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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.

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 entire.y independent 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.

John Brinsley. Charles Hoole.

§ 5. John Brinsley the elder, a Puritan schoolmaster at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, a brother-in-law of Bishop Hall's, and father of John Brinsley the younger who became a leading Puritan minister and author, was a veritable reformer, but only with reference to methods. His most interesting books are Ludus Literarius or the Grammar Schoole, 1612 (written after 20 years' experience in teaching, as we learn from the Consolation, p. 45), and A Consolation for our Grammar Schooles: or a faithfull and most comfortable incouragement for laying of a sure foundation of all good learning in our schooles and for prosperous building thereupon, 1622. The first of these, when reprinted, as it is sure to be, will always secure for its author the notice and the gratitude of students of the history of our education; for in this book he tells us not only what should be done in the school-room, but also what was done. In a dialogue with the ordinary schoolmaster the reformer draws to light the usual practice, criticizes it, and suggests improvements.

§ 6. In Brinsley we get no hint of realism; but by the middle of the sixteen hundreds we find the realistic spirit is felt even by a schoolmaster, Charles Hoole,* who was a kinsman of Bishop Sanderson, the Casuist, and was master first of the Grammar School at Rotherham, then of a private Grammar School in London, published besides a number of school books, a translation of the Orbis Pictus (date of preface, January, 1658), and also "A New Discovery of the old art of teaching schoole published for the general

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* Henry Barnard (English Pedagogy, second series, p. 192), speaks of Hoole as "one of the pioneer educators of his century." According to Barnard he was born at Wakefield, in 1610, and died in 1666, rector of "Stock Billerica " (perhaps Stock with Billericay), in Essex.

Hoole's Realism.

profit, especially of young Schoolemasters" (date of preface, December, 1659). In these books we find that Hoole succeeded even in the school-room in keeping his mind open. He complains of the neglect of English, and evidently in theory at least went a long way with the realistic reformers "Comenius," he says, "hath proceeded (as Nature itself doth) in an orderly way, first to exercise the senses well by presenting their objects to them, and then to fasten upon the intellect by impressing the first notions of things upon it and linking them one to another by a rational discourse; whereas indeed we generally, missing this way, do teach children as we do parrots to speak they know not what, nay, which is worse, we taking the way of teaching little ones by grammar only, at the first do puzzle their imaginations with. abstractive terms and secondary intentions, which, till they be somewhat acquainted with things, and the words belonging to them in the language which they learn, they cannot apprehend what they mean. And this I guess to be the reason why many greater persons do resolve sometimes not to put a child to school till he be at least eleven or twelve years of age . . You then, that have the care of little children, do not too much trouble their thoughts and clog their memories with bare grammar rudiments, which to them are harsh in getting, and fluid in retaining; because indeed to them they signifie nothing but a meer swimming notion of a general term, which they know not what it meaneth till they comprehend all particulars: but by this [ie, the Orbis P.] or the like subsidiarie inform them first with some knowledge of things and words wherewith to express them; and then their rules of speaking will be better understood and more firmly kept in mind. Else how should a child conceive what a rule meaneth when he neither

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