An address before the Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association, Brooklyn,

New York, February 18, 1892

THE PLACE OF COMENIUS IN THE

HISTORY OF EDUCATION

Travellers in distant lands describe rivers which are seemingly absorbed by the sandy desert. They disappear and leave little or no trace behind them. After a time, perhaps many miles away, the stream reappears. It gathers force and volume with going, and lends its fertilizing power to the surrounding country. Even when hidden to view, it has not ceased to exist. Though the arid wastes have concealed its course, its effect has been felt beneath the surface; and here and there is a green oasis to mark its silent path.

Human history is rich in analogies to this Comenius natural phenomenon, and in Comenius the history of education furnishes its example. In life he was persecuted for his religious convictions and sought after for his educational ideas. In death, he was neglected and forgotten by friends and foes alike. It could be said of him as the Emperor Julian said of the Epicureans, he was so completely stamped out that even his books were scarce. But the great

State of Europe in 1592

educational revival of our century, and particularly of our generation, has shed the bright light of scholarly investigation into all the dark places, and to-day at the three hundredth anniversary of his birth the fine old Moravian bishop is being honored wherever teachers gather together and wherever education is the theme. We have found in Comenius the source and the forecasting of much that inspires and directs our new education.

It is difficult to project oneself back into a time when our present environment—social, political, material was in its infancy and when modern invention had annihilated neither time nor space. It is still more difficult to give due credit to one who at such a time saw visions and dreamed dreams that we have since realized to the full. What is commonplace today, was genius three hundred years ago.

America was one hundred years old when Comenius was born, but the wilderness of the New World was unbroken. Neither at Jamestown nor at Plymouth had a permanent settlement been established. The Spanish Armada had just been defeated, and the future of Great Britain made secure. Shakspere, Spenser, Jonson, and Hooker were making Elizabethan literature. Francis Bacon was growing in

power and reputation, but the climax of his career was yet to come. Copernicus had done his work; but Galileo, Kepler, and Harvey were still young men. Montaigne was dying, and Giordano Bruno was soon to be led to the stake. Luther had finished his fight, and the shock of the contest was felt in every corner of Europe. The universities were growing in numbers and influence; but Descartes and Newton, with the secrets of modern philosophy and modern science locked in their breasts, were yet unborn. It was an age of growth, of development, of rapid progress; but what we know as modern ideas and institutions only existed in their beginnings. The education of the people, true to its conservative traditions, was still shackled. Sturm, the typical schoolmaster of partisan humanism, had endeavored to escape the unsatisfactory present by anchoring the school to the newly found past. Rabelais and Montaigne had scoffed and ridiculed in vain. Something more systematic and constructive than mere literary criticism of the extravagances of humanism was necessary if education was to be in touch with the time. The impetus to this constructive work, and many far-reaching suggestions concerning it, were given by Comenius.

Educational aim of Comenius

His teachers

up.

His own education was belated and deficient. Before it was concluded his reflective spirit was aroused, and Comenius conceived the idea of devoting his life to making the road to learning easier to travel for those who were to come after him. This philanthropic enthusiasm was natural to him and was fostered by the religious atmosphere in which he was born and brought It grew with and became the ruling years passion of his life. At the close of his work he could say with deepest feeling: "I can affirm from the bottom of my heart that these forty years my aim has been simple and unpretending, indifferent whether I teach or be taught, admonish or be admonished, willing to act the part of a teacher of teachers, if in anything it may be permitted me to do so, and a disciple of disciples where progress may be possible."

The intellectual development of Comenius bears traces, both in its character and its direction, of the influence of five men. These are the Holstein educational reformer, Ratich or Ratke; the Irish Jesuit, Bateus; the Italian Dominican, Campanella; the Spaniard, Vives, the friend of Erasmus; the Englishman, Francis Bacon. From Ratich he learned something of the way in which language-teaching, the