Ing to the rules of our holy religion, but, in addition, to teach

the knowledge of letters to those who are capable of learning

them by the aid of our Lord. Although it avails more to

practise the law than to know it, it must be known before it

(•.in be practised. Several monasteries having sent us

manuscripts, we have observed that, in the most of them,

the sentiments were good, but the language bad. We

exhort you. (lieu, not only not to neglect the study of letters,

but to devote yourselves to them with all your power."

On the other hand, the nobles did not make any great

effort to justify their social rank by the degree of then-

knowledge. One day, as Charlemagne entered a school,

72 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

displeased with the indolence and the ignorance of the } T oung

barons who attended it, he addressed them in these severe

terms: "Do you count upon your birth, and do you feel a

pride in it? Take notice that you shall have neither govern-

ment nor bishoprics, if you are not better instructed than

others."

80. Alcuin (735-804). — Charlemagne was seconded in

his efforts by Alcuin of England, of whom it might be said,

that he was the first minister of public instruction in France.

It is he who founded the Palatine school, a sort of imperial

and itinerant academy which followed the court on its

travels. It was a model school, where Alcuin had for his

pupils the four sons and two daughters of Charlemagne, and

Charlemagne himself, always eager to be instructed.

Alcuin's method was not without originality, but it is a

great mistake to say that it resembles the method of Socrates.

Alcuin doubtless proceeds by interrogation ; but here it is

the pupil who interrogates, and the teacher who responds.

" What is speech? asks Pepin, the eldest son of Charle-

magne. It is the interpreter of the soul, replies Alcuin.

What is life? It is an enjoyment for some, but for the

wretched it is a sorrow, a waiting for death. What is

sleep? The image of death. What is writing? It is the

guardian of history. What is the body? The tenement

of the soul. What is day? A summons to labor." 1

All this is either commonplace or artificial. The senten-

tious replies of Alcuin may be fine maxims, fit for embellish-

ing the memory ; but in this procedure of the mere scholar,

affected bv the over-refinements of his time, there is nothing

which can call into activity the intelligence of the pupil.

1 For other examples, see the Life of Alcuin, by Lorenz ; and for Middle

Age education in general, consult Christian Schools and Scholars, by

Augusta Theodosia Drane. (P.)

THE EARLY CHRISTIANS AND THE MIDDLE AGE. 73

Nevertheless the name of Alcuin murks an era in the

history of education. His was the first attempt to form an

alliance between classical literature and Christian inspiration,

— to create a " Christian Athens," according to the emphatic

phrase of Alcuin himself.

81. The Successors of Charlemagne. —It had been the

ambition of Chailemagne to reism over a civilized societv,

rather than over a barbarous people. Convinced that the

only basis of political unit}' is a unity of ideas and of morals,

he thought to find the basis of that moral unity in religion,

and religion itself he purposed to establish upon a more

widely diffused system of instruction. But these ideas were

too advanced for the time, and their execution too difficult

for the circumstances then existing. A new decadence fol-

lowed the era of Charlemagne. The clergy did not respond

to the hopes which the great emperor had placed on them.

As far back as 817, the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle decided

that henceforth no more day-pupils should be received into

the conventual schools, for the reason that too large a num-

ber of pupils would make impossible the maintenance of the

monastic discipline. No one of Charlemagne's successors

seems to have taken up the thought of the great emperor ;

no one of them was preoccupied with the problems of educa-

tion. It is upon despotic authority, and not upon the intel-

lectual progress of their subjects, that those unintelligent

rulers wished to found their power. Under Louis the Pious

and Charles the Bald there were constructed more castles

than schools.

The kings of France were far from imitating the Anglo-

Saxon kino-, Alfred the Great (84 ( J-!><>1), to whom tradition

ascribes these two sayings : " The English ought always to

be free, as free as their own thoughts"; ••Free-born sons

should know how to read and write."

74 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

82. Scholasticism. — It was not till the twelfth century

that the human mind was awakened. That was the age of

Scholasticism, the essential character of which was the stud}'

of reasoning, and the practice of dialectics, or syllogistic

reasoning. The syllogism, which reaches necessary con-

clusions from given premises, was the natural instrument of

an age of faith, when men wished simply to demonstrate

immutable dogmas, without ever making an innovation on

established beliefs. It has often been observed that the art

of reasoning is the science of a people still in the early stage

of its progress ; we might almost say of a barbarous people.

A subtile dialectic is in perfect keeping with manners still

rude, and with a limited state of knowledge. It is only an

intellectual machine. It was not then a question of

original thinking. All that was necessary was simply to

reason upon conceptions already acquired, and the sacred

depository of these was kept in charge by Theology. Con-

sequently, there was no independent science. Philosophy,

according to the language of the times, was but the humble

servant of Theology. The dialectics of the doctors of the

Middle Age was but a subtile commentary on the sacred

books and on the doctrines of Aristotle. 1 It seems, says

Locke, to see the inertness of the Middle Age, that God was

pleased to make of man a two-footed animal, while leaving

to Aristotle the task of making him a thinking being. From

his point of view, an able educator of the seventeenth cen-

tury, the Abbe Fleury, pronounces this severe judgment on

the scholastic method : —