[98] Michelet, Nos fils, p. 175 et seq.
[99] This is, perhaps, the earliest appearance of the conception that learning should be a process of discovery or of re-discovery. Condillac (1715-1780) has elaborated this idea in the introduction to his Grammaire, and Spencer (Education, p. 122) makes it a fundamental law of teaching. If this assumed principle were to be rigorously applied, as, fortunately, it cannot be, progress in human knowledge would be impossible. Mr. Bain’s comment on this doctrine (Education as a Science, p. 94) is as follows: “This bold fiction is sometimes put forward as one of the regular arts of the teacher; but I should prefer to consider it as an extraordinary device, admissible only on special occasions.” (P.)
[100] It may not be generally known that Comenius was once solicited to become the President of Harvard College. The following is a quotation from Vol. II., p. 14, of Cotton Mather’s Magnalia: “That brave old man, Johannes Amos Commenius, the fame of whose worth hath been trumpetted as far as more than three languages (whereof every one is indebted unto his Janua) could carry it, was indeed agreed withal, by our Mr. Winthrop in his travels through the low countries, to come over into New England, and illuminate this Colledge and country, in the quality of a President, which was now become vacant. But the solicitations of the Swedish Ambassador diverting him another way, that incomparable Moravian became not an American.” This was on the resignation of President Dunster, in 1654. (P.)
[101] The most complete account ever written of Comenius and his writings is, “John Amos Comenius,” by S. S. Laurie (Boston: 1885). It is an invaluable contribution to the philosophy and the history of education. (P.)
[102] Buisson’s Dictionnaire de Pédagogie, Article Comenius.
[103] In the French Lycées and Colleges the grades are named as follows, beginning with the lowest: “ninth, eighth, seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth, third, second, rhetoric, philosophy, preparatory mathematics, elementary mathematics, special mathematics.” Latin was formerly begun in an earlier grade.
[104] The public school of the European type may be represented by a series of (3) pyramids, the second higher than the first, and the third higher than the second, each independent and complete in itself; while the public school of the American type is represented by a single pyramid in three sections. While in an English, French, or German town, public education is administered in three separate establishments, in an American town there is a single graded school that fulfills the same functions. (P.)
[105] Platter, a Swiss teacher of the sixteenth century (1499-1582).
[106] For this quotation, as for all those which we borrow from the preface of the Janua linguarum, a French edition of which (in three languages: Latin, German, and French) appeared in 1643, we copy from the authentic text.
[107] There is a misleading fallacy in all such illustrations. What analogy is there between the learning of history or geology and the learning of a trade like carpentry? Should a physician and a blacksmith be educated on the same plan? In every case knowledge should precede practice; and the liberal arts are best learned by first learning their correlative sciences. (P.)