phase of the awakening of the modern inquisitive spirit which found expression earlier in the rise of the universities, the recovery and reconstruction of the ancient learning, the awakening of geographical discovery and exploration, and the questioning of the doctrines and practices of the Mediaeval Church.
INSUFFICIENCY OF ANCIENT SCIENCE. From the point of view of scientific inquiry, all ancient learning possessed certain marked fundamental defects. The Greeks had—their time and age in world-civilization considered—made many notable scientific observations and speculations, and had prepared the way for future advances. Thales (636?-546? B.C.), Xenophanes (628?-520? B.C.), Anaximenes (557-504 B.C.), Pythagoras (570- 500 B.C.), Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.), Empedocles (460?-361? B.C.), and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) had all made interesting speculations as to the nature of matter, [1] Aristotle finally settling the question by naming the world-elements as earth, water, air, fire, and ether. Hippocrates (460-367? B.C.), as we have seen (p. 197), had observed the sick and had recorded and organized his observations in such a manner [2] as to form the foundations upon which the science of medicine could be established. The Greek physician, Galen (130-200 A.D.) added to these observations, and their combined work formed the basis upon which modern medical science has slowly been built up.
On the other hand, some of what each wrote was mere speculation and error, [3] and modern physicians were compelled to begin all over and along new lines before any real progress in medicine could be made. Aristotle had done a notable work in organizing and codifying Greek scientific knowledge, as the list of his many scientific treatises in use in Europe by 1300 (R. 87) will show, but his writings were the result of a mixture of keen observation and brilliant speculation, contained many inaccuracies, and in time, due to the reverence accorded him as an authority by the mediaeval scholars and the church authorities, proved serious obstacles to real scientific progress.
At Alexandria the most notable Greek scientific work had been done. Euclid (323-283 B.C.) in geometry; Aristarchus (third century B.C.), who explained the motion of the earth; Eratosthenes (270-196 B.C.), who measured the size of the earth; Archimedes (270?-212 B.C.), a pupil of Euclid's, who applied science in many ways and laid the foundations of dynamics; Hipparchus (160-125 B.C.), the father of astronomy, who studied the heavens and catalogued the stars, were among the more famous Greeks who studied and taught there in the days when Alexandria had succeeded Athens as the intellectual capital of the Greek world. Some remarkable advances also were made in the study of human anatomy and medicine by two Greeks, Herophilus (335-280 B.C.) and Erasistratus (d. 280 B.C.), who apparently did much dissecting.
But even at Alexandria the promise of Greek science was unfulfilled. Despite many notable speculations and scientific advances, the hopeful beginnings did not come to any large fruitage, and the great contribution made by the Greeks to world civilization was less along scientific lines than along the lines of literature and philosophy. Their great strength lay in the direction of philosophic speculation, and this tendency to speculate, rather than to observe and test and measure and record, was the fundamental weakness of all Greek science. The Greeks never advanced in scientific work to the invention and perfection of instruments for the standardization of their observations. As a result they passed on to the mediaeval world an extensive "book science" and not a little keen observation, of which the works of Aristotle and the Alexandrian mathematicians and astronomers form the most conspicuous examples, but little scientific knowledge of which the modern world has been able to make much use. The "book science" of the Greeks, and especially that of Aristotle, was highly prized for centuries, but in time, due to the many inaccuracies, had to be discarded and done anew by modern scholars.
The Romans, as we have seen (chapter III), were essentially a practical people, good at getting the work of the world done, but not much given to theoretical discussion or scientific speculation. They were organizers, governors, engineers, executives, and literary workers rather than scientists. They executed many important undertakings of a practical character, such as the building of roads, bridges, aqueducts, and public buildings; organized government and commerce on a large scale; and have left us a literature and a legal system of importance, but they contributed little to the realm of pure science. The three great names in science in all their history are Strabo the geographer (63 B.C.-24 A.D.); Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.), who did notable work as an observer in natural history; and Galen (a Roman-Greek), in medicine. They, like the Greeks, were pervaded by the same fear that their science might prove useful, whereas they cultivated it largely as a mental exercise (R. 203).
THE CHRISTIAN REACTION AGAINST INQUIRY. The Christian attitude toward inquiry was from the first inhospitable, and in time became exceedingly intolerant. The tendency of the Western Church, it will be remembered (p. 94), was from the first to reject all Hellenic learning, and to depend upon emotional faith and the enforcement of a moral life. By the close of the third century the hostility to pagan schools and Hellenic learning had become so pronounced that theApostolic Constitutions(R. 41) ordered Christians to abstain from all heathen books, which could contain nothing of value and only served "to subvert the faith of the unstable." In 401 A.D. the Council of Carthage forbade the clergy to read any heathen author, and Greek learning now rapidly died out in the West. For a time it was almost entirely lost. In consequence Greek science, then best represented by Alexandrian learning, and which contained much that was of great importance, was rejected along with other pagan learning. The, very meager scientific knowledge that persisted into the Middle Ages in the great mediaeval textbooks (p. 162), as we have seen in the study of the Seven Liberal Arts (chapter VII), came to be regarded as useful only in explaining passages of Scripture or in illustrating the ways of God toward man. The one and only science worthy of study was Theology, to which all other learning tended (see Figure 44, p. 154).
The history of Christianity throughout all the Dark Ages is a history of the distrust of inquiry and reason, and the emphasis of blind emotional faith. Mysticism, good and evil spirits, and the interpretation of natural phenomena as manifestations of the Divine will from the first received large emphasis. The worship of saints and relics, and the great development of the sensuous and symbolic, changed the earlier religion into a crude polytheism. During the long period of the Middle Ages the miraculous flourished. The most extreme superstition pervaded all ranks of society. Magic and prayers were employed to heal the sick, restore the crippled, foretell the future, and punish the wicked. Sacred pools, the royal touch, wonder-working images, and miracles through prayer stood in the way of the development of medicine (R. 204). Disease was attributed to satanic influence, and a regular schedule of prayers for cures was in use. Sanitation was unknown. Plagues and pestilences were manifestations of Divine wrath, and hysteria and insanity were possession by the devil to be cast out by whipping and torture. One's future was determined by the position of the heavenly bodies at the time of birth. Eclipses, meteors, and comets were fearful portents of Divine displeasure:
Eight things there be a Comet brings,When it on high doth horrid rage;Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings,War, Earthquakes, Floods, and Direful Change. [4]
The literature on magic was extensive. The most miraculous happenings were recorded and believed. Trial by ordeal, following careful religious formulae, was common before 1200, though prohibited shortly afterward by papal decrees (1215, 1222). The insistence of the Church on "the willful, devilish character of heresy," and the extension of heresy to cover almost any form of honest doubt or independent inquiry, caused an intellectual stagnation along lines of scientific investigation which was not relieved for more than a thousand years. The many notable advances in physics, chemistry, astronomy, and medicine made by Moslem scholars (chapter VIII) were lost on Christian Europe, and had to be worked out again centuries later by the scholars of the western world. Out of the astronomy of the Arabs the Christians got only astrology; out of their chemistry they got only alchemy. Both in time stood seriously in the way of real scientific thinking and discovery.
GROWING TOLERANCE CHANGED BY THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS. After the rise of the universities, the expansion of the minds of men which followed the Crusades and the revival of trade and industry, the awakening which came with the revival of the old learning and the rise of geographical discovery, the church authorities assumed a broader and a more tolerant attitude toward inquiry and reason than had been the case for hundreds of years. It would have been surprising, with the large number of university- trained men entering the service of the Church, had this not been the case. By the middle of the fifteenth century it looked as though the Renaissance spirit might extend into many new directions, and by 1500 the world seemed on the eve of important progress in almost every line of endeavor. As was pointed out earlier (p. 259), the Church was more tolerant than it had been for centuries, and about the year 1500 was the most stimulating time in the history of our civilization since the days of Alexandria and ancient Rome.
In 1517 Luther nailed his theses to the church door in Wittenberg. The Church took alarm and attempted to crush him, and soon the greatest contest since the conflict between paganism and Christianity was on. Within half a century all northern lands had been lost to the ancient Church (see map, p. 296); the first successful challenge of its authority during its long history.
The effect of these religious revolts on the attitude of the Church toward intellectual liberty was natural and marked. The tolerance of inquiry recently extended was withdrawn, and an era of steadily increasing intolerance set in which was not broken for more than a century. In an effort to stop the further spread of the heresy, the Church Council of Trent (1545-63) adopted stringent regulations against heretical teachings (p. 303), while the sword and torch and imprisonment were resorted to to stamp out opposition and win back the revolting lands. A century of merciless warfare ensued, and the hatreds engendered by the long and bitter struggle over religious differences put both Catholic and Protestant Europe in no tolerant frame of mind toward inquiry or new ideas. The Inquisition, a sort of universal mediaeval grand jury for the detection and punishment of heretics, was revived, and the Jesuits, founded in 1534-40, were vigorous in defense of the Church and bitter in their opposition to all forms of independent inquiry and Protestant heresy.
It was into this post-Reformation atmosphere of suspicion and distrust and hatred that the new critical, inquiring, questioning spirit of science, as applied to the forces of the universe, was born. A century earlier the first scientists might have obtained a respectful hearing, and might have been permitted to press their claims; after the Protestant Revolts had torn Christian Europe asunder this could hardly be. As a result the early scientists found themselves in no enviable position. Their theories were bitterly assailed as savoring of heresy; their methods and purposes were alike suspected; and any challenge of an old long-accepted idea was likely to bring a punishment that was swift and sure. From the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century was not a time when new ideas were at a premium anywhere in western Europe. It was essentially a period of reaction, and periods of reaction are not favorable to intellectual progress. It was into this century of reaction that modern scientific inquiry and reasoning, itself another form of expression of the intellectual attitudes awakened by the work of the humanistic scholars of the Italian Renaissance, made its first claim for a hearing.
THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC METHOD. One of the great problems which has always deeply interested thinking men in all lands is the nature and constitution of the material universe, and to this problem people in all stages of civilization have worked out for themselves some kind of an answer. It was one of the great speculations of the Greeks, and it was at Alexandria, in the period of its decadence, that the Egyptian geographer Ptolemy (138 A.D.) had offered an explanation which was accepted by Christian Europe and which dominated all thinking on the subject during the Middle Ages. He had concluded that the earth was located at the center of the visible universe, immovable, and that the heavenly bodies moved around the earth, in circular motion, fixed in crystalline spheres. [5] This explanation accorded perfectly with Christian ideas as to creation, as well as with Christian conceptions as to the position and place of man and his relation to the heavens above and to a hell beneath. This theory was obviously simple and satisfactory, and became sanctified with time. As we see it now the wonder is that such an explanation could have been accepted for so long. Only among an uninquisitive people could so imperfect a theory have endured for over fourteen centuries.
[Illustration: FIG. 113. NICHOLAS KOPERNIK (Copernicus), (1473-1543)]
In 1543 a Bohemian church canon and physician by the name of Nicholas Copernicus published hisDe Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium, in which he set forth the explanation of the universe which we now know. He piously dedicated the work to Pope Paul III, and wisely refrained from publishing it until the year of his death. [6] Anything so completely upsetting the Christian conception as to the place and position of man in the universe could hardly be expected to be accepted, particularly at the time of its publication, without long and bitter opposition.
In the dedicatory letter (R. 205), Copernicus explains how, after feeling that the Ptolemaic explanation was wrong, he came to arrive at the conclusions he did. The steps he set forth form an excellent example of a method of thinking now common, but then almost unknown. They were:
1. Dissatisfaction with the old Ptolemaic explanation.
2. A study of all known literature, to see if any better explanationhad been offered.
3. Careful thought on the subject, until his thinking took form in adefinite theory.
4. Long observation and testing out, to see if the observed factswould support his theory.
5. The theory held to be correct, because it reduced all known factsto a systematic order and harmony.
This is as clear a case of inductive reasoning as was L. Valla's exposure of the forgery of the so-called "Donation of Constantine," an example of deductive reasoning. Both used a new method—the method of modern scholarship. In both cases the results were revolutionary. As Petrarch stands forth in history as the first modern classical scholar, so Copernicus stands forth as the first modern scientific thinker. The beginnings of all modern scientific investigation date from 1543. Of his work a recent writer (E. C. J. Morton) has said:
Copernicus cannot be said to have flooded with light the dark places of nature—in the way that one stupendous mind subsequently did— but still, as we look back through the long vista of the history of science, the dim Titanic figure of the old monk seems to rear itself out of the dull flats around it, pierces with its head the mists that overshadow them, and catches the first gleam of the rising sun,…
Like some iron peak, by the CreatorFired with the red glow of the rushing morn.
[Illustration: FIG. 114. TYCHO BRAHE (1546-1601)]
THE NEW METHOD OF INQUIRY APPLIED BY OTHERS. At first Copernicus' work attracted but little attention. An Italian Dominican by the name of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), deeply impressed by the new theory, set forth in Latin and Italian the far-reaching and majestic implications of such a theory of creation, and was burned at the stake at Rome for his pains. A Dane, Tycho Brahe, after twenty-one years of careful observation of the heavens, during which time he collected "a magnificent series of observations, far transcending in accuracy [7] and extent anything that had been accomplished by his predecessors," showed Aristotle to be wrong in many particulars. His observations of the comet of 1577 led him to conclude that the theory of crystalline spheres was impossible, and that the common view of the time as to their nature [8] was absurd. In 1609 a German by the name of Johann Kepler (1571-1630), using the records of observations which Tycho Brahe had accumulated and applying them to the planet Mars, proved the truth of the Copernican theory and framed his famous three laws for planetary motion.
