In these two pupils, so different in manner, Rabelais has personified two contrasted methods of education: that which, by mechanical exercises of memory, enfeebles and dulls the intelligence; and that which, with larger grants of liberty, develops keen intelligences, and frank and open characters.
103. The New Education.—Let us now notice with some detail how Rabelais conceives this new education.[72] After having thrown into sharp relief the faults contracted by Gargantua in the school of his first teachers, he entrusts him to a preceptor, Ponocrates, who is charged with correcting his faults, and with re-moulding him; he is to employ his own principles in the government of his pupil.
Ponocrates proceeds slowly at first; he considers that “nature does not endure sudden changes without great violence.” He studies and observes his pupil; he wishes to judge of his natural disposition. Then he sets himself to work; he undertakes a general recasting of the character and spirit of Gargantua, while directing, at the same time, his physical, intellectual, and moral education.
104. Physical Education.—Hygiene and gymnastics, cleanliness which protects the body, and exercise which strengthens it,—these two essential parts of physical education receive equal attention from Rabelais. Erasmus thought it was nonsense (“ne rime à rien”) to wash more than once a day. Gargantua, on the contrary, after eating, bathes his hands and his eyes in fresh water. Rabelais does not forget that he has been a physician; he omits no detail relative to the care of the body, even the most repugnant. He is far from believing, with the mystics of the Middle Age, that it is permissible to lodge knowledge in a sordid body, and that a foul or neglected exterior is not unbefitting virtuous souls. The first preceptors of Gargantua said that it sufficed to comb one’s hair “with the four fingers and the thumb; and that whoever combed, washed, and cleansed himself otherwise, was losing his time in this world.” With Ponocrates, Gargantua reforms his habits, and tries to resemble Eudemon, “whose hair was so neatly combed, who was so well dressed, of such fine appearance, and was so modest in his bearing, that he much more resembled a little angel than a man.”
Rabelais attaches equal importance to gymnastics, to walking, and to active life in the open air. He does not allow Gargantua to grow pale over his books, and to protract his study into the night. After the morning’s lessons, he takes him out to play. Tennis and ball follow the application to books: “He exercises his body just as vigorously as he had before exercised his mind.” And so, after the study of the afternoon till the supper hour, Gargantua devotes his time to physical exercises. Riding, wrestling, swimming, every species of physical recreation, gymnastics under all its forms,—there is nothing which Gargantua does not do to give agility to his limbs and to strengthen his muscles. Here, as in other places, Rabelais stretches a point, and purposely resorts to exaggeration in order to make his thought better comprehended. It would require days of several times twenty-four hours, in order that a real man could find the time to do all that the author of Gargantua requires of his giant. In contrast with the long asceticism of the Middle Age, he proposes a real revelry of gymnastics for the colossal body of his hero. We will not forget that here, as in all the other parts of Rabelais’ work, fiction is ever mingled with fact. Rabelais wrote for giants, and it is natural that he should demand gigantesque efforts of them. In order to comprehend the exact thought of the author, it is necessary to reduce his fantastic exaggerations to human proportions.
105. Intellectual Education.—For the mind, as for the body, Rabelais requires prodigies of activity. Gargantua rises at four in the morning, and the greater part of the long day is filled with study. For the indolent contemplations of the Middle Age, Rabelais substitutes an incessant effort and an intense activity of the mind. Gargantua first studies the ancient languages, and the first place is given to Greek, which Rabelais rescues from the long discredit into which it had fallen in the Middle Age, as is proved by the vulgar adage, “Græcum est, non legitur.”
“Now, all disciplines are restored, and the languages reinstated,—Greek (without which it is a shame for a person to call himself learned), Hebrew, Chaldean, Latin. There are very elegant and correct editions in use, which have been invented in my age by divine inspiration, as, on the other hand, artillery was invented by diabolic suggestion. The whole world is full of wise men, of learned teachers, and of very large libraries, and it is my opinion that neither in the time of Plato nor in that of Cicero, nor in that of Papinian, were there such opportunities for study as we see to-day.”
Like all his contemporaries, Rabelais is an enthusiast in classical learning; but he is distinguished from them by a very decided taste for the sciences, and in particular for the natural sciences.
106. The Physical and Natural Sciences.—The Middle Age had completely neglected the study of nature. The art of observing was ignored by those subtile dialecticians, who would know nothing of the physical world except through the theories of Aristotle or the dogmas of the sacred books; who attached no value to the study of the material universe, the transient and despised abode of immortal souls; and who, moreover, flattered themselves that they could discover at the end of their syllogisms all that was necessary to know about it. Rabelais is certainly the first, in point of time, of that grand school of educators who place the sciences in the first rank among the studies worthy of human thought.
The scholar of the Middle Age knew nothing of the world. Gargantua requires of his son that he shall know it under all its aspects: