# The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius/Introduction 1

INTRODUCTION
I
BIOGRAPHICAL
John Amos Comenius (in Bohemian Komensky) was born on the 28th of March 1592, in the village of Nivnitz, near Ungarisch-Brod in Moravia. His father, Martin Komensky, was a miller in fairly prosperous circumstances and belonged to the religious body known as the Moravian Brethren. This community had been organised in 1547; it carried on, with modifications, the traditions of John Hus, and took a position midway between the Utraquists, his followers, and the Roman Catholics. Though the ideas of the Lutherans had not been without a decided influence, the Moravians differed from that body on certain fundamental points, such as the Doctrine of Works, and, at one period, the celibacy of the clergy. Their chief ​characteristic was extreme simplicity, and their great desideratum to lead a pure life, and one as far as possible in accordance with the commands of Scripture, which they interpreted in their most literal sense.
It was in this atmosphere of free Biblical inquiry that Comenius was brought up, and the result of early training can be seen in his habit of appealing to the Scriptures on every possible occasion, and of proving his most technical propositions directly from their pages.
Shortly after his son’s birth, Martin Komensky left Nivnitz and moved to Ungarisch-Brod, where he died in 1602. His wife did not survive him more than a couple of years, and shortly afterwards his two daughters Ludmilla and Susanna died also. Comenius was thus left an orphan at an early age, and his guardians appear to have robbed him of any small fortune that his father had bequeathed. This was not the only manifestation of his evil star. During the two following years, while attending the elementary school at Strasnic, he made the acquaintance of Nicolaus Drabik. It was a strange irony of fate that a wanderer like Comenius, when only eleven years old and in his native land, should commence the intimacy that was to embitter his old age in Amsterdam.
From the point of view of positive instruction this early training was unproductive, and the Latin school at Prerau, to which he was not sent till his sixteenth year, appears to have been even less efficient than the other secondary schools of the age. Comenius however, who, as we shall see, was rather inclined to underestimate the educational activity of contemporary Europe, assures us that his experience was nothing exceptional, and that he was but one of the thousands whose youth was wasted in these “slaughter-houses” of the young. Often did his eyes fill ​with tears when thinking of his wasted childhood, often did he vainly wish that he might live those years over again and employ them more profitably.
Viewed differently, the defects in his early education were the seeds from which sprang the whole of his didactic efforts. Considerably older than his schoolfellows, he was able to criticise the methods in use, and speedily arrived at the conclusion that the lack of progress was due more to the inefficiency of the teachers than to the idleness of their pupils. From this time onwards, full of pity for the sufferings of his fellows, he began to devise new methods of class instruction and better schemes of study. From the vivid memory of the horrors through which he had passed, of the thousand-and-one rules that had to be learned by rote before they were understood, of the monotonous study of grammar, only diversified by the maddening effort to translate Latin authors without the assistance of suitable dictionaries or commentaries, sprang that intense sympathy with beginners which characterises his whole life and gives practical worth to every precept that he enunciated.
In the Latin school he only remained for two years. He had definitely made up his mind to seek ordination as a minister of the Moravian Brethren, and needed a more advanced education than could be obtained in Bohemia. Not that the University of Prague was in any way below the standard of the age, but it was in the hands of the Utraquists, whose attitude towards the “Brethren” was by no means friendly. It was therefore to Herborn in Nassau that Comenius, then eighteen years old, turned his steps. A university had been founded in this town in 1584, and enjoyed a very high. reputation. The range of subjects taught was wide, as, though great prominence was given to Theology, ample provision was made for the “Humanities” as well; and in addition it was possible to learn music and the French and Italian languages.
​It was under the Rectorship of Wolfgang Ficinus that Comenius matriculated in March 1611. Of his residence at the University we unfortunately know very little; but he can scarcely have remained there for two years without coming under the influence of John Henry Alsted, and the similarity of their views and dispositions renders it probable that the two men were brought into very close contact. Although only twenty-six years old, Alsted had already a very considerable reputation, and in point of attainments was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable men of his time. His industry was so great that his contemporaries christened him Sedulitas, an anagram on the Latinised form of his name. As an etymologist he took a high place, as a writer on Didactic he ranks historically with Ratke as the immediate forerunner of Comenius, and his Encyclopædia Scientiarum Omnium, published at Herborn in 1630, proves him to have been a master in every branch of learning. The range of knowledge was limited, and to write with authority de omni scibili was not the impossibility that it now is, but a glance through the pages of this Encyclopædia shows that its author obtained a marvellous grip of every subject that he studied, and had a very unusual power of co-ordinating the mass of erudition that he possessed. Nor did his many-sidedness end here. His Triumphus Biblicus, in which he attempts to lay the foundation of all positive knowledge in the literal interpretation of Scripture, displays an aspect of his character that we do not meet in the Encyclopædia, and gives evidence of a mind imbued with the most intense mysticism.
Of the exact nature of the intercourse between Comenius and Alsted we have no direct information, but, as Alsted was in the habit of maintaining the closest relations with his pupils and is afterwards found in correspondence with Comenius, we may take it for granted ​that the great similarity of the views held by the two men should not be attributed to accident. The only point on which they were at actual variance was the constitution of the elementary or vernacular school. This Alsted would have restricted to the use of girls, and of boys destined for a handicraft, while Comenius insists on the necessity of giving a distinct primary education to those who are afterwards to enter a learned profession. With the exception of this difference of opinion, a large number of the most striking precepts that figure in the Great Didactic might have been taken direct from Alsted’s Encyclopædia. The man who declared that instruction in the mother tongue should precede the study of Latin, who thought that grammar was the least effective instrument in teaching a language, who proclaimed, almost in Baconian language, the doctrine of “Experience,” and who believed in method to such an extent that he drew up time-tables of the most intricate description for a day, a week, a month, and a year, assuredly played the part of a kindly foster-father to the callow educational zeal of the Herborn student.
That Comenius, while at Herborn, devoted much attention to the study of educational method, we know from his own words. Wolfgang’s Ratke’s essay on the Reformation of schools had been authorised and approved by the Universities of Jena and of Giessen in 1612, and a tractate on the new method, probably that by the Giessen professors Helwig and Jung, rapidly found its way into Comenius’ hands. To this he gratefully acknowledges his debt and attributes his efforts to reform the school at Prerau.
From Herborn he proceeded to Heidelberg, where he matriculated in June 1613. Here he appears to have ​devoted some attention to the study of astronomy, as we find him purchasing the original manuscript of one of Copernicus’ works. This, however, is the solitary incident that is known of his residence here.
After a journey through Europe, in the course of which he visited Amsterdam for the first time, he went back to Heidelberg. A short illness followed, possibly the result of exposure on his travels, and in 1614 he returned to Moravia on foot. He was now twenty-two years old, and, as he could not be ordained for two years, undertook the management of the school at Prerau. This was one of the many schools established by the “Unity” for the education of those of their own persuasion, and must have been rather more than an elementary school, as Comenius, who now for the first time came into contact with the practical difficulties of instruction, began to evolve an easier method for teaching Latin. To this he devoted a great deal of attention and produced a small book for beginners, afterwards printed at Prague in 1616, but which has not been preserved. This was not his first literary effort. As early as 1612, while at Herborn, he had begun to collect the materials for a Bohemian dictionary with the twofold object of purifying his native tongue and of mastering it thoroughly. As he was now old enough to commence his ministry in the Moravian Church, he was ordained in April 1616, in company with his old schoolfellow Drabik. The two following years he probably spent at Olmütz.
Of the next few years, as of the whole of the earlier portion of his life, the information to be obtained is fragmentary. In 1618 he was sent to Fulneck, where he acted as pastor to the Moravian community and was at the same time inspector of the school. During the three years that followed he devoted himself entirely to the spiritual and bodily welfare of his flock, sparing no pains to further the prosperity of the town. He even tried to introduce bee-culture, and sent to Hungary for bees, then ​unknown in Fulneck. His married life now began, and in the society of his wife, a Hungarian lady, Comenius spent what were probably his happiest years.
The year in which he entered upon his pastorate at Fulneck is memorable for the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, and from this time onwards the position of the non-Catholic bodies, exposed as they were to the relentless persecution of Pope Paul V. and the Jesuits, was most precarious. Their hopes were finally overthrown by the battle of the White Mountain in November 1620, and by execution of the chief Bohemian Protestants, which followed at Prague in June 1621.
Comenius’ wanderings were now to begin. In 1621 Fulneck was plundered and burned by Spanish troops. On this occasion he lost everything that he possessed, including the greater part of his library and the manuscript of some Didactic works on which he had been engaged, and took refuge, in company with many others of the Brethren, on the estate of Karl von Zerotin. Here he remained for three years, during which time he occupied himself in reading books on education, and wrote besides several religious works in the Czech language. To this period must also be ascribed his metrical translation of the Psalms, a composition of great poetic merit; his Labyrinth of the World, an allegorical description of life, dedicated to Karl von Zerotin; and a map of Moravia that was for a long time the best in existence.
It was doubtless in this literary activity that he sought relief for the sorrow caused him by the death of his wife and his two children, who were carried off in 1622 by an epidemic that was raging through Moravia. He was thus once more left alone in the world.
In 1624, with startling rapidity, if we consider the cir​cumstances and the forlorn condition of the Brethren, he married again. His bride was Maria Dorothea Cyrill, the daughter of John Cyrill, a Moravian pastor and a former senior of the Consistory at Prague. The members of the Unity cannot have been left entirely destitute by the persecution to which they were subjected, as Maria brought her husband a small fortune. The sequel proved that marriage at such a time had been far from prudent. In the same year the order was issued that all non-Catholic preachers and pastors were to leave Bohemia within six weeks, and a few months later another mandate expelled them from Moravia as well. Karl von Zerotin had great influence with Ferdinand II., but the Jesuits were too strong for him. He received a personal injunction to cease harbouring non-Catholics on his estate, and the twenty-four ministers whom he was sheltering had to conceal themselves as best they could in caves and forests.
The Brethren now recognised that all hope of remaining in their fatherland must be relinquished, and in 1625 sent Comenius and two companions to Poland to report on the advisability of their removing thither in a body. On the way the messengers made the acquaintance of Christopher Kotter, a native of Sprottau. Kotter was a prophet, and his visions and the announcements that he had to make concerning the future of the Evangelical Church were full of interest to the Brethren. Comenius, to whom anything of a prophetic nature was always an attraction, gave a proof of his remarkable energy by translating the whole of Kotter’s prophecies into Czech, a task which took him sixteen days. After a short visit to Berlin, where there were a number of Bohemian exiles, he returned to Moravia. During the next two years the Brethren held themselves in readiness to fly at a moment’s notice. The only incident of any interest is the appearance on the scene of a prophetess, Christina Poniatowska. Christina was an hysterical girl, only sixteen years old, and her visions, like those of Kotter, dealt with the speedy restoration of the Evangelic Church, and the cessation of ​the persecutions to which it was being subjected. Needless to say, Comenius displayed as great an interest in her as he had done in Kotter. Already the visionary tendencies, out of which his enemies made such capital in later years, were getting possession of him.
In 1627 a few of the Evangelical Pastors, preparatory to their final departure, took refuge on the estate of George Sadowski at Slaupna, and here Comenius again took up the threads of his didactic efforts. As a slight return for the protection afforded him, John Stadius, one of the pastors, had undertaken the education of Sadowski’s three sons, and asked Comenius, whose interest in the subject was well known, to draw up a few rules for his guidance. The request was gladly complied with, and the return to his former pursuit was accentuated by the following incident.
One summer day Comenius and a few of the other pastors walked over to the castle of Wilcitz to look at the library there. Among other works of interest they found the Didactic of Elias Bodinus, which had recently been brought from Germany. The perusal of this fired Comenius to attempt a work on a similar scale in his own language. True, his Church and the institutions that it supported were falling into ruin before his eyes, but, if he might believe the prophecies of Kotter and of Poniatowska, the day was not distant when the Brethren would be restored to their native land, and then his first task would be the reorganisation of the schools. “With this end in view,” he writes, “I entered on the work with fervour, and completed as much of it as I could while I still remained in my native land.”
His efforts were soon interrupted. In 1628 all who shared the evangelic faith had definitely to leave Bohemia. Comenius, accompanied by his wife, his father-in-law, and the prophetess Poniatowska, set out for Poland, and on the 28th of March reached Lissa, a town in the province of Posen. Here, under the powerful protection of Count ​Raphael of Lissa, he was destined to find a home for the next twelve years, and it is to this period that his chief educational activity belongs. Though to the end of his days he never ceased to devise fresh plans for the easier instruction of the young, most of the works that made his name famous were written before 1641. There were many reasons why these years should be especially fruitful. Now for the first time since his ordination he took to teaching as a means of earning his livelihood, and, as a master of the Gymnasium at Lissa, of which he became Rector in 1636, he had ample means of putting his theories into practice, and of bringing them into harmony with the dust and friction of the class-room. To these years of actual work in a large institution is due much of the practical character of his writings, and the very faults of the Gymnasium (it had to be completely remodelled in 1635, in order to bring it into harmony with his ideas) served to show him more clearly what should be avoided. In addition to this he had far more time to devote to educational theory than at any later period of his life. Though the welfare of the Unity already absorbed a large share of his energy, he had not that weight of responsibility that made him, as its bishop, look on all else as a subsidiary task. His pansophic conceptions, that afterwards took such hold of him, were only in their infancy, and more important than all, his spirit was still unbroken. He still believed that the Evangelical religion would be restored in his native land, and that the happy days of his early ministry would be repeated. He still believed that the prophecies of Kotter and of Poniatowska would be fulfilled, and in his efforts to reform the Gymnasium at Lissa and to write suitable school-books for it, he saw nothing but a preparation for the future reformation of schools in Bohemia, and a means by which the youth of his own country might be brought up with minds well tempered to fight for their country and their Church. He accordingly applied himself to his task with great vigour. The ​Gymnasium at Lissa consisted of four classes, and instruction was given for five hours daily. All the time that remained to him he devoted to the working out of his ideas. The Great Didactic, his Magnum Opus, for which he had already begun to make notes at Slaupna, now began to assume a definite shape, and in order that it might embody the views of those whose opinion was most worth having, he attempted to place himself in communication with Ratke, first ascertaining that he was still alive. But Ratke, who in his characteristics resembled a vendor of quack medicines, returned no answer to Comenius’ letter. Again he wrote adjuring him, by all that was sacred, not to keep him in suspense any longer, but to give him some details of the true method that he was reported to have discovered. Again he waited in vain for an answer, and it was not till three years later that a letter from George Wincler, pastor of Goldbergen in Silesia, explained the silence. The fact was that Ratke made as great a mystery of his method as was possible, and hoped, by judiciously concealing its details and advertising its merits, to sell it for a high price to some prince or noble. Without gold he resolutely refused to speak. “What hopes,” writes Wincler, “did not the pompous eulogy of Ratke’s method by Helwig and Jung arouse? But our friend Ratke preserves his silence, and will continue to do so. Mr. Moser, the chief assistant in our school, actually went to live with him in the hope of finding out the basis of his method, but came away empty-handed.”
As a matter of fact, Comenius was acquainted with many points of the method that was so carefully shrouded, and, though he cannot resist a sneer at the system and its pretensions, never forgets to acknowledge that it was Ratke who first fired him to attempt school-reform.
Getting no answer from Ratke he now addressed a ​letter to John Valentine Andreae, whose works, both religious and educational, he had read with great interest. Andreae, who was then pastor of the church at Calva in the Duchy of Wittemberg, sent a prompt reply, but only to the effect that he was too old to pronounce an opinion on such matters. Greatly disappointed, Comenius wrote again, but, though the answer that he elicited was long and sympathetic, it contained nothing that could help him to put his ideas into shape.
Of greater use were the didactic works of Rhenius, Ritter, and Glaum that now came into his hands. These writers were loud in their complaints of contemporary education, and turned a search-light on the defective arrangements that Comenius saw daily in the Gymnasium. Less stimulating, perhaps, but of more definite assistance, were the writings of Eilhard Lubin and of C. Vogel. Lubin, a friend of Andreae’s, had been elected Professor of Theology at Rostock in 1605, and had brought out a parallel edition of the New Testament in Latin and Greek, to which he had prefixed some hints on the teaching of Latin to boys. Vogel, who was head-master of the Paedagogium at Göttingen, had drawn up a scheme of instruction in Latin in which he had specified the daily task for twelve months. The student was to commence by learning a list of simple words, arranged in alphabetical order with the German meanings attached, and was then to aid his memory by combining these words into sentences. In this way he claimed that a boy of moderate intelligence, by working only two hours daily, could easily learn the whole Latin language in one year. The system was probably in Comenius’ thoughts when he devised the ​Janua Linguarum; the claim has been made with equal assurance by all the inventors of infallible language-methods, from that day to this.
More original, and full of sound common-sense, were the ideas of J. Cecilius Frey, a physician residing in Paris. He had brought out a work on education in 1629, and this must have come into Comenius’ hands shortly after publication. According to Frey, all languages should be learned colloquially, and attention should be given to arithmetic, geography, drawing, and mechanics. In this upholder of “real studies” Comenius must have hailed a kindred spirit.
With these works before him Comenius applied himself to the double task of creating a more comprehensive and philosophically-based scheme of education than had ever before been devised, and of compiling a series of classbooks suited to the various stages of scholars. These books, while carefully adapted to the capacity of the schoolboy, were written in accordance with the philosophic principles set forth in The Great Didactic, and thus to a remarkable degree combined theory and practice. The class-books were written for the practical teacher, the Didactic was intended for the schoolmaster whose interest in his work was not confined to the school-room, and for nobles, statesmen, and philosophers who wished to reform the schools of their country, but found no scheme ready to hand that was both practical and comprehensive.
Comenius’ aims were revolutionary, and his didactic principles were capable of changing by slow degrees the aspect of civilisation, but the philosophic basis on which they rested was that of harmonious development from existing institutions. Children were to learn their lessons in less time and with less trouble. This had been suggested by previous writers. The time thus gained was to be ​devoted to a thorough grounding in morality and religion. This again had been frequently urged, though not so weightily or so systematically. But when we come to the introduction of “real studies,” the rudiments of which are to be taught in the nursery, and when his views on this subject gradually merge into “Pansophia” or “Universal Knowledge,” we feel that a really new element has been introduced. This element, however, contains nothing subversive. Nothing could be further removed from the method of Rousseau. Comenius starts with no fundamental condemnation of society. No brilliant paradoxes fill his pages. His reform is to be a gradual development of what already exists, and, that his suggestions may be practicable and may pave the way for a transition with as little friction as possible, he bases them on the writings of his predecessors. With some of these he was not familiar. As we shall see, in our general view of the educational systems of the age, there were writers of whom he had not heard; but, be that as it may, he had done all in his power to analyse the tendencies actually at work, and his Didactic is an endeavour to embody all that was good in existing schemes, while adding many features that were new.
From the first day of his residence in Lissa, Comenius never ceased to work at his comprehensive treatise The Great Didactic. Written in Czech, and probably completed in 1632, it remained in manuscript till 1849, when it was printed at Prague. A Latin translation, however, with several additional chapters, was published at Amsterdam in 1657, and occupies the first ninety-eight pages of the Opera Didactica Omnia.
Even before his final departure from Bohemia, Comenius had probably sketched out his educational scheme, in which he provides for the education of a child from the very hour of its birth. Six years in what he calls the Mother School, six years in the Vernacular School, and six years in the Latin School enable a young man to proceed to the University at eighteen, having had a training, though necessarily a somewhat superficial one, in every ​subject that possesses educational value. In accordance with this scheme Comenius prepared several guides and class-books for the use of the teachers and pupils in the various classes. The first of these, the Informatorium Skoly Materske, or Informatory of the Mother School, was written in Czech, in which language it was not published till 1858. A German translation was issued at Lissa in 1633 for the Palatine of Belz. This work, which appears in the folio of 1657 as Schola Infantia, or The School of Infancy, was primarily intended for parents, and treats at length some of the points touched on in The Great Didactic, and more particularly in chap. xxviii., Sketch of the Mother School. It is written in the voluminous style characteristic of the author, and the chapters treat of the following subjects:—
1. The greatest care should be taken of children, God’s most precious gift.
2. Why God sends so many children into the world.
3. Children stand in great need of a good education.
4. In what subjects children should be instructed.
5. How their safety and health can be attained.
6. How they can be taught to take an intelligent interest in what they see around them.
7. How they should be habituated to the actualities of life.
8. How they should be taught eloquence and the proper use of language.
9. How they can be brought up in the paths of morality.
10. How they can be imbued with piety.
11. How long they are to be detained in the Mother School.
12. How they are to be prepared for the Public Schools.
No mean scheme this for children under six years of age. Here was a great truth that Comenius was the first to enunciate. Education begins on the mother’s knee. ​The schools for older boys may be as good as possible, but they can never be thoroughly effective unless the children come to them possessed of an elementary grounding in each subject taught, a grounding that can only be given by the patient mother.