[Illustration: FIG. 115. GALILEO GALILEI (1564-1642)]
Finally an Italian, Galileo Galilei, a professor at the University of Pisa, developing a telescope that would magnify to eight diameters, discovered Jupiter's satellites and Saturn's rings. The story of his discovery of the satellites of Jupiter is another interesting illustration of the careful scientific reasoning of these early workers (R. 206). Galileo also made a number of discoveries in physics, through the use of new scientific methods, which completely upset the teachings of the Aristotelians, and made the most notable advances in mechanics since the days of Archimedes. For his pronounced advocacy of the Copernican theory he was called to Rome (1615) by the Cardinals of the Inquisition, the Copernican theory was condemned as "absurd in philosophy" and as "expressly contrary to Holy Scripture," and Galileo was compelled to recant (1616) his error. [9] For daring later (1632) to assume that he might, under a new Pope, defend the Copernican theory, even in an indirect manner, he was again called before the inquisitorial body, compelled to recant and abjure his errors (R. 207) to escape the stake, and was then virtually made a prisoner of the Inquisition for the remainder of his life. So strongly had the forces of medievalism reasserted themselves after the Protestant Revolts!
[Illustration: FIG. 116. SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727)]
Finally the English scholar Newton (1642-1728), in hisPrincipia(1687), settled permanently all discussions as to the Copernican theory by his wonderful mathematical studies. He demonstrated mathematically the motions of the planets and comets, proved Kepler's laws to be true, explained gravitation and the tides, made clear the nature of light, and reduced dynamics to a science. Of his work a recent writer, Karl Pearson, has said:
The Newtonian laws of motion form the starting point of most modern treatises on dynamics, and it seems to me that physical science, thus started, resembles the mighty genius of an Arabian tale emerging amid metaphysical exhalations from the bottle in which for long centuries it had been corked down.
So far-reaching in its importance was the scientific work of Newton thatPope's couplet seems exceedingly applicable:
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night;God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
THE NEW METHOD APPLIED IN OTHER FIELDS. The new method of study was soon applied to other fields by scholars of the new type, here and there, and always with fruitful results. The Englishman, William Gilbert (1540-1603) published, in 1600, hisDe Arte Magnetica, and laid the foundations of the modern study of electricity and magnetism. A German-Swiss by the name of Hohenheim, but who Latinized his name to Paracelsus (1493-1541), and who became a professor in the medical faculty at the University of Basle, in 1526 broke with mediaeval traditions by being one of the first university scholars to refuse to lecture in Latin. He ridiculed the medical theories of Hippocrates (p. 197) and Galen (p. 198), and, regarding the human body as a chemical compound, began to treat diseases by the administration of chemicals. A Saxon by the name of Landmann, who also Latinized his name to Agricola (1494-1555), applied chemistry to mining and metallurgy, and a French potter named Bernard Palissy (c. 1500- 88) applied chemistry to pottery and the arts. To Paracelsus, Agricola, and Palissy we are indebted for having laid, in the sixteenth century, the foundations of the study of modern chemistry.
[Illustration: FIG. 117. WILLIAM HARVEY (1578-1657)]
A Belgian by the name of Vesalius (1514-64) was the first modern to dissect the human body, and for so doing was sentenced by the Inquisition to perform a penitential journey to Jerusalem. One of his disciples discovered the valves in the veins and was the teacher of the Englishman, William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood and later (1628) dared to publish the fact to the world. These men established the modern studies of anatomy and physiology. Another early worker was a Swiss by the name of Conrad Gessner (1516-65), who observed and wrote extensively on plants and animals, and who stands as the first naturalist of modern times.
The sixteenth century thus marks the rise of modern scientific inquiry, and the beginnings of the study of modern science. The number of scholars engaged in the study was still painfully small, and the religious prejudice against which they worked was strong and powerful, but in the work of these few men we have not only the beginnings of the study of modern astronomy, physics, chemistry, metallurgy, medicine, anatomy, physiology, and natural history, but also the beginnings of a group of men, destined in time to increase greatly in number, who could see straight, and who sought facts regardless of where they might lead and what preconceived ideas they might upset. How deeply the future of civilization is indebted to such men, men who braved social ostracism and often the wrath of the Church as well, for the, to them, precious privilege of seeing things as they are, we are not likely to over- estimate. In time their work was destined to reach the schools, and to materially modify the character of all education.
[Illustration: FIG. 118. FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)]
HUMAN REASON IN THE INVESTIGATION OF NATURE. To the English statesman and philosopher, Francis Bacon, more than to any one else, are we indebted for the proper formulation and statement of this new scientific method. Though not a scientist himself, he has often been termed "the father of modern science." Seeing clearly the importance of the new knowledge, he broke entirely with the old scholastic deductive logic as expressed in theOrganon, of Aristotle, and formulated and expressed the methods of inductive reasoning in hisNovum Organum, published in 1620. In this he showed the insufficiency of the method of argumentation; analyzed and formulated the inductive method of reasoning, of which his study as to the nature of heat [10] is a good example; and pointed out that knowledge is a process, and not an end in itself; and indicated the immense and fruitful field of science to which the method might be applied. By showing how to learn from nature herself he turned the Renaissance energy into a new direction, and made a revolutionary break with the disputations and deductive logic of the Aristotelian scholastics which had for so long dominated university instruction.
In formulating the new method he first pointed out the defects of the learning of his time, which he classified under the head of "distempers," three in number, and as follows:
1.Fantastic learning: Alchemy, magic, miracles, old-wives, tales, credulities, superstitions, pseudo-science, and impostures of all sorts inherited from an ignorant past, and now conserved as treasures of knowledge.
2.Contentious learning: The endless disputations of the Scholastics about questions which had lost their significance, deductive in character, not based on any observation, not aimed primarily to arrive at truth, "fruitful of controversy, and barren of effect."
3.Delicate learning: The new learning of the humanistic Renaissance, verbal and not real, stylish and polished but not socially important, and leading to nothing except a mastery of itself.
As an escape from these three types of distempers, which well characterized the three great stages in human progress from the sixth to the fifteenth centuries, Bacon offered the inductive method, by means of which men would be able to distinguish true from false, learn to see straight, create useful knowledge, and fill in the great gaps in the learning of the time by actually working out new knowledge from the unknown. The collecting, organizing, comparing, questioning, and inferring spirit of the humanistic revival he now turned in a new direction by organizing and formulating for the work a newOrganumto take the place of the oldOrganonof Aristotle. In Book 1 he sets forth some of the difficulties (R. 208) with which those who try new experiments or work out new methods of study have to contend from partisans of old ideas.
