143. Sense Intuitions. ВЂ” If Comenius has traced with a

master hand the general organization of the primary school,

he has no less merit in the matter of methods.

When thev recommend the observation of sensible things

as the first intellectual exercise, modern educators do but

repeat what Comenius said three centuries ago.

" In the place of dead books, why should we not open the

living Look of nature? . . . To instruct the young is not to

beat into them by repetition a mass of words, phrases, sen-

flatter, a Swiss teacher of the sixteenth century (1499-1582).

PROTESTANTISM AND PRIMARY INSTRUCTION. 13o

tences, aud opinions gathered ont of authors ; but it is to

open their understanding through things. . . .

" The foundation of all knowledge consists in correctly rep-

resenting sensible objects to our senses, so that they can be

comprehended with facility. I hold that this is the basis of all

our other activities, since we could neither act nor speak wisely

unless we adequately comprehended what we were to do and

say. Now it is certain that there is nothing in the under-

standing that was not first in the senses, and, consequently,

it is to lay the foundation of all wisdom, of all eloquence,

and of all good and prudent conduct, carefully to train the

senses to note with accurac}' the differences between natural

objects ; and as this point, important as it is, is ordinarily

neglected in the schools of to-day, and as objects are pro-

posed to scholars that they do not understand because they

have not been properly represented to their senses or to their

imagination, it is for this reason, on the one hand, that the

toil of teaching, and on the other, that the pain of learning,

have become so burdensome and so unfruitful. . . .

"We must offer to the }'Ouug, not the shadows of things,

but the things themselves, which impress the senses and

the imagination. Instruction should commence with a real

observation of things, and not with a verbal description of

them."

We see that Comenius accepts the doctrine of Bacon,

even to his absolute sensationalism. In his pre-occupation

with the importance of instruction through the senses, he

goes so far as to ignore that other source of knowledge and

intuitions, the inner consciousness.

144. Simplification of Grammatical Study. — The first

result of the experimental method applied to instruction, is

to simplify grammar and to relieve it from the abuse of ab-

134 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

stract rules. " Children," says Comenius, " need examples

and things which they can see, and not abstract rules."

And in the Preface of the Janua linguamm, he dwells

upon the faults of the old method employed for the study

of languages.

' ' It is a thing self-evident, that the true and proper way of

teaching languages has not been recognized in the schools

up to the present time. The most of those who devoted

themselves to the study of letters grew old in the study of

words, and upwards of ten years was spent in the study of

Latin alone ; indeed, they even spent their whole life in the

study, with a very slow and very trifling profit, which did not

pay for the trouble devoted to it." 1 It is by use and by read-

ing that Comenius would abolish the abuse of rules. Rules

ought to intervene only to aid use and give it surety. The

pupil will thus learn language, either in speaking, or in read-

ing a book like the Orbis Pictus, in which he will find at the

same time all the words of which the language itself is com-

posed, and examples of all the constructions of its syntax.

145. Necessity of Drill and Practice. — Another

essential point in the new method, is the importance at-

tributed by Comenius to practical exercises : "Artisans," he

said, " understand this matter perfectly well. Not one of

them will give an apprentice a theoretical course on his trade.

He is allowed to notice what is done b}- his master, and then

the tool is put in his hands : it is in smiting that one becomes

a smith." 2

1 For this quotation, as for all those which we borrow from the preface

of the Janua linguarum, a French edition of which (in three languages:

Latin, German, and French) appeared in 1643, we copy from the authentic

text.

2 There is a misleading fallacy in all such illustrations. What analogy is

there between the" learning of history or geology and the learning of a trade

PROTESTANTISM AND PRIMARY INSTRUCTION. 135

It is no longer the thing to repeat mechanically a lesson

learned by heart. There must be a gradual habituation to

action, to productive work, to personal effort.

146. General Bearing of the Work of Comenius. —

How many other new and judicious ideas we shall have to

gather from Comenius ! The methods which we would be

tempted to consider as wholly recent, his imagination had

already suggested to him. For example, preceding the Orbis

Pictus, we find an alphabet, where to each letter corresponds

the cry of an animal, or else a sound familiar to the child.

