Studying impossible without a will.

needs instruction.

I have met with nothing that seems to me to go more truly to the very foundation of the art of teaching than the following:

"We should never lose sight of this grand principle that STUDY DEPENDS ON THE WILL, and the will does not endure constraint: 'Studium discendi voluntate quæ cogi non potest constat.' (Quint. j, 1, cap. 3.)* We can, to be sure, put constraint on the body and make a pupil, however unwilling, stick to his desk, can double his toil by punishment, compel

* Rollin somewhat extends Quintilian's statement: "The desire of learning rests in the will which you cannot force." About attempts to coerce the will in the absence of interest, I may quote a passage from a lecture of mine at Birmingham in 1884, when I did not know that I had behind me such high authorities as Quintilian and Rollin : "I should divide the powers of the mind that may be cultivated in the school-room into two classes: in the first I should put all the higher powers-grasp of meaning, perception of analogy, observation, reflection, imagination, intellectual memory; in the other class is one power only, and that is a kind of memory that depends on the association of sounds. How is it then that in most school-rooms far more time is spent in cultivating this last and least-valuable power than all the rest put together? The explanation is easy. All the higher powers can be exercised only when the pupils are interested, or, as Mr. Thring puts it, 'care for what they are about.' The memory that depends on associating sounds is independent of interest and can be secured by simple repetition. Now it is very hard to awaken interest, and still harder to maintain it. That magician's wand, the cane, with which the schoolmasters of olden time worked such wonders, is powerless here or powerful only in the negative direction; and so is every form of punishment. You may tell a boy-'If you can't say your lesson you shall stay in and write it out half-a-dozen times!' and the threat may have effect; but no 'instans tyrannus' from Orbilius downwards has ever thought of saying, 'If you don't take an interest in your work, I'll keep you in till you do!' So teachers very naturally prefer the kind of teaching in which they can make sure of success.

Against making beginnings bitter.

him to finish a task imposed upon him, and with this object we can deprive him of play and recreation. But is this work of the galley-slave studying? And what remains to the pupil from this kind of study but a hatred of books, of learning, and of masters, often till the end of his days? It is then the will that we must draw on our side, and this we must do by gentleness, by friendliness, by persuasion, and above all by the allurement of pleasure." (Traité, 8th Bk. Du Gouvernement des Classes, 1r Partie, Art. x.)

§ 41. The passage I have quoted is from the Article "on giving a taste for study (rendre l'étude aimable);" and if some masters do not agree that this is "one of the most important points concerning education," they will not deny that "it is at the same time one of the most difficult." As Rollin truly says, "among a very great number of masters who in other respects are highly meritorious there will be found very few who manage to get their pupils to like their work."

§ 42. One of the great causes of the disinclination for school work is to be found according to Rollin and Quintilian, in the repulsive form in which children first become acquainted with the elements of learning. "In this matter success depends very much on first impressions; and the main effort of the masters who teach the first rudiments should be so to do this, that the child who cannot as yet love study should at least not get an aversion for it from that time forward, for fear lest the bitter taste once acquired should still be in his mouth when he grows older."* (Begin, of Art. x, as above.)

* Here as usual Rollin uses Quintilian without directly quoting him. He gives in a note the passage he had in his mind. "Id imprimis

Port-Royal advance. Books on P.-R.

§ 43. In this matter Rollin was more truly the disciple of the Port-Royalists than of Quintilian. They it was who protested against the dismal "grind" of learning to read first in an unknown tongue, and of studying the rules of Latin in Latin with no knowledge of Latin, a course which professed to lead, as Sainte-Beuve puts it, "to the unknown through the unintelligible." They directed their highlytrained intellects to the teaching of the elements, and succeeded in proving that the ordinary difficulties were due not to the dulness of the learners, but to the stupidity of the masters. They showed how much might be done to remove these difficulties by following not routine but the dictates of thought, and study and love of the little ones.

*

There is an excellent though condensed account of the Port-Royalists under "Jansenists" in Sonnenschein's Cyclopædia of Education. In vol. ij, of Charles Beard's Port-Royal, (2 vols., 1861) there is a chapter on the Little Schools. The most pleasing account I have seen in English of the Port-Royalists (without reference to education) is in Sir Jas. Stephen's Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography. In French the great work on the subject is Sainte-Beuve's Port-Royal, 5 vols. (71 ed., 6 vols.) The account of the Schools is in 4th bk., in vol. iij, of 1st ed. Very useful for studying the pedagogy of Port-Royal are L'Education à PortRoyal by Félix Cadet (Hachette, 1887) and Les Pédagogues de PortRoyal, by I. Carré (Delagrave, 1887). These last give extracts from the main writings on education by Arnauld, Nicole, Lancelot, Coustel, &c. The article, Port-Royal, in Buisson's D., is the "Introduction" to Carré's book. A 3-vol. ed. of Rollin's Traité was published (Paris, Didot) in 1872. The more interesting parts of this book are contained

cavere oportebit, ne studia qui amare nondum potest oderit; et amari. tudinem semel præceptam etiam ultra rudes annos reformidet. (Quint., lib. j, cap. I.)"

Rollin, &c.

in F. Cadet's Rollin: Traité des Etudes (Delagrave, 1882). Rollin's work was at one time well-known in the English trans., and copies of it are often to be found "second-hand." The best part comes last; which may account for the neglect into which the book has fallen. The accounts of Port-Royal and of Rollin in G. Compayré's Histoire Critique are very good parts of a very good book. Vérin's Etude sur Lancelot I have not seen, and it is only too probable that I have not given to Lancelot the attention due to him.

XII.

SOME ENGLISH WRITERS BEFORE

LOCKE.

§ 1. THE beginning of the 17th century brought with it a change in the main direction of thought and interest. As we have seen, the 16th century adored literature and was thrown back on the remote past. Some of the great scholars like Sturm had indeed visions of literary works to be written, that would rival the old models on which they were fashioned; but whether they hoped or not to bring back the Golden Age all the scholars of the Renascence thought of it as having been. With the change of century, however, a new conception came into men's minds. Might not this worship of the old writers after all be somewhat of a superstition? The languages in which they wrote were beautiful languages, no doubt, but they were ill adapted to express the ideas and wants of the modern world. As for the substance of these old writings, this did not satisfy the cravings of men's minds. It left unsolved all the main problems of existence, and offered for knowledge mere speculations or poetic fancies or polished rhetoric. Man needed to understand his position with regard to God and to Nature; but on both of these topics the classics were either silent or misleading. Revelation had supplied what