TheNovum Organumshowed the means of escape from the errors of two thousand years by means of a new method of thinking and work. Bacon did not invent the new method—it had been used since man first began to reason about phenomena, and was the method by means of which Wycliffe, Luther, Magellan, Copernicus, Brahe, and Gilbert had worked—but he was the first to formulate it clearly and to point out the vast field of new and useful knowledge that might be opened up by applying human reason, along inductive lines, to the investigation of the phenomena of nature. His true service to science lay in the completeness of his analysis of the inductive process, and his declaration that those who wish to arrive at useful discoveries must travel by that road. As Macaulay well says, in his essay on Bacon:
He was not the maker of that road; he was not the discoverer of that road; he was not the person who first surveyed and mapped that road. But he was the person who first called the public attention to an inexhaustible mine of wealth which had been utterly neglected, and which was accessible by that road alone.
To stimulate men to the discovery of useful truth, to turn the energies of mankind—even slowly—from assumption and disputation to patient experimentation, [11.] and to give an impress to human thinking which it has retained for centuries, is, as Macaulay well says, "the rare prerogative of a few imperial spirits." Macaulay's excellent summary of the importance of Bacon's work (R. 209) is well worth reading at this point.
THE NEW METHOD IN THE HANDS OF SUBSEQUENT WORKERS. By the middle of the seventeenth century many important advances had been made in many different lines of scientific work. In the two centuries between 1450 and 1650, the foundations of modern mathematics and mechanics had been laid. At the beginning of the period Arabic notation and the early books of Euclid were about all that were taught; at its end the western world had worked out decimals, symbolic algebra, much of plane and spherical trigonometry, mechanics, logarithms (1614) and conic sections (1637), and was soon to add the calculus (1667-87). Mercator had published the map of the world (1569) which has ever since born his name, and the Gregorian calendar had been introduced (1572). The barometer, thermometer, air-pump, pendulum clock, and the telescope had come into use in the period. Alchemy had passed over into modern chemistry; and the astrologer was finding less and less to do as the astronomer took his place. The English Hippocrates, Thomas Sydenham (1624-89), during this period laid the foundations of modern medical study, and the microscope was applied to the study of organic forms. Modern ideas as to light and optics and gases, and the theory of gravitation, were about to be set forth. All these advances had been made during the century following the epoch-making labors of Copernicus, the first modern scientific man to make an impression on the thinking of mankind.
[Illustration: FIG. 119. THE LOSS AND RECOVERY OF THE SCIENCES Each short horizontal line indicates the life-span of a very distinguished scholar in the science. Mohammedan scientists have not been included. The relative neglect or ignorance of a science has been indicated by the depth of the shading. The great loss to civilization caused by the barbarian inroads and the hostile attitude of the early Church is evident.]
Accompanying this new scientific work there arose, among a few men in each of the western European countries, an interest in scientific studies such as the world had not witnessed since the days of the Alexandrian Greek. This interest found expression in the organization of scientific societies, wholly outside the universities of the time, for the reporting of methods and results, and for the mingling together in sympathetic companionship of these seekers after new truth. The most important dates connected with the rise of these societies are:
1603. The Lyncean Society at Rome. 1619. Jungius founded the Natural Science Association at Rostock. 1645. The Royal Society of London began to meet; constituted in 1660; chartered in 1662. 1657. The Academia del Cimento at Florence. 1662. The Imperial Academy of Germany. 1666. The Academy of Sciences in France. 1675. The National Observatory at Greenwich established.
After 1650 the advance of science was rapid. The spirit of modern inquiry, which in the sixteenth century had animated but a few minds, by the middle of the seventeenth had extended to all the principal countries of Europe. The striking results obtained during the seventeenth century revealed the vast field waiting to be explored, and filled many independent modern-type scholars with an enthusiasm for research in the new domain of science. By the close of the eighteenth century the main outlines of most of the modern sciences had been established.
LEADING THINKERS OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSITIES. During the seventeenth century, and largely during the eighteenth as well, the extreme conservatism of the universities, their continued control by their theological faculties, and their continued devotion to theological controversy and the teachings of state orthodoxy rather than the advancement of knowledge, served to make of them such inhospitable places for the new scientific method that practically all the leading workers with it were found outside the universities. This was less true of England than other lands, but was in part true of English universities as well. As civil servants, court attachés, pensioners of royalty, or as private citizens of means they found, as independent scholars reporting to the recently formed scientific societies, a freedom for investigation and a tolerance of ideas then scarcely possible anywhere in the university world.
[Illustration: FIG. 120. RENÉ DESCARTES (1596-1650)]
Tycho Brahe and Kepler were pensioners of the Emperor at Prague. Lord Bacon was a lawyer and political leader, and became a peer of England. Descartes, the mathematician and founder of modern philosophy, to whom we are indebted for conic sections; Napier, inventor of logarithms; and Ray and Willoughby, who did the first important work in botany and zoology in England, were all independent scholars. The air-pump was invented by the Burgomaster of Madgeburg. Huygens, the astronomer and inventor of the clock was a pensioner of the King of France. Cassini, who explained the motion of Jupiter's satellites, was Astronomer Royal at Paris. Halley, who demonstrated the motions of the moon and who first predicted the return of a comet, held a similar position at Greenwich. Van Helmont and Boyle, who together laid the foundations of our chemical knowledge, were both men of noble lineage who preferred the study of the new sciences to a life of ease at court. Harvey was a physician and demonstrator of anatomy in London. Sydenham, the English Hippocrates, was a pensioner of Cromwell and a physician in Westminster. The German mathematical scholar, Leibnitz, who jointly with Newton discovered the calculus, scorned a university professorship and remained an attaché of a German court. Newton, though for a time a professor at Cambridge, during most of his mature life held the royal office of Warden of the Mint. These are a few notable illustrations of scientific scholars of the first rank who remained outside the universities to obtain advantages and freedom not then to be found within their walls. Much these same conditions continued throughout most of the eighteenth century, during which many remarkable advances in all lines of pure science were made. By the close of this century the universities had been sufficiently modernized that scientific workers began to find in them an atmosphere conducive to scientific teaching and research; during the nineteenth century they became the homes of scientific progress and instruction; to-day they are deeply interested in the promotion of scientific research.
1. Show that the rise of scientific inquiry was but another manifestation of the same inquiring spirit which had led to the recovery of the ancient literatures and history.
2. What do you understand to be meant by the failure of the Greeks to standardize their observations by instruments?
3. Show that it would be possible largely to determine the character of a civilization, if one knew only the prevailing ideas and conceptions as to scientific and religious matters.