Is not this already the very essence of the phononimic pro-

cesses l brought into fashion in these last years ? But what •

is of more consequence with Comenius than a few happy dis-

coveries in practical pedagogy, is the general inspiration of

his work. He gives to education a psychological basis in

demanding that the faculties shall be developed in their natu-

ral order : first, the senses, the memory, the imagination, and

lastly the judgment and the reason. He is mindful of physi-

cal exercises, of technical and practical instruction, without

forgetting that in the primary schools, which he calls the

"siudios of humanity," there must be trained, not only strong

and skilful artisans, but virtuous and religious men, imbued

with the principles of order and justice. If he has stepped

from theology to pedagogy, and if he permits himself some-

times to be borne along by his artless bursts of mysticism, at

least he does not forget the necessities of the real condition,

like carpentry? Should a physician and a blacksmith he educated on the

same plan? In every case knowledge should precede practice; and the

liberal arts are best learned by first learning their correlative sciences. (P.)

1 " A process of instruction which consists in placing beside the elements

of human speech thirty-three onomatopoetic gestures, which recall to the

sight the same ideas that the sounds and the articulations of the voice recall

to the ear." — Grossklin. (P.)

136 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

and of the present life of men. " The child," he says, " shall

learn only what is to be useful to him in this life or in the

other." Finally, he does not allow himself to be absorbed in

the minute details of school management. He has higher

views, — he is working for the regeneration of humanit}'.

Like Leibnitz, he would freely say: "Give me for a few

years the direction of education, and I agree to transform the

world ! "

[147. Analytical Summary. — 1. Decisive changes in

human opinion, political, religious, or scientific, involve cor-

responding changes in the purposes and methods of educa-

tion.

2. The Reformation was a breaking with authority in mat-

ters of religion, as the Baconian philosophy was a breaking

with authority in matters of science ; and their joint effect on

education was to subject matters of opinion, belief, and

knowledge to the individual reason, experience, and observa-

tion.

3. In holding each human being responsible for his own

salvation, the Reformation made it necessary for every one

to read, and the logical consequence of this was to make

instruction universal ; and as schools were multiplied, the

number of teachers must be increased, and their grade of

competence raised.

4. The conception that ignorance is an evil, 'and a constant

menace to spiritual and temporal safety, led to the idea of

compulsory school-attendance.

5. In the recoil from the intuitions of the intellect sanc-

tioned by Socrates, to the intuitions of the senses sanctioned

by Bacon, education passed from an extreme dependence on

reflection and reason, to an extreme dependence on sense and

observation ; so that inference has been thrown into dis-

PROTESTANTISM AND PKDI A i:V INSTRUCTION. lo7

credit, and the verdict of the senses has been made the test

of knowledge.

6. In adapting the conception of universal education to

the social conditions of his time, Comenius was led to a gra-

dation of schools that underlies all modern systems of public

instruction.]

CHAPTER VII.

THE TEACHING CONGREGATIONS. — JESUITS AND

JANSENISTS.

the teaching congregations ; jesuits and jansenists ; founda-

tion of the society of jesus (1540) ; different judgments

on the. educational merits of the jesuits; authorities to

consult; primary instruction neglected; classical studies;

latin and the humanities j neglect of history, of philoso-

phy, and of the sciences in general j discipline; emula-

tion encouraged ; official disciplinarian ; general spirit

of the pedagogy of the jesuits; the oratorians j the

little schools; study, of the french language j new system

of spelling; THE MASTERS and the BOOKS OF port royal;

DISCIPLINE IN PERSONAL REFLECTION; GENERAL SPIRIT OF THE

INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION AT PORT ROYAL ; NICOLE ; MORAL

PESSIMISM J EFFECTS ON DISCIPLINE ; FAULTS IN THE DISCIPLINE

OF PORT ROYAL; GENERAL JUDGMENT ON PORT ROYAL; ANA-

LYTICAL SUMMARY.