In this stage education cannot be organised in any cut-and-dried fashion. What necessary is a suggestive handbook that shall tell parents what is required of them, and how these requirements can be met. It was to meet this need that the Informatory of the Mother School was composed. For the Mother School class-books were unnecessary, as the instruction given was naturally of an informal character. The children who go to the Vernacular School, however, are old enough to be arranged in definite classes, and to meet their wants Comenius wrote six classbooks, one for each class. These books, like the Informatory of the Mother School, were composed with a view to the reorganisation of Evangelist schools in Bohemia. This occasion did not come, and the books were never published. The Czech language, in which they were written, appealed to a very small audience, while the books dealing with the Latin School were of universal interest. Under pressure of other work, therefore, their author never found time to correct them, and no trace remains but their titles translated into Latin and a short description of each given by Comenius himself. The first, intended for boys in their seventh year, is the Violet-bed of the Christian Youth, containing “the pleasantest flowerets of scholastic instruction.”
The second is the Rose-bed of the Christian Youth, containing “nosegays of the most fragrant flowers of knowledge.”
For the third year of attendance a more ambitious work was provided, to be called The Garden of Letters and of Wisdom. This was to embody a pleasantly-written account of “everything necessary to be known in heaven and earth.”
​For the fourth year’s work the Labyrinth of Wisdom was provided. This consisted largely of questions and answers of a subtle description, and was intended to sharpen the intellect. Next followed the Spiritual Balsam-bed of the Christian Youth, in which the use of all sciences and arts is demonstrated, while the series is terminated by the Paradise of the Soul, which comprised an abstract of Scripture History, together with the principal Church hymns and prayers.
It is much to be regretted that this series of books has not been preserved, but the titles enable us to gather an adequate idea of their contents. The scholar enters the vernacular school, having received a grounding in the elements of knowledge. This groundwork is developed in a definite manner by means of regular class instruction, and thus, by the time he reaches his twelfth year, the boy possesses a fair acquaintance with the realities of the world in which he lives. This acquaintance is the more extensive, because his attention has been exclusively devoted to “real studies,” and Latin has been completely deferred to the next stage.
In particular should be noticed the way in which the principle of gradation is applied. Each class-book is suited to the age of the pupils. The very name of the first, The Violet-bed, is intended to attract the child who comes to school for the first time, and is apprehensive that the process of learning will be dull and distasteful, while the course of instruction for the fifth year is but a more! advanced edition of that for the third.
In spite of the practical tendency of the age, a tendency strongly exemplified by Comenius himself, the study of Latin still remained the chief factor in the school curriculum. Nor was this altogether without reason. Apart from its philological value, Latin was the gate through which alone the world of letters could be entered, and the student who could talk and write in the tongue of Cicero possessed a means of communication with kindred spirits throughout the world, unequalled in universality by any ​language of the present day. It is true that Latin no longer tyrannised over the intercourse of the learned to such an extent as in the previous century. The Reformation had ousted Latin from the services of the Reformed Church. In every country the vernacular was beginning to assert itself, and the establishment of the Academia della Crusca at Florence in 1582, and of the Académie Française in 1637, showed that the instinctive movement in this direction was becoming thoroughly self-conscious.
But this modernising breeze had not yet stirred the dust on the school-room benches. Latin was still the chief subject taught, though the high estimation in which it stood was shown more by the time devoted to it than by any successful efforts to teach it rapidly and well. Attempts had been made, and many of them, to render the path of the beginner easier, and it was no longer necessary for him to sit down to the task of finding his way through Terence with no other assistance than that given by an ignorant usher; but none of these attempts had attained any genuine result, and there was still no suitable class-book from the study of which could be obtained a fairly comprehensive vocabulary and a knowledge of the structure of sentences sufficient to enable a boy to attack a classic author on his own account.
To the composition of such a class-book Comenius applied himself in 1628, and the result of his efforts was the publication in 1631 of his Janua Linguarum Reserata, or Seminarium Linguarum et Scientiarum Omnium. This book, as an introduction to the study of Latin, was an immense advance on anything that had yet appeared. Its method of construction, however, was not original, as the idea had already suggested itself to two pedagogues, the one Elias Bodinus, and the other William Bateus, a member of the Jesuit College at Salamanca.
With Bodinus’ scheme Comenius had been familiar since 1627, and from it he doubtless borrowed the essential features of the Janua. Bodinus’ suggestion was as ​follows: seventeen hundred of the most useful words were to be skilfully arranged in sentences of a kind calculated to impress themselves indelibly on the memory of the student, and by a careful perusal of these a comprehensive knowledge of the language was to be obtained before any classic author was attempted. Such a book, says Bodinus, would be of great use, and he expresses a wish that some competent scholar may undertake the task.
Of the existence of the other work Comenius only became aware after the plan of his own Janua had taken a definite shape in his mind. On acquainting his friends with the scheme, one of them told him that such a book, under the title Janua Linguarum, had already been written by some Jesuit priests in Spain. He lost no time in procuring the work, but found that while it proceeded much on the lines proposed by him, its execution was so imperfect as to minimise its educational value. Of this contribution made by Spain towards the scholastic needs of the day, Comenius gives a full account, and the book itself is worthy of notice. Originally conceived by William Bateus, it had been written by him in conjunction with his brother, John Bateus, and an Irishman named Stephen. William Bateus died at Madrid in 1614, but his work survived him. A Prussian nobleman, when travelling in Spain in 1605 in the company of some Englishmen of good birth, had made the acquaintance of Stephen, who displayed to him his new and infallible method of teaching Latin. Struck by the merit of the book, he took a copy with him, and, on the return of the party to England, had it published in 1615 with a French and an English translation attached. Though imperfect, it supplied a manifest demand, and was shortly afterwards republished at Strasburg by Isaac Habrecht with the addition of a German translation. Still finding favour, it was again brought out by Gaspar Scioppius at Milan in 1627 ​in Latin and Italian under the title of Mercurius Bilinguis, and again at Basle in 1636 under the title of Mercurius Quadrilinguis, the latter edition being in Latin, German, Greek, and Hebrew.
The work carried into effect the scheme suggested by Bodinus. All the principal words in Latin were arranged in 1200 sentences. Each word, with the exception of auxiliary verbs and connecting particles, only occurred once, and, by a careful study of the whole, Latin was to be learned in an incredibly short time. As Isaac Habrecht remarked, the book was a kind of Noah's Ark, in which all the important words were grouped together, and the necessity of reading voluminous authors in order to find them was obviated.
The book was so very faulty that its undoubted success points to the very great demand that existed for a practical method of teaching beginners. Many of the most important words were altogether omitted, and others that were included were uncommon and quite unsuited for beginners. No care was taken to use the words in their root-signification, and the sentences themselves, far from possessing any educational value, were so ill-conceived as to make it scarcely credible that the book had been translated into eight languages by 1629.
From this work, therefore, Comenius borrowed nothing but its name, the Gate of Languages, and, indeed, his own attempt showed so much originality that it would be unfair to hint that he was indebted to his predecessors for the chief points in its construction.
The Grammar School, as Comenius found it, was as far removed as possible from the spirit of scientific observation. Boys were set to translate crabbed authors by the help of still more crabbed commentaries, and might easily acquire ​a fair knowledge of Latin without having any acquaintance with the objects to which the Latin words referred. The professed object of Comenius was to write a book for beginners in Latin, but the bent of his mind was too practical, and his love of the “real” too pronounced, to allow him to work out in detail a class-book that could produce nothing but superficial literary knowledge. With Spencer and the modern Realists he believed that for training of any kind—intellectual, moral, or religious—the study of surrounding phenomena was immensely superior to the study of grammars and lexicons. But grammar could not be ousted from the schools, and the study of the classics, that even now takes the giant’s share of the energy devoted to secondary education, was the only subject to which any serious attention was given. A compromise had therefore to be made, and the elements of Latin became the medium through which an accurate knowledge could be obtained of the world and of the function played by the various objects met with in daily life.
The material with which he started was about 8000 of the most common Latin words, which he arranged so as to form 1000 sentences. At the beginning of the book these were short and simple to suit the stumbling efforts of the beginner, gradually becoming complex and involving more difficult constructions towards the end. Each word was used in its root-signification, and, with the exception of particles like et, sed, quia, etc., only occurred once in the whole work. In the formation of the sentences care was taken to bring out the differences that existed between the vernacular, Czech in the first instance, and Latin, while no grammatical construction of importance was omitted.
The scientific side of the work was accentuated by its division into one hundred sections or chapters, each dealing with some one class of phenomena in nature, art, or society, such as fire, diseases, trade, arithmetic, learned conversation, and angels.
​Sec. 36. Of Gardening gives a good idea of the nature of these sentences.
36. De Hortorum Cultura
379. Hortus, vel pomarium est vel viridarium vel vivarium.
380. Sepitur vel aggere, vel macerie, vel plancis, vel sepe palis [sudibus] longuriis aliisque vitilibus plexa.
381. Hortulanus [olitor] ligone, et rutro, bipalioque fodit, et per pulvinos semina spargit.
382. Arborator seminario vel taleis vel viviradicibus consisto [concinnitas est et elegantia si per quincuncem digerantur] surculos inserit et rigat, scalproque germi germina putat, stolones amputat.
383. Oleum ex olivis exprimitur; subtus amurca fidit, fraces abjiciuntur.
384. Aviarius alvearia curat, ceramque liquat.
The sec. Of Constancy shows how abstract subjects are treated.
92. De Constantia
897. In honesto instituto immoti persistere, constantiæ est, non perseverare levitatis.
898. Sed heus tu, aliud est constantem, aliud pervicacem esse.
899. Si quis ergo meliora suadet aut dissuadet, adhortatur vel dehortatur, ne sis contumax, ne præfracte repugna, nec obstinate contradic, sed obsequere.
900. Verum si quis te in bono labefactat, obfirma animum et obstina, usque dum perrumpas obstacula: rata enim irrata reddere dedecet.
The reader will at once ask himself if it could be possible to teach a boy Latin from a book constructed on such a plan. The first of the illustrations given above contains a number of words by no means easy to remember, and each of these is only used once. If the student found that a word or a construction did not stick in his memory his only resource was to go over the sentence again; and ​to learn the same word repeatedly in the same juxtaposition would wear out the patience of the most diligent pupil. A modern writer who wished to construct a book of this kind would proceed on the assumption that a very limited number of words must be repeated as often as possible, so that each, by dint of its perpetual recurrence, may impress itself on the mind. Of the great principle of iteration Comenius was well aware; indeed he lays special stress upon it, and it is therefore the more surprising that in this instance his practice runs directly contrary to his theory.
Whatever the shortcomings of the book may have been, and Comenius fully realised that it had many, its success was extraordinary. No one was more surprised than the author himself at the triumphal procession that it made through Europe. It was translated into twelve European languages—Latin, Greek, Bohemian, Polish, German, Swedish, Belgian, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hungarian, and even travelled as far eastward as Asia, where it appeared in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Mongolian. For the existence of many of these translations we have only the author’s word, but it is an undoubted fact that in every European country generations of children thumbed the Janua and no other book until they were sufficiently advanced to begin Terence or Plautus, and that for years after its publication Comenius’ name was familiar in every school-room. Even Bayle, who is little disposed to sympathise with Comenius, confesses that the ​Janua met with marvellous success. “Had Comenius written no other book than this he would have rendered himself immortal. The work was reprinted countless times, and was translated into I know not how many languages. There are several polyglot editions. I do not doubt that Comenius speaks sincerely when he admits that the success of the work surpassed anything that he anticipated, for who would not be surprised that such a book should have been translated into twelve European languages.”
The approval bestowed on the Janua was not quite universal. Some critics refused to believe that the new method of teaching Latin was a whit superior to the old, or, quite overlooking the educational value of the matter, directed their remarks against the style, which they said was bad, and the Latinity, which they considered faulty.
Milton in his Tractate on Education dismisses the book with a contemptuous remark, and Adelung, writing a hundred years later, quotes with approval the criticism, “In vain will the beginner look for the result that its author claims from the use of the Janua.” Adelung himself goes so far as to assert that its universal use would have been the surest way of restoring the barbarous Latin of the Middle Ages (die Barbarey der mittleren Zeiten).
In truth, these criticisms of Comenius’ Latinity are beside the point. Granted that he was no great scholar (in comparison with men like the Scaligers and Casaubon he was none at all), his claim on the historian of education lies in the fact that he rescued the boys of his generation from the sterile study of words and introduced them to the world of mechanics, politics, and morality.
​The publication of the Janua and the success with which it met brought Comenius into contact with many of the most striking and influential men of the day. In England in particular the book had been well received, and an English version, brought out shortly after its publication at Lissa in 1631 under the title Janua Linguarum Trilinguis, at once attracted the attention of Samuel Hartlib. Of German origin, Hartlib resided in London, and took a keen interest in everything that savoured of intellectual progress. The friend of Milton and of Evelyn, he formed the centre of a circle of thinkers to which any foreigner who arrived in England readily found access, and, in spite of his many engagements at home, contrived to keep up a correspondence with men of mark in Europe. At the beginning of 1632, greatly struck by Comenius’ didactic venture, and especially by its Encyclopædic features, he sent him a friendly message with a copy of Streso’s Of the use and abuse of reason. He also hinted that it might be possible to procure him some monetary aid in England to enable him to carry on his work with greater ease.
Comenius, in answering, expressed his satisfaction at the approval with which his efforts had been received. Any pecuniary assistance would be useful. At the moment he was being aided by the Palatine of Belz, but, as he was travelling, the funds came in but slowly. He was getting on with his didactic works as fast as possible, as there would be much to do wh the Brethren were allowed to return to their labours in Bohemia.
As a matter of fact his scholastic work was to be interrupted. A Latin Grammar that he wrote in 1631 had not satisfied him, and for the next few years he devoted himself to history and physics. The Synod of the Brethren that sat in 1632 asked him to write an account of the events that had befallen the “Unity,” and this request caused him to compose his History of the Bohemian Brethren and ​his History of the persecutions of the Bohemian Church, the latter of which was not published till 1648.
But most of his attention was given to the composition of his treatise on physics. This work, which appeared at Leipzig in 1633, is a most curious publication, and, as Comenius always based his didactic laws on the operations of nature and on the fundamental principles that underlie the constitution of the universe, it is on this account worthy of special attention.
The scope of the work will be best illustrated by the headings of the individual chapters, twelve in number.
1. Sketch of the creation of the world.
2. Of the invisible principles of the world.
3. Of motions.
4. Of the qualities of things.
5. Of the changes of things.
6. Of the elements.
7. Of vapours.
8. Of concrete substances.
9. Of plants.
10. Of animals.
11. Of man.
12. Of angels.
In writing a Christian Cosmogony, Comenius was to a large extent following precedent. Valesius, Lambartus, Levinus, Oscalus, Kasmannus, and his own tutor Alsted had done so before him, and had made the same effort to combine the desire for scientific progress on inductive lines and the belief that the truth on every subject, scientific or otherwise, is to be found in the Scriptures.
For the production of works of this kind the curious conflict of ideas at the close of the sixteenth century was responsible. The spirit of free inquiry introduced by the reformed religion had to a large extent overthrown the authority of Aristotle, but the Christian philosophers of the ​period merely substituted the Bible for the Aristotelian physics, based their theories on arguments drawn from the Mosaic account of the Creation, and, while they were half awake to the value of experimentation, had but little dealing with it in the actual development of their hypotheses.
The great representatives of these conflicting strains of thought were Campanella and Bacon, for both of whom Comenius had a profound admiration. The two books of the Novum Organum had appeared in 1620, and in the same year Campanella’s De sensu rerum et magia was published at Frankfort, where his Prodromus Philosophiae had been published three years previously. These three works were read with great interest by Comenius; but, while he had a great regard for Bacon and alludes to him continually, he remained in reality little affected by the Inductive Philosophy. Though dimly conscious that Bacon was on the right path, and attracted by the notion of penetrating to the inmost essence of things, he was but slightly impressed by the experimental side of the question. In his Great Didactic, which professes to be founded on an analysis of natural processes, he never mentions Bacon’s name, and his method of procedure is based almost entirely on analogy, often of a far-fetched nature.
While Bacon was not free from the fantastic notions of his age, Campanella is their representative, and with him Comenius has far more in common. “I could easily show that our Prometheus stole a large part of his false beacon-lights from Campanella’s heaven,” wrote Des Marets in 1668, and, though he was no friendly critic, it must be confessed that his appreciation was a just one. We need not be surprised, therefore, find Comenius dealing with essences, principles, and similar monstrosities of Physics. ​For his cosmogony he rests on the authority of Genesis. The world is created out of the three principles of Matter, Spirit, and Light. The qualities of things are Consistency (salt), Oleosity (sulphur), and Aquosity (mercury). Plants are endowed with “vital spirit,” while animals are distinguished from them by the power of originating movement and by the possession of “animal spirit.” Man consists of Body, Spirit, and Soul.
Comenius wrote his Physics under the inspiration of Campanella; but he differs from his master on certain points. As substratum for his philosophy Campanella had taken the existence of two principles, cold and heat. Alsted also had imagined two principles, heaven and earth, the first active and the second passive. According to Comenius this duality is inconsistent with the harmony that exists in nature. Whenever two opposing principles meet we find nothing but strife, and a Trinity of cosmic principles is therefore necessary to account for the peaceful working of the universe. In introducing this Trinity he was doubtless influenced by a desire to make the Christian Trinity harmonise with the basis of natural phenomena, but in reality he is only returning to the fancies of Paracelsus, who had already originated the conception of salt, sulphur, and mercury as a Cosmic Triad. What part Comenius made these principles play in the Astronomy that he published at the same time as the Physics, it is impossible to say, as the book has unfortunately been lost.
The writing of school-books was now once more to occupy his attention. The Janua had proved too difficult for the boys who entered the Latin School, and to meet their wants the Vestibulum or Entrance Hall to the Janua was composed. His first intention was to write some dialogues for boys to make them familiar with the Latin language, but he decided to preserve the form of the ​Janua that the book might serve the better as an introduction to it. He selected about 1000 of the most common Latin words, and out of them constructed 427 sentences. These are very simple throughout, as the following examples will show:—
Chapter I
De accidentibus rerum
6. Deus est æternus, mundus temporarius.
7. Angelus immortalis, homo mortalis.
8. Corpus visibile, spiritus invisibilis, anima itidem.
9. Cœlum est supremum, Aer medius, Terra infima.
Chapter IV
De rebus in Schola
246. Scholasticus sponte frequentat scholam, quo in artibus erudiatur.
247. Initium est a literis.
248. Ex syllabis voces componuntur, e dictionibus sermo.
249. Ex libro legimus tacite, aut recitamus clare.
250. Involvimus eum membranæ et ponimus in pulpito.
251. Atramentum est in atramentario.
The preface contains instructions for the book’s use. It is first to be read through twice, and then the boy is to commit the sentences to memory, learning two or three in an hour and repeating them to the master. Each sentence is to be translated to the pupil before he reads it, that he may have no difficulty in making it out. The declension of nouns is to be taught as the boy makes his way through the book; nouns and adjectives should be declined together as Deus æternus; Mundus temporarius. As a help to recollecting the case-meanings the following table is given:—
​1. Ecce Tabula nigra.
2. Pars Tabulæ nigræ.
3. Addo Partem Tabulæ nigræ.
4. Video Tabulam nigram.
5. O tu Tabula nigra.
6. Video aliquid in Tabula nigra.
The Vestibulum met with considerable success, and, though never as popular as the Janua, was published in English, German, Hungarian, and Swedish.
Having once started theorising about the physical constitution of the universe, Comenius carried his train of thought still farther than in the Physics. He had already enabled the “studious youth” to take an external survey of natural objects by means of the Janua Linguarum, he would now introduce him to their essential nature, and with this end in view began to compose a Gate of phenomena or doorway to wisdom; the work to be a kind of small Encyclopædia or hand-book of universal knowledge. Some friends with whom he had discussed this project now visited England, and excited so much interest by the reports that they brought of the Pansophistic work on the stocks, that a “worthy man” (probably Hartlib) wrote to him and asked for a slight sketch of the projected treatise. Comenius obligingly complied with the request and sent him a short manuscript entitled Outline of my work on Universal Wisdom.
Imagine his surprise, when the manuscript intended for his friends’ eyes alone was returned to him in print. Still, though publication had been far removed from his intention, he could not but recognise the advantage of sounding public opinion and seeing what the learned world thought of the issue of a work on such ambitious lines. As a feeler, ​the Prelude to the efforts of Comenius served its purpose admirably. “Every corner of Europe is filled with this pansophic ardour,” wrote John Adolphus Tassius, Professor of Mathematics at Hamburg, in a letter to Hartlib; “if Comenius were to do no more than stimulate the minds of all men in this way he might be considered to have done enough.” On all sides opinions were freely expressed. Some went so far as to say that no greater benefit had been bestowed on the human race since the revelation of God’s Word, and called upon Comenius to finish his work. Others said that the task was too great for one man, that collaborators must be found for him, and that a Pansophic College should be established. In some quarters, on the other hand, the book was openly derided, and in Poland it met with strong disapproval from those who said that it was a dangerous experiment to mix things divine with things human, Theology with Philosophy, Christianity with Paganism.
This conflicting criticism made Comenius a little uncertain, and for the moment he discontinued his work. First, however, he wrote a further Explanation of my Pansophic efforts, to reassure those who saw any impiety in his design.
In the conception of a comprehensive Encyclopædia there was nothing new. As early as 1264 Vincent of Beauvais had collected the entire knowledge of the Middle Ages in three volumes, while Alsted’s great work, published in 1630, performed the ne office for the seventeenth century. Even while Comenius was engaged on his Delineatio, a new Encyclopædia, that of Peter Laurenberg, appeared, under the title Pansophia. Needless to say, he obtained and read it eagerly, but found that it was not the kind of work he had in view, “since it said nothing of Christ, the fount of true wisdom, and nothing of the life to come.”
​The Janua Rerum was in the first instance to give a synopsis of natural phenomena in the same way that the Janua Linguarum did of the Latin language, but its construction was to be quite different from that of the Encyclopædias in use. “Even the best-arranged Encyclopædias that I have so far seen have been more like a chain containing many links well fastened together than like an automaton whose wheels are cunningly contrived so that the whole can set itself in motion.” This defect can be obviated by disposing the arts and sciences in such a manner that we may begin with what we know best and proceed by slow degrees to what is less familiar. In this way the first chapter will throw light on the second, the second on the third, and so on. The essential point is that the universal laws of thought be taken as a basis, and that then, by sound processes of reasoning, some universal way be opened to ascertaining the truth of things. It is by neglecting to find this universal principle and by limiting themselves to one subject that physicists and philosophers in general have fallen into so many errors and contradictions. The hypotheses of Copernicus are plausible, it is true, but quite inconsistent with the laws of physics. Gilbert, totally absorbed in the study of magnetism, has tried to base his whole philosophy upon it, and here again has offended against the true principles of nature. Campanella’s views met with some approval, but were overthrown by the telescope of Galileo Galilei. These contradictions cannot be avoided “unless the rays of truth that are scattered through all things meet together in one spot, so that the same symmetry may be evident in all that appertains to the senses, to the intellect, and to divine ​revelation. These are the three channels through which knowledge comes to us, and error will cease if the balance between them be preserved.”
For a moment Comenius seems to lay more stress on the materialistic side, and tells us that “Universal Wisdom” should reduce all things to number, measure, and weight; a process of meting out nature with a footrule for which he dutifully finds authority in Scripture (Wisdom ii. 20). But he soon recedes from the commonplace conception of accurate measurements. Bacon, he says, seems to have discovered the necessary method of separating the true from the false by his system of “artificial induction”; but this process takes too long, requiring generations of effort, and, besides, it is useless for the construction of Pansophia, since it deals only with natural phenomena, while Pansophia treats of the whole universe.
Very different are the laws or norms by which universal knowledge is to be obtained, and these Comenius proceeds to enunciate in eighteen aphorisms:—
1. Universal knowledge, so far as it can be obtained by man, has as its objects God, nature, and art.
2. A perfect knowledge of these three is to be sought.
3. The knowledge of things is perfect when it is full, true, and ordered.
4. Knowledge is true when things are apprehended as they exist in reality.
5. Things are apprehended in their essential nature when the manner in which they have come into existence is understood.
6. Each object comes into existence in accordance with its “idea,” that is to say, in relation to a certain rational conception through which it can be what it is.
7. Therefore, all things that come into existence, whether they are the works of God, of nature, or of man, do so in accordance with their “ideas.”
8. Art borrows the “ideas” of its productions from nature, nature from God, and God from Himself.
​9. In fashioning the world, therefore, God produces an image of Himself, so that every creature stands in a definite relation to its creator.
10. As all things share in the “ideas” of the Divine mind, they are also mutually connected and stand in a definite relation to one another.
11. It follows that the rational conceptions of things are identical, and only differ in the form of their manifestation, existing in God as an Archetype, in nature as an Ectype, and in art as an Antitype.
12. Therefore the basis of producing as of apprehending all things is harmony.
13. The first requisite of harmony is that there should be nothing dissonant.
14. The second is that there should be nothing that is not consonant.
15. The third is that the infinite variety of sounds and concords should spring from a few fundamental ones, and should come into being by definite and regular processes of differentiation.
16. Therefore, if we know the fundamental conceptions and the modes of their differentiation, we shall know all things.
17. Such rational conceptions can be abstracted from phenomena by means of a certain method of induction, and must be posited as the norms of phenomenal existence.
18. These norms of truth must be abstracted from those objects whose nature is such that they cannot be otherwise, and which are at every one’s disposal for the purpose of making experiments, that is to say, from natural phenomena.
These aphorisms constitute the philosophic basis of Pansophia. The work constructed with reference to them is to be “an accurate anatomy of the universe, dissecting the veins and limbs of all things in such a way that there shall be nothing that not seen, and that each part shall appear in its proper place and without confusion.” Great care is to be taken that terms, especially general terms, ​be carefully defined. These general terms of Pansophia are, as it were, axioms of physics; ultimate truths that do not admit of demonstration or analysis, but only need to be illustrated by examples. They are given us from heaven; but in selecting from them great care must be taken to avoid error. The particular cases that are brought forward in the system should not introduce any new truth, but should merely consist of a special application of the general conceptions that have preceded. In this way physical investigation is to be conducted on the analogy of geometry, and developed deductively from axioms. It will be seen that Comenius, in spite of his constant praise of Bacon and his sympathy with the more fantastic conceptions of that thinker, has but little in common with his inductive philosophy. His “idea” is an echo of Plato; his “ratio” is a reincarnation of Aristotle’s logos; while his general axioms are obtained by intuition and not by any definitely planned method of induction. While granting that Bacon’s “artificial induction” may be of use for the investigation of natural objects, he distinctly repudiates it for the purposes of Pansophia, since this deals with the universe, in which the supernatural is included. With the exception of the steam-engine, there are few civilising agencies of the present day that have not been ascribed to Comenius’ fertile brain by his continental admirers, and the attempt to link his name with that of Bacon as an inductive philosopher is backed by equally scanty evidence. As a natural philosopher he belongs to the century that preceded him and not to the age of experiment that was to follow, and his didactic principles were due rather to an extraordinary intuition of what was necessary than to patient reasoning on inductive lines.
It is on the conception of the universe as ordered, and of the relations that exist between phenomena as rational, ​that any system of education, apart from the mere inculcation of facts, must rest, and this is the truth that Comenius brings out most strongly in his Pansophic writings. It is towards this “Universal Wisdom” that all his didactic efforts tend. The student is led from one fact to another, and, as these facts are arranged in their natural order, he is thus placed in touch with the actual cosmic processes, can follow up the train of thought, and enlarge the circle of knowledge by working on the lines indicated by the operations of nature. As result, the mature student is no pedant, crammed to overflowing with dry and uncoördinated facts, but a man whose faculty of original thought has been developed and whose training fits him to be an independent investigator of the universe. The boldness of the scheme excites admiration; but the enthusiasm evinced by Hartlib and his friends can only suggest the thought that these gentlemen had failed to appreciate that the one important point in the Baconian philosophy was the insistence on experiment and verification as a basis for sound induction.
It must not be imagined that this excursion into the realm of first principles and philosophic abstractions impeded Comenius in the performance of his practical duties as a teacher. During these years (1635–1640) his activity in school-organisation was as great as ever, and the leading position that he now took in the Moravian Fraternity laid an extra burden on his shoulders. In 1635 the Synod asked him to bring out a Latin-Bohemian edition of the Vestibulum and of the Janua, and expressed its satisfaction at hearing that the learned David Bechner was working at a Viridarium Lingua Latina, an amplification of the Janua. Additional labour was given by the reorganisation of the Gymnasium in accordance with the plans of Comenius, and we accordingly find him drawing up The rules of the renowned Gymnasium at Lissa. These are of an eminently practical character. Especial stress is laid on the need of a spirit of piety throughout the ​school. Rules are laid down for good behaviour in class, in the streets, and at home. Playing in the streets is forbidden, though the boys are urged to go and play outside the town, first choosing one of their number as a leader. Early rising is recommended, and all are advised to enter in a notebook anything of interest that they may learn from day to day. Dancing is strictly forbidden. “The dance is a circle whose centre is the devil” is the portentous phrase by which the heinousness of the offence was impressed on the boys’ minds.
In the following year a portion of Bechner’s Viridarium, under the title Proplasma Templi Latinitatis, was completed, and was subjected to Comenius’ criticism. As a writer of school-books Bechner was inferior, and the chief value of the work lies in its preface. Comenius, however, must have thought well of it, as he includes it in the Amsterdam Folio (i. 318–345).
In his preface Bechner laments that Latin is learned as a dead and not as a living language. Themistocles learned to speak Persian in a short time by going to Persia, and Ovid picked up Sarmatian rapidly by living at Tomi. Why do we not bear these examples in mind when we teach Latin? A suitable place should be set apart with its own church, school, workshops, and everything necessary for carrying on life. Here boys should be sent to school, and in this community nothing but Latin should be talked. A master must accompany each division of boys to see that the vernacular is completely laid aside. Pictures and carved models of every-day objects are to be exposed to view with their Latin names written under them that the boys may be given every opportunity of absorbing Latinity, and, in addition to this, they should act moral and instructive plays in Latin.
With this last suggestion in view he takes section 5 of the Janua, “De Igne,” and works it up into a series of dialogues of increasing difficulty, all illustrative of the ​nature of fire. There are five stages, the Limen, the Janua, the Atrium, the Odeum, and the Adytum. A short extract from the Atrium will suffice to show the fantastic nature of the composition. The actors are Uriel, Pyrodes, and Caius Carbo, and they elucidate the subject as follows:—
P. Quis iste concursus hominum et clangor insolens tinnitusque extra numerum?
C. Incendium excitatum est.
P. Ubi ergo exarsit?
C. In ædibus nescio cujus; in platea cui ab arce nomen factum est.
U. Atque hoc quomodo . . .? etc.
The Odeum is more advanced, while the Adytum gives, still in dialogue form, a long philosophical and historical disquisition on fire. The idea was not new, having been already employed by the Jesuits, and the dialogues are written with no dramatic power. The work is dedicated to Comenius and his friends and well-wishers-Hartlib in London, Schneider in Leipzig, Evenius in Weimar, Mochinger in Dantzig, and Docemius in Hamburg.
In this year Comenius succeeded Henrici as Rector of the Gymnasium; but his reforming ardour was damped by the death of his friend and patron Count Raphael, over whose grave he preached a funeral sermon. This was afterwards published under the title “The mirror of good government, in which out of the prophet Isaiah, and from the example of the pious Eliakim, the true qualities of right and praiseworthy government are depicted and set forth as a model to all good rulers.”
The death of their patron made no serious difference to the safety of the Brethren, as his son Bohuslaw promised to protect them as his father had done. It was for Bohuslaw that Comenius composed his Faber Fortunæ, The Moulder of Fortune. This work starts with the conception of man as a free agent. We are not dependent on circumstances, but control them; we must first, however, learn to control ourselves and thus to identify our will with ​the desire for the true good. Thus the art of moulding our fortunes consists in depending not on circumstances but on reason, and not on the reason of another but on our own; that is to say, on the reason of God that works in us.
It is impossible to say how much time was devoted to the Janua Rerum during the last few years of Comenius’ stay in Lissa. Apart from his work as a schoolmaster, his other literary productions were sufficient to fill up any ordinary man’s time, and the claims made on him by admirers in other towns and countries increased daily. In 1637 a request was addressed to him from Breslau asking him to write some hints on school-teaching for the Gymnasium in that town. With this demand he complied in his De sermonis Latini studio dissertatio. It is interesting as being the first published work of Comenius that dealt with school organisation in a philosophic spirit.
The treatise opens with a dedicatory verse by George Bechner, in which the author is ranked above Epictetus. After some general remarks on the importance of a knowledge of facts—“Verba sine rebus, putamina sunt sine nucleo, vagina sine gladio, umbra sine corpore, corpus sine anima”—Comenius proceeds to divide the Latin School into four classes, each of which is to have its own book. The first and second classes are to be provided with the Vestibulum and the Janua, whose acquaintance we have already made; while for the two more advanced classes he suggests the compilation of two other books, The Palatium and The Thesaurus. The Palace is to be divided into four parts—“The Palace of Letter-writing,” “The Palace of History,” “The Palace of Oratory,” and “The Palace of Poetry.” “The Palace of Letter-writing” is to contain a hundred letters corresponding to the hundred divisions of the Janua. The style is to be varied, and a few general remarks on letter-writing are to be added. “The Palace of History” is to consist of dialogues embodying historical information about the objects mentioned in the Janua. ​“The Palace of Oratory” is to repeat the same material in oratorical form, the phrases used being adapted from Cicero, Quintilian, and Seneca; while the “Palace of Poetry deals with the same subjects treated in verse. The verses are not to be original, but are to be taken from the classic poets. In this way Rossie in England had written a life of Christ with lines taken from Vergil.
The culminating point in this series of graduated school-books is the Thesaurus. This is a collection of extracts from classic writers dealing with the subjects of the Janua. For all these books suitable lexicons are to be compiled, and a Latin grammar is to be written for use with the Janua. As a further assistance to the use of the Thesaurus he proposes a Clavis Intellectus Humani, in which the subject-matter is to be arranged in “a certain general proportion” with reference to the relation in which things, the concepts of things, and language, stand to one another.
These books are to be spread over the six years devoted to the Latin School as follows: for the Vestibulum six months is sufficient, and for the Janua a year; for the Palatium a year and a half is allowed, leaving the remaining three years for the study of the authors.
Then follow some general remarks on teaching, after which come some special rules for the use of the classbooks.
From the use of the Vestibulum the boy must learn to read Latin words with the proper accent and to write what he knows with fluency; he is also to master the rudiments of grammar and syntax. As a help to writing, some of the Latin sentences should be printed faintly (green is recommended as a suitable colour), and over this the boy may write in black ink.
The Vestibulum is to be read through ten times, and ​each time stress should be laid on some fresh point. By the ninth reading it should practically be known off by heart. Great stress is laid on the importance of employing the morning hours for learning, and the afternoon for reading and writing. Similarly, the Janua is to be read ten times, the tenth reading being a kind of Latin disputation in which the winner gets a prize.
In the following year (1638) an invitation came from Sweden asking Comenius to undertake the reformation of the schools in that country. He refused. The task, he said, was too great for one man, and he foresaw nothing but envious opposition from the local schoolmasters.
But, though not induced to leave Lissa, it was brought home to him how much schools all over Europe were in need of reformation, and he was induced to commence the translation of The Great Didactic out of Czech into Latin. The headings of the chapters he communicated to Hartlib, who published them in 1642 as an appendix to his Reforme of Schooles. In other directions his literary output was as great as ever. To these years belong two plays, Diogenes Cynicus redivivus and Abrahamus Patriarcha, which were acted by the students of the Gymnasium.
To the interest excited by his philosophic schemes we have alluded in our account of the Prodromus. This interest continued to increase, and Comenius, who had come to Lissa in 1628, known merely as a member of a little band of Bohemian exiles, with sensible views on the teaching Latin, began to realise that he had achieved European notoriety and that any country would be glad to secure his services. Much his renown was probably due to the enthusiasm of Hartlib, who was in correspondence with a large number of intellectual men both in England and on the continent. Pell, an English mathematician and the friend of Hartlib, was in communication with Mersenne in France; Mersenne had written to Comenius on the subject of his Pansophic schemes, and Descartes himself, an old school-fellow and friend of ​Mersenne, had expressed his approval of them, though hitherto he knew of them only by hearsay.
Comenius thus began to feel that the walls of the Lissa Gymnasium formed a limited horizon, and one beyond which his personal influence might with great advantage be extended. Many causes worked together to make him dissatisfied with his position. The death of Count Raphael in 1636 and of his old master Alsted in 1638 had taken from him two of his best friends. Enemies, envious of his success, had worked upon the distrust that his brothers in the faith could not refrain from evincing towards his scientific efforts, and had accused him before the Synod of displaying irreverence in his Pansophic writings. Count Bohuslaw had seceded from the Evangelic party and embraced the Catholic faith, and seems to have given an unsatisfactory reply when Comenius (in 1640) laid before him his further schemes for scholastic and pansophic works. It is therefore not surprising that he yielded to the pressing demands of Hartlib and, having first obtained leave from the Unity, set out for England.
It was after a most unsatisfactory voyage, during which he had been carried by a storm into the Baltic, that he reached London in the September of 1641; but, once there, he was received with open arms by the little band of which Hartlib was the centre.
A man of great enthusiasm but of less judgment, Hartlib knew everybody in England who was worth knowing. “I could fill whole sheets,” he wrote to Worthington, “in what love and reputation I have lived these thirty years in England; being familiarly acquainted with ​the best of archbishops, bishops, earls, viscounts, barons, knights, esquires, gentlemen, ministers, professors of both Universities, merchants, and all sorts of learned or in any kind useful men.” Himself a voluminous author and translator, he was ever on the look-out for talent in need of assistance, and was rapidly getting through his fortune in the promotion of every Utopian scheme that came under his notice. It was to him and at his request that Milton addressed his essay Of Education (1644).
At this time in easy circumstances, he was living in Duke’s Place, Drury Lane, an address which we may be sure was the centre of Comenius’ London experiences. Here would have met to discuss the intellectual and political problems of the day men like Theodore Haak, John Durie, John Beale, John Wilkins, John Pell, and Evelyn, who had just returned to London after a three months’ journey through Europe. Milton was living in London, and must certainly have met and conversed with the illustrious stranger; while no farther off than at Seven-oaks was Thomas Farnaby, a very remarkable English schoolmaster, who had evinced his interest in the Janua by prefixing a short Latin poem to Anchoran’s edition of 1631.
It was a strange society to which Comenius was introduced. Haak was a naturalised Englishman who had been ordained deacon in 1634 by Hall, Bishop of Exeter. He it was who in 1648 suggested the meetings of learned men that eventually led to the formation of the Royal Society. To No. 5 of Hooke’s philosophical collections he contributed the criticisms of Marin Mersenne and of Descartes upon Dr. John Pell’s An Idea of Mathematics, and, according to Anthony à Wood, translated half of Paradise Lost into High Dutch.
John Durie, the son of Robert Durie, minister of the Scotch Church at Leyden, had been educated for the ​ministry at Sedan under Andrew Melville, and also at Leyden and Oxford. A great advocate of Evangelical unity, he was continually employed on semi-religious embassies. Recently ordered out of her country by Christina, Queen of Sweden, he was now in London without any definite occupation. Two years later he obtained the post of Keeper of the books, medals, and manuscripts of St. James.
John Beale, afterwards rector of Yeovil in Somersetshire, and chaplain to Charles I., was, like Hartlib, an agricultural enthusiast, and wrote, among other things, Aphorisms concerning Cider. Hartlib, writing to Boyle in 1658, says of him: “There is not the like man in the whole island nor in the continent beyond the seas so far as I know it I mean that could be made more universally use of to good to all, as I in some measure know and could direct.”
John Wilkins, afterwards Bishop of Chester, was ready to entertain any absurdity as long as its aim was philanthropic. He was the author of some curious works, including Discovery of a New World (1638), a description of communication with the moon by means of flying-machines, and Mercury, or the secret and swift messenger, showing how a man may with privacy and speed communicate his thoughts to a friend at any distance.
Last comes Dr. John Pell, a mathematician of no mean order. He had published his Commentationes in Cosmographiam Alstedii in 1631, and had doubtless many a conversation with Comenius about the character and parts of his old master.
Such was the circle in the midst of which Comenius found himself, and much further our acquaintance with the details of his visit does not go. He was delighted with London. To his friends in Lissa he writes with enthusiasm of the preachers, the libraries, and the anxiety displayed for school reform.
“I live,” he says in a letter dated the 18th of October, “as a friend among friends; though not so many visit me as ​would do so if they knew that I could speak English, or if they had more confidence in their own Latin, or if they had not such a high opinion of me.”
This shyness on the part of callers gave him plenty of time to talk over plans with his friends. He had not arrived at a fortunate moment; the king had gone to Scotland, Parliament had risen for three months, and nothing remained but to stay in London for the winter and unfold to Hartlib and his circle the sketch, such as it was, of his Pansophic system. His leisure time he employed in the composition of a new work, entitled Via Lucis, which was, however, not published until the year 1668 in Amsterdam.
Uppermost in the minds of Hartlib and his friends was the formation of a Universal College for physical research, on the lines suggested by Bacon in the New Atlantis. Now at last in Comenius they thought they had discovered a man competent to found a “Solomon’s House,” if only sufficient assistance were given him by Parliament. This was their chief object in urging him to come to England, and it was on the establishment of the college that the conversation turned. As we have seen, Comenius was totally unfitted to organise a collection of laboratories for physical research—for that was what the proposal practically amounted to. He was, as he himself confesses, primarily a theologian, and, though he could talk glibly and attractively of enlarging the boundaries of human knowledge, he had no conception of the tedious processes of experimentation that were necessary, and flew off to vague generalisations at every opportunity. If proof was necessary, he supplied it from the Scriptures, and as a means for verification valued a text from Genesis more than all the paraphernalia of the chemist and the physicist.
The Via Lucis, while much of it is of that fantastic ​nature that we have already noticed in Comenius’ Pansophic writings, contains some points that are both new and interesting. The term “light” is taken to signify the millennium of learning to be attained by Pansophic methods, though at the same time the physical phenomenon of light is dealt with and its nature declared to consist of waves or motion (chap. ix.) This “light” is to be obtained by means of four things—universal books, universal schools, a universal college, and a universal language (chap. xv.) The universal college is to consist of men chosen from the whole world. These must be gifted, industrious, and pious, and their task is to further the welfare of mankind and extend the limits of knowledge in every way. England is a suitable place in which to found this college, partly because its position renders communication easy with the whole world, partly in memory of Bacon, and partly because it has offered to found the college and supply it with funds.
More important than all is the foundation of a universal language. Vives had suggested Latin, but Comenius thinks otherwise. Latin is too difficult, and is at the same time a poor language. A new tongue must be devised, at the same time easier and more complete than other languages. With this end in view, it is important to investigate the relation of sounds to objects and to harmony.
A new language can be formed in two ways, from the languages that exist or from things themselves. The latter is the method approved by Comenius. This universal language is not to abolish others. Learned men may still use Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and nations their vernaculars (chap. xix.) A golden age is then to set in, in which the conversion is to take place, first of the Mohammedans, then of the heathen, and finally of the Jews (chap. xxi.)
In the conception of a new language, on which he lays so much stress, he was not alone. Dalgarno, a Scotsman, published a sketch of a Lingua Philosophica in 1661, and ​Bishop Wilkins, at the request of the Royal Society, brought out an elaborate scheme of a similar nature in 1668. Wilkins’ scheme does not deal with the relations of sounds to things. “The first thing in such an institution,” he says, “is to assign several letters and sounds for the forty genuses.“ This is done arbitrarily, and on this substratum the language is built up. It was to be written in a kind of shorthand, the signs for which are rather clumsily chosen. The universal language must have been one of the topics of conversation between Wilkins and Comenius, and it is difficult to say which, if either, borrowed it from the other.
Parliament now sat again, but had too much work on its hands to devote any attention to Comenius, and told him to wait. In the meantime he was assured that the intention was to give over to him some college with its income for the carrying into effect of his schemes. In London the Savoy or Chelsea College, and in the country Winchester College, were suggested as suitable institutions, so that, as Comenius remarks, “nothing seemed more certain than that the scheme of the great Verulam, of opening in some part of the world a universal college, whose one object should be the advancement of the sciences, would be carried into effect.”
But trouble had broken out in Ireland, and in England it was evident that affairs were working up to civil war. Comenius soon perceived that amid so much turmoil there was little chance of these suggestions bei carried into practice, and began to think of returning home. His position was unpleasant. On the strength of Hartlib’s invitation and assurance that funds would be forthcoming, he had given up his post in Lissa. Hopes of universal colleges and pecuniary support were now vanishing into thin air, and he found himself with baffled expectations, ​a wife and daughters to support, and a rapidly emptying purse.
It was at this juncture that a new patron, Ludwig de Geer, appeared on the scene. De Geer belonged to an aristocratic Dutch family, and had realised an enormous fortune in commerce. The centre of his business transactions, which he left to his agent Hotton, was Amsterdam. He himself resided on his estates at Finspong and Norköping in Sweden. It was through Hotton that he first heard of Comenius, in whose projects he began to take a keen interest as soon as his attention was directed to them. A letter sent to Lissa through Hotton’s agency arrived too late, and it was not till he had been in London for some time that Comenius received it. Feeling that Hartlib had perhaps promised more than he could bring about, he wrote to de Geer saying that if he had received his letter before leaving Lissa he would now be not in London but in Sweden.
This letter elicited another pressing invitation from de Geer, and to this Comenius sent an answer in December, explaining that he was not quite a free agent; his Church had the first claim on him, and he must consult his superiors before taking any fresh step.
Hartlib, who was aware of the correspondence with de Geer, now did his best to induce Comenius to stay in London, and brought out an English translation of the Prodromus under the title A Reformation of Schooles, in the hope of attracting renewed attention to the Pansophic schemes. But the unsettled state of affairs and his growing need of money made Comenius daily more anxious to get away. Fresh correspondence with de Geer followed, in which he pointed out that, if he was to make any real progress with his Pansophic books, he must have the assistance of some fellow-workers. Alone, he would find the task too great. De Geer, however, seems to have demurred to the proposal, and objected to Joachim Hubner, one of the proposed colleagues, on the ground of his religious opinions.
​These negotiations occupied the spring of 1642, during which time Comenius employed himself by composing his Pansophiae Diatyposis, published two years later at Amsterdam.
He now, quite unexpectedly, received an invitation to go to France, but, having already made up his mind to visit Sweden, left London for Holland in June. In August he reached Norköping and had his first interview with de Geer. On the subject of Pansophia the new patron preserved a discreet silence, but after several days’ conversation an understanding appears to have been arrived at, and nothing remained but to fix on a suitable spot in which Comenius might settle down to his labours.
Partly with the object of getting suggestions on this point he went to Stockholm by de Geer’s advice to see Oxenstierna, the Swedish Chancellor, and Skythe the Rector of the University at Upsala. The fact was that what de Geer wanted was not Pansophic works, but school-books for the Swedish schools, and in sending Comenius to call on Oxenstierna he was doubtless carrying out a preconcerted scheme.
Arrived at Stockholm, Comenius had to undergo a running fire of interrogation. Oxenstierna in particular plied him with the most searching questions, and his remarks seem to have made a deep impression on the worthy pedagogue, since, in one of the brief biographical notices that are scattered up and down his works, he devotes more space to this interview than to any other event in his life. For two days the Chancellor discussed the Didactic works. From his youth, he confessed, he had felt that the common methods of instruction were contrary to nature, but had been unable to say exactly what the defect was. At last, when on an embassy to Germany, some learned men with whom he discussed the subject told him that Wolfgang Ratke had devised a new method. He immediately put himself into communication with him; but Ratke absolutely refused to give him a personal interview, and sent him instead a ponderous quarto volume, the contents of which ​did not come up to his expectation and appeared to be of less practical worth than the suggestions of Comenius. Comenius modestly replied that he had done what he could in this branch of reform and was now busy with his Pansophic schemes. To which Oxenstierna rejoined that he was aware of this, as he had read the Prodromus, and that he would discuss the subject on the following day.
The morrow’s interview was far less pleasing to Comenius. The hard-headed Chancellor was not nearly so disposed to be enthusiastic over the Pansophia and the visionary schemes connected with it as were Hartlib and his circle. “Can you stand contradiction?” he asked. Comenius replied that the one object of publishing the Prodromus had been to obtain criticism of any kind, while that of a man like Oxenstierna would be doubly valuable. The Chancellor then began to bring forward objections to the whole scheme of regenerating the world by means of Pansophia. Some of these objections were political, others rested on the Scriptural assurance that darkness rather than light was to be man’s lot on earth, but to all Comenius gave such satisfactory replies that he imparted some of his enthusiasm even to the sceptical critic, who exclaimed, “I do not believe that any one ever had ideas like yours. Continue to build on the foundations that you have laid.” Wiser judgment then returned, and he strongly advised him to leave his Pansophic schemes alone for the moment, to devote himself to the improvement of schools, and to elaborate his improved method of teaching Latin, since thus he would pave the way for more ambitious efforts in the future.
To Comenius, who was heartily sick of what he calls his spinosa didactica, this advice must have been a bitter potion, but, as Skythe echoed Oxenstierna’s opinion, and further suggested that Elbing in Prussia would be a suitable place for him to settle in with his family, he gulped it down with the best grace possible.
V Comenius now returned to Norköping, and, on communicating the result of the interview to de Geer, found to ​his disgust that his patron viewed Oxenstierna’s advice with the highest approval. He had, therefore, no resource but to submit, and consoled himself with the hope that the task would only take him a couple of years, after which he might again devote himself to philosophy.
Preparations for the move, and a preliminary visit to Elbing, occupied the next few months. In Lissa he had to take final leave of his scholastic and clerical duties and engage some assistants to help him with the philological work in view.
At this return to philology his friends in England were indignant, and did their best to recall him to his former projects. “You have devoted sufficient attention to school-books,” they wrote; “others can carry on the work you have begun. The world will gain far more advantage from having the paths of true wisdom opened to it than from any study of Latin.” “Quo moriture ruis? minoraque viribus audes?” added Hartlib, more disappointed than any of them at the dissipation of their Pansophic dreams of the previous winter.
Comenius wavered. He still hankered after Pansophia, and sent Hartlib’s letter to Sweden in the hope that it might cause de Geer and Oxenstierna to alter their views. But a stern reply, bidding him to persist in his undertaking and complete the school-books, was all that he obtained, and with great unwillingness he set to work.
In the history of great renunciations surely none is stranger than this. We have a man little past the prime of life, his brain teeming with magnificent if somewhat visionary plans for social reform, a mighty power in the community that shared his religious ideas, and an object of interest even to those who may have shrugged their shoulders at his occasional want of balance. Suddenly he flings his projects to the winds, consigns his darling plans to the dust-heap of unrealisable ideas, and retires to a small sea-side town-not to meditate, not to give definite form to latent conceptions or to evolve new ones, not to make ​preparations for the dazzling of intellectual Europe with an octavo of fantastic philanthropy or of philosophic mysticism, but—to write school-books for the little boys in Swedish schools. True, he was paid. He was bartering his inclinations against coin of the realm, against the good gold that streamed from de Geer’s Dutch counting-house. He was going to do useful work. Europe gained far more advantage from his school-books than from the Pansophia that did but impart a certain dignity and finish to his didactic method. None the less, Comenius was martyrising himself. Money, sufficient for his daily wants, he could always obtain, and with ease. Of school-books he had written enough, and of school method he was sick unto death. It was the old story. The old inability, on the part of a versatile man, to realise his true vocation.
Musicians have hankered after brushes and palate, statesmen have grudged to public affairs the energy filched from literary pursuits, and Comenius, the inspired schoolmaster, wished to shut up his dictionaries and grammars and to philosophise about things in general. His Pansophia may have been useless; to the progress of exact thought it may even have been harmful; he may have been totally unfitted to attempt the welding together of a philosophic system; but this it was, and nothing else, that he wished to do, and this it was that he determined to renounce.
The reason is not far to seek. It was his steadfast belief, backed up by the prophecies of Kotter and of Christina Poniatowska, that his co-religionists would one day triumph over their enemies and be restored to their native land, and the agent that was to bring this about was Sweden, the great Protestant power of Europe. By thus linking himself with Sweden, by carrying out the wishes of de Geer, Oxenstierna, and Skythe, he was establishing a powerful claim upon the generous treatment that he believed the Swedes destined to accord to his countrymen, and making straight the path along which his Church was to march home in triumph. This was why he held himself bound to accept de Geer’s offer; this was the ulterior ​object, to attain which he thought no present sacrifice too great.
It was in the November of 1642 that he reached Elbing. In spite of his eagerness to get to work, the first week was one of enforced idleness, for in the house that he had taken there were neither tables nor chairs; but these material defects were soon remedied. The immediate task was to rewrite the Janua Linguarum and to compose the lexicon and grammar that were to accompany it. He was now to have assistance in his labours, and as fellow-workers had brought with him Paul Cyrillus, Peter Figulus, Daniel Petreus, and Daniel Nigrinus. Bechner, whom he had been anxious to secure as a collaborator, was unable to come. Still further to ensure getting through the work with speed, he gave out that he must drop all correspondence with his friends for one year, an intention, needless to remark, that he found impossible to carry out.
The Swedish patron was as good as his word, and as soon as he heard that Comenius was definitely settled at Elbing, and ready to set to work, remitted 1000 thaler for him and for the Brethren. With the letter of thanks that Comenius sent to Wolzogen, de Geer’s agent at Finspong, he forwarded also some copies of the Vestibulum, and suggested that the Swedish boys should write it out from dictation while waiting for the revised versions on which he was engaged, such an exercise being an essential part of his method.
Elbing had seemed an eminently suitable place to work in, and Comenius had imagined that he would be free from any great interruption. Unfortunately Bartholomew Nigrin, formerly minister of the Reformed Church at Dantzig, had settled there, and his presence appears to have been a continual source of disturbance to Comenius. Nigrin had been imbued with the notion, shared, as we have seen, by John Durie, Hartlib, and many others, that a union of Christendom was possible. With the apparent object of furthering this end, he tried to induce Comenius to throw up his contract with de Geer and withdraw him​self from all connection with Sweden. Comenius, who saw in Sweden the future protector of the Evangelic Faith, had made his engagement with open eyes, so that it is difficult to see why these overtures on the part of Nigrin should have caused him so much annoyance. At any rate, Nigrin soon went over to the Roman Catholic faith, and from that time gave Comenius little trouble.
Resolutions notwithstanding, philological works were very far from getting Comenius’ undivided attention. His Pansophiæ Diatyposis had been commenced in England, and, in his anxiety to get it into print and thus give his friends in England some earnest that his Pansophic activity was only dormant, he devoted a great part of his time to its completion. In the summer of 1643 we find him in Dantzig making arrangements for its publication, which followed shortly after.
He now made a vigorous effort to devote himself wholly to the revision of the Janua. Latin authors had to be gone through with minute care to ensure that no important word was being omitted, and, the more labour Comenius and his assistants bestowed on their task, the farther it seemed to be from completion. It was impossible to say how many months would pass before the end was reached, and more than once, while suffering from the irritation induced by his somewhat pettifogging occupation, he was on the point of throwing up his engagement and returning to his Universal Knowledge. But the Brethren had to be considered, and de Geer was helping them liberally. In June a fresh subsidy was sent, and Comenius, by way of showing some sign of life, sent letters to his patron, to Bishop Matthiae of Sweden, ​and to Oxenstierna. To the latter he also forwarded a copy of his Via Lucis, in the hope of stimulating the slight interest in the Pansophia that the statesman had evinced in the previous year. In particular he asked him for a criticism of the didactic principles contained in chap. xvi. This letter shows what extravagant expectations he entertained of the part that Oxenstierna was to play in the support of Evangelism. “Since we live in hope,” he wrote, “that the fall of Babylon will give an opportunity for the restoration of Zion, and since we see that the time is drawing near, I am of opinion that you ought not to remain in ignorance of our views on this matter, since you are one of those in whose hands the rod of judgment has been placed.”
These expectations were increased by his old school-companion Drabik, of whom he had, for a long time, heard nothing. Drabik, who was living in Hungary, sent a copy of fourteen revelations that had been made him from heaven. These spoke of the brilliant future in store for the Evangelical Church, and in particular of the exaltation of Comenius, who was destined to make the good news known to all nations. Comenius had already had an unfortunate experience with the prophecies of Kotter and of Poniatowska, whose weak point was their unfulfilment. This time he was more wary, and replied that, before he accepted any prophecies as true, he must examine them, as well as the prophet, carefully. In the meantime he would pray God to give him light.
It now began to dawn on de Geer that the scholar whom he was paying to write class-books for Sweden was spending his time over matters philosophical and theological. In answer to a remonstrance from Wolzogen, who complained that time was passing and that nothing had been produced, Comenius answered that it was too soon to expect any result. He was writing books and not copying them; his work was on a totally new plan, and needed time and labour to make it harmonious in all its details. If the Swedish children had no school-books, let them employ themselves in learning their own language, Scripture history, ​piety, and good manners. They would soon make up for lost time when the Latin text-books were completed. With this assurance de Geer had, for the moment, to be content.
But, in spite of his promise to get on with his philological works as quickly as possible, we find Comenius still busied with philosophic plans. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising to find that de Geer strongly objected to a Dr. Kozak of Bremen, whom Comenius suggested as a collaborator, since Kozak’s interests were purely scientific. At the same time an effort was made to induce the Hamburg professors, Jung and Tasse, to join him in his Pansophic work, but they refused to leave their present positions unless a high salary could be guaranteed them, and for this Comenius knew that it would be useless to ask de Geer.
It is possible that, had he been able to arrange a meeting with his patron in the summer of 1644, he would have attempted to withdraw from an engagement that he found so irksome, but travel was rendered dangerous by the war that had broken out between Sweden and Denmark in the preceding year. The claims on his time remained as numerous as ever. In this year (1644) he published a religious work, Absurditatum Echo; and, at the request of the Elbing Town Council, undertook to lecture at the Gymnasium on the Janua Rerum four times weekly, from one till three o’clock. For this he was to receive a salary of 400 florins. As if he were not already sufficiently occupied, he found himself compelled by his position as an elder in the Moravian Church to attend an Evangelical meeting at Orla in Lithuania.
It may appear like dishonesty on Comenius’ part that he so persistently dissipated his energies on other work while in de Geer’s pay for one definite purpose, but to any such accusation two very strong rejoinders may be made.
In the first place, he was undoubtedly devoting to his school-books a very great deal if not quite the whole of his time; and, in the second, he had shown to what extent he considered himself bound to carry out his engagement, by refusing two offers of a far more congenial character.
​In 1643, George Rakoczy, Count of Transylvania, had asked him to accept the professorship formerly held by Alsted, and at the same time to undertake a general reform of the school system in Hungary. Count Radziwill of Lithuania had gone further, and had actually proposed to give him a residence on his estate and endow him with the quarter of his income that he might carry on his Pansophic studies in peace. Both these suggestions Comenius had rejected, and he therefore felt that, while practically fulfilling his promise, he was not called upon to become an utter slave to de Geer’s desire for school-books.
De Geer, however, did not see matters in the same light, and, on his return from Orla to Elbing, Comenius found himself compelled to write a dutiful letter to Hotton, each line of which shows that the chains that bound him to philology were galling his flesh. “O that it had pleased God,” he writes, “to instil these thoughts into another, to implant these intellectual desires in another’s mind! O that I might have either greater powers or fewer desires! But with every forward step that I make, a further insight is granted me, and I find it impossible not to strive after what is deeper and better. The consequence is that my former work always seems imperfect, and though I correct and improve in a thousand ways and without intermission, I arrive at no definite result. The task that I have undertaken is a great one, and my efforts are like a stream whose volume of water increases as it gets farther from its source. You see that I have something in my mind greater than a Vestibulum, a Janua, a Dictionary, or leading-strings for boys of that description.”
But neither this letter nor one of a later date received any answer, and Comenius wrote again (November 1644) imploring de Geer, in God’s name, not to desert him, since he had refused help from other quarters. In proof of this he copied several passages from Count Radziwill’s letter and sent them to Hotton, that de Geer might see if he had really been guilty of inconstancy. He must at this time have been in serious pecuniary distress, only slightly ​alleviated by the authorities at Elbing, who provided him with a house rent-free.
At last the long-expected letter from Sweden arrived. Hotton had made peace with de Geer, and the result was a remittance of 400 thaler. In his letter of acknowledgment, Comenius, with that simplicity which is his strongest characteristic, speaks out of his inner consciousness and assures his patron that what hinders him in his work is the novelty of his Pansophic system, and the effort to lay the foundations of truth without any sophistry.
It must indeed have been small comfort to de Geer, who was impatiently waiting for his school-books, to be told that their composer was engaged on a work destined to reform human affairs, and of which the Pansophia was only the seventh part.
In the following year (1645) Wladislaw IV. of Poland summoned a great religious conference at Thorn, and invited the various religious bodies to send representatives. The union of Catholics and Protestants had been one of Comenius’ favourite notions, but, on hearing that Dantzig proposed to send to the Synod two Lutherans, who had little in common with the Moravian Brethren, he decided to have nothing to do with it. Though the Brethren at Lissa had been very anxious that he should represent them, they excused him at his earnest request. “May all these sects and their supporters perish,” he wrote. “Christ, whom I serve, knows no sect.” In order, however, that he might have some reason for absenting himself from such a representative gathering, he wrote to de Geer, asking him to send a summons to Sweden and thus free him from the pressure to which he was being subjected. But de Geer dissuaded him from coming to Sweden until the war between that country and Denmark was at an end.
Deprived, therefore, of this excuse, and continually urged by his friends to attend the conference, Comenius gave way, and set out for Thorn. On his arrival (August 1645) he received a friendly communication from Hotton, warning him that de Geer’s patience was exhausted, that he ​wished for completed works and not new plans, and that an angry letter from him was on its way.
This news made Comenius anxious, and, as the conference progressed but slowly and promised to be a long affair, he determined to return to Elbing. Just before leaving Thorn he received from de Geer the letter that had been heralded by Hotton. It was violent and full of accusations. He had better get those for whom he worked to support him. The three years at Elbing had been fruitless, since he had published nothing. Descending to particulars, de Geer complained that the salary of 400 thaler promised to a Dr. Cyprian Kinner was far too high.
At first, Comenius was completely overcome by this attitude on the part of his patron, but, by the time he returned to Elbing, he had recovered his self-possession, and wrote de Geer a calm justification of his conduct. He pointed out that his works, which, as a matter of fact, were nearly completed, formed a harmonious whole, so that one could not be published before the other; that the distracting occupations, that de Geer cast in his teeth, were no more than was necessary to give his mind needful relaxation after its arduous labours. Coming to the incident of Kinner, he pointed out that a captain in the army received more pay than the salary that was considered too high, and that, if de Geer wanted the books finished at all, it was absolutely essential that he should supply competent assistance. If he wished, he might withdraw his support. “Were I not beset with applications on every side,” he concludes, “and, in addition, threatened by approaching old age, I should desire nothing better than to retire into some solitude and there give myself up to my favourite investigations. I should seek no patron, but rather strive with all my might to stand in need of none.”
Comenius’ friends in Lissa now came to the rescue, not with funds, for money was a very scarce commodity among the Moravian Brethren, but with what was, from their point of view, the soundest advice under the circumstances. ​“Finish your school-books as quickly as you can,” they said, “and then devote yourself to your clerical duties.” So Comenius set to work once more, and this time in earnest. There was still a good deal to be done. The Janua had to be completely rewritten, in accordance with a new principle of arrangement, and the composition of the grammar and lexicon demanded patience. He had hoped from assistance from Kinner, but for the moment Kinner was detained in Schleswig-Holstein, and, though we find him working with Comenius later on, he seems to have been partly engaged on a Didactic of his own.
De Geer was mollified by Comenius’ letter and by his evident intention to complete his task. At the beginning of 1646 he sent him 500 thaler for himself and the same sum for the Brethren. At the end of the year we find Comenius in Sweden, where a commission of three men examined the school-books, now almost completed, and reported favourably on them. It only remained to put the finishing touches.
But poverty and trouble pursued Comenius relentlessly. Any money that came into his hands soon found its way to the pockets of the needy scholars and exiles who clustered round him. At this time he was especially anxious to aid Ritschel, a former collaborator, now in great distress. Himself in need of assistance, he made urgent applications on Ritschel’s behalf to the Reformed Church in Belgium, and managed to collect the sum of 50 thaler. Importuning for charity, even though he himself was not its object, was greatly against the grain; “Better die than beg,” he wrote to Hartlib.
In former years Hartlib might have helped him, but he had already spent the greater part of his fortune in the promotion of experiments of various kinds, and, though ​Cromwell had awarded him a pension of £100 yearly, it is doubtful if he received it regularly. Certain it is that, after the Restoration, he was in great distress. He was now busily engaged with the project of a “Correspondence Agency,” which he wished to see established in London. This was to be a kind of Information Office, where any one might seek advice (gratis, if he were poor) on any subject. In addition, it was to further correspondence and learned intercourse between men of talent within and without England, and by this means the realisation of Bacon’s scientific and of Comenius’ pedagogic schemes was to be rendered easier. The scheme, however, a somewhat visionary one, was not carried out, and remained one of the blind alleys into which so many enthusiasts in England were led before their efforts culminated in the actual formation of the Royal Society in 1660.
A considerable portion of the school-books was now actually ready, and was despatched to Sweden at the beginning of 1647. This included the Methodus Linguarum Novissima, with its index and dedication, and part of the Janua. More Comenius refused to send until definite arrangements for publication had been made. The Janua was to be illustrated, and this caused additional delay. Considering that Comenius was now engaged on his treatise, Independentia confusionum origo, a work directly aimed against the sectarian tendency of religious bodies in England, it is difficult to imagine how he found time to busy himself with business arrangements at all.
A fresh page in his life was now to be turned, and, had the bulk of de Geer’s books not been completed, the chances are that they would have remained unfinished. The aged Bishop of the Unity, L. Justinius, had died at Ostrorog, and Comenius was elected to fill his place. His acquiescence in this choice meant that the connection with de Geer must to a large extent be broken, as pastoral duties would now take up much of his time. In spite, therefore, of his expectations from Sweden, he at length made up his mind to turn his back upon that country, and, leaving his ​retreat at Elbing, once more took up his residence at Lissa. De Geer and Hartlib were both anxious that he should leave the books to be published by Elzevir in Amsterdam, but he thought it better to see them printed under his own eyes, and insisted on entrusting them to a local printer at Lissa. He was now settling for the second time in the town where his spurs as a schoolmaster and as an educationist had been won, and many things combined to make him enter on this new stage of his career with that melancholy to which the Slavonic temperament is ever prone. He was fifty-six years old. His life had been spent in exile and in the continual struggle against poverty. His hopes that the Evangelic religion would ultimately prosper must, by this time, have been a good deal shaken. The Pansophia was not completed, and, at his age, with his duties, and in a century when the duration of life was much shorter than at the present day, he could scarcely hope to finish it. True, he had produced his school-books, his Great Didactic, and his Treatise on language, but these were to him nothing but spinosa didactica. His life-work, the work for which he had wished to be remembered, existed but in his own fancy and in the loose sheets of uncoördinated information that he had been collecting for years. In addition, the death of his wife, for whose weak state of health the journey to Lissa had proved too much, made him more than ever in need of the sympathy that, as a Bishop, he was expected to extend to others.
To leave the author for a moment, and return to his writings. The printer at Lissa proved unsatisfactory, and, in 1650, Comenius sent the manuscripts to Amsterdam, washed his hands of them, and left their publication to de Geer. The works written between 1642 and 1650 constitute the second part of the Opera Didactica Omnia. Here we find the Methodus Linguarum Novissima, a couple of pages of the Vestibulum, in Latin and in German, and the same amount of the Janua, both left unfinished because, as he tells us, he brought out an improved edition later on, in ​Hungary, and preferred to print this version in Part III. of the Folio. The grammar for the Janua, under the title Januae Linguarum novissima clavis, Grammatica Latino-Vernacula, he gives in full, because, though also revised in Hungary, the two works are practically distinct. The grammar written at Elbing proved too long for young boys (it occupies over 100 folio pages), and is more suited to the master than to the pupil, while that written in Hungary is much shorter.
Following the grammar are some Annotationes super Grammaticam novam Janualem; additional information for teachers and hints as to the spirit in which the grammar should be used. “This is a grammar that I have given you,” he says, in a few concluding words, “but one that is to serve as a prelude to logic, rhetoric, and the sciences themselves. Do we wish to train up boys so that they may always remain boys? Nay, it is to higher things that they must be advanced.” The Lexicon Januale is not printed in the folio, since an edition of it was brought out by Thomas Gölz at Frankfort in 1656, while the publication of the Atrium was hindered by Comenius’ call to Hungary in 1650.
We thus see that the series of works composed for de Geer consisted of a philosophic treatise on Language, its nature, its functions, and the laws to be observed in teaching it, followed by a set of graduated reading-books and lexicons based on these laws. The Methodus Novissima deserves special notice, more indeed than can be given to it here. Its scope is not so wide as that of the Great Didactic, since it deals primarily with language, but in breadth of thought it is fully equal to it. Its great drawback is its bulk (it is half as long again as the Great Didactic). As a writer Comenius lacked the instinct of limitation, and in the Methodus, as in much that he wrote, allowed his pen to run away with him.
The work contains thirty chapters, and these fall naturally under seven heads.
I. cc. i.–iv.Theory of Language.—Philosophic dis​cussion of the nature of language, the differences and resemblances that exist between various languages, and their respective defects and advantages.
II. cc. v.–viii.Historical.—Especial attention should be paid to one language in particular. Why this language should be Latin. The method of teaching it hitherto in vogue. Brief account of the efforts that have been made to improve upon that method.
III. cc. ix., x.Didactic.—A new method, based upon true didactic principles, is needed. Thorough exposition and analysis of these principles.
IV. cc. xi.-xiii.General description of the Methodus Novissima, with special reference to the principle of gradation involved.
V. cc. xiv.–xvii.This principle as applied to Latin. Description of the Vestibulum, Janua, Atrium, and Thesaurus.
VI. cc. xviii.–xxviii.Universal application of the method, not only to the teaching of Latin, but to the vernaculars as well; to polyglotty, to scientific ends, to the better understanding of the Scriptures, to the improvement of schools, and to the education of rude peoples.
VII. cc. xxix., xxx.Appeal to learned men, theologians, and rulers, to further the principles involved.
With a large portion of the detail in this work the reader has already been made familiar, and about one-sixth (chap. x.) is an abstract of the Great Didactic; but scattered through the earlier chapters there are a number of suggestive remarks that illustrate the author's versatility and breadth of mind, and these we will briefly indicate.
It must be confessed that some of Comenius’ philosophising on the nature of language is sorry stuff. The remark that language is derived from thought and thought from objects (rebus), has a plausible air, but is not developed. Of far greater interest is his description of a perfect language. For this, four things are necessary: (1) a complete nomenclature of objects, (2) no ambiguity in the meaning of words, (3) explicit laws for the proper construction of sentences, (4) the nomenclature ​should not be redundant, each object being represented by one word and no more.
While such a conception of language is of logical value, it is evident that it could only seriously recommend itself to one who lacked all appreciation of literary style. Objects are limited, but the ways in which they may be viewed are indefinite, and it is the possession of several words of varying etymological significance to express different aspects of the same conception that lends a language its charm.
In the domain of comparative philology we find Leibnitz to a large extent anticipated. The similarities between the chief languages of Europe prove beyond a doubt that they have a common origin, and this can be none other than Hebrew. In proof of this assertion he purposes, so he tells us, to write a comparative lexicon of the five chief languages of Europe. It is scarcely necessary to say that the choice of Hebrew as a root-language is suggested by religious associations and by the Scriptural account of the manner in which diversity of language originated. The difficulty of intercourse between nation and nation, for which the Tower of Babel is answerable, can be overcome by the adoption of some one language as a medium of communication. Here Comenius forgets his former decision in favour of a philosophical language, and casts his vote for Latin. After giving at length the arguments of Vives, he adds a few of his own. Latin is easy to pronounce, and in this respect possesses an advantage over most modern tongues. It is free from the difficulties of the Hebrew ham and of the Arabic hha. It has no th like English, no nasal vowels like Polish, and its consonants are not sometimes hard and sometimes soft, as in the Slavonic languages. Hungarian words are monstrously long, Chinese and, to a large extent, German words are too short, and have to be joined agglutinatively; but Latin vocables are of a medium and practicable length.
This prominence given to Latin as a link between nation and nation is not to discourage the cultivation of modern languages. On the contrary, it is of great importance ​that each people should learn its own language thoroughly, and try to preserve it pure and free from admixture with others. A thorough knowledge of any tongue can be obtained by means of translations of the Vestibulum, the Janua, and the Atrium, and the desire to introduce foreign words will be diminished as the resources of the vernacular become better known. In this respect some nations are great offenders, and particularly the Bohemians, who continually borrow foreign words and expressions although their own language is an exceptionally rich one. The best method of maintaining the purity of a language is the inception of Academies, such as the Society della Crusca at Florence, or the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft at Weimar. Some such society should exist in every country, and its first object should be to analyse the syntax and grammar of the vernacular, and to reduce them to definite rules. The conditions of those nations who are not sufficiently civilised to do this for themselves, exercises Comenius greatly. The task obviously falls to the lot of the neighbouring people. Thus, the language of the Laps must be set in order by the Swedes, Welsh by the English, and the American dialects by the Spaniards, Belgians, and English that live in America.
Such are a few of the interesting points, buried as usual beneath a mass of verbosity and repetition, that are raised in the Novissima Methodus. A short quotation from the fragment of the Vestibulum that immediately follows it in the folio edition of 1657, will show how closely the German was fitted to the Latin—
| Invitatio. | Einladung. |
| Veni puer aut quisquis es qui cupis discere Latinam linguam: quae pulchra est communisque populis et facit doctos | Kom [her du] Knab oder wer du seyst der du begehrst zu lernen die Lateinische Sprach: welche schön ist und gemein den Völkern und macht gelehrte [Leut] |
The grammar composed for the Janua does Comenius little credit. It is far too long (it occupies sixty-three folio pages), it abounds in divisions, subdivisions, and such-like complications, and is thus totally at variance with the rules laid down in the Great Didactic. It is followed by some notes for the teachers who used it.
In the midst of his varied activity Comenius had ever kept his eyes fixed on one beacon light, and this was the triumphant return of the Bohemian Protestants to their fatherland. To this end he had devised plans for school-organisation, church discipline, social reform, and what not. For this he had courted Sweden and waited in Oxenstierna’s antechamber; for this he had buried himself at Elbing, and had spent the best part of six years in doing what he detested, writing school-books; for this he had pocketed his pride and eaten another’s bread; for this he had borne de Geer’s petulant humours and inconsiderate arrogance. And now it all proved to be in vain. The Thirty Years’ War was at an end. In 1648 the Peace of Westphalia had been ratified at Münster and at Osnabrück, and, while religious toleration had been granted to the Protestants in general, it had not been extended to the Bohemian Brethren. These found themselves as far as ever from the return to their beloved country.
​To the whole Unity the blow was tremendous, but to none more than to its bishop. The revulsion of feeling caused by the overthrow of all his hopes was sufficient to strain the mental equilibrium of a man more evenly balanced than Comenius, and it is from this juncture that he commenced to give way to those prophetic tendencies that made him the butt of every academic scoffer in Europe, and contributed more than anything else to neutralise the influence that his life should have had on the immediate future of school-organisation.
Hard work, the most easeful of anodynes, came to his rescue. The bond by which the Brethren had been kept together was loosened, and the Unity was fast dispersing. Comenius’ energies were divided between resisting this tendency and finding places as teachers for those who were leaving Lissa to seek their fortunes elsewhere. The Gymnasium had greatly declined since the days of his Rectorship, and the effort to bring it up to its former pitch of excellence laid an additional burden upon him. It was in literature, however, that he found the most complete refuge from the dull disappointments of life. His solicitude for the purity of modern languages was not confined to the general propositions laid down in the Methodus Novissima. In this year (1649) a German Dictionary from his pen was published, followed by a translation of the eighth book of Lasici’s History of the Bohemian Brethren; a last effort to keep the Unity together and excite the sympathy of Europe in its behalf. In cheerfulness his family history contrasted favourably with his political outlook. He had married again, now for the third time, and in the same year two of his daughters, Dorothea and Elizabeth, were married, the first to his literary collaborator Figulus, and the second to a young Hungarian, Molitor by name. It is to be regretted that we get no glimpse into the interior of the household, as, in the absence of definite information, it is difficult to imagine anything but a some​what dreary environment of depressed theologians and needy compilers of school-books.
In the following year (1650) he addressed to his flock a curious document entitled The Will of the Dying Mother. The “dying mother,” needless to say, is the Bohemian Church, who exhorts her children and divides among them her spiritual treasures. The title alone speaks of a morbidly sensitive state on the part of the author, and it was well that his activity was soon to find an outlet into a channel healthier than any provided by the somewhat moribund Lissa.
Attracted by the Methodus Novissima, which was printed at Lissa at the same time as a work of his own, Christopher von Bnin, the Palatine of Posen, had already asked Comenius to assist him in founding a three-class Gymnasium at Sirakow. This offer he was unable to accept, since he was already in communication with the son of George Rakoczy, his former well-wisher. Sigismund Rakoczy and his mother, the Countess Susanna, had read the Pansophia, some of which appears to have been published by this time, and invited its author to come to Hungary and open a school on the lines laid down in it. Several circumstances made Comenius anxious to go to Hungary. There he would find a large portion of the Moravian Church, and there lived Nicolas Drabik, in whose revelations of the future he took more interest daily. He accordingly set out for Saros-Patak, where he arrived in May (1650). A short journey to Tokai with his patrons, during which he discussed the matter, gave him time to make up his mind, and he accepted the offer on the following conditions. Count Rakoczy was to provide a well-built school-house with seven class-rooms, adjoining which there was to be boarding accommodation for as many pupils as possible. There were to be some scholarships by means of which poor students, of whom a certain number were to be Bohemians, might receive board and education for a nominal fee; a sufficient number of masters to allow one for each class; ​and lastly, but probably, in Comenius’ eyes, the most important of all, a printing-press, well supplied with type, and some printers to work it.
To these conditions the Count agreed, and Comenius then proceeded to draw up and submit to him a detailed scheme for the school, which he published in the following year under the title Sketch of the Pansophic School. This sketch, of which we give a full description elsewhere, proves Comenius to have been a master of organisation. In scope and breadth of view, the scheme was centuries in advance of its time, while many of the suggestions that it contains are but imperfectly carried into effect at the present day.
Leaving his wife, his son Daniel, and his daughter Susanna at Lissa, Comenius, accompanied by his son-in-law Figulus, settled definitely at Saros-Patak in October (1650), and set about his task without any delay. With the object of exciting the sympathy of the residents in the town, he commenced a course of lectures on Education. The first of these, On the cultivation of the intellect, was delivered in the lecture-room of the school on the 24th of November, and was followed, four days afterwards, by another on Books as the chief instrument of culture. But his ingrained tendency to theorise was as displeasing to his Hungarian friends as it had been to de Geer. “Your schemes,” they said, “are too ambitious. While you lecture to us and talk about your seven-class Gymnasium, the education of our sons is neglected. Make a modest commencement and open a few classes at once.”