4. Show the two different types of reasoning involved in the deduction of L. Valla (p. 246) and the induction of Copernicus.
5. Of which type was the reasoning of Galileo as to Jupiter's satellites?
6. Show that the three "distempers" described by Bacon characterize the three great stages in human progress from the sixth to the fifteenth centuries.
7. How do you explain the long rejection of the new sciences by the universities?
In the accompanyingBook of Readingsthe following selections are reproduced:
203. Macaulay: Attitude of the Ancients toward Scientific Inquiry. 204. Franck: The Credulity of Mediaeval People. 205. Copernicus: How he arrived at the theory he set forth. 206. Brewster: Galileo's Discovery of the Satellites of Jupiter. 207. Inquisition: The Abjuration of Galileo. 208. Bacon: On Scientific Progress. 209. Macaulay: The Importance of Bacon's Work.
1. How do you explain the attitude of the ancients toward scientific inquiry?
2. State the ancient purpose in pursuing scientific studies.
3. Contrast Bacon and Plato as to aims.
4. Show that the thinking of Copernicus as to the motions of the heavenly bodies was an excellent example of deductive thinking.
5. Show that the discovery and reasoning of Galileo was an example of the common method of reasoning of to-day.
6. Were the difficulties that surrounded scientific inquiry and progress, as described by Bacon, easily removed?
7. Explain the readiness with which the clergy have so commonly opposed scientific inquiry for fear that the results might upset preconceived theological ideas.
Ball, W. R. R.History of Mathematics at Cambridge.* Libby, Walter.An Introduction to the History of Science.Ornstein, Martha.Role of the Scientific Societies in the SeventeenthCentury.* Routledge, Robert.A Popular History of Science.* Sedgwick, W. T. and Tyler, H. W.A Short History of Science.* White, A. D.History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, 2vols. Wordsworth Christopher.Scholae Academicae; Studies at theEnglish Universities in the Eighteenth Century.
THE RISE OF REALISM IN EDUCATION. As will be remembered from our study of the educational results of the Revival of Learning (chapter XI), the new schools established in the reaction against medievalism, to teach pure Latin and Greek, in time became formal and lifeless (p. 283), and their aim came to be almost entirely that of imparting a mastery of the Ciceronian style, both in writing and in speech. This idea, first clearly inaugurated by Sturm at Strassburg (R. 137), had now become fixed, and in its extreme is illustrated by the teachings of the Jesuit Campion at Prague (R. 146). As a reaction against this extreme position of the humanistic scholars there arose, during the sixteenth century, and as a further expression of the new critical spirit awakened by the Revival of Learning, a demand for a type of education which would make truth rather than beauty, and the realities of the life of the time rather than the beauties of a life of Roman days, the aim and purpose of education. This new spirit became known as Realism, was contemporaneous with the rise of scientific inquiry, and was an expression of a similar dissatisfaction with the learning of the time. As applied to education this new spirit may be said to have manifested itself in three different stages, as follows:
1. Humanistic realism. 2. Social realism. 3. Sense realism.
We will explain each of these, briefly, in order.
A NEW AIM IN INSTRUCTION. Humanistic realism represents the beginning of the reaction against form and style and in favor of ideas and content. The humanistic realists were in agreement with the classical humanists that the old classical literatures and the Bible contained all that was important in the education of youth. The ancient literatures, they held, presented "not only the widest product of human intelligence, but practically all that was worthy of man's attention." The two groups differed, however, in that the classical humanists conceived the aim of education to be the mastery of the vocabulary and style of Cicero, and the production of a new race of Roman youths for a revived Latin scholarly world, while the new humanistic realists wanted to use the old literatures as a means to a new end—that of teaching knowledge that would be useful in the world in which they lived. Monroe has so well expressed the humanistic-realist attitude that a passage from his History is worth quoting here. He says:
Not only did ancient philosophy contain the true philosophy of this life, but languages were the key to the real understanding of the Christian religion. Not only did mastery of these languages give power of speech, and hence influence over one's fellows; but, if military science was to be studied, it could in no place be better searched for than in Caesar and in Xenophon; was agriculture to be practiced, no better guide was to be found than Virgil or Columella; was architecture to be mastered, no better way existed than through Vitruvius; was geography to be considered, it must be through Mela or Solinus; was medicine to be understood, no better means than Celsus existed; was natural history to be appreciated, there was no more adequate source of information than Pliny and Seneca. Aristotle furnished the basis of all the sciences, Plato of all philosophy, Cicero of all institutional life, and the Church Fathers and the Scriptures of all religion.
EXPONENTS OF HUMANISTIC REALISM. The Dutch international scholar Erasmus (1467?-1536) (p. 274), the Frenchman Rabelais (1483-1553), and the English poet Milton (1608-74) stand as the clearest representatives of this new humanistic realism.
Erasmus had clearly distinguished between the education of words and the education of things, had pointed out the ease with which real truth is learned and retained, and had urged the study of the content rather than the form of the ancient authors. In hisSystem of Studieshe said:
From these very authors (Latin and Greek), whom we read for the sake of improving our language, incidentally, in no small degree is a knowledge of things gathered.
In hisCiceronianhe had ridiculed those who mistook the form for the spirit of the ancients.
The French non-conforming monk, curé, physician, and university scholar, François Rabelais, in his satiricalLife of Gargantua(1535) andThe Heroic Deeds of Pantagruel(1533) had set forth, even more clearly, the idea of obtaining from a study of the ancient authors (R. 210) knowledge that would be useful. Writing largely in the character of a clown and a fool, because such was a safer method, he protested against the formal, shallow, and insincere life of his age. He made as vigorous a protest against medievalism and formalism as he dared, for he lived in a time when new ideas were dangerous commodities for one to carry about or to try to express. He ridiculed the old scholastic learning, set forth the idea of using the old classics for realistic as well as humanistic ends, and also advocated physical, moral, social, and religious education in the spirit of the best writers and teachers of the Italian Renaissance. His book was extensively read and had some influence in shaping thinking, though Rabelais's importance in the history of education lies rather in his influence on later educational thinkers than on the life of his time.
[Illustration: FIG. 121. FRANÇOIS RABELAIS (1483-1553)]
Perhaps the clearest example of humanistic realism is found in the writings of the English poet and humanitarian, John Milton. HisTractate on Education(1644) was extensively read, and was influential in shaping educational practice in the non-conformist secondary academies which arose a little later in England. Still later his ideas indirectly somewhat influenced American development.
