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

843. 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.

In

There is an excellent though condensed account of the Port-Royalists: under "Jansenists" in Sonnenschein's Cyclopedia of Education. 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 Port. Royal 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. 1.)"

Rollin, &c.

in F. Cadet's Rollin: Traité des Études (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 Histoir 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

Birth of Realism.

the classics could not give concerning man's relation to God; but nothing had as yet thrown light on his relation to Nature. And yet with his material body and animal life he could not but see how close that relation was, and could not but wish that something about it might be known, not simply guessed or feigned. Hence the demand for real knowledge, that is, a knowledge of the facts of the universe as distinct from the knowledge of what men have thought and said. We have heard of the mathematician who put down Paradise Lost with the remark that it seemed to him a poor book, for it did not prove anything; and it was just in this spirit that the new school of thinkers, the Realists, looked upon the classics. They wanted to know Nature's laws and words which did not convey such knowledge seemed to them of little value.

§ 2. Here was a tremendous revolution from the mode of thought prevalent in the Renascence. No longer was the Golden Age in the past. In science the Golden Age must always be in the future. Scientific men start with what has been discovered and add to it. Every discovery passes into the common stock of knowledge, and becomes the property of everyone who knows it just as much as of the discoverer. Harvey had no more property in the circulation of the blood, Newton and Leibnitz no more property in the Differential Calculus than Columbus in the Continent of America; indeed not so much, for Columbus gained some exclusive rights in America, but Harvey gained none over the blood.

So we see that whereas the literary spirit made the dominant minds reverence the past, the scientific spirit led them to despise the past; and whereas the literary spirit raised the value of words and led to the study of celebrated

Realist Leaders not schoolmasters.

writings, the scientific spirit was totally careless about words and prized only physical truths which were entirely in dependent of words. Again, the literary spirit naturally favoured the principle of authority, for its oracles had already spoken the scientific spirit set aside all authority and accepted nothing that did not of itself satisfy the reason. (Compare Comenius, supra p. 152.)

§ 3. The first great leader in this revolution was an Englishman, Francis Bacon. But the school-room felt his influence only through those who learnt from him; and among educational reformers, the chief advocates of realism have been found on the Continent, e.g., Ratke and Comenius.* But the desire to learn by "things, not words " affected the minds of many English writers on education, and we find this spirit showing itself even in Milton and Locke, and far more clearly in some writers less known to fame.

§ 4. There is a wide distinction in educational writers between those who were schoolmasters and those who were not. Schoolmasters have to come to terms with what exists and to make a livelihood by it. So they are conservatives by position, and rarely get beyond an attempt at showing how that which is now done badly might be done well. Suggestions of radical change usually come from those who never belonged to the class of teachers, or who, not without disgust, have left it.

Among English schoolmasters of the olden times the chief writers I have met with besides Mulcaster are John Brinsley the elder, and Charles Hoole.

* Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Froebel were also in this sense realists, but they held that the educational value of knowledge lay not in itself, but only in so far as it was an instrument for developing the faculties of the mind.