Under this pressure, therefore, Comenius wrote a short sketch of a three-class Gymnasium, which he dedicated to Sigismund Rakoczy, and in accordance with this sketch the lowest or Vestibular class was opened on the 13th of ​February (1651). On this occasion he delivered his Panegyric of the true method. The second, or Janual class, followed on the 14th of March, and was inaugurated in turn by a lecture On the advantage of an exact nomenclature of objects. The opening of the Atrial class, occasion for a lecture on The elegant study of style, had to be postponed until the January of 1652.
In spite of the enthusiasm with which he had been welcomed on his arrival at Saros-Patak, Comenius’ path of reform was a thorny one. In asking for a seven-class Gymnasium, he had, like a practical man, probably asked for a good deal more than he expected to get, but he experienced great difficulty in obtaining that even the three classes opened should be arranged in accordance with his didactic principles. The teachers of the school, who had been vaguely anxious for an improved method that promised to make their work lighter, were mutinous when they understood the details of the scheme. The introduction of so much orderliness meant for them regular attendance and continuous application, and to this they objected strongly. Chosen from “the crowd of students,” accustomed to attend the lectures of professors and to come into class only in their spare hours, and then with their minds full of other matters, it is small wonder that reform was more congenial to them in principle than in practice. “The task of a schoolmaster needs the whole man, since it consists in fashioning and refashioning the countenance, the hands, the minds, and the hearts of the little ones”; but how could this be expected from men who only intended to remain in the profession for one year, who looked on their occupation as degrading, and meant to leave it as soon as they could find any more lucrative employment? It need scarcely cause surprise ​that masters of this stamp were little in sympathy with the most striking features of the new method. “Of what use is a complete nomenclature of objects to us? we are not going to be philosophers,” they said, when the Janua was placed in their hands. “Of what use is style to us? we are not going to be Ciceros,” they remarked, when they saw the Atrium. With such unpromising material it needed a stronger man than Comenius to achieve success.
He was probably at a loss to know how to treat their opposition. The publication at this time of the De Ratione Studii of Joachim Fortius, and of the similarly named treatise of Erasmus, seems due to his desire to avoid odium by sheltering himself behind the authority of former writers. These treatises, however, produced no effect, so he followed them up by a pamphlet of his own, entitled Fortius redivivus, sive de pellenda Scholis ignavia, and, that he might enlist the sympathy of the boys on his side, began to sketch out the work that he called the Vestibuli et Janue Lucidarium or the Ocular demonstration of the nomenclature of Objects, afterwards famous as the Orbis Pictus or World in pictures, and to write his dramatic arrangement of the Janua, published later as the Schola Ludus.
But this brings us back to the text-books. Count Rakoczy had provided a printing-press and other requisites. Their publication was thus rendered a matter of comparative ease, and some of the masters in the school fitted a Hungarian version to the Latin text. They appear in Part III. of the Amsterdam Folio, arranged in order of usage.
First comes the Vestibulum, remodelled as already described. This is followed by a very simple and practical child’s grammar, occupying only thirteen folio columns, after which comes a complete index to the Vestibulum, referring each word to the number of the section in which it occurs. A few hints to the teacher express Comenius’ views as to the method to be adopted. The boy is first ​to learn, in the vernacular, the names of all the objects mentioned; an hour’s instruction being arranged as follows. In the first quarter of an hour, the master reads over a portion of the Vestibulum to his class, and makes the boys read it aloud in turn. In the second, they copy out what he has read to them. In the third, the master explains the meaning of each word and examines the boys to see if they understand. In the fourth they learn the portion off by heart.
Two months should suffice for learning the whole of the Vestibulum in the vernacular, and then the Latin version may be placed in the pupils’ hands. The same method as before may be adopted, and it is estimated that in four months the class should know their task thoroughly. The grammar may then be commenced, care being taken to translate each rule into the vernacular before the boys learn it. For this, three months are allotted, after which the pupils proceed to the lexicon or index. This should be read through in a fortnight, and with a fourfold object: (1) the boys will thus become accustomed to the abbreviations that they will find in the lexicon of the Janua; (2) it will be an excellent opportunity for seeing how well they know the meaning of the words; (3) by referring to the text from the words that they do not know, they will learn the numbers up to 500; (4) an examination in grammar can be instituted by asking them to parse each word as they come to it.
The pupil is now sufficiently advanced to leave the Vestibular and enter the Janual class. In the method that he suggests for this class, Comenius by no means rises to his own level, making the extraordinary proposal that the lexicon (100 folio pages) should be learned first, that then the grammar (twenty-five folio pages) should be mastered, and that then only should the text of the Janua be given to the boys.
Of course he had his reasons for this method, though ​they are scarcely convincing. Under the old system, he says, when the beginner was introduced straight to the Janua, he had three difficulties to contend with, ignorance of the words, of their constructions, and of the objects to which many of them referred. These difficulties he hopes to overcome by adopting the order indicated. “First, rising from its roots, comes the forest of Latin words, the lexicon. Then we give you the tools for cutting this forest down, sawing the trees into planks, and fastening these together, namely, the grammar. Finally we place before you a short universal history of objects, fashioned out of all the words in Latin properly fitted together, namely, the text of the Janua.”
This is a good example of Comenius’ habit of running a fanciful illustration to death. It is quite true, as he points out, that in making any construction it is necessary to have, first the materials, and then the tools to work them into shape; but the result of his reasoning on these lines is grotesque. He places a ponderous dictionary in the child’s hand, saying, “Learn this and I will let you read Latin.” The older grammarians, with their seven genders and their multitudinous rules, never attained this pitch of absurdity.
The grammar, if not quite a model, from the modern standpoint, is yet extremely good. It is far shorter than that written in Elbing, and the rules are terse and to the point. It may interest the reader to see how Comenius introduces the prepositions that govern the ablative.
Præpositiones Ablativi.
Cum lupus nollet cedere de i via, nec ille fugere posset ab 2 eo, aut stare diu coram 3 eo, et sic fuit haud procul 4 morte, nisi pugnaret pro 5 vita: licet esset sine 6 socio (absque 7 socio) vibravit tamen hastam cum 8 impetu et transverberavit lupum, distractasque ex 9 illo exuvias ostentat, præ 10 gaudio, palam omnibus.
The edition of the Janua, that follows, is considerably ​enlarged. It occupies fifty folio pages, and treats at some length of everything in heaven and earth, as the following extracts indicate:—
Sec. 518 (Geometria). Ex concursu linearum fit angulus qui est vel rectus, quem linea incidens perpendicularis efficit, ut est (in subjecto schemate) angulus ACB; vel acutus, minor recto, ut BCD; vel obtusus, major recto, ut ACD.
Sec. 578 (Chronologia cum Historia). Circa A. ch. 1300, coepit innotescere vis magnetis, qua se obvertit ad polos mundi; quod dedit ansam fabricandi Pyxidem nauticam, cujus ope detectum est alterum hemispherum orbis, totusque mundus navigationibus factus pervius; ut gentes (prius seclusæ et ignoratæ sibi invicem), jam possint colere communicationem utilitatum.
Sec. 717 (Theologia). Theologia tota fundatur super Revelationes Dei; quarum nihil ignorare, universalem sensum tenere catholice et posse vindicare qua inde torquentur hæretice, Theologica est exactio.
The pupil of the Janual class had thus the opportunity of acquiring a very fair knowledge of the world in which he lived. Armed with this, he proceeded to the study of the Atrium, and turned his attention to “style.” Commencing with a Grammatica Elegans, which presupposes a knowledge of the rudiments of grammar and deals with subjects such as the transposition of sentences and prosody, he is then introduced to the Atrium Latinitatis. This is the Janua writ large (it covers eighty folio pages), and is composed with a view to illustrating the ornate capacities of the Latin language. The lexicon, written for use with it, was not printed in Hungary, and was first published by ​Janson at Amsterdam in 1657. It was a Latin-Latin and not a Latin-Vernacular dictionary, as, by the time he reached the Atrial class, the pupil was supposed to possess a competent knowledge of the language. The Saros-Patak classbooks, with the exception of the grammars for the Vestibulum and the Janua, were all inferior to the first editions previously published at Lissa. In his effort to be scientific Comenius fell into the very trap that he wished to avoid, and became complicated and tedious. But this relapse was more than compensated for by the celebrated Orbis Pictus, or World in Pictures. It was impossible to publish this work at the printing-office of the Patak Gymnasium, as no engraver competent to execute the illustrations could be found, and it was therefore sent to Nuremberg, where it was brought out at the cost of Michael Endter in 1658. In the preface, Comenius states the philosophic principles by which he was guided in the composition of the work. “There is nothing in the intellect that has not first existed in the senses,” says he, with an airy assumption of the materialistic standpoint that he rejects whenever he philosophises about things in general, but which yet plays such a living part in his pedagogy. “It is because schools commonly neglect this truth, and give the pupils things to learn that they do not understand and which have never been properly placed before their organs of sense-perception, that the tasks of the teacher and of the learner are so irksome, and that so little result is produced.” When dealing with objects that are in the school room it is easy enough to point them out to the beginner, but, when the range of the boys’ vocabulary becomes more extended, the “object-lesson” process can only be effected by means of a picture-book. Such a book will serve several purposes. Small boys generally imagine that the operations of the school-room must necessarily be of a most dismal character. “Now it is well known that, from their ​earliest childhood, boys delight in pictures and feast their eyes upon them greedily. If we can thus free the gardens of wisdom from their terrors, our labour will have been well employed.” In the second place, the book will excite the boy’s interest and help him to fix his attention; and, thirdly, it will serve as a stepping-stone to the Vestibulum and the Janua, with which end in view it was primarily written.
Imagine the Janua Linguarum considerably shortened, simplified, and illustrated, and you have before you the Orbis Pictus. Each section has a picture corresponding to it, and numbers, affixed to individual words in the text, enable the boy to pick out in the picture the exact object to which the word refers. For example:—
Aër
Translated into the vernacular, it was to serve as a first reading-book. Even the letters and the manner of pronouncing them might be learned from a kind of picture ​alphabet by which the text is preceded, and which suggests a connection between the sound of the letter and the cry of an animal.
| Cornix cornicatur, | á á | S a |
| Agnus balat, | bé é é | B b |
| Cicada stridet, | cí cí | C c |
| Upupa dicit, | du du | D d |
| Infans ejulat, | é é é | E e |
The success of this book was even more extraordinary than that of the Janua Linguarum. It went through numberless editions, and was bought by thousands of parents who knew little of Comenius, and cared less ​for his didactic principles. They found that children liked the pictures and picked up their alphabet, and a few words, easier in that way than in any other. That was sufficient for them, and they paid no attention to pedantic detractors who insisted that pictures should have been given only of those objects that could not be submitted to direct inspection. The Orbis Pictus was the first picture-book ever written for children, and exercised a softening influence on the harshness with which, in an unsympathetic age, the first steps in learning were always associated. For years it remained unequalled. Basedow’s Elementarwerk mit Kupfern (1773) was the first attempt, not altogether successful, to improve upon it. “Apart from the Orbis Pictus of Amos Comenius,” wrote Goethe, “no book of this kind found its way into our hands.”
It is impossible to pass such a favourable criticism on the Schola Ludus, or dramatised form of the Janua. These plays were to be acted at the end of each term, and put the subject-matter of the Janua into the mouths of the dramatis personæ. These were generally about fifty in number, so that the greater part of the school could take part in the performances. The plays were intended to interest the pupils, but, if the boys of Saros-Patak in the seventeenth century were like those of the present day, they must have looked upon them as an unmitigated nuisance, and have objurgated the name of Comenius when they had to get up the dreary screed. In one of them, the mathematical section of the Janua is worked into a dialogue between Mathematicus, Metrito, and Trytanio.
Math. And so you are seized with a desire to learn mathematics?
Num. We are, sir. We seek for information, and promise you our gratitude.
Mathematicus then proceeds, in the most stilted manner, to expound the elements of mathematics, occasionally interrupted by expressions of wonder on the part of his pupils. Were it not wholly contrary to Comenius’ character ​to jest with a subject so sacred as education, we might almost suspect that the following was intended to be humorous:—
“This demonstration,” says Mathematicus, referring to Archimedes’ calculation dealing with the sand on the sea-shore, “is very accurate. But I am unwilling to waste time.”
“Marvellous, marvellous!” breaks in Numeriano, evidently afraid that Mathematicus may think better of it, and enter on a long discourse. “Let us proceed to addition.”
The plays occupy 100 folio pages, and are dismal stuff. If the audiences were as delighted with them as Comenius assures us they were, they must have been easily satisfied.
Of more interest are the hints as to their production, by which they are preceded.
Great care is to be taken that all the boys are present at the performances (attendentibus decurionibus ne quis absit). The actors are to be praised, if they acquit themselves successfully, and any of the poorer students who are among them may be presented with a prize of books. Finally, he adds, evidently mindful of reluctance on the part of all concerned, it will be a great stimulus if the actors and their masters are invited to supper after the play.
Of the Patak publications it only remains to mention the little tract On Manners, and the Laws of a well-ordered School.
These are both so full of interest that we greatly regret that lack of space prevents our giving them in full. Comenius, in this respect in accord with William of Wykeham, was evidently a great stickler for good manners. “He who excels in learning, but lacks manners, is deficient rather than proficient,” he writes at the head of his precepts. These treat of dress, of how to stand and how to walk, of speech, of manners toward the master and toward school-fellows, of behaviour in school, in church, at table, and in the playground. The following are some of the rules for behaviour at meals.
​It is ill-mannered for boys:—
To lean their elbows on the table,
Or to hold their hands beneath the table.
To place morsels of excessive size in their mouths.
To gnaw bones with their teeth,
Or to hand on to others food that they have half-eaten.
To take food out of their mouths.
To scratch their heads, or chatter and laugh while eating.
To drink with their mouths full, or to make a noise while drinking.
To pick their teeth with their nails or with their forks.
At table a boy should not speak until first spoken to.
In the playground, boys are urged to run, to jump, and to play games with balls, since it is necessary to put the body in motion and allow the mind to rest. Forbidden pastimes are games played with dice, wrestling, boxing, and swimming, since these are either useless or dangerous.
On getting up in the morning, a boy is first to say his prayers, then to comb his hair, wash his hands and face, and dress neatly. He must remember to wish good morning to all whom he may meet. At night, he is to go straight to bed after evening prayers, and should not forget his private devotions. Once in bed, he should take care not to lie on his back, but must sleep half the night lying on his right and the other half lying on his left side. If several boys are sleeping in one room, there must be no talking after a given hour, and in any case all conversation out of school must be carried on in Latin.
The Laws of a well-ordered School repeat many of what we may call the commonplaces of the Comenian method, but also contain much that is new and to the point. Each class must have a separate class-room, and this should contain a raised desk for the master and a suffi​cient number of seats for the boys, so arranged that the master can see all his pupils at once. The boys should sit with their backs to the window, that the light may fall on the master as he works at the blackboard. In addition to the class-rooms there must also be a big school for dramatic performances and speech-days. Once a month the headmaster, accompanied by the clergyman of the parish or by one of the school-managers, should examine the class to see if fitting progress has been made. At the end of the year an examination on a larger scale is to be held, but, as it is impossible to examine the whole class, boys should be selected haphazard and questioned on their year’s work. Promotions must be arranged in accordance with this examination.
Flogging is allowed, but with certain restrictions. On the first hour of Sunday, the whole school shall be called together, and, after the headmaster has read the rules, each master shall chastise those of his own pupils who have broken any of them during the previous week.
Comenius had evidently been a sufferer at the hands of that scourge of schoolmasters, the unreasoning parent. Before any boy is admitted to the school, his father must sign a document by which he undertakes to abide by the rules of the institution, and promises that his son’s attendance shall be as regular as possible.
In the boarding-house, no meals are allowed out of hours, and such a thing as a tuck-shop is evidently not to be tolerated for a moment. Boys go to bed at eight o’clock and get up at four, and must make their own beds as soon as they rise.
The masters are reminded that their position is one of dignity and of great importance. For the headmaster, in particular, special duties are laid down. He should be a model to the whole school of virtue, piety, and diligence. As he has no class of his own he ought to go through all the classes daily, “as the sun courses through the heavens.” He is to look after the school archives, and to keep an exact record of each boy’s entrance to and ​departure from the school. He is to be hospitable, and should give testimonials of good conduct to deserving boys who leave the school. If other schools or cities send to him for masters, he may send them some of his best pupils.
It may seem surprising that Comenius remained for any length of time in Hungary. With his colleagues he was not a persona grata. His patron, Sigismund Rakoczy, died in 1652, and there was no prospect that the Gymnasium would be increased beyond the three classes already in existence. The Protestants in Lissa were continually urging him to return to them, and enemies whispered that his only object in staying at Saros-Patak was to line his own purse.
The Countess Susanna herself, a lady of a thrifty disposition and not particularly enthusiastic about Comenius, was the best refutation of this latter charge, and any disinclination to return to Poland must probably be ascribed to the influence of his evil genius Drabik.
Drabik, though living at Lednic, was in constant correspondence with Comenius and paid several visits to Saros-Patak, with the object of inducing the Rakoczy family to take some interest in his prophecies. In this he was not very successful, although Comenius did his best to impress on George Rakoczy that the revelations deserved careful attention, if not credence.
Were it not that Sludge is still with us and that scientific men of our own day still fall victims to the spirit-rapper, it would be difficult to understand how a man of Comenius' practical gifts, and not Comenius only but a host of Protestants throughout Europe, could for one minute have given any credence to this wretched impostor. Kotter may possibly have believed in his own revelations; Christina Poniatowska was a weak-minded and weak-bodied girl, subject to genuine fits of hysteria; but Drabik was a cunning calculator, who took stock of the material with which he had to deal and saw that, in ​their present state of despair combined with superstitious expectation, the struggling Protestant communities would swallow almost any prophetic farrago that he chose to deliver to them. Count Rakoczy was to overthrow the house of Hapsburg, and Comenius was to anoint him king at Pressburg. In combination with Sweden, the Count was then to make Protestantism the faith of Europe. In this operation the Turks, of all people in the world, were to assist him, and, by the translation of the Bible into Turkish, for which the Countess Susanna was to supply the funds, were to be made cognisant of the exact grounds of dispute between the Reformed and the Catholic Church.
The transparency of Drabik’s motives was only equalled by his brazen-facedness. In ignorance of the events that were taking place in the Rakoczy family, he continued to receive and to impart revelations concerning the future actions of Sigismund Rakoczy for months after his death. The shout of laughter that the scoffers raised at this unfortunate mistake would have been sufficient to induce most prophets to retire from business, but Drabik, with the greatest calmness, created George Rakoczy his brother’s prophetic heir, and had the impudence to announce repeatedly that in a few weeks so he was informed from heaven-he would be summoned to Saros-Patak, and taken on by the Rakoczys as a kind of family seer; a hint that produced no effect of the kind intended.
Comenius was as yet indisposed to give these revelations full credence, but he thought them well worth considering, and, as events of a peculiarly startling character were foretold for the year 1653, he remained in Hungary, thinking that it might be as well to encounter a social upheaval under the protection of the powerful Rakoczy family. Needless to say, nothing remarkable occurred at the prescribed date, and, as the Church in Lissa needed his presence urgently, he finally (1654) made up his mind to leave Saros-Patak. The non-fulfilment of the prophecies had, strange to say, not diminished his interest in Drabik, whose hold upon him grew firmer daily.
​On the 2nd of June he delivered a farewell oration in the great hall of the Gymnasium. All the circumstances that had led to friction between himself and his colleagues were forgotten, and, in an eloquent speech, he wished prosperity to the school, and reminded its governors and patrons of the golden rules by which it might be attained. Shortly afterwards he left Saros-Patak.
He did not, however, go straight back to Lissa, but stayed for a few weeks at Lednic, where he was in daily communication with Drabik. During the last few months of his residence in Hungary he had redoubled his efforts to induce George Rakoczy to take an interest in the Revelations, and had actually been invited to go to Siebenbürgen and expound them in person. This he had been unable to do, but, with the object of retaining the Count’s interest, he wrote the tractate Gentis felicitas, in which, after discussing the general essentials of good and successful government, he treats of Hungary in particular, and urges the Count, as the perfect ruler and saviour of the Hungarian nation, to place himself in opposition to the house of Hapsburg and uphold the cause of Evangelism.