Milton first gives us an excellent statement of the new religious-civic aim of post-Reformation education (R. 211), and then points out the defects of the existing education, whereby boys "spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latine and Greek, as might be learnt otherwise easily and delightfully in one year." He then presents his plan for "a compleat and generous Education" for "noble and gentle youths," and tells "how all this may be done between twelve and one and twenty, less time than is now bestowed in pure trifling at Grammar and Sophistry." The course of study he outlines (R. 212) is enormous. The first year, that is beginning at twelve, the boy is to learn Latin grammar, arithmetic, and geometry, and to read simple Latin and Greek. During the next three or four years the pupil is to master Greek, and to study agriculture, geography, natural philosophy, physiology, mathematics, fortification, engineering, architecture, and natural history, all by reading the chief writings of the ancients, in prose and poetry, on these subjects. During the remaining years to twenty-one the pupil, similarly, is to obtain ethical instruction from the Greeks and the Bible; learn Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Saxon law; learn Italian and Hebrew; and study economics, politics, history, logic, rhetoric, and poetry by reading selected ancient authors. What Rabelais suggested in jest for his giant, Milton adopted as a program for the school. In addition, in thoroughly characteristic modern English fashion, he makes careful provision for daily exercise and play. Aside, though, from its impossibility of accomplishment except by a superior few, Milton's plan is thoroughly representative of the new humanistic-realistic point of view-that is, that education should impart useful information, though the information as Milton conceived it was to be drawn almost entirely from the books of the ancients.
[Illustration: FIG. 122. JOHN MILTON (1608-74)]
EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF HUMANISTIC REALISM. The importance of humanistic realism in the history of education lies largely in that it was the first of a series of reactions that led later to sense-realism—that is, to the study of science and the application of scientific method in the schools.
In England it possesses still larger importance. Milton had called his institution an "Academy." [1] After the restoration of the Stuarts (Charles II, 1660), some two thousand non-conforming clergymen were "dispossessed" by the Act of Conformity (1662; R. 166), and soon after this the children of Non-Conformists were excluded from the grammar schools and universities. Many of these clergymen now turned to teaching as a means of earning a livelihood and serving their people, and the ideas of the non-conformist Milton were influential in turning the schools thus established even further toward the study of useful subjects. Many of the new schools offered instruction in the modern languages, logic, rhetoric, ethics, geography, astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, surveying, navigation, history, oratory, economics, and natural and moral philosophy, as well as the old classical subjects. All teaching, too, was done in English, and the study of English language and literature was emphasized. This made these non-conformist academies in many respects superior to the older Latin grammar schools. After the enactment of the Toleration Act, in 1689, these schools were allowed to incorporate and were gradually absorbed into the existing Latin grammar-school system of England, but unfortunately without producing much change in the character of these older institutions.
The idea of offering instruction in these new studies was in time carried to America, where better results were obtained. At first a few of the subjects, such as the mathematical studies, surveying, navigation, and English, were introduced into the existing Latin grammar or other schools of secondary grade. Especially was this true in the colonies south of New England. After 1751, and especially after about 1780, distinct Academies arose in the United States (chapter XVIII), whose purpose was to offer instruction in all these new subjects of study. From these our modern high schools have been derived.
[Illustration: FIG. 123. MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE (1533-92)]
MONTAIGNE AND LOCKE. Social realism represents a still further reaction away from the humanistic schools. It was the natural reaction of practical men of the new world against a type of education that tended to perpetuate the pedantry of an earlier age, by devoting its energies to the production of the scholar and professional man to the neglect of the man of affairs. The social realists were small in number, but powerful because of their important social connections and wealth, and they were very determined to have an education suited to their needs, even if they had to create it themselves (R. 213). The French nobleman, scholar, author, and civic officer, M. de Montaigne (1533-92), and the English philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), were the clearest exponents of this new point of view, though it found expression in the writings of many others. Each declared for a practical, useful type of education for the young boy who was to live the life of a gentleman in the world of affairs.
Neither had any sympathy with the colleges and grammar schools of the time (R. 214), and both rejected the school for the private tutor. This tutor must be selected with great care, and first of all must be a well-bred gentleman—a man, as Montaigne says, "who has rather a well-made than a well-filled head" (R. 215). Locke cautions that "one fit to educate and form the Mind of a young Gentleman is not every where to be found," and of the common type of teacher he asks, "When such an one has empty'd out into his Pupil all the Latin and Logick he has brought from the University, will that Furniture make him a fine Gentleman?" (R. 216).
Both condemn the school training of their time, and both urge that the tutor train the judgment and the understanding rather than the memory. To impart good manners rather than mere information, and to train for life in the world rather than for the life of a scholar, seem to both of fundamental importance in the education of a boy. "The great world," says Montaigne, "is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves. In short, I would have this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the most attention." "Latin and Learning," says Locke, "make all the Noise; and the main Stress is laid upon Proficiency in Things a great Part whereof belong not to a Gentleman's Calling; which is to have the Knowledge of a Man of Business, a Carriage suitable to his Rank, and to be eminent and useful to his Country, according to his Station" (R. 216). Both emphasized the importance of travel abroad as an important factor in the education of a gentleman.
THEIR PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. Both Montaigne and Locke were concerned alone with the education of the sons of gentlemen, individuals now coming rapidly into prominence to dispute place in the world of affairs with the higher nobility on the one hand and the clergy on the other. With the education of any other class Montaigne never concerned himself. As for Locke, he was later appointed a King's Commissioner, with certain oversight of the poor, and for the education of the children of such he drew up a careful report which, in true English fashion, provided for their training in workhouses and their apprenticeship to a trade (R. 217). He wrote nothing with regard to the education of the children of middle-class workers and tradesmen. Both authors also deal entirely with the work of a tutor, and not with the work of a teacher in a school. Neither deals specifically with elementary education, but rather with what, in Europe, would be called the secondary-school period in the education of a boy. Locke was extensively read by the gentry of England, as expressive of the best current practice of their class, and his ideas as to education were also of some influence in shaping the instruction of the non-conformist teachers in the academies there. His place in the history of education is also of some importance, as we shall point out later, for the disciplinary theory of education which he set forth. Still more, Locke later exerted a deep influence on the writings of Rousseau (chapter XXI), and hence helped materially to shape modern educational theory.
[Illustration: FIG. 124. JOHN LOCKE (1631-1704)]
THE NEW SCHOOLS FOR THE SONS OF THE GENTRY. Both Montaigne and Locke, in their emphasis on the importance of a practical education for the social and political demands of a gentleman concerned with the affairs of the modern world, represent a still further reaction against the humanistic schools of the time than did the humanistic realists whom we have just considered. Still more, both are expressive of the attitude of the nobility and gentry of the time, who had almost deserted the schools as pedantic institutions of little value. France was then the great country of Europe, and French language, French political ideas, French manners, and French tutors found their way into all neighboring lands. A new social and political ideal was erected—that of the polished man of the world, who could speak French, had traveled, knew history and politics, law and geography, heraldry and genealogy, some mathematics and physics with their applications, could use the sword and ride, was adept in games and dancing, and was skilled in the practical affairs of life.
