Loyola and Montaigne. Port Royal.

diplomate; don't match your skill against theirs. You cannot chat without coming out of your shell, so to speak. Instead of this, you must puzzle them by your reserve, and drive them to this admission: 'We don't know what to make of our new master.'

"Do I advise you then to be on the defensive throughout the whole year and like a stranger among your pupils? No! a thousand times, No! It is just to make their relations with you simple, confiding, I might say cordial, without the least danger to your authority, that I endeavour to raise this authority at first beyond the reach of assault."La Discipline, chap. v, pp. 31 ff.

In this book we see the best side of the Jesuits. They believe in their "mission," and this belief throws light on many things. Those who hate the Jesuits have often extolled the wisdom of Montaigne, when he says: "We have not to train up a soul, nor yet a body, but a man; and we cannot divide him." Can they see no wisdom in this? "Let your mind be filled with the thought that both soul and body have been created by the Hand of God: we must account to Him for these two parts of our being; and we are not required to weaken one of them out of love for the Creator. We should love the body in the same degree wrote in 1548 to Francis But if we wish to see the

that He could love it." This is what Loyola

Borgia (Compayré, Doctrines, &c., vol. j, 179). other side of the Jesuit character, we have only to look at the Jesuit as a controversialist. We sometimes see children hiding things and then having a pretence hunt for them. The Jesuits are no children, but in arguing they pretend to be searching for conclusions which are settled before arguments are thought of. See, e.g., the attack on the Port Royalists in Les Jésuites Instituteurs, par le P. Ch. Daniel, 1880, in which the Jesuit sets himself to maintain this thesis: "D'une source aussi profondément infectée du poison de l'hérésie, il ne pouvait sortir rien d'absolument bon" (p. 123).. One good point he certainly makes, and in my judgment one only, in comparing the Port Royalist schools with the schools of Jesuits. Methods which answer with very small numbers may not do with large numbers: "You might as well try to extend your gardening operations to agriculture" (p. 102).

V.

RABELAIS.

(1483-1553.)

1. To great geniuses it is given to think themselves in a measure free from the ordinary notions of their time and often to anticipate the discoveries of a future age. In all literature there is perhaps hardly a more striking instance of this "detached" thinking than we find in Rabelais' account of the education of Gargantua.

§ 2. We see in Rabelais an enthusiasm for learning and a tendency to verbal realism; that is, he turned to the old writers for instruction about things. So far he was a child of the Renascence. But in other respects he advanced far beyond it.

§ 3. After a scornful account of the ordinary school books and methods by which Gargantua "though he udied hard, did nevertheless profit nothing, but only grew thereby foolish, simple, dolted, and blockish," Rabelais decides that "it were better for him to learn nothing at all than to be taught suchlike books under suchlike schoolmasters." All this old lumber must be swept away, and in two years a youth may acquire a better judgment, a better

Rabelais' ideal. A new start.

manner, and more command of language than could ever have been obtained by the old method.

We are then introduced to the model pupil. The end of education has been declared to be sapiens et eloquen: pietas; and we find that though Rabelais might have substituted knowledge for piety, he did care for piety, and valued very highly both wisdom and eloquence. The eloquent Roman was the ideal of the Renascence, and Rabelais' model pupil expresses himself "with gestures so proper, pronunciation so distinct, a voice so eloquent, language so well turned and in such good Latin that he seemed rather a Gracchus, a Cicero, an Æmilius of the time past than a youth of the present age."

4. So a Renascence tutor is appointed for Gargantua and administers to him a potion that makes him forget all he has ever learned. He then puts him through a very different course. Like all wise instructors he first endeavours to secure the will of the pupil. He allows Gargantua to go the accustomed road till he can convince him it is the wrong one. This seems to me a remarkable proof of wisdom. How often does the "new master" break abruptly with the past, and raise the opposition of the pupil by dispraise of all he has already done! By degrees Ponocrates, the model tutor, inspired in his pupil a great desire for improvement. This he did by bringing him into the society of learned men, who filled him with ambition to be like them. Thereupon Gargantua "put himself into such a train of study that he lost not any hour in the day, but employed all his time in learning and honest knowledge." The day was to begin at 4 a.m., with reading of "some chapter of the Holy Scripture, and oftentimes he gave himself to revere, adore, pray, and send up his supplications

Religion. Study of Things.

to that good God, whose word did show His majesty and marvellous judgments." This is the only hint we get in this part of the book on the subject of religious or moral education: the training is directed to the intellect and the body.

§ 5. The remarkable feature in Rabelais' curriculum is this, that it is concerned mainly with things. Of the Seven Liberal Arts of the Middle Ages, the first three were purely formal: grammar, logic, rhetoric; while the following course : arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, were not. The effect of the Renascence was to cause increasing neglect of the Quadrivium, but Rabelais cares for the Quadrivium only; Gargantua studies arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, and the Trivium is not mentioned. Great use is made of books and Gargantua learned them by heart; but all that he learned he at once "applied to practical cases concerning the estate of man." It was the substance of the reading, not the form, that was thought of. At dinner "if they thought good they continued reading or began to discourse merrily together; speaking first of the virtue, propriety, efficacy, and nature of all that was served in at that table; of bread, of wine, of water, of salt, of flesh, fish, fruits, herbs, roots, and of their dressing. By means whereof he learned in a little time all the passages that on these subjects are to be found in Pliny, Athenæus, &c. Whilst they talked of these things, many times to be more certain they caused the very books to be brought to the table; and so well and perfectly did he in his memory retain the things above said, that in that time there was not a physician tha. knew half so much as he did." Again, out of doors he was to observe trees and plants, and " compare them with what is written of them in the books of the ancients, such as Theo

G

Anschauung." Hand-work. Books and Life.

phrastus, Dioscorides, &c." Here again, actual realism was to be joined with verbal realism, for Gargantua was to carry home with him great handfuls for herborising. Rabelais even recommends studying the face of the heavens at night, and then observing the change that has taken place at 4 in the morning. So he seems to have been the first writer on education (and the first by a long interval), who would teach about things by observing the things themselves. It was this Anschauungs-prinzip-use of sense-impressionsthat Pestalozzi extended and claimed as his invention two centuries and a half later. Rabelais also gives a hint of the use of hand-work as well as head-work. Gargantua and his fellows "did recreate themselves in bottling hay, in cleaving and sawing wood, and in threshing sheaves of corn in the barn. They also studied the art of painting or carving." The course was further connected with life by visits to the various handicraftsmen, in whose workshops "they did learn and consider the industry and invention of the trader."

Thus, even in the time of the Renascence, Rabelais saw that the life of the intellect might be nourished by many things besides books. But books were still kept in the highest place. Even on a holiday, which occurred on some fine and clear day once a month, "though spent without books or lecture, yet was the day not without profit; for in the meadows they repeated certain pleasant verses of Virgil's Agriculture, of Hesiod, of Politian's Husbandry." They also turned Latin epigrams into French rondeaux.

This course of study, "although at first it seemed difficult, yet soon became so sweet, so easy, and so delightful, that it seemed rather the recreation of a king than the study of a scholar."