RATICH AT KÖTHEN.

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and, in 1619, Prince Lewis of Anhalt-Köthen, with Prince Ernest of Weimar, resolved that the great discovery should not be lost to the world for want of a fair trial: so Ratich was established at Köthen, and all his demands were complied with. A printingpress was set up for him, with Eastern as well as European types. A body of teachers (bound over to secrecy) came to receive his instructions, and then carried them out, under his directions, in a school of 230 boys and 200 girls, which the Prince got together for him. But everything was soon in disorder. Instead of introducing the uniform religion, he offended the Calvinistic Kötheners by his uncompromising Lutheranism. And his success was by no means such as to defy hostile criticism. His enemies soon declared the whole scheme a failure, and naturally went on to denounce its author as an impostor. The Prince, exasperated by the utter break-down of his expectations, revenged himself on Ratich by throwing him into prison, and after a confinement of some months dismissed him with a public declaration that he had promised what he was unable to perform.

For more than twenty years after this, Ratich continued to trumpet his system; but in the din of the Thirty Years' War he did not receive much attention. He died in 1635.

Although Ratich's pretensions were manifestly absurd, and his binding over his pupils to secrecy makes us suspect him of being a charlatan, he really seems to have been the first to propound many of those principles which I have mentioned as the com

mon property of the Innovators. Although he professed to teach a foreign language in six months, he gave extreme prominence to the study of the mothertongue. The children at Köthen had to go through three classes before they began any other language. His maxims are these: 1. Everything after the order and course of Nature.' 2. One thing at a time.' 3. 'One thing again and again repeated.' 4. 'Nothing shall be learnt by heart.' In learning by heart, he says, the attention is fixed on the words, not on the ideas; but if a thing is thoroughly grasped by the understanding, the memory retains it without further trouble. 5. Uniformity in all things.' Everything was to be taught in the same way. Grammars of different languages were to be constructed on the same plan, and were to differ only in those parts where the idioms of the languages differed.* 6. 'Knowledge of the thing itself must be given before that which refers to the thing.' 'Accidens rei priusquam rem ipsam quærere prorsus absonum et absurdum esse videtur. .. Ne modus rei ante rem.' You do not give the properties of the square or circle before the pupil knows what square and circle are, says Ratich; why, then, should you give rules about patronymics, e.g., before the pupil knows anything of patronymics, or, indeed, of the simplest facts of the language? The use of rules is to confirm previous knowledge, and not to give knowledge.†

*This suggestion about grammars seems reasonable; but so little has it been attended to, that when children learn in this country both English and Latin grammar, the very nomenclature differs, as if on purpose to bewilder them.

The ordinary teaching of almost every subject offers illustrations of

RATICH'S MAXIMS.

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7. Everything by experiment and analysis.' Per inductionem et experimentum omnia. Nothing was to be received on authority. Indeed, Ratich even adopted the motto 'Vetustas cessit, ratio vicit,' as if the opposite to ratio was vetustas. 8. Everything without coercion.' The human understanding, he says, is so formed that it best retains what it finds pleasure in receiving. The rod should be used to correct offences against morals only. Ratich laid great stress on the maintenance of a good feeling the neglect of this principle. Take e. g. the way in which children are usually taught to read. First, they have to say the alphabet-a very easy task as it seems to us, but if we met with a strange word of twenty-six syllables, and that not a compound word, but one of which every syllable was new to us, we might have some difficulty in remembering it. And yet such a word would be to us what the alphabet is to a child. When he can perform this feat, he is next required to learn the symbols of sounds, and to learn the names of these symbols. Some of these names bring the child in contact with the sound itself, but most are simply conventional. What notion does the child get of the aspirate from the name of the letter h? Having learnt twenty-six names and twenty-six symbols, and connected them together, the child finally comes to the sounds of which the names and symbols are the accidents. the teacher, these sounds cannot be pronounced alone.' and they should therefore be first brought to the child's notice as they really exist, and as the child is already familiar with them, i. e., in connection. The child knows words. Teach him the symbols of those words. By analysing these, he may learn the symbols of the component syllables, and finally of the component sounds. He will then have no difficulty in learning the names of the letters, as he knows the letters themselves. This was Jacotot's method.

But,' objects Certainly not,

* The reader will find that the unanimity of the writers on education in advocating this principle is almost as great as that of schoolmasters in neglecting it. The oldest and perhaps the most striking testimony I have met with on this point is the passage from 7th book of Plato's Republic, quoted by Ascham: οὐδὲν μάθημα μετὰ δουλείας τὸν ἐλεύθερον χρὴ μανθάνειν· οἱ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ σώματος πόνοι βίᾳ πονούμενοι χεῖρον οὐδὲν τὸ σῶμα ἀπεργάζονται· ψυχῇ δὲ βίαιον οὐδὲν ἔμμονον μάθημα . μὴ τοίνυν βίᾳ, ὦ ἄριστε, τοὺς παῖδας ἐν τοῖς μαθήμασιν, ἀλλὰ παίζοντας τρέφε.

...

between the teacher and the taught, and, lest this should be endangered by necessary discipline, he would hand over the care of discipline to a separate officer, called the Scholarch.

When we examine Ratich's method of teaching, we shall find that here, too, he deserves to be considered the Coryphæus of the Innovators. The teacher

of the lowest class at Köthen had to talk with the children, and to take pains with their pronunciation. When they knew their letters, the teacher read the book of Genesis through to them, each chapter twice over, requiring the children to follow with eye and finger. Then the teacher began the chapter again, and read about four lines only, which the children read after him. When the book had been worked over in this way, the children were required to read it through without assistance. Reading once secured, the master proceeded to grammar. He explained, say, what a substantive was, and then showed instances in Genesis, and next required the children to point out others. In this way grammar was verified throughout from Genesis, and the pupils were exercised in declining and conjugating words taken from the book.

When they advanced to the study of Latin, they were given a translation of a play of Terence, and worked over it several times before they were shown the Latin. The master then translated the play to them, each half hour's work twice over. At the next reading, the master translated the first halfhour, and the boys translated the same piece the second. Having thus got through the play, they began

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again, and only the boys translated. After this there was a course of grammar, which was applied to the Terence, as the grammar of the mother-tongue had been to Genesis. Finally, the pupils were put through a course of exercises, in which they had to turn into Latin sentences imitated from the Terence, and differing from the original only in the number or person used.

Raumer gives other particulars, and quotes largely from the almost unreadable account of Kromayer, one of Ratich's followers, in order that we may have, as he says, a notion of the tediousness of the method. No doubt anyone who has followed me hitherto, will consider that this point has been brought out already with sufficient distinctness.

When we compare Ratich's method with that of Ascham, we find that they have much in common. Ratich began the study of a language with one book, which he worked over with the pupil a great many times. Ascham did the same. Each lecture, he says, would, according to his plan, be gone over a dozen times at the least. Both construed to the pupil, instead of requiring him to make out the sense for himself. Both taught grammar, not independently, but in connection with the model book. So far as the two methods differed, I have no hesitation in pronouncing Ascham's the better. It gave the pupil more to do, and contained the very important element, writing. By this means there was a chance of the interest of the pupil surviving the constant repetition; but Ratich's pupils must have been bored to death. His plan of making them familiar with the translation first, was subsequently advocated by