148. The Teaching Congregations. 1 — Up to the French

Revolution, up to the day when the conception of a public

and national education was embodied in the legislative acts

1 Religious congregations, as known in France, are associations of per-

sons who, consecrating themselves to the service of God, make a vow to

live in common under the same rule. Many of these congregations devote

themselves to the work of teaching, and these are of two classes, the

authorized and the unauthorized. For example, the "Brethren of the

Christian Schools," founded by La Salle, is an authorized, and the " Society

of Jesus" an unauthorized, congregation. From statistics published in

1878, it appears that there were then in France, 24 congregations of men

authorized to teach, and controlling 3096 establishments; and 528 similar

congregations of women, controlling 16,478 establishments. At the same

, time there were 85 unauthorized congregations of men, and 260 unauthorized

congregations of women, devoted to teaching. (P.)

THE TEACHING CONGREGATIONS. 139

of our assembled rulers, education remained almost exclu-

sively an affair of the Church. The universities themselves

were dependent in part on religious authority. But especially

the great congregations assumed a monopoly of the work of

teaching:, the direction and control of which the State had

not yet claimed for her right.

Primary instruction, it is true, scarcely entered at first into

the settled plans of the religious orders. The only exception

to this statement that can properly be made, is the congrega-

tion of the Christian Doctrine, which a humble priest, Caesar

de Bus, founded at Avignon iu 1592, the avowed purpose of

which was the religious education of the children of the com-

pany.' But, on the other hand, secondary instruction pro-

voked the greatest educational event of the sixteenth century,

the foundiug of the company of Jesus, and this movement

was continued and extended in the seventeenth century,

either in the colleges of the Jesuits, ever growing in number,

or in other rival congregations.

149. Jesuits and Jansenists. — Among the religious

orders that have consecrated their efforts to the work of

teaching, the first place must be assigned to the Jesuits and

the Jansenists. Different in their statutes, their organiza-

tion, and their destinies, these two congregations are still

more different in their spirit. They represent, in fact, two

opposite, and, as it were, contrary phases of human nature

and of the Christian spirit. For the Jesuits, education is

reduced to a superficial culture of the brilliant faculties of

the intelligence ; while the Jansenists, on the contrary, aspire

to develop the solid faculties, the judgment, and the reason.

1 The congregation of the Doctrinaries founded at a later period estab-

lishments of secondary instruction. Maine de Biran, Laromiguiere, and

Lakanal were pupils of the Doctrinaries.

140 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

In the colleges of the Jesuits, rhetoric is held in honor ;

while in the Little Schools of Port Royal, it is rather logic

and the exercise of thought. The shrewd disciples of Loyola

adapt themselves to the times, and are full of compassion for

human weakness ; the solitaries of Port Royal are exacting

of others and of themselves. In their suppleness and cheer-

ful optimism, the Jesuits are almost the Epicureans of Chris-

tianity ; with their austere and somewhat sombre doctrine,

the Jansenists would rather be the Stoics. The Jesuits and

the Jansenists, those great rivals of the seventeenth century,

are still face to face as enemies at the present moment.

While the inspiration of the Jesuits tries to maintain the old

worn-out exercises, like Latin verse, and the abuse of the

memory, the spirit of the Jansenists animates and inspires

the reformers, who, in the teaching of the classics, break

with tradition and routine, to substitute for exercises aimed

at elegance, and for a superficial instruction, studies of a

greater solidity and an education that is more complete.

The merit of institutions ought not always to be measured

by their apparent success. The colleges of the Jesuits, dur-

ing three centuries, have had a countless number of pupils ;

the Little Schools of Port Royal did not live twenty years,

and during their short existence they enrolled at most only

some hundreds of pupils. And yet the methods of the

Jansenists have survived the ruin of their colleges and the

dispersion of the teachers who had applied them. Although

the Jesuits have not ceased to rule in appearance, it is the

Jansenists who triumph in reality, and who to-day control

the secondary instruction of France.

150. Foundation of the Society of Jesus. — In organiz-

ing the Society of Jesus, Ignatius Loyola, that compound of

the mystic and the man of the world, purposed to establish,

THE TEACHING CONGREGATIONS. 141

not an order devoted to monastic contemplation, but a real

fighting corps, a Catholic army, whose double purpose was to

conquer new provinces to the faith through missions, and to

preserve the old through the control of education. Solemnly

consecrated by the Pope Paul III., in 1540, the congregation

had a rapid growth. As early as the middle of the sixteenth

century, it had several colleges in France, particularly those

of Billom, Mauriac, Rodez, Tournon, and Pamiers. In 1561