Under the fire of so much exhortation, George Rakoczy was unable to make up his mind. From a letter to Count Jonas Mednyanszky it appears that he did not attach very much importance to the prophecies, though, for other reasons, he was decidedly disposed to take the line suggested by them. To Comenius he wrote that his difficulties were immense, as he had to cope with the Emperor, the king of Poland, the Turks, and the fickleness of his own subjects. If, however, another defender of Evangelism were to arise, he would be quite willing to assist him.
The occasion was not far to seek. The succession of Charles Gustavus to the throne of Sweden introduced a new element into the political situation, and may have induced Rakoczy to think that Drabik’s forecast of striking events in the near future was, after all, a divine communication. That he was greatly tempted to abandon the cautious pro​cedure of diplomacy, and show his hand with the careless indifference of a passionate enthusiast, seems beyond a doubt. In sending an ambassador to the young king he was acting in conjunction with and under the direct influence of Comenius. Constantine Schaum, to whom the task of conducting the negotiations with Charles and with Oxenstierna was entrusted, had orders to go to Lissa on his way to Sweden, and the Count begged Comenius to give his envoy what advice he could.
For the Protestant exiles in Lissa the position was now greatly altered. Though Count Bohuslaw, on embracing the Catholic faith, had not withdrawn his protection from Comenius and the Brethren under his spiritual charge, it was evident that, in case of war, their situation was precarious. The undisguised sympathy that they displayed for Sweden did not mend matters, and, when Charles Gustavus, in the August of 1657, actually crossed the Polish frontier and marched as a victor on Warsaw and Cracow, danger stared them daily in the face. It was distinctly the moment when Comenius should have preserved a discreet silence, and have suffered himself and his compatriots to remain screened by their political insignificance; instead of this, with his habitual simplicity, he published a Panegyric on Charles Gustavus, in which he hailed him as “the liberator of humanity, the comfort of the afflicted, and the pattern for kings.” The work, which had a considerable vogue, cannot have failed to embitter the feelings of the Poles against the aliens in their midst, and, as Comenius’ enemies afterwards declared, may have been partly responsible for the calamities that befell Lissa. During his victorious march through Poland, Charles had spared a town that contained so many non-Catholics, and merely left a Swedish garrison to maintain the footing that he had acquired in the district. On the 17th of April, a large body of Polish troops came down unexpectedly, compelling the garrison to withdraw and leave Lissa at the mercy of the infuriated Poles. A large number of Protestants sought safety by fleeing into the forests on the ​Silesian frontier, but Comenius and some of his friends scorned this course, and, with confidence inspired by Drabik’s prophecies, calmly awaited the development of events. They were not left long in suspense. On the the 29th of April, the Poles burst once more into the defenceless town, sacked it, and reduced it to ashes. It was with the greatest difficulty that any of the Protestants who had remained there saved their lives. Comenius succeeded in escaping to Silesia, where he took refuge with a wealthy nobleman, the Freiherr of Budova. He was once more homeless, and his worldly assets consisted of the clothes in which he stood, a few good friends, and a reputation somewhat damaged by the fanatical views to which he had committed himself.
Some days afterwards, his host sent Comenius’ amanuensis over to Lissa with an escort to see if anything had escaped the conflagration; nothing could be found, however, but a few pages of the Pansophia that he had buried before his flight. Amongst other things he had lost his library, and promissory notes to the value of 1000 thaler; though these he valued but little in comparison with his precious manuscripts, into which he had put the best part of his energy, and with which his fondest hopes were bound up. His Sylva Pansophiæ, containing “the definitions of all things”; his Dictionary of the Bohemian Language, on which he had been engaged for thirty years; his Harmony of the Evangelists; his refutations of Descartes of the Copernican theory, and his collected sermons of forty years, all had been devoured by the flames, and he filled the air with his lamentations. “Had God only spared me the Sylva Pansophiæ,” he cried, “all else would have been easier to bear, but even this is destroyed.” Was ever such irony? With the exception of the Bohemian dictionary, the works that were lost could have elicited little but contempt from subsequent generations. Those, on which his fame to a large extent rests, were already in the hands of half the ​school-boys in Europe, and beyond the reach of any casual conflagration.
A letter of Pell’s, dated July 17th, shows that Comenius’ friends in England were kept well informed as to the state of his affairs. “Five days ago,” writes Pell, “I received a letter dated Dantzig, June 17th, containing a letter from Mr. Comenius, dated 22nd of May, wherein he describes the sad estate of those Protestants that escaped from Lesna, where he, for his own part, besides his writings, lost in money, books, and household stuff, above 3000 reichs-dalers (about £700 sterling). He had with incredible labour and no small journeys gotten the favour of some liberal persons, and hoped perhaps to leave his children £200 apiece, which among so many poor exiles would have seemed great riches. I hear he is sixty-five years old, and, it seems, hath nothing left but the clothes on his back. Those papers which have been found in the ashes and rubbish of Lesna are little worth in comparison of those which he accounts irrevocably lost. . . I should have been willing to read over his refutations of the Copernicans and Cartesians, but with that prejudice that I do not believe him to be a competent judge of all the differences between them and other writers. And therefore of all his papers, there is none for whose loss I am less sorry, though he say of them, ‘Me valde dolet, siquidem in iis multum posueram operæ et diligentiæ.’
“I have caused his letter to be fairly written out and have sent it to the divines (pastors and professors) of Zurich, who esteem him and have introduced his Janua into their higher school some years ago. I make no question but they will do something for him.”
The terrible calamity that had befallen the Protestant community at Lissa excited the sympathy of non-Catholics throughout Europe. On every side collections were made ​in aid of the homeless exiles. From Dantzig as much as 3000 thaler was contributed to the fund, and in England it was even suggested that a grant of land should be made to them in Ireland. For Comenius, Silesia was but a temporary refuge, and on leaving it his first movements were unfortunate. His effort to settle at Frankfort on the Oder was frustrated by an outbreak of the plague, and in Hamburg, his next resting-place, the old man, worn out by the fatigues to which he had been subjected, underwent a severe illness.
As regards money he had no cause for anxiety. Laurence de Geer, the son of his former patron, came to the rescue and insisted that he should settle permanently in Amsterdam, under his immediate protection. Laurence had long been a passionate admirer of Comenius, though more from the religious and philosophical than from the educational standpoint. The hard-headed old merchant, his father, had refused to listen to Pansophic schemes and prophetic rhapsodies, and had sternly insisted that school-books and nothing else were what he wanted for his money; but the younger de Geer would place no such restriction upon his friend. Comenius might still dabble in education, if he wished; but he was to be left free to rewrite the Pansophic works that had been destroyed by the flames, and thus to complete what he regarded as the great work of his life.
As soon as he was well enough to travel, he set out with his family to Amsterdam, and here he found himself in the midst of friends. “Mr. Drury has returned to Amsterdam,” writes Hartlib to Pell, “and promises with all speed to hasten unto us, and it is very like Mr. Comenius will come along with him.” But the invitation to England was not accepted. Comenius’ time was fully occupied in getting together a library to replace that lost at Lissa, and in arranging for the publication of his collected works on education, and of the prophecies of Kotter, Poniatowska, and Drabik. At the printer’s ​de Geer seems to have given him unlimited credit. Indeed, his literary renown was so great, that a profit was actually expected from the sale of the Didactic Works, and with this his patron offered to finance a new translation of the Bible into Polish.
It is impossible to say if the magnificent folio, in which the Didactic Works appeared, sold as well as was anticipated. The edition must have been a small one, as the book was very rare a few years after Comenius’ death. To the modern student it is invaluable on account of the numerous autobiographical notices of the author that it contains; but there is no doubt that it can have done little to further Comenius’ renown as a theoretic educationist. The school-books, that appear in chronological order, were already well known, and their collected mass is so great that it quite swamps the Great Didactic. Had this work been published separately it could scarcely have failed to go through several editions, and might have been the means of rescuing the Comenian method from the oblivion into which it afterwards fell.
In itself the volume is a fine one, over 1000 folio pages in length, well printed and well bound. Under the title The Complete Didactic Works of J. A. Comenius, it comprises works written, in Part I., between 1627 and 1642; in Part II., between 1642 and 1650; in Part III., between 1650 and 1654; in Part IV., between 1654 and 1657.
With the contents of the first three parts the reader is already acquainted. Part IV., which is comparatively short, consists of works written in Amsterdam. A collection of sentences based on the Vestibulum, arranged in alphabetical order and entitled Vestibuli Auctarium, is the only section of it that forms an essential part of the Comenian series of school-books. It is dedicated to a Dr. Rulice of Amsterdam, with whom Comenius was in daily ​intercourse. Of greater interest is the work that follows, An Apology for the Latinity of the Janua. On his arrival in Amsterdam, Comenius had been asked by some influential citizens to open a small school, and try the efficacy of his method on the Dutch boys. This suggestion seems to have made the established schoolmasters of the town apprehensive that the stranger, with his new methods, would make a bid for their teaching connection, and thus render their position insecure. They therefore brought against him the only charge that would hold water, namely, that his scholarship was poor and likely to lead boys astray. To this Comenius replied in his Apologia Latinitatis, and, anxious to leave his enemies no case against him, he followed this up by his Ventilabrum Sapientiæ, in which he subjects his own method to a critical examination and points out his own shortcomings so unsparingly as to leave nothing for the ill-disposed to say.
He had now finished with the Latin school-books, “from which he had so often turned in disgust,” and was free to devote himself to the Pansophia. “Mr. Comen,” writes Hartlib to Pell, “to retire himself to give himself wholly to his Pansophia goes this spring to be at Monsieur de Gerre’s house for a certain time, where he is provided for as a prince, but nobody knows he is there but we three and one of Comen’s amanuenses.” It would have been well had de Geer’s sympathy stopped short at the Pansophia. Unfortunately he took quite as much interest in the Revelations and in the cognate doctrine of Chiliasmus, or the one thousand years’ reign of peace on earth to be inaugurated by Christ at His second coming, and even invited Drabik to come to Amsterdam. The year 1656, so fateful to the Unity, had been foretold as that in which ​the reign of peace was to commence, and, this expectation falsified, 1671 or 1672 was the next date to which Comenius, inspired by Drabik, had given his entire confidence. The alliance of Rakoczy with Charles Gustavus, and the death of Ferdinand II., had given a passing air of plausibility to Drabik’s ravings, and poor Comenius finally threw common-sense scruples to the wind and definitely identified himself with the party of prophecy. The publication by him of Lux in Tenebris, or the collected prophecies of Kotter, Poniatowska, and Drabik, may have been largely due to de Geer’s influence, but it must be borne in mind that men like Thomas Burnet and William Whiston were staunch adherents of the doctrine of Chiliasmus, and that both on the continent and in England a large number of Protestants had no doubt whatever that Drabik was directly inspired from heaven. “This last week I have twice read the book of Drabicius,” writes Beale to Hartlib, “and cannot doubt but, in the main, God is in it.” Comenius was now leaving the legitimate paths of Churchmanship and pedagogy, and entering upon the trackless maze of vaticination. Revelation succeeded revelation. “About three weeks ago,” writes Hartlib to Pell in 1658, “Mr. Comen did impart unto me a copy of the last three visions of Drabicius from March 8th to September 1st, wherein he says again that the king of France is to be the German emperor.” In the following year appeared the History of the Revelations; in 1663, the more recent visions of Drabik were given to the public; and, two years later, a complete illustrated edition of all the prophecies up to date, under the title Lux e Tenebris, was issued.
In spite of the popularity of these works, murmurs of disapproval were heard in many quarters. Nicholas Arnold, a professor at Franecker, gave vent to his feelings in his Discursus Theologicus contra Comenium, and Samuel Des Marets, Professor of Theology at Groningen, published several brochures, in which, however, he was careful to state that the object of his attack was not Comenius, but the Revelations fathered by him. Even in his own ​family he met with opposition. We learn from letters of Figulus to Arnold, that his son-in-law had disapproved of the publication of Lux in Tenebris in 1657.
It is difficult to understand how Comenius found it possible to do much more work at his Pansophia during these years, since to edit the prophecies and fight their battles with the sceptical must have taken up nearly as much time as to write school-books at Elbing. De Geer, however, seems to have made every arrangement in his power to ensure that the Universal Knowledge should be carried to a successful issue. “I still more and more admire the zeal and piety of that admirable man,” wrote Rulice to Hartlib in 1658. “I must tell you in aurem, if Comen do not mention it, he hath called also Figulus, with his family, hither, and will maintain him only to assist his father-in-law and to know all concerning Pansophia, that if Comen should die or be carried away, he may finish it.”
De Geer, in fact, was willing to spend his money on any object that commended itself to his evangelical friends. The Rakoczy family had refused to finance the translation of the Bible into Turkish, but he came to the rescue with his inexhaustible purse. The work was undertaken by a certain Warner, who had travelled in Turkey, and was to be revised by Golius, the well-known orientalist. Hartlib announces this in triumph to Boyle and Worthington. At last the Deus ex machina, destined to interpose and strike the final blow at Catholicism, would be instructed in the part that he was called upon play.
With the publication of the Opera Omnia Didactica, Comenius had not entirely ceased to take an interest in matters educational. In 1658 we find him giving practical instruction in his method to Jacob Redinger, master of the Latin School at Frankenthal. Redinger had heard of him from afar, and was not satisfied till he came to Amsterdam to consult the great oracle of school-craft. Comenius’ magic influence, that enthralled every schoolmaster with a disinterested love for the profession of education, made a deep impression on him. He became ​the most devoted adherent of the new method, and, in his young enthusiasm, brought out an edition of the Vestibulum and a German translation of the Schola Ludus. A follower of Comenius in one direction, he soon became his disciple in another, embraced the doctrine of Chiliasmus, and joined the crowd of Protestants who, throughout Europe, were eagerly awaiting the fulfilment of the Drabician prophecies.
That the Pansophia made but slow progress need cause little surprise, as, in addition to his occupations of a purely theological nature, Comenius had undertaken the task of managing the finances of the Bohemian Brethren. The sympathy of friends in England had not been confined to words, but had led to collections on a large scale. In 1658 £5900, and in the following year £3000, were sent to the Continent in aid of the exiled victims of Catholicism. At the same time, collections were made in Holland and in Switzerland, and the whole sum of money had to pass through Comenius’ hands. Applications for assistance poured in from every side, and the aged Bishop had to tear himself from his philosophic labours and undertake the duties of a paymaster-general. From England supplies continued to come in until, in 1661, Charles II., alarmed at the removal of so much money from the country, put a stop to the collection, and impounded the money that was ready for transmission. Needless to say, an indignant letter from Amsterdam remained ineffective and unanswered. In the midst of so many distractions it is remarkable that Comenius, whose health was rapidly failing, found time to conduct some physical experiments on the nature of heat and cold, and to correspond with Robert Dalgarno in England on the subject of a complicated clockwork construction that the latter was devising.
Of the last ten years of Comenius’ life our information, never very direct or very full, is extremely scanty. His correspondence with Hartlib ceases in 1662, and we are ​thus deprived of an important source of information. In 1665 death took from him his wife, his friend Dr. Rulice, and his patron Laurence de Geer, and, though the place of the latter was, to a certain extent, supplied by his brother Gerard, who continued to support him in comfort, he must have led but a forlorn existence, an exile from his native land, and the survivor of most of his friends. In his loneliness he devoted himself to his metaphysical writings with all the energy that a feeble old man, whose life had been a perpetual hoping against hope, could muster. His Janua Rerum appears to have been completed in 1666, though, if this was identical with a work of the same name that he mentions previously as being in print, it is impossible to say. The only edition known was published at Leyden in 1681. Of this treatise it suffices to say that it is a deductive metaphysic, totally unlike the Janua Rerum that he anticipated in his younger days, and that it bears no trace of Bacon’s influence. The same may be said of his Pansophic writings, some of which were completed in the same year. Under the title of A general deliberation for the improvement of the human race were comprised six parts, named respectively, Panegersia, Panaugia, Pantaxia or Pansophia, Panpadia, Panglottia, and Panorthosia, concluded by a seventh consisting of a general exhortation. If the first two were published during Comenius’ lifetime, the editions must have been limited to a few copies, as Buddaeus, in 1702, had to edit the Panegersia from the original manuscript, and of the Panaugia there only exists one copy—in the museum at Prague. The Panegersia excited the admiration of Herder, but it is unnecessary ​for us to say more than that its contents embody a curious admixture of fantastic metaphysic and weak analogies drawn from the processes of nature. The general drift of the argument is that of the Via Lucis, written during his stay in England, and published by Cunrad at Amsterdam in 1668. Of this work Comenius sent a copy to the Royal Society in London, with a letter in which he implored its members not to deal too exclusively with the physical aspect of the universe to the neglect of the more important metaphysical and supernatural side.
He was now seventy-seven years old, but his desire to write and to publish remained as great as ever. His Unum Necessarium, a religious work, appeared in 1668, and in the following year he again plunged into controversy with a tract directed against Samuel Des Marets, who still persisted in his sceptical attitude towards the prophecies and the chiliastic doctrine. The result of this brochure was startling. Des Marets lost his temper completely, and in his reply Antirrheticus he quits the ground of argument and assails Comenius’ personal character in a manner quite unjustifiable, if the age and failing strength of his antagonist be considered. After terming Comenius “a fanatic, a visionary, and an enthusiast in folio,” he proceeds, “I would venture to say that by feeding one family, that of de Geer, on pansophic hope, and by nourishing it or rather bewitching it with chiliastic smoke and Drabik’s prophecies, he has been able to make a yearly income three or four times as great as the salary that I receive from the government.”
The sharp tone of this attack cut Comenius to the quick. Forlorn, and on the verge of the grave, he had neither the force nor the inclination to rebut the insinuations of dishonesty that it contained. Some consolation in his distress he may have derived from the society of the aged ​French prophetess and visionary, Antoinette Bourignon, who had recently come to reside at Amsterdam; but his life was burning low, and not even the fuel of fanaticism was able to revive the flame. Early in the year 1670 his son-in-law Figulus died, and, on the 15th of November, the last Bishop of the Bohemian Brethren quitted that life in which every ambition that he entertained had been doomed to disappointment. He was buried at Naarden, near Amsterdam, on the 22nd of November.
It was a strange account on which the ledger had closed. For himself, Comenius was a failure, and his life bankrupt; not so for mankind. The despised pedagogy, the “puerilia illa mihi toties nauseata” have laid posterity under an eternal obligation, and have given the deepest possible meaning to the words of Leibnitz,
“Tempus erit, quo te, Comeni, turba bonorum. Factaque spesque tuas, vota quoque ipsa colet.”
Of Comenius’ descendants little is known. His son Daniel was ordained, and died in 1694, but these two facts exhaust the material for his biography. Nor have we much more information about the fate of his literary remains. Gerard de Geer’s interest in the Pansophic writings did not cease with the death of their author, and he entrusted the arrangement and publication of the manuscripts to a certain Nigrinus, who appears to have found his task a difficult one, owing to the complex nature of the plan that Comenius had been trying to work out. In 1677 he announced that the Panorthosia was completed, but no trace of its publication remains. In 1680 he brought out a Specilegium Didacticum, giving the scheme of the didactic works. If he was responsible for the Janua Rerum that appeared in 1681 it is impossible to say.
​We now approach the question, “What was the effect of the personality and of the theoretic writings of Comenius on the generation that immediately succeeded him, and on the following century?” The answer is somewhat surprising. The man whom we unhesitatingly affirm to be the broadest-minded, the most far-seeing, the most comprehensive, and withal the most practical of all the writers who have put pen to paper on the subject of education, the man whose theories have been put into practice in every school that is conducted on rational principles, who embodies the materialistic tendencies of our “modern side” instructors, while avoiding the narrowness of their reforming zeal, who lays stress on the spiritual aspect of true education while he realises the necessity of equipping his pupils for the rude struggle with nature and with fellow-men-Comenius, we say, the prince of schoolmasters, produced practically no effect on the school organisation and educational development of the following century. His school-books, frequently reprinted, were thumbed for years to come by boys in every corner of Europe; but the theoretic works, The Great Didactic, The Newest Method of Languages, The Mother School, remained unknown and ineffective. For all the result that they produced, they might as well have perished in the flames at Lissa.
