movements and ideas back to their sources, he finds that a surprisingly large number of them were absorbed from the progressive tendencies of the time and formulated for the school by Comenius. The elementary school course must be shortened and enriched, we say; the pupil is consuming his life in preparing for life, says Comenius. Rote-learning and mere memory-training are useless, we hear; my fundamental principle is that the understanding and the tongue should advance in parallel lines always, says Comenius. Not enough time and care are devoted to the teaching of English, it is said; instruction in the mother tongue must lie at the basis of all else, says Comenius. The list might be continued indefinitely. The infant school or kindergarten, female education, the incorporation of history and geography in the curriculum, the value of drawing and manual training, the fundamental importance of sense-training, the physical and the ethical elements in education, and finally that education is for all and not for a favored few only-were all articles in the creed of Comenius. Yet many of them are far from universally adopted to-day. Surely this man was a prophet!

The robust and practical character of the

proposals of Comenius is most apparent when Comenius they are contrasted with the educational doc- and Locke trines of those who have come after him, particularly Locke, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel. Frail as the psychology of Comenius was, it was truer than that of Locke. He knew that the human mind was an organism, an activity, a seed with wonderful potency of growth and development, and not a mere sheet of wax, as the Englishman taught, on whose passive surface the environment merely leaves certain impressions or traces. Locke's thought was of the education of the gentleman; Comenius proclaimed that education was for the race. The single point in which Locke corrected Comenius was in exalting character rather than knowledge as the chief aim in education. Of Rousseau one may say with Mr. Quick: Rousseau "His writings and the results produced by them are among the strangest things in history; and especially in matters of education it is more than doubtful if the wise man of the world Montaigne, the Christian philanthropist Comenius, or that 'slave of truth and reason' Locke, had half as much influence as this depraved serving-man." Rousseau's enthusiasm took the form of theory run mad, and the practical impossibility of his educational plans was

Pestalozzi

only exceeded by their philosophical unsoundness. Comenius had been himself a teacher and an organizer of schools. He knew the practical limitations under which any theory is put when reduced to practise. He asked of the school and the pupil nothing that was impossible. He accepted society as he found it and would teach it to reform itself. Rousseau, on the other hand, was in revolt against the whole social order. He would like to break all its bonds and make of every individual a selfworshipping god.

There is nothing in the history of education so touching as the story of the life of Pestalozzi. His own immortal words, "I lived like a beggar to teach beggars to live like men," only half reveal the story of his unwearied patience, his intense suffering, his self-sacrifices for childhood. His life gave reality to his half-mystical principle that "the essential principle of education is not teaching; it is love." Yet his thought is relatively unimportant. Pestalozzi gave himself to education, but few new principles. His theory of the value of intuition. needs to be carefully supplemented, and his insistence on the fact that education is development, a drawing out and not a putting in, merely repeats the thought on which all of

the work of Comenius was based. Without that principle, which Comenius had made familiar more than a century before, the work of Pestalozzi would have been of little importance in the history of education. Indeed, it would have been philanthropy merely, not education.

Nor does it detract from the estimate to Froebel be put upon Froebel's teachings to say that in almost every important particular they were built upon foundations laid by the Moravian bishop. Froebel himself was strangely deficient in masculinity and in practical capacity. His exaggerated and absurd symbolism and his unbalanced religiosity give a certain curious interest and stimulus to his doctrines, but add nothing to their force or their permanent value. His seed-thought is again that of Comeniuseducate by developing the pupil's own activity. Out of it and its corollaries the new education has grown.

and the

in education

The place of Comenius in the history of Comenius education, therefore, is one of commanding modern importance. He introduces and dominates the movement whole modern movement in the field of elementary and secondary education. His relation to our present teaching is similar to that held by Copernicus and Newton toward mod

ern science, and Bacon and Descartes toward modern philosophy. Yet he was not, in a high sense, an original mind. But his spirit was essentially modern and remarkably receptive. He assimilated the ideas that were inspiring the new civilization and applied them to the school. In an age of general ignorance, Comenius had an exaggerated idea of the importance of mere knowledge. This is easily understood and readily excused. Most of his educational tenets, preached with all the fervor of a Peter the Hermit and fought for with all the determination of a Cœur de Lion, have become commonplaces. But such is their value that we do well to pause to honor the memory of him who made them so.