[Illustration: FIG. 125. AN ACADEMIE DES ARMESFrom an early eighteenth-century Parisian poster, advertising an Academy.]
To give such training the French created numerous Academies in their cities. A writer of 1649 states that there were twelve such institutions at that time in Paris alone. Not infrequently some nobleman was at the head. Boys were first educated at home by tutors, and then sent to the Academy to be trained in riding, the military arts, fortification, mathematics, the modern languages, and the many graces of a gentleman. The Englishman, John Evelyn, who was in France in 1644, thus describes the French Academies:
At the Palais Cardinal in Paris I frequently went to see them ride and exercise the Greate Horse, especially at the Academy of Monsieur du Plessis, and de Veau, whose scholes of that art are frequented by the Nobility; and here also young gentlemen are taught to fence, daunce, play on musiq, and something in fortifications and mathematics.
At Richelieu, near Tours, belongs an Academy where besides the exercise of the horse, armes, dauncing, etc., all the sciences are taught in the vulgar French by Professors stipendiated by the great Cardinal. The Academy of Juilly included some study of physical science, mathematics, geography, heraldry, French history, Italian, and Spanish, besides the riding and gentlemanly arts.
In England the tutor in the home became the type form for the education of the sons of a gentleman, the boys frequently being sent abroad to complete their education. In German lands, which in the seventeenth century were in close sympathy with French life and thought, Heidelberg being a center for the dissemination of French ideas, the French academy idea was copied, and what were calledRitterakademieen(knightly academies) were founded in the numerous court cities [2] for the education, along such lines, of the sons of the many grades of the German nobility. Between 1620 and 1780, before the rise of the German nationalistic movement which sought to replace French ideas by native German culture, was the great period of these German court schools, and during this period they bestowed on the sons of the German nobility the courtly and military education of the French academies. The education of the nobility was in consequence segregated from the intellectual life of other classes. "Gallants" and "pedants" were the respective outputs of the two types of schools.
THE NEW EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THIS GROUP. This represented a still further and more important step in advance than either of the preceding. In a very direct way sense realism in education was an outgrowth of the organizing work of Francis Bacon. Its aim was:
(1) To apply the same inductive method formulated by Bacon for the sciences to the work of education, with a view to organizing a general method which would greatly simplify the instructional process, reduce educational work to an organized system, and in consequence effect a great saving of time; and
(2) To replace the instruction in Latin by instruction in the vernacular, [3] and to substitute new scientific and social studies, deemed of greater value for a modern world, for the excessive devotion to linguistic studies.
The sixteenth century had been essentially a period of criticism in education, and the leading thinkers on education, as in other lines of intellectual activity, were not in the schools. In the seventeenth century we come to a new group of men who attempted to think out and work out in practice the ideas advanced by the critics of the preceding period. In the seventeenth century we have, in consequence, the first serious attempt to formulate an educational method since the days of the Athenian Greeks and the treatise of Quintilian.
The possibility of formulating an educational method that would simplify the educational process and save time in instruction, appealed to a number of thinkers, in different lands. This group of thinkers, due to their new methods of attack and thought, the German historian of education, Karl von Raumer, has calledInnovators. The chief pedagogical ideas of the Innovators were:
1. That education should proceed from the simple to the complex, and the concrete to the abstract.
2. That things should come before rules.
3. That students should be taught to analyze, rather than toconstruct.
4. That each student should be taught to investigate for himself,rather than to accept or depend upon authority.
5. That only that should be memorized which is clearly understood andof real value.
6. That restraint and coercion should be replaced by interest in thestudies taught.
7. That the vernacular should be used as the medium for allinstruction.
8. That the study of real things should precede the study of wordsabout things.
9. That the order and course of Nature be discovered, and that amethod of teaching based on this then be worked out.
10. That physical education should be introduced for the sake ofhealth, and not merely to teach gentlemanly sports.
11. That all should be provided with the opportunity for an educationin the elements of knowledge. This to be in the vernacular.
12. That Latin and Greek be taught only to those likely to complete aneducation, and then through the medium of the mother tongue.
13. That a uniform and scientific method of instruction could be worked out, which would reduce education to a science and serve as a guide for teachers everywhere.
The Englishman, Francis Bacon, whom we have previously considered; the German, Wolfgang Ratichius (or Ratke); and the Moravian bishop and teacher, Johann Amos Comenius, stand as perhaps the clearest examples of this organizing tendency in education. Ratke and Comenius will be considered here as types.
WOLFGANG RATKE. Bacon had believed that the new scientific knowledge should be incorporated into the instruction of the schools, and had suggested, in hisAdvancement of Learning(1603-05), a broader course of study for them, and better facilities for scientific investigation and teaching. While Bacon was not a teacher and did not write specifically on school instruction, his writings nevertheless deeply influenced many of those who followed his thinking.
The first writer to apply Bacon's ideas to education and to attempt to evolve a new method and a new course of instruction was a German, by the name of Wolfgang Ratke (1571-1635). While studying in England he had read Bacon'sAdvancement of Learning, and from Bacon's suggestions Ratke tried to work out a new method of instruction. This he offered, and with much secrecy, unsuccessfully for sale at various German courts. Finally he issued an "Address" to the princes of Germany, assembled at an Electoral Diet at Frankfurt-am-Main, in 1612. In this he told them of his new method, which followed Nature, and declared that it was "fraught with momentous consequences" for mankind. He claimed that he could:
1. By using the German language in the earlier years:(a) Bring about the use of one common language among the Germanpeople, and thus lay the basis for unity in government andreligion;(b) Impart to children a knowledge of the useful arts and sciences.
2. Teach Latin. Greek, and Hebrew better, and in far less time, than had previously been required for one language only.
This method he offered to sell to the princes, and he would impart it only on the promise that it be not revealed to others. Two professors were appointed to examine Ratke, and they reported very favorably on his plan.
In 1617 Ratke published, in Leipzig, hisMethodus Nova, which was the pioneer work on school method, and is Ratke's chief claim to mention here. In this he laid down the fundamental rules for teaching, as he had thought them out. They were as follows:
1. The order of Nature was to be sought and followed.
2. One thing at a time, and that mastered thoroughly.
3. Much repetition to insure retention.
4. Use of the mother tongue for all instruction, and the languages tobe taught through it.
5. Everything to be taught without constraint. The teacher to teach,and the scholars to keep order and discipline.
6. No learning by heart. Much questioning and understanding.
7. Uniformity in books and methods a necessity.
8. Knowledge of things to precede words about things.
9. Individual experience and contact and inquiry to replace authority.
We see here the essentials of the Baconian ideas, as well as the foreshadowings of many other subsequent reforms in teaching method.