The cause of this is not far to seek. If we have laid stress on his entanglement with the prophet Drabik, the reason has been less the intrinsic value of that worthy’s revelations than their effect on the reputation of his unfortunate dupe. Comenius was not alone in believing them to be heaven-sent. As we have seen, the prophet had a large following. Few members of the Bohemian Church but had followed the example of their bishop, and put their faith in the misty fabrication; and throughout Europe, Protestants, if not convinced of its truth, awaited the future with interest.
Imagine the effect produced, when, eight months after Comenius’ death, Drabik formally retracted all the prophecies and went over to the Roman Catholic faith.
​The reaction was terrible. The remnant of the Moravian Brethren, who felt they had been duped, laid all the blame upon their spiritual guides. In Hungary, a minister who had been a keen partisan of Drabik’s was dismissed from his office. Daniel Comenius, anxious to go to Hungary, was warned by his friends that his life would scarcely be safe there; while his father’s efforts and sacrifices on behalf of his flock were forgotten in the virtuous indignation that was showered on his want of judgment. Worse than this, the dictionary-makers, biographers, and historians, who should have been the guardians of his fair fame, either took their impressions from the hostile tractates of his enemies, or, in ignorance of his theoretic works, measured his value as an educationist by their peddling standard of correct Latinity. “He worked at a Pansophia,” wrote Morhof, in 1688, “which he left only half finished. He wrote a Prodromus to it, and this, together with some other philosophic matter, he published at Amsterdam in folio.” “His Janua is full of barbarisms, which he tried in vain to defend; for his Apology stands itself in need of one.” He also wrote a Physic remodelled in accordance with Divine Light. . . . I praise the man’s piety, but piety alone will not do everything.”
The whole of his writings on the theory of education alluded to as “some other philosophic matter”! This is bad enough, but worse was to follow. The sceptical Bayle, writing in 1697, gets the greater part of his material from Des Marets’ Antirrheticus, and treats the angry retort of an antagonist as a reliable estimate of Comenius’ character. Des Marets gets a special word of praise. “On ne sauroit assez louer notre Des Marets,” he writes, “de sa vigueur contre les Enthousiastes et contre les annonciateurs de grandes révolutions. On a pu voir comme il poussa Comenius.” Of the Amsterdam folio he says, “C’est un ouvrage in folio divisé en quatre parties ​qui coûta beaucoup de veilles à son auteur, et beaucoup d’argent à d’autres et dont la République de lettres n’a tiré aucune profit; et je ne crois pas même qu’il y ait rien de practicable dans les idées de cet auteur.”
In the eighteenth century Bayle’s Dictionary was widely circulated, and ignorant readers readily acquiesced in the estimate given to Comenius’ character and merits. In 1742 a protest was raised by Paul Eugene Layritz, school-director at Nuremburg, under the title Vindication of the Memory of Comenius, but this was unable to counteract Bayle’s influence, and a still more deplorable fate awaited the unhappy pedagogue. Adelung, in his History of Human Folly, gives him a prominent place, and classes him with magicians, alchemists, and soothsayers—a truly humiliating position for the father of modern education.
To be abused tries one’s temper, but need not diminish his self-esteem; to be misunderstood may embitter a disposition, but need not shatter a sense of merit; but to be absolutely ignored presents no element of compensation, and this is what befell Comenius at the hands of his successors in the path of school reform. While the pedagogic writers of the seventeenth century were firm believers in the continuity and organic development of educational theory, those of the eighteenth to a large extent ignored the efforts of their predecessors, and were at no pains to discover if the principles that they enunciated had already been worked out by others. A. H. Francke mentions the Unum Necessarium, but never alludes to the Great Didactic. Had Rousseau been put through a course of Comenian method, his Emile might have lost in paradox and in piquancy, but the educationist would have gained, where the lover of polite literature lost. In How Gertrude ​Teaches her Children, Pestalozzi, from a slightly different point of view, enunciates principles almost identical with those of the School of Infancy, and, had Pestalozzi been led to study the Great Didactic, he would probably have confined himself to the development, on the subjective side, of the objective principles embodied in that treatise. Subsequent writers were wittier than Comenius, none possessed, in combination, his sympathy with children, his power of analysis, and his breadth of mind.
It is only recently that Comenius has been rediscovered. Von Raumer in his History of Pedagogy (1843) was the first to attract attention to the surpassing merit of the Great Didactic, and since then several translations of that work and a voluminous Comenian literature have appeared in Germany. In 1841 Professor Purkyňe found the manuscript of the Bohemian Didactic at Lissa. It was published at Prague in 1849, and has since been twice reprinted. The School of Infancy was translated into English by D. Benham in 1858, and more recently Professor Laurie has provided the student with an admirable epitome of the Amsterdam Folio of 1657. In the present volume, the Great Didactic is presented to English readers for the first time.
* ↑ In the Introduction to De cultura ingeniorum oratio (Op. Did. Omn. iii. 72) he calls himself Hunno Brodensis Moravus; but, as he was known at Herborn as John Amos Niwnizensis, was inscribed in the Matriculation book at Heidelberg as Joannes Amos Nivanus Moravus, and wrote his name “Johannes Amos Nivanus” on the manuscript of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium cælestium that he bought from a widow Christman at Heidelberg, it seems probable that Nivnitz was his birthplace and that he refers to Ungarisch-Brod as the spot where his childhood was spent.
* ↑ By contemporary writers they are also termed the Bohemian Brethren and The Unity.
* ↑ Admodum enim puer parente utroque orbatus, tutorum supinitate ita fui neglectus ut demum ætatis anno decimo sexto Latina elementa gustare contigerit.—J. A. Comenius, Opera Didactica Omnia, Amsterdam, 1657, i. 442.
* ↑ Millibus e multis ego quoque sum unus, miser homuncio, cui amœnissimum vitæ totius ver, florentes juventutis anni, nugis scholasticis transmissi , misere perierunt .—Did. Mag. xi . 13.
* ↑ Sedulus in libris scribendis atque legendis Alstedius nomen sedulitatis habet. Encyclopædia Scientiarum Omnium, Leyden, 1649 (2nd Ed.), ad init.
* ↑ Nulla lingua docetor ex grammatica.—Encyc. Scient. Omn. ii. 287.
* ↑ Experientiæ nulla authoritas præjudicet.—Ibid.
* ↑ Statim ut Wolphgangii Ratichii de Studiorum rectificanda methodo consilium, ab Academiis Jenensi et Gissena scripto publico laudatum, Anno 1612, prodierat, fama hæc meas quoque ad aures studiis tunc Herbornæ Nassoviorum operam dantis pervenit.—Op. Did. Omn. i. 3.
* ↑ Multa igitur et multum animo volvebam.—Op. Did. Omn. i. 442.
* ↑ Facilioris grammaticæ præcepta.—Ibid. i. 3.
* ↑ J. A. Comenius, Grosse Unterrichtslehre (Julius Beeger und Franz Zoubek), p. 14.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. i. 442.
* ↑ It had gone through twenty editions by 1695.
* ↑ Ep. ad Montanum, p. 77. Quoted by Kvacsala in Johann Amos Comenius. Sein Leben und seine Schriften. Notes, p. 12.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. i. 3.
* ↑ Ibid.
* ↑ Zoubek, p. 28.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. ii. 282.
* ↑ Ibid. ii. 282.
* ↑ Hæc summa est Ratichianæ illius vulgo decantatæ methodi.—Ibid. ii. 81.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. ii. 283.
* ↑ In 1628 Gabriel Holstein had expounded Glaum’s method under the title “Divinæ Glaumianæ Methodi Specimina,” and claimed that any language could, by its aid, be learned in six months. “But,” says Comenius, “hanc methodum prodiise [sic] non vidimus,” ii. 86, 87.
* ↑ Comenius ad Palatinum Belzensem.—Ep. Com. Mus. Boh. [Kvacsala.]
* ↑ Consilium de latina lingua compendiose a pueris addiscenda.
* ↑ J. C. Frey, Medici, Paris. Opuscula varia nusquam edita, Parisiis, 1646, pp. 327–331. Frey recommends “Coenobia,” or continuous conversation in a boarding-school, as the best means of learning a language.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. i. 197.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. i. 248, 249.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. ii. 82.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. i. 250.
* ↑ Ibid, ii, 81.
* ↑ Comenius gives the following examples: 623. Vadem in ergastulo clam confectum comperi. 953. Has dictionum telas posthumus nevit. Op. Did. Omn. i. 252.
* ↑ Ibid.
* ↑ Spencer, Education, ch. i.
* ↑ Did. Mag. chap. xviii. sec. 43.
* ↑ Hic, inquam, scopus fuit, quem attigisse tantum abest ut glorier, ut primus etiam defectus agnoscam et confitear.—Op. Did. Omn. i. 254.
* ↑ Factum est, quod futurum imaginari non poteram, ut puerile istud opusculum universali quodam eruditi Orbis applausu fuerit acceptum.—Ibid. iii. 381.
* ↑ Ibid. iii. 381. Beeger says that a manuscript translation into Turkish by Ali Beg, and dating from 1650, exists in Paris.
* ↑ Evelyn’s Diary, 27th January 1658: “My deare son Richard died. He had before the fifth yeare learned out Puerilis, got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin and had made a considerable progress in Comenius’ Janua.”
* ↑ Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, Rott. 1697, i. 882.
* ↑ “To tell you therefore what I have benefited herein among old renowned Authors, I shall spare; and to search what many modern Janua’s and Didactics more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not.”
* ↑ Adelung’s Geschichte der menschlichen Narrheit, Leipzig, 1785; p. 205.
* ↑ Ibid. p. 222.
* ↑ For information about Hartlib I am indebted to Samuel Hartlib, a biographical memoir, by H. Dircks, 1865.
* ↑ ‘Grammatica latina legibus vernaculæ concinnata.’ Not preserved.
* ↑ ‘Physicæ ad lumen divinum reformatæ synopsis philodidactorum et theodidactorum censuræ exposita.’
* ↑ Campanellam et Verulamium, philosophiæ restauratores gloriosos. Pansophici Libri Delineatio.—Op. Did. Omn. i. 442.
* ↑ Verulamius mirabili suo organo rerum naturas intime scrutandi modum infallibilem detexit.—Ibid. i. 426.
* ↑ Facile ostenderem nostrum Prometheum magnam partem suorum ignium fatuorum ex illius cœlo suffuraturum fuisse.—Antirrheticus, p. 37 (quoted by Bayle).
* ↑ ‘Astronomia ad lumen physicum reformanda.’
* ↑ ‘Januæ Linguarum reseratae Vestibulum quo primus ad Latinam Linguam aditus Tirunculis paratur.’
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. i. 303.
* ↑ Quid per essentiam suam res quæque sit.—Pansophici Libri Delineatio, i. 403.
* ↑ Janua rerum sive Sapientiæe porta.—Ibid.
* ↑ Encyclopædiolam seu Pansophiolam.—Ibid.
* ↑ ‘Pansophici Libri Delineatio.’
* ↑ ‘Conatuum Comenianorum Præludia. Oxoniæ, excudebat Gulielmus Turnerus.’
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. i. 455.
* ↑ ‘Dilucidatio Conatuum Pansophicorum.’
* ↑ An English translation of the Delineatio and Dilucidatio was brought out by Hartlib in 1642, under the title ‘A reformation of schooles, designed in two treatises.’
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. i. 458.
* ↑ Delineatio, sec. 39.
* ↑ Ibid. sec. 24.
* ↑ Ibid. sec. 26. Ut per universalissima cognoscendi principia, eosque ad ultimas usque conclusiones rite deducendi modos, universalem aliquam veritati rerum cognoscendæ aperiret viam.
* ↑ Ibid. Gilbertus magnetis speculatione abreptus totam Philosophiam ex magnete deducere voluit: sed evidentissime cum injuria principiorum Physicorum.
* ↑ Delineatio, sec. 40.
* ↑ Ibid. sec. 63.
* ↑ One commentator actually declares that the rules of Freemasonry have been taken from Comenius’ writings.
* ↑ In the Preface to the Great Didactic Comenius expressly says that his principles were arrived at a priori.
* ↑ Leges illustris Gymnasii Lesnensis.
* ↑ Chorea est circulus cujus centrum est Diabolus.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. i. 320.
* ↑ Cedat Epictetus nomen tibi, clare Comeni.—Op. Did. Omn. i. 348.
* ↑ Rossæus Anglus.—Op. Did. Omn. i. 357. I have been unable to obtain any further information about this scholar.
* ↑ This he further on identifies with the Janua Rerum.—Op. Did. Omn. i. 362.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. i. 348–393.
* ↑ De modo autem speculum ejusmodi conficiendi, naturæ maxime consentaneus ille videtur (quem et Comenium hac de re libros mundi utriusque Majoris nimirum et Minoris cum libro Scripturæ, ut audio, potissimum consulentem sibi eligere conjicio) qui Vestigia Creatoris in producendis rebus accuratissime observet, ita ut ex rationis lumine primo probetur; necessario concedendum esse rerum conditorem et Deum, deinde Creaturæ eo pertractentur modo, quo Moses eas in Genesi sua procreatas luculenter descripsit.—Excerpta Literarum, J. Duræi, 1638. MS. Sloane, Brit. Mus. 417.
* ↑ Dr. John Worthington, Master of Jesus College, Cambridge.
* ↑ He wrote among other works ‘An essay for the advancement of Husbandry-learning: or proposition for the erecting of a College of Husbandry’ (1651); ‘The advice of W. P. (Sir William Petty) to Mr. Sam. H. for the advancement of some particular parts of learning’; and a pamphlet entitled ‘An invention of Engines of Motion.’
* ↑ Amicis apparatum Pansophicum (quam tenuis fuit) lustrantibus.—Op. Did. Omn. ii. preface.
* ↑ ‘Via Lucis. Hoc est, Rationabilis disquisitio, quomodo intellectualis animorum lux, Sapientia, tandem sub mundi vesperam per omnes mentes et gentes feliciter spargi possit.’
* ↑ Cujus singulæ voces loco definitionum essent, ad rerum ipsarum numeros, mensuras, et pondera factæ.
* ↑ ‘An Essay towards a real character and a philosophical language,’ by John Wilkins, D.D., Dean of Ripon and Fellow of the Royal Society. London, 1668. P. 414.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. ii. preface.
* ↑ ‘De novis studia didactica continuandis occasionibus.’
* ↑ ‘De novis studia didactica continuandis occasionibus.’
* ↑ ‘J. A. Comenii, Pansophiæ Diatyposis Ichnographia et Orthographia delineatione Totius futuri Operis amplitudinem, dimensionem, usus adumbrans.’ This work was translated into English in 1651 by Jeremy Collier, Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge (father of the non-juror), under the title ‘A Patterne of Universall Knowledge in a plaine and true draught or a diatyposis or model of the eminently learned and pious promoter of science in generall, Mr. J. A. Comenius, shadowing forth the largeness and use of the intended work in an ichnographicall and orthographicall delineation.’
* ↑ A sketch of this ‘D. Cypriani Kinneri Cogitationum Didacticarum Diatyposis Summaria’ was translated by Hartlib, under the title A Continuation of J. A. Comenius’ School Endeavours, or a Summary Delineation of Dr. Cyprian Kinner . . . his Thoughts concerning Education, or the way and method of Teaching. London, 1648.’
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. ii. 297.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. ii. 304.
* ↑ Ibid. 455.
* ↑ ‘Index plenus Germanicarum vocum,’ Op. Did. Omn. ii. 457.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. ii. 458.
* ↑ Visa enim illis et lecta, eatenus edita.—Ibid. iii. 3.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. iii. 5.
* ↑ ‘Scholæ Pansophicæ Delineatio.’
* ↑ Kvacsala, p. 329.
* ↑ ‘De cultura ingeniorum oratio,’ Op. Did. Omn. iii. 72.
* ↑ ‘De primario Ingenia colendi instrumento, Libris,’ Ibid. 106.
* ↑ ‘De Schola Latina, tribus classibus divisa,’ Ibid. 114.
* ↑ ‘Methodi veræ encomia,’ Op. Did. Omn. iii. 739.
* ↑ ‘De utilitate accuratæ Rerum nomenclaturæ Oratiuncula,’ Ibid. 745.
* ↑ ‘Methodi veræ encomia,’ preface, Ibid. 736.
* ↑ Nemo ultra annum perduraturus.—Ibid.
* ↑ ‘Leges Præceptorum,’ xvi. Ibid. 796.
* ↑ ‘De Studii Pansophici Impedimentis,’ Op. Did. Omn. iii. 735.
* ↑ ‘De instituendis e Latinæ Linguæ Vestibulo exercitiis ad Præceptorem commonefactio,’ Op. Did. Omn. iii. 206.
* ↑ ‘Orbis sensualium pictus, hoc est Omnium fundamentalium in mundo rerum, et in vita actionum, Nomenclatura, ad ocularem demonstrationem deducta.’
* ↑ Aus meinem Leben, pt. i. bk. i.
* ↑ Peractis cum applausu hisce Ludis.—Op. Did. Omn. iii. 1042.
* ↑ ‘Præcepta morum, in usum juventutis collecta.’
* ↑ ‘Leges scholæ bene ordinatæ.’
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. iii. 776–784.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. iii. 784.
* ↑ ‘Oratio valedictoria,’ Op. Did. Omn. iii. 1041.
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. iv. 5.
* ↑ Letter to Harsdörfer, Zoubek, p. 90.
* ↑ Probably to Hartlib.
* ↑ The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, by Robert Vaughan, D.D. London, 1839. Vol. ii. p. 431. From Lansdowne Coll. of MS. in Brit. Mus.
* ↑ Lansdowne Coll. of MS. Quoted by Vaughan, ii. 423.
* ↑ ‘J. A. Comenii Opera Didactica Omnia, variis hucusque occasionibus scripta, diversisque locis edita; nunc autem non tantum in unum, ut simul sunt, collecta, sed et ultimo conatu in Systema unum mechanice constructum, redacta. Amsterdami. Impensis D. Laurentii de Geer, Excuderunt Christophoros Cunradus et Gabriel a Roy. Anno 1657.’
* ↑ Op. Did. Omn. iv. 6.
* ↑ ‘Ventilabrum Sapientiæ sive sapienter sua retractandi ars. Cum adjuncta authoris omnium Didacticarum suarum cogitationum retractatione brevi.’
* ↑ Latinitatis studia mihi toties nauseata.—Op. Did. Omn. iv. 6.
* ↑ Hartlib to Pell, quoting a letter of Rulice, Vaughan, ii. 448.
* ↑ Ibid.
* ↑ The works of the Hon. Robert Boyle. London, 1772. Vol. vi. p. 99.
* ↑ Hartlib had been in ill-health for some time, and probably died in this year.
* ↑ In his letter to the bookseller Montanus (Van den Berge) in 1661.
* ↑ ‘Janua Rerum reserata, hoc est Sapientia prima (quam vulgo metaphysicam vocant). Authore J. A. Comenio. Lugduni Batavorum; apud heredes Jacobi Heeneman. Anno 1681.’
* ↑ ‘De rerum humanaruni emendatione consultatio catholica.’
* ↑ There is a manuscript copy of the Panegersia in the British Museum.
* ↑ Kvacsala.
* ↑ ‘Briefen zur Beförderung der Humanität,’ No. 41.
* ↑ ‘De Zelo sine scientia et charitate, admonitio fraterna J. A. Comenii ad D. Samuelum Maresium: pro minuendis odiis et ampliandis favoribus.’
* ↑ I have been unable to find any copy of this tractate. Bayle quotes it largely.
* ↑ Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique. Vol. ii. p. 884, note.
* ↑ Leibnitz, Coll. Works. Ed. Pertz. Vol. iv. p. 270.
* ↑ ‘Specilegium Didacticum artium discendi aut docendi summam brevibus præceptis exhibens.’
* ↑ Morhof, Polyhistor literarius, philosophicus, et practicus. Lubecæ, 1688, pp. 119, 120.
* ↑ Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique. Rott. 1697, ii. 559.
* ↑ Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique. Rott. 1697, i. 883.
* ↑ ‘Manes Comenii vindicati, ejusque docendi discendique methodus a Petri Baylii injuriis liberata,’ 1742.
* ↑ Adelung’s ‘Geschichte der menschlichen Narrheit, oder Lebenschreibungen berühmter Schwarzkünstler, Goldmacher, Teufelsbanner, Zeichen-und- Liniendeuter, Schwärmer, Wahrsager, und anderer philosophischen Unholden.’ Leipzig, 1785.
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