Starting points of the sciences.

"Early fruit is useful for the day, but will not keep; whereas late fruit may be kept all the year. As some natural capacities would fly, as it were, before the sixth, the fifth, or even the fourth year, yet it will be beneficial rather to restrain than permit this; but very much worse to enforce it." "It is safer that the brain be rightly consolidated before it begin to sustain labours: in a little child the whole bregma is scarcely closed and the brain consolidated. within the fifth or sixth year. It is sufficient, therefore, for this age to comprehend spontaneously, imperceptibly and as it were in play, so much as is employed in the domestic circle" (Ib. chap. xi).

§ 40. One disastrous tendency has always shown itself in the schoolroom-the tendency to sever all connection between studies in the schoolroom and life outside. The young pack away their knowledge as it were in water-tight compartments, where it may lie conveniently till the scholastic voyage is over and it can be again unshipped.* Against this tendency many great teachers have striven, and none more vigorously than Comenius. Like Pestalozzi he sought to resolve everything into its simplest elements, and he finds the commencements before the school age. In the School of Infancy he says (speaking of rhetoric), "My aim is to shew, although this is not generally attended to, that the roots of all sciences and arts in every instance

In all

* Comical and at the same time melancholy results follow. elementary school, where the children "took up" geography for the Inspector, I once put some questions about St. Paul at Rome. I asked in what country Rome was, but nobody seemed to have heard of such a place. "It's geography!" said I, and some twenty hands went up directly their owners now answered quite readily, "In Italy."

Beginnings in Geography, History, &c.

arise as early as in the tender age, and that on these foundations it is neither impossible nor difficult for the whole superstructure to be laid; provided always that we act reasonably with a reasonable creature" (viij, 6, p. 46). This principle he applies in his chapter, "How children ought to be accustomed to an active life and perpetual employment" (chap. vij). In the fourth and fifth year their powers are to be drawn out in mechanical or architectural efforts, in drawing and writing, in music, in arithmetic, geometry, and dialectics. For arithmetic in the fourth, fifth, or sixth year, it will be sufficient if they count up to twenty; and they may be taught to play at "odd and even." In geometry they may learn in the fourth year what are lines, what are squares, what are circles; also the usual measures-foot, pint, quart, &c., and soon they should try to measure and weigh for themselves. Similar beginnings are found for other sciences such as physics, astronomy, geography, history, economics, and politics. "The elements of geography will be during the course of the first year and thenceforward, when children begin to distinguish between their cradles and their mother's bosom" (vj, 6, p. 34). As this geographical knowledge extends, they discover "what a field is, what a mountain, forest, meadow, river" (iv, 9, p. 17). "The beginning of history will be, to be able to remember what was done yesterday, what recently, what a year ago."* (Ib.)

§ 41. In this book Comenius is careful to provide.

"A talent for History may be said to be born with us, as our chief inheritance. In a certain sense all men are historians. Is not every memory written quite full of annals ? Our very speech is curiously historical. Most men, you may observe, speak only to narrate. (Carlyle on History. Miscellanies.)

L

Drawing. Education for all.

children with occupation for "mind and hand” (iv, 10, p. 18). Drawing is to be practised by all. "It matters not," says Comenius, "whether the objects be correctly drawn or otherwise provided that they afford delight to the mind."*

§ 42. We see then that this restless thinker considered the entire course of a child's bringing-up from the cradle to maturity; and we cannot doubt that Raumer is right in saying, "The influence of Comenius on subsequent thinkers and workers in education, especially on the Methodizers, is incalculable." (Gesch. d. P., ij, "Comenius," § 10.)

Before we think of his methods and school books, let us inquire what he did for education that has proved to be on a solid foundation and "not liable to any ruin."

§ 43. He was the first to reach a standpoint which was and perhaps always will be above the heads of "the practical men," and demand education for all. "We design for all who have been born human beings, general instruction to fit them for everything human. They must, therefore, as far as possible be taught together, so that they may mutually draw each other out, enliven and stimulate. Of the 'mother-tongue school' the end and aim will be, that all the youth of both sexes between the sixth and the twelfth or thirteenth years be taught those things which will be useful to them all their life long."t

* South Kensington, which controls the drawing of millions of chil. dren, says precisely the opposite, and prescribes a kind of drawing, which, though it may give manual skill to adults, does not "afford delight" to the mind of children.

+ "Generalem nos intendimus institutionem omnium qui homines nati sunt, ad omnia humana. Vernacula (schola) scopus metaque erit, ut omnis juventus utriusque sexus, intra annum sextum et duodecimum seu decimum tertium, ea addoceatur quorum usus per totam vitam se

Scientific and Religious Agreement.

In these days we often hear controversies between the men of science and the ministers of religion. It is as far beyond my intention as it is beyond my abilities to discuss how far the antithesis between religion and science is a true one; but our subject sometimes forces us to observe that religion and science often bring thinkers by different paths to the same result; e.g., they both refuse to recognise class distinctions and make us see an essential unity underlying superficial variations. In Comenius we have an earnest Christian ininister who was also an enthusiast for science. Moreover he was without social and virtually without national restrictions, and he was thus in a good position for expressing freely and without bias what both his science and his religion taught him. "Not only are the children of the rich and noble to be drawn to the school, but all alike, gentle and simple, rich and poor, boys and girls, in great towns and small, down to the country villages. And for this reason. Every one who is born a human being is born with this intent-chat he should be a human being, that is, a reasonable creature ruling over the other creatures and bearing the likeness of his Maker." (Didactica M. ix, § 1.) This sounds to me nobler than the utterances of Rousseau and the French Revolutionists, not to mention Locke who fell back on considering merely "the gentleman's calling." Even Bishop Butler a century after Comenius hardly takes so firm a ground, though he lays it down that "children

extendat.” I quote this Latin from the excellent article Coménius (by several writers) in Buisson's Dictionnaire. It is a great thing to get an author's exact words. Unfortunately the writer in the Dictionnaire follows custom and does not give the means of verifying the quotation. Comenius in Latin I have never seen except in the British Museum.

Bp. Butler on Educating the Poor.

have as much right to some proper education as to have their lives preserved."*

§ 44. The first man who demanded training for every human being because he or she was a human being must always be thought of with respect and gratitude by all who care either for science or religion. It has taken us 250 years to reach the standpoint of Comenius; but we have reached it, or almost reached it at last, and when we have once got hold of the idea we are not likely to lose it again. The only question is whether we shall not go on and in the end agree with Comenius that the primary school shall be for rich and poor alike. At present the practical men, in England especially, have things all their own way; but their horizon is and must be very limited. They have already had

* In Sermon on Charity Schools, A.D. 1745. The Bishop points out that "training up children is a very different thing from merely teaching them some truths necessary to be known or believed." He oes into the historical aspect of the subject. As since the days of Eizabeth there has been legal provision for the maintenance of the poor, there has been “need also of some particular legal provision in behalf of poor children for their education; this not being included in what we call maintenance." "But," says the Bishop, "it might be necessary that a burden so entirely new as that of a poor-tax was at the time I am speaking of, should be as light as possible. Thus the legal provision for the poor was first settled without any particular consideration of that additional want in the case of children; as it still remains with scarce any alteration in this respect." And remained for nearly a century longer. Great changes naturally followed and will follow from the extension of the franchise; and another century will probably see us with a Folkschool worthy of its importance. By that time we shall no longer be open to the sarcasm of "the foreign friend :" "It is highly instructive to visit English elementary schools, for there you find everything that should be avoided." (M. Braun quoted by Mr. A. Sonnenschein. The Old Code was in force.)