During the next half-dozen years Ratke was a much-interviewed person, as the idea of a more general education of the people, advanced by the Protestant reformers, had appealed strongly to the imagination of many of the German princes. Finally the necessary money was raised to establish an experimental school, [4] printing-presses were set up to print the necessary books, the people of the village of Köthen, in Anhalt, were ordered to send their children for instruction, and the school opened with Ratke in charge and amid great expectations and enthusiasm. A year and a half later the school had failed, through the bad management of Ratke and his inability to realize the extravagant hopes he had aroused, and he himself had been thrown into prison as an impostor by the princes. This ended Ratke's work. He is important chiefly for his pioneer work as the forerunner of the greatest educator of the seventeenth century.
JOHANN AMOS COMENIUS. We now reach not only the greatest representative of sense realism, both in theory and practice, before the latter part of the eighteenth century, but also one of the commanding figures in the history of education. Comenius was born at Nivnitz, in Moravia, in 1592. As a member, pastor, and later bishop of the Moravian church, and as a follower of John Huss, he suffered greatly in the Catholic-Protestant warfare which raged over his native land during the period of the Thirty Years' War. His home twice plundered, his books and manuscripts twice burned, his wife and children murdered, and himself at times a fugitive and later an exile, Comenius gave his long life to the advancement of the interests of mankind through religion and learning. Driven from his home and country, he became a scholar of the world.
While a student at the University of Nassau, at the age of twenty, he read and was deeply impressed by the "Address" of Ratke. Bacon'sNovum Organum, which appeared when he was twenty-eight, made a still deeper impression upon him. He seems to have been familiar also with the writings of the educational reformers of his time in all European lands. He traveled extensively, and maintained a large correspondence with the scholars of his time. He was master of a Latin school in Moravia from the age of twenty-two to twenty-four, when he was ordained as a pastor of the Moravian Church. Eight years later, in 1632, he was banished, with all Protestant ministers, from his native land, and while an exile for a time took charge of a school at Lissa, in Poland. Here he worked out, in practice, the great work on method which he later published. In 1638 he was invited to reform the schools of Sweden; in 1641 he visited England, in connection with a plan for the organization of all knowledge; he spent the next eight years working at school reform in Sweden; from 1650 to 1654 he was in charge of a school at Saros-Patak, in Hungary, where he worked out his famous textbooks for teaching language; he was consulted with reference to the presidency of Harvard College, in 1654; the same year he returned to Lissa, and once more lost his books and manuscripts and was made a homeless exile; and finally he found a patron and asylum in Amsterdam, where he died in 1671, at the age of seventy-nine. The verse beneath his portrait seems an especially appropriate commentary on his life.
COMENIUS AND EDUCATIONAL METHOD. While teaching at Lissa, in Poland, Comenius had formulated for himself the principles underlying school instruction, as he saw it, in a lengthy book which he calledThe Great Didactic. [5] The title page (R. 218) and the table of contents (R. 219) will give an idea as to its scope. In this work Comenius formulated and explained his two fundamental ideas, namely, that all instruction must be carefully graded and arranged to follow the order of nature, and that, in imparting knowledge to children, the teacher must make constant appeal through sense-perception to the understanding of the child. We have here the fundamental ideas of Bacon applied to the school, and Comenius stands as the clearest exponent of sense realism in teaching up to his time, and for more than a century afterward.
Deeply religious by nature and training, Comenius held the Holy Scriptures to contain the beginning and end of all learning; to know God aright he held to be the highest aim; and with true Protestant fervor he contended that the education of every human being was a necessity if mankind was to enter into its religious inheritance, and piety, virtue, and learning were to be brought to their fruition. Unlike those who were enthusiasts for religious education only, Comenius saw further, and held an ideal of service to the State and Church here below for which proper training was needed. Still more, he believed in the education of human beings simply because they were human beings, and not merely for salvation, as Luther had held.
Comenius was the first to formulate a practicable school method, working along the new lines marked out by Bacon. He had no psychology to guide him, and worked largely by analogies from nature. A great idea with him was that we should study and follow nature, and this led him to the conclusions that education should proceed from the easy to the difficult, the near to the remote, the general to the special, and the known to the unknown, and that the great business of the teacher was imparting and guiding, and not storing the memory. These conclusions seem commonplaces to us of to-day, but what is commonplace today was genius three hundred years ago. To select the subject-matter of instruction carefully and on the basis of utility, to eliminate needless materials, not to attempt too much at a time, to use concrete examples, to have frequent repetitions to fix ideas, to advance by carefully graded steps, to tie new knowledge to old, to learn by observing and doing, and to learn by use rather than by precept—were still other of the present-day commonplaces which Comenius worked out and formulated in hisDidactica Magna. [6] His plea for a mild and gentle discipline in place of the brutality of his time, his emphasis of the vernacular and the realities of life, his conception as to the importance of early education, his careful gradation of the school, and his ability to see the usefulness of Latin without over-emphasizing its importance—all stamp him as a capable and practical schoolmaster who saw deeply into the nature of the educational process.
[Illustration: PLATE 10. JOHN AMOS COMENIUS (1592-1671)The Moravian Bishop at the age of fifty. (After an engraving by Glover,printed as a frontispiece to Hartlib'sA Reformation of Schooles.London, 1642.)
Loe, here an Exile, who to serve his God,Hath sharply tasted of proud Pashurs RodWhose learning, Piety, & true worth, being knowneTo all the world, makes all the world his owne. F.Q.]
COMENIUS' IDEAS AS TO THE ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS. In hisDidactica MagnaComenius divided the school life of a child into four great divisions. The first concerned the period from infancy to the age of six, which he called The Mother School. For this period he wroteThe School of Infancy(1628), a book intended primarily for parents, and one of such deep insight and fundamental importance that parents and teachers may still read it with interest and profit. In it he anticipated many of the ideas of the kindergarten of to-day. The next division was The Vernacular School, which covered the period from the ages of six to twelve. For this period six classes were to be provided, and the emphasis was to be on the mother tongue. This school was to be for all, of both sexes, and in it the basis of an education for life was to be given. It was to teach its pupils to read and write the mother tongue; enough arithmetic for the ordinary business of life, and the commonly used measures; to sing, and to know certain songs by rote; to know about the real things of life; the Catechism and the Bible; a general knowledge of history, and especially the creation, fall, and redemption of man; the elements of geography and astronomy; and a knowledge of the trades and occupations of life; all of which, says Comenius, can be taught better through the mother tongue than through the medium of the Latin and Greek. In scope this school corresponds with the vernacular school of